Post-TRC anxieties in Jacob Dlamini’s Native Nostalgia

Abstract

In this article, I explore the representation of South Africa’s transition after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Jacob Dlamini’s Native Nostalgia, a provocative account of the author’s childhood in a Johannesburg township during apartheid. I argue that Dlamini’s engagement with recent South African history and his (re)construction of black identity can be understood in counter-discursive ways as having the potential to subvert some of the official historical narratives that underpin the dominant political structures. Furthermore, I foreground how Dlamini uses his peculiar historiographical method to articulate strong scepticism towards, and anxieties about, the post-TRC socio-political order in which nostalgia for the past, disenchantment with the present and trepidation for the future all co-exist simultaneously in a state of nervous tension.