“My name is Mandla Shabalala. Around these shacks people call me Lord of the Shacks. Eish. When somebody first start that calling, I tell them stop making nonsense. What lord? Which lord? If I really was a lord, I still be patching holes in my roof with old campaign posters every election season? Hawu. I am borrowing extension cords from neighbours when my illegal electricity connection decide it is tired of working? Cha, mfowethu.

But people in the settlement like give names to things. Once a name stick, it just stick.

The truth is I not own these shacks. Nobody really own them. The government say one thing. The municipality say another thing. Every few years some important-looking people arrive with clipboards and promises. They walk around taking measurements, pointing at things, nodding at each other like doctors who talking about a patient. Then they disappear. We never see them again until the next election. Meanwhile we continue living our lives.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Onyeka Nwelue is a Nigerian writer, filmmaker, jazz musician, a trained anthropologist and a Žižekian disciple, a Soyinkaphile, who has published over 40 books, including the Crime Awards and ANA prize-winning The Strangers of Braamfontein, hailed by Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka as ‘raunchy.’ He is also the author of Murder in Orania, Home Affairs and Pay the Xenofobie 5 Million Rands and The Lord of the Shacks. He is the founding director of the James Currey Society in Oxford.

'Lord of the Shacks' is published by WAA Stellenbosch Uitgewer