“Nigeria” in the Cape: Afropolitanism and Alienation in Yewande Omotoso's <em>Bom Boy</em>

Abstract

This article studies Yewande Omotoso’s debut novel, Bom Boy, as an example of the newly emerging body of migrant fiction in South Africa and focuses on its representation of migratory linkages between Cape Town, South Africa, and Nigeria. While Nigerian writers virulently raised their pen against apartheid, current South African writing appears to distance itself from its erstwhile supporters. This most visibly surfaces in the appearance of “the Nigerian” as a new stock character in some recent South African novels. I argue that Omotoso’s novel registers the continuous history of South Africa’s othering of the African continent while at the same time highlighting moments of relation between South Africa and Nigeria and their respective peoples. The novel envisions Cape Town as an inherently ambiguous place of intersection and cross-cultural contact, as well as of alienation. Drawing on Achille Mbembe’s notion of Afropolitanism, I suggest that while invoking the term, the novel also calls for its revaluation. This, the text seems to propose, crucially needs to take into account the specific and troubling history of the Cape as a location from which to think anew transnational connections with Nigeria. The copresence of Afropolitanism and alienation particularly comes to the fore in the author’s juxtaposition of the figure of Rhodes with the legendary heroine Moremi of Yoruba myth, as well as in her exploration of the theme of transnational and transracial adoption.