Zakes Mda read Waiting for the Barbarians and Age of Iron and started writing novels and it led to him breaking with the conventions of writing South Africa:
“… [I]n the experience of a liberated South Africa we have come to appreciate the grey areas. Some of our politicians who were once larger-than-life heroes of the liberation struggle have turned out to be the worst villains—moral degenerates, rapists, and embezzlers. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings demonstrated that even some of those Afrikaners who were known to us as the most heartless agents of the apartheid state possessed redeeming qualities. We began to understand what drove the particular Afrikaner to torture and murder black youths when other Afrikaners did not, what made him a tool of the state’s violence when his neighbor was not. For the first time we had some idea of the motivational dynamics that drove these individuals, though we still found their behavior inexcusable and reprehensible.”
Full context in the Boston Review.
Thanks for posting this.