Nkosi Mating Bird Themes

Mating Birds: Lewis Nkosi
Introduction
This essay focuses on the book “Mating Birds” which was written by a young black man giving us the narration of his life. Ndi Sibiya, the narrator is awaiting death for the alleged rape of a white girl with whom he claims to have a muted love affair across the segregated beach. The narration is an attack on apartheid, the political system and judiciary. Throughout this essay I am going to; outline and discuss the theme of love, death and rape in the novel, discuss the implications of the beach in the muted love between Veronica Sluter an Ndi Sibiya, Show the conspiracies between the law and apartheid as a political system that ‘othered’ blacks, Trace and critically evaluate the narrative techniques that Lewis Nkosi uses to criticize apartheid, specifically emphasising how such narrative techniques dislodge apartheid without becoming the ‘common protest novel.’
Outline and discuss the theme(s) of love, death and rape in the novel.
Looking back into apartheid, we can see that the party which came into power in 1948 came with many laws which made it impossible for black and white to interact. Numerous laws like “Mixed

Even though Nkosi focuses on the private realm of the sexual instead of political issues, apartheid still remains a political, racial background in this narrative. Nkosi 's intention throughout Mating Birds is to reveal that the individual becomes voiceless under the power of the State in South Africa. With the work of Michiko Kakutani in New York Times, we are able to see how ironically enough is the act responsible for his (Ndi Sibiya’s) death sentence is not a political one, while Lewis Nkosi made it very clear that, every aspect of daily life in South Africa including love and sexuality-is infected with