“Portmanteau biota” and Ecofeminist Interventions in Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness*

Abstract

Summary When Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, the first African woman, and the first person ever to win the award for environmental activism, was asked by Time magazine's Stephan Faris, “What's the world's biggest challenge?”, she replied: “The environment. We are sharing our resources in a very inequitable way…. And that is partly the reason why we have conflict” (Faris 2004: 4). Conflict over natural resources is very much at the centre of Mda's novel The Heart of Redness (2000). The historical past, emblematised by the cattle-killings in the Eastern Cape during the 1850s, is linked to the present through the ecological consciousness of Qukezwa, whose character is conceived in mythopoeic terms. Positing the notion that Qukezwa is the quintessential ecofeminist in the novel, this paper foregrounds her role as a catalyst in the war of words between the “Believers” in the prophecies of Nongqawuse and the “Unbelievers”. Her seemingly reckless act of cutting down foreign trees may be viewed as a protest against what Alfred W. Crosby has termed “portmanteau biota” (1986: 270), a collective term for the organisms that Europeans took with them to the lands they colonised. Qukezwa's actions register a strong message to those governments which exploit Planet Earth without regard for the deleterious consequences of their actions.