More Ants!

More Ants!, the second hilarious story based on true events, can be read without knowing the first one entitled There are Ants in my Sugar. A quick summary of the latter in this edition, however, will quickly bring you up to date with events following the family being unceremoniously dumped in winter, practically in the middle of the night at their new “country home” (without running water or electricity). Having tried to make the best of a bad situation Annica and her close friend (also her ‘maid’) May, now run into brand new crises such discover a simmering forbidden love affair, for one, and murderous criminals, for another. Annica not only has to try and save her own ailing marriage by very unusual means that may involve the supernatural, she also has to try and rescue the roof of her hovel from complete disintegration as the notorious Transvaal storms – all while the husband is away. And yet another threat from within – her husband trying to take over her little business as his own business collapses – pushes our heroine of the veld even further towards the edge. The stakes couldn’t be higher as Ben, the Jewish pig farmer, not only openly expresses great concern towards her (which definitely goes beyond just good neighbourliness), he also gets involved in the husband’s business causing May to consistently warn of “groot kak” (big trouble) as all the various crises reach breaking point. The climax brings together a motley crew of characters (a white male racist, his ‘coloured’ (mulatto) sweetheart - who may still hate him for dumping her - a white gay interior decorator and his Indian lower, a ‘witchdoctor’, and an Afrikaans aunt, to name but a few). And let us not forget it is apartheid South Africa where race groups are forbidden by law to ‘associate’. And while they are chomping through life-saving rusks, milktart (custard flan) and koeksisters (Chinese bow ties) and washing it down with koffie (coffee) with the racist Apie and racially ‘reclassified’ Liesbet respectively, they almost forget to save their own lives. An increasingly desperate Annica now resorts to something few white women would do in the 1960s: she begs the help of a sangoma in her attempt to save everybody. How this will all play out is anybody’s guess – and it truly could go ‘either way’. But the sangoma’s revelations about Annica’s ‘ancestors’ are truly astounding and makes Annica sit up. But then the well-spoken, black missionary steps in and tries to bring calm and sanity to proceedings. Could he get them all to come to their senses as events seem to get crazier in this rural backwater of 1960s South Africa? Endearing, funny with lots of action and a sense of the mysterious the narrative is akin to the kind of Southern Writing in American fiction where characters are still driven by forces of the past, there is always some sort of race element that sets up potential conflicts, but then also reconciliation in the end. The characters are earthy, resourceful and find themselves outside their usual comfort zones.