Long before the abhorrent spread of Apartheid, South Africa was in turbulence of decolonization. While independence arrived, colonies became states, their remained a dilemma as to the manner which one can conduct themselves in the infrastructure left behind by the colonizer. An infrastructure that was inclined to the ideology of oppression. While following the end of colonial period the empire still maintained influence over the socio-economic ongoings of the country, South Africa became the dominant economic power towards the end of 20th century. However, what kind of lives did people lead, divided by apartheid, in an apparent democratic politics. How is that trauma reflected in the later years? Karen Jennings novel Crooked Seeds attempts to ponder over these questions as the history of a nation is echoed through the conflicted household of Deidre van Deventer.
Set in a post-apartheid South Africa, Karen Jenning’s novel unfolds in 2028 where the nation has been ravaged by a severe drought and people across towns continue to remain queued in front of water trucks. In Cape Town, Deidre leads her life in a crumbling corner of a public housing complex haunted by her past and hoping in vain to build herself a new life. Her father is dead and her mother, admitted in a nearby care centre, suffers from mental illness. Deidre who lost a leg in an explosion perpetually pities herself as a “cripple” and a “victim”. At the same time, she uses it as an excuse to be prioritized over others. Her indifference to the queue made up in front of her is an example of the same
She kept her eyes on the water truck, did not acknowledge the cars, did not look at the queue.
Deidre feels entitled to the basic amenities due to her whiteness and her disabilities and continues to take advantage of the coloured people around her. Miriam, her friend who lives in the same complex obediently carries out all that Deidre asks, moping the floor, driving her to the shopping centre and getting her clean sheets.
However, her life comes to a pause when she receives a call from the police. Her family home becomes a crime scene under the investigation of Detective Constable Xaba. The discovery of human bones led them to believe that her brother Rossouw van Deventer may have been involved with a pro-apartheid group that planned to interrupt the 1994 elections by blowing up voting centres. While Deidre continues to denied it, Jennings uses the investigation as an event that provokes the reader to look into Deidre’s own attitude towards the shifting socio-political atmosphere of the country.
Deidre doesn’t believe her brother to be a part of the said plot, yet she remembers that she lost her leg in an explosion resulting from Rossouw’s experimental work. The explosion marks the point where all of their lives are overturned. Deidre’s mother begins to spiral into a disturbing mental state. At the same time, she remembers her tiptoeing around the fact that Ross stealthily enters the house, burying babies in their lawn. Deidre’s adopted daughter Monica was brought back by Ross but saved by their mother.
While Rossouw’s involvement undoubtedly suggests an unambiguous ideology of racism and xenophobia, racism also reflects itself in Deidre during her conversation with Miriam regarding upcoming elections.
Well, I guess I could’ve voted in ‘ninety-four because I was eighteen, but no one ever talked to me about it or told me to register or anything like that, and my parents weren’t really political people. They didn’t vote either, so it’s just not something we did in our house….
You’re coloured so voting actually means something to you and your people because you were kept from it for all those years…
I just never saw the point for me. The government doesn’t care about me, so why waste time on it?
Deidre metaphorically refers to the systemic racism and intergenerational trauma that the population has been suffering from despite being in a post-apartheid society. It vocalizes the lag that always remains between the growth of new superstructural systems and the existing infrastructure.
However, the narrative shifts to a transformation as Deidre coaxes her mother for answers and finally decides to reveal the past to further the investigation.
Crooked Seeds successfully explores how shades of past are reflected into the future. The hope and the scope of resolution is inevitable. The mountain burns. If only the rain would come, just a little bit of rain, to wet the soil, feed the seeds, so that something might grow again.