A playful, clever, and witty writer, Vladislavić’s writing of the 1980s and 1990s closely chronicles the emergence of post-apartheid South Africa, and plays close attention to the country’s urban spaces. The WHITES ONLY Bench (his capitals) comes from a collection whose original title is particularly telling: Propaganda by Monuments.
Set in a museum, we learn through the wittily-conveyed horror of some of the staff that the example of the titular bench of which they had been so initially proud – featuring so prominently in a press photograph (captured, of course, in black and white) – is a fake, created in their own workshop as ‘the real thing’ had proved so hard to find.
What follows is a satire of bureaucracy and of urges to be ‘correct’ and ‘authentic’, a reminder that cities are palimpsests where histories are continually overwritten, and an exploration of the horribly complicated nature of ‘truth’. Under the wit, there is true horror: as well as the day-to-day cruelties of the now defeated apartheid, the story also takes in the victims of the Soweto Riots. The objects that remind us of the past have not entirely lost their potency, even if their meanings have grown more complex. Not as playful with form as some of Vladislavić’s work, the story is perhaps an accessible entry point for those unfamiliar with his writing (they should purchase The Restless Supermarket immediately), and one that may delight lovers of Kafka and Terry Gilliam in equal measure.
Published in Propaganda by Monuments, D Philip, 1996
A Personal Anthology 