It was the great Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, who said that “…until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” This quote came to mind as I was reading Niq Mhlongo’s debut novel, Dog Eat Dog. The novel follows the life of Dingz Njomane– a Wits university student – as he tries to navigate life in post apartheid South Africa. The story is set on the historical backdrop of the year 1994, when South Africa had its first democratic election.

The year is 1994. What does this mean for the country as a whole? Can we now live together in peace and harmony and bury our past of racial segregation?

It is often said that universities are a microcosm of society and I thus find it interesting that Niq Mhlongo places his main character in a historically white institution, especially with regards to what’s been happening in our universities since last year. The subjects that Mhlongo touches on in this novel are eerily too-similar to those that last year’s #FeesMustFall protests were about – the financial predicament of black students in institutions of higher learning. For instance, Dingz’s bursary application is declined by the Bursary Committee. To make matters worse for him, he is taken out of the residence accommodation after he has a fall out with the Priest, the Residence Head. Now, he has to go back to the township – “God’s worst ghetto” Soweto – and live with his family.

In his short story, To Kill a Man’s Pride, Mtutuzeli Matshoba says “One sure way [to kill a man’s pride] is to take a man’ and place him in a Soweto Hostel. Although, it’s not a hostel, but a four-roomed house, in which Dingz moves back to, he is not happy about moving out of res. About moving out of res and being financially excluded from university, he says: “I felt like I was being pushed back into a gorge filled with hungry crocodiles.”

The year is 1994. The first democratic elections in the country are taking place. The government has promised everyone everything ranging from welfare grants to free medical care…but will deliver. The homeless have been promised “proper housing and employment.” Dingz’s reason for voting is that he was promised access to better education.

The year, now, is 2016. 22 years later – have the promises been fulfilled yet? A lot is happening this year. Schools in Vuwani have been set alight. A few weeks back, we watched in disbelief as MPs of parliament clashed with security officials. Service delivery protests around the country. Security guards armed with rubber bullets on campus are an abnormal normality. Honestly, it’s scary! Everything is just scary. Could all this have been avoided? Of course, yes!

The problems facing South Africa today have been festering for years. Long before blacks were called monkeys by that other woman in Durban, Ms Steenkamp had already told Dingz that he had “apish behaviour.” Writers like Niq Mhlongo and others have written about it since 2004 and beyond. Niq Mhlongo’s novel diagnoses the ailments and social complexities of post-apartheid in a way that no writer has done for me. He takes you to Soweto in 1994 and explains to you what the dawn of democracy and the promises made then meant to Dingz and others like him. What have those votes yielded? The promises, have they been fulfilled? These are just some of the questions that lingered in my mind long after I had put the book down.

Dish it: What are you reading?