Revisiting SSMendi in a trilling fiction
A review of 'Dancing with the death drill'
This book won the award for Best fiction single-authored volume at the Humanities and Social Science awards on March 14. The awards were hosted by the National Institute for Humanities and Social Science (NIHSS).
The title “Dancing the Death Drills” conveys that the book is to be about war, but also life and death itself. The title of the book is a song some of the characters sang when the “SSMedi” was sinking, the main character sings this same song at his court hearing.
This novel takes you on a rollercoaster ride, it is as if you are living through the main character and feeling what the character is feeling. Dancing with the Death Drills the author based it off real events that happen in the past. The book was based on the sinking of the” SSMendi” where many soldiers died.
The author created his own character who survived the shipwrecked, it was as if the author wanted to imagine how life would be for a survivor of such a tragedy. The book takes the reader through the life of the main character before and after the shipwreck and the war he survived.
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The journey the character went through, made him the man he is at the end of the book, a man who was not afraid of dying. In his life, he has seen a lot of death, the death of his mother, sister, friends and fellow soldiers. The book begins with the main character Jean-Jacques Henri thinking about his upcoming retirement but by the end of the chapter he has killed two people and it shocks many within the book.
A reporter who was very interested in the life of Jean-Jacques finds, a friend of his Jerry Moloto. Jerry tells the reporter the life story Jean-Jacques who is actually Pitso Motaung a South African man, not an Algerian man they thought. After the reporter Thierry Bousquet hears the whole story of Pitso or Jean-Jacques, Jerry and him goes and visits Jean-Jacques and asks if they can publish his story.
The last chapter is where Jean-Jacques is at his court case and before the hearing even started it seems as if he is remembering the life and because someone knows his life story and will tell it to the world he is ready for anything including death.
The story ends with the character singing and dancing to the song ‘dancing with the death drill.’ The story is set in past South Africa and the world. The novel depicts a worlds were racism and slavery was the norm, a world where because of the colour of your skin, you were treated as a boss or dirt.
The novel shows just how much the world has changed and has become less about your race but actually, your intelligent and merit. The book was written in the perspective of each character as a way for the character to tell their own story, yet in the books, it is told by another person.
The reader feels what the character is feeling and but still knows they are only a spectator of the story. This novel has a way of getting the reader invested in each perspective of the characters life. I feel as though while reading the book I felt what the character was feeling but not with the same intensity the character was feeling it.
The story of each of the main character was so vivid it felt as if I was there but only as an onlooker. The building of events and the environment was so excellent it made imagining situations within the books easy. The book is very well written and I would recommend it for anyone who wants to learn more about not only the History of South Africa but WW1 through a fictional character.
Book: Dancing the Death Drill
Author: Fred Khumalo
Published by Umuzi, 2017
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