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Chapter 1
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Welcome to Our Hillbrow, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Regret and Redemption
Apartheid and Colonialism
Prejudice and Ignorance
Storytelling
Summary
Analysis
If Refentše, “child of Tiragalong and Hillbrow,” were still alive, he might have written the books he wanted to write. These were books of poetry, and they were going to be dedicated to Hillbrow. Refentše had already published one short story, which could have led to more publications.
It's noteworthy that the narrator now calls Refentše both a child of Tiragalong and Hillbrow (instead of just Tiragalong), because it shows that Refentše saw Hillbrow as an important part of his identity. It is also significant that the narrator tells Refentše he would have written a book of poetry if he was alive, because it suggests that writing and being alive are deeply linked for Refentše, showing how important sharing stories was to him before his death.
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Refentše knew that there were not many stories written about Hillbrow, particularly not in languages that could be widely shared across the country—like English—or in languages that he was familiar with, like Sepedi. Refentše found a “mission in this omission” and decided he’d write about Hillbrow himself, first in English and then translated into Sepedi. He had thought that maybe he’d turn his published short story into a longer novel. But his literary ambitions were not stronger than his eventual “conviction” to die by suicide.
That Refentše felt a “conviction” to die by suicide shows how much pain he was experiencing before he died and suggests that guilt, regret, and isolation are very hard feelings to overcome. Refentše’s literary plans were grand, but he wasn’t able to follow through on his desire to write a novel. This suggests that he gave a lot up to die by suicide, again showing how tempting the idea of death was to him.
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Refentše, from the afterlife, is “grimly amused” at how quickly news of his suicide travels through his home village, Tiragalong, and how comfortable everyone is talking about it. One person who really “embellishes” the story of his suicide is Refilwe, an ex-girlfriend of his from Tiragalong. They split up when Refentše discovered that Refilwe had other boyfriends. Refilwe got back in touch five years after Refentše left for university and asked him for a job reference. Refilwe herself just graduated from another university north of Johannesburg (studying English and Sepedi) and was applying for an Assistant Editor position in the city.
Refilwe talked Refentše into writing the reference—even though they had broken up—by reminding him that they’d been in love once. She told him that he knew her very well. Also, she mentioned his recommendation would mean a lot, since he was a highly educated person. Refentše (frustratedly) agreed that this was the case, thinking about how people took uneducated people much less seriously. As it turns out, he did not have to try too hard to write the reference, since Refilwe was an excellent, bright woman. Refentše wrote a meaningful recommendation, attesting to Refilwe’s work ethic and pleasant personality.
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Refilwe got the job, and Refentše was very happy for her. He suggested they meet for a beer to celebrate at a university bar called Sweeny’s. They did, and they enjoyed an afternoon together, and afterwards Refentše went home with Lerato. Everything was very pleasant, but then Refilwe called a few weeks later and invited Refentše to dinner at her flat. She offered to cook for him. Refentše accepted the invitation, even though he was pretty sure that Refilwe now wanted to get back together.
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Back when Refilwe first cheated on Refentše, he had been upset enough to leave her. He did forgive her—in that he didn’t want to cause her any pain—but he also judged her for sleeping with other people. However, the narrator reminds Refentše that, later in his life, he found reasons to “rethink his self-righteousness.” This is because Refentše eventually had sex with his friend Sammy’s lover, Bohlale.
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On that night, Bohlale called Refentše and asked him to come over. She was distraught because Sammy had brought home a woman he’d met at a bar in a seedy part of town, and he even told Bohlale to sleep on the floor. Bohlale confided in Refentše that if she allowed that type of behavior and didn’t confront Sammy, he’d likely do it again. Refentše listened sympathetically. They both agreed that this was not Sammy’s usual behavior—Bohlale even said that the “whore” Sammy was with had bragged about drugging him. But Bohlale was very upset nonetheless.
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Refentše sat next to Bohlale, wondering what could have made his friend Sammy go to that part of town, which he didn’t even like. Then Refentše looked into Bohlale’s eyes and felt remarkably close to her because of how hurt she was. Refentše said that he would talk to Sammy and that he was sure Sammy loved Bohlale very much. She began to sob. When he went in to hug her, she hugged him back, and this physical touch sparked a deeper embrace. They felt incredibly attracted to each other and had sex.
Refentše thought of this night when Refilwe invited him to have dinner with her, since he knew “how weak he could be.” He had no desire to betray Lerato. In fact, the more he thought about Refilwe, the more he focused his attention on Lerato. He decided that he’d leave work early on the night he was supposed to go to Refilwe’s apartment—not out of eagerness to see her, but because he wanted to stop home and kiss Lerato first. The narrator reminds Refilwe that these “efforts at fidelity” ended up being useless—not because of Refentše, but because of Lerato and Sammy’s affair. These are the topics—"love, betrayal, seduction, suicide”—that Refentše could have written about if he hadn’t died too early.
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The narrator reminds Refentše of his weakened relationship with is mother and suggests that this was also a factor in Refentše’s suicide. Refentše and his mother argued about Lerato because Refentše’s mother thought Lerato had drugged Refentše into loving her. Refentše’s mother was also prejudiced against people from Hillbrow, and she considered Lerato a Lekwerekwere (even though Lerato came from a township just north of Johannesburg) and a sexual deviant because she lived in the city. The fact that Refentše could never give his mother any money when he came home—because he still had to pay off his student loans—only made his mother more confident that he was “a victim of the cunning of Hillbrowans.”
Because of her convictions about Hillbrowans, Refentše couldn’t turn to his mother for comfort when he found out about Lerato and Sammy’s betrayal. He also couldn’t go to his closest friend, since Sammy was one of the people who hurt him. This made suicide start to look appealing. In fact, he began thinking that suicide would give him “relief” from many things: the pressure to succeed, the constant stress of financial worries, the heavy disappointment of so much betrayal in his life—even relief over the guilt he still felt about his affair with Bohlale. He ended up dying by suicide after jumping from his 20-story balcony. The narrator says, “Refentše, welcome to our Hillbrow…”
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Refilwe still loved Refentše. She also hadn’t known about his inner struggles and thought he was happy enough. Refentše did look successful, since he was the first person from Tiragalong to graduate with an MA from university, he was a lecturer, and he’d had a story published. When, in Tiragalong, people said cruel things about Refentše after his suicide—like that he didn’t care about his own mother—Refilwe defended him. However, Refilwe’s love for Refentše clouded her judgement and caused her to “retell” the story of his death in her own way.
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The people of Tiragalong came up with their own reason for Refentše’s death—they blamed his mother. They said she gave him medicines to break the love potion Lerato had given him, but that these medicines were too strong and ruined his mind. When Refentše’s mother slipped and fell into his grave during his burial, the people of Tiragalong took this as a confirmation that she was a witch. They bound her, poured petrol on her, and burned her to death (an act done often in Tiragalong and known as “necklacing” because of the tires filled will gasoline that were put around the victim’s neck).
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When Refilwe told the people of Tiragalong that Refentše had simply been “naïve” and had fallen for a woman from Johannesburg, she changed people’s opinions about what happened. In Refilwe’s “rewritten” version, Refentše was tricked not by his mother but by a “loose-thighed Hillbrowan” named Lerato. The people of Tiragalong were only too happy to believe such a scandal. Everyone, Refilwe included, was happy to say terrible things about people from the city.
Refilwe even suggested that Lerato’s father was Nigerian, meaning that Lerato was the daughter of a Lekwerekwere. Refilwe said all sorts of cruel things about migrant Nigerian men in order to further smear Lerato’s name in Tiragalong. By the time Refilwe’s story was done, Refentše’s suicide was just “hard evidence” of the “dangerous power” of immigrant women for the people of Tiragalong. It didn’t matter that Lerato’s father was not Nigerian at all.
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Many months later, it would be revealed that Lerato’s father, Piet, was also the father of a beloved boy from Tiragalong, Tshepo. Tshepo was the very first Tiragalong child to study at the University of Witwatersrand, and he was a role model for Refentše (and a bit of a hero in the village). Tshepo was struck by lightning and killed years ago. His neighbor, an old woman, was accused of witchcraft and “necklaced” to death in Tiragalong. The people of the village did not know that Piet, who died when Tshepo was four years old, also had another family.
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The village enjoyed gossiping with the newfound information Refilwe had given them. There was one person, though, who knew just how false all of these stories were: Lerato herself. She was heartbroken after Refentše’s death. Lerato, too, found suicide “seductive” in the aftermath of Refentše’s death.
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The narrator tells Refentše that, from heaven, he gets to have a bit of hindsight and reflection. Refentše sits in heaven and sees that his choices resulted in the death of two people: his mother, and Lerato. The narrator calls Refentše a “killer.” Heaven also lets Refentše see Sammy’s mind deteriorate from guilt and sadness. Refentše sees from heaven that all of this suffering could have been avoided if he had forgiven Lerato and tried to understand the reasons for her infidelity.
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If Refentše had tried to talk to Lerato after she had sex with Sammy, he would have realized that her reasons for cheating were very similar to the reasons Refentše felt when he had sex with Bohlale. In fact, he would have forgiven her and kissed her, simply saying, “such is the way of heart and flesh.” He would have understood that Lerato felt ignored and overlooked, just like Bohlale, and that Sammy felt sorry, just like Refentše.
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The day that Sammy and Lerato had their affair, Refentše was depressed. He hadn’t eaten the food that Lerato prepared him, which disappointed her. She called Sammy, worried about Refentše’s increasing loss of appetite for food, love, and even life. Sammy and Lerato did “exactly” what Refentše and Bohlale did—bonded through sadness and sympathy. But when Refentše found Sammy and Lerato together, his imagination ran wild, and he thought that they’d been sneaking around behind his back for months. This thought was too much for him to bear.
The difference between Refentše and Bohlale’s affair and Sammy and Lerato’s was that Sammy never found out Bohlale cheated on him. Sammy kept going out and getting drunk, since he didn’t see how his behavior was affecting his girlfriend. One night, he was beat up, robbed, and stabbed. Refentše found him when he happened to hear Sammy’s screams and had rushed him to the hospital. When Sammy woke up in the hospital, he had immediately asked for Bohlale.
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Sammy asking for Bohlale should have saved Sammy and Bohlale’s relationship. When Refentše came home from the hospital, he told Bohlale that Sammy had asked for her, and she broke down in sobs. She admitted that she’d been ready to leave Sammy that morning, but now she had proof that he loved her.
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Late that night, Bohlale called Refentše in tears, telling him that they had to confess and apologize to Sammy. Refentše was not as convinced—he said that Sammy was in a bad state at the hospital and that they wouldn’t want to shock him. Bohlale disagreed, her guilt weighing on her, and she said that she was going to tell Sammy as soon as possible. Refentše nervously spent the rest of the night reading. The next day, Bohlale made her way to the hospital and was hit and killed by a speeding, stolen car. Refentše never did tell Sammy about the affair, figuring that his friend had enough grief to deal with. Refentše’s secret remained “locked in his heart,” eating away at his conscience.
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To find an outlet for this grief and guilt, Refentše started to write the short story about Hillbrow. This is the story that ended up getting published. It is about an HIV-positive woman from Tiragalong who is shunned by the village because of her illness. The people of Tiragalong say (like they would in real life) that the woman effectively killed herself by sleeping with a Lekwerekwere. Refentše wrote how “Tiragalong danced because its xenophobia—its fear of and hatred for both black non-South Africans and Johannesburgers—was vindicated.”
Some people who read Refentše’s story felt for the protagonist, which surprised him (they were the “exceptions”). These people seemed to sympathize with her, saying that she was just trying to survive. These people also noted the hypocrisy of people from Tiragalong, since AIDS was very much present there, too, even if they were in denial about it.
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The protagonist of Refentše’s story does not die by suicide. She thinks she will not go back to Tiragalong anymore, because the cruelty of the townspeople is too much, but she finds it difficult to avoid home. She decides to grapple with all of her grief through storytelling, and she writes a novel about Hillbrow, the AIDS epidemic, and prejudice.
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Refentše works into his story, though, that it’s a “big mistake” for this woman to write her book in Sepedi. When publishers review it, they call her “vulgar.” This is because she called things like “shit” and “genitalia” their correct Sepedi name, but the publishers said this was crass, even though the same word in English or Afrikaans would have been socially acceptable. In Refentše’s story—as in Refentše’s life—publishers don’t take a chance on languages other than the ones deemed safe by the market or by people that purchase educational texts. Writing in this traditional South African language is too “dangerous.”
The story that the woman in Refentše’s story writes is “buried,” and she is devastated. She begins to physically deteriorate, losing lots of weight. People say to her face that they are concerned for her, but she knows they would prefer if she faded away, since she “dared” to criticize the nation’s prejudices. Refentše, unsurprisingly, found kinship with his protagonist because she represents many of the anxieties that he feels about Hillbrow, Tiragalong, South Africa, and the world.
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Had Refentše actually written the full-length novel, he probably would have had time to do even more reflection, and he may not have decided to die by suicide. This would have prevented his mother’s death and Lerato’s suicide. He might have told Sammy the truth about him and Bohlale. Sammy, meanwhile, deranged from sorrow, also began telling people in Tiragalong how terrible Lerato was. He started sounding like everyone else from the village: full of prejudice.
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Refentše knew he would never be able to write a story that held all of his feelings, though. This is because every moment that he was alive, he experienced new things and thus thought differently about the world around him. This didn’t upset him—if anything, it made him intrigued. But his devastation about the affair he imagined between Sammy and Lerato was too great to think clearly. And so Refentše left the world through the window.
