Book review

By: Pelane Mabula

Title : Bite of the Banshee
Author : Muff Andersson
Place of publication :Yeoville,Johannesburg, South Africa
Publisher :STE Publishers
Date of Publication : May, 2002
Number of pages : 227
About the author

A South African author, who is now a former umkhondo wesizwe commander and a journalist, Muff Andersson, was granted amnesty in 18th September 1997 for distributing weapons to the ANC and its followers during the apartheid era.

The first book that she wrote was published in 1981 named Music in the mix, even so, “Bite of the Banshee” marks Muff andersson’s debut as a novelist. She is had read for her PhD on political memory and popular culture.

 
She had received an award for her first book named Music in the mix. She had also done the political memory and violence in Yizo-Yizo drama in 2001.
Bite of the Banshee (banshee is defines as Holy Ghost).

 
Bite of the Banshee has 41 chapters, was written after the apartheid era though its contents speak of how other families went to exile and their children had to be raised where they would not be familiar with their mother tongue and how their culture operated.

The book looks at crime in the new South Africa, during democracy.
This is a really fascinating book that intrigues one to want to know more about what is going to happen next, who killed Dodie Katz? Was it her lesbian friends? Psycho kid
perhaps?

Or someone else that you are yet to come across the book? What in sighted me most during the process of acquiring this book is that the South African president who is referred to in this book is a she, her name, Thandeka Rulashe. This made me ask myself many questions.

I felt like the book was narrating reality of what may have happened or a dramatization of what may have happened just after lending our democracy.

But we never had a female president, even our former deputy president who is a woman was part of the presidency just a few years ago and this book was wrote in 2002.

I then wanted to know how she came about to become president, thus motivated me to read even further.
It makes one comment on the life style that the characters in this book live, and how they relate to the way that the reader lives.

This book is about friends, family and the police trying to find out who killed Dodie Katz, A thirty-nine year old human rights lawyer who was at that time at Cape town to defend her client, and soon been friend, Ms Abigail Moeketsi(charged with crimen injuria against Zodwa Nxumalo), one of the many characters in this book, namely , Amilcar Moeketsi, Thandi Moeketsi, Dimitri Gallo, Philiswa, Philemon, MK Makatini, Psycho kid (Cornelius van der merwe), Brady, Max, Abby, Sue and Ceril Katz( Dodie’s parents), Regina, phindi khumalo, Pat Fernandez, Melanie Chambers, Mamma and others.

In this book, you will learn how Dodie Katz was killed and how her loved ones where affected by her death, especially her parents, though her Mother took it very badly.

You will also learn that one does not always have to suspect a well-known criminal in the community for any crime that takes place, it can be anyone, even the person you have never thought of or can be related to the crime in itself.

My first questions after reading the book was, “ what happened to uncle Max? Why was he not prosecuted?” He for years, used Cornelius to do his dirty work of carrying his drugs to different venues in the country, and he does not seem like he was even considered to be wrong.

 
I believe that the purpose of this book is to let the audience know that even though an individuals may think that nobody saw them practicing a particular crime, investigations will be conducted and all shall be revealed.

Though we live at times where everything and anything is possible, I still find this novel shocking as to how a person can rape, strangle and then kill a helpless person who is made to be unable to defend themselves by being tied.

Dodie Katz was found gagged and tied to her bed, raped and then strangled to death in her hotel room, a gruesome deed this is. All her friends, family and colleagues could not believe what had happened to Dodie.

Since there was no sign of a forced entry or anything missing in her room, some people thought / opined that Dodie had picked up a man on her way back to her hotel room while Philiswa raised a thought that she may have been a lesbian . But how? How can she be raped by another women, we know things do happen, but a woman would not rape another woman.

Stefan suggested that there was not only one killer, he raised that there could have been two or more accomplices in the room together with Dodie at the time of her death, but his thought was ruled out by kojak (philemon) when he told him that all the evidence in the room suggests that there was only one person together with Dodie in the room at the time of her death.

Abby and Amilcar are brother and sister, both of them were born in exile, Zambia to be specific and neither of them can speak a single South African language, except for English that is. This siblings were single handedly raised by their mother Mamma, who was then appointed, after exile, as an ambassador to Mexico for South Africa where she was based in Mexico city.
Amilcar ( works as an African correspondent) thought that white South Africans were a disgusting lot, that’s just because he just does not like the way they live, the perfumes they use and the expensive food they buy.

Amilcar, who found out that he was gay, had a relationship with Nico stephanou, the owner of a restaurant named Harlequin, of which did not last long. He then decided to leave the country. But before did so, he had introduced Dodie Katz to Patricio Fernandez, a sexual healer the Christmas prior to Dodies death. Dodie then booked an appointment with him when she went to Cape Town.

On the day of the murder, psycho kid was delivering a small package of bath salts to a particular room at a hotel in Cape Town where he says that Pat Fernandez had answered the door for him when he knocked. This was the room where Dodie was gruesomely murdered in. he clearly stated that he heard Dodie’s voice before he was chased away by the man he saw and say that it was Pat Fernandez.

Psycho kid was delivering the bath salts to the right room, but the wrong hotel. It was supposed to have been another hotel where the American recipient for the salts was waiting, not two blocks away from the initial hotel.

 
Psycho kid was known for drug possession, but in this case, he was not in possession of any illegal substance, only bath salts that he was carrying.

MK Makatini both questioned uncle Max and what is it that he had given psycho kid to carry. After this confrontation, they learned that psycho kid was only carrying anti-retro-viral in a bath salt form.

Psycho kid was arrested for charges of murder, after stating that he had saw Pat Fernandez at the hotel ,Pat was also arrested and charged with murder.
Relevant tests were run and during the trial period, tests proved that Pat was guilty of the rape and murder of Dodie Katz. Psycho kid’s testimony confused Dawie de Lange, Pat Fernandez’s lawyer on how the boy’s story had was the same to what he can remember.

Pat Fernandez was convicted of rape and murder. During his limited residence in jail as a jailbird, he committed suicide.
I believe that the book has achieved its goal by being able to teach people that, though you may be surrounded by a bad environment and made wrong choices, you can still make up to it by being true to yourself and focus on the things that can better your future, in this case, psycho kid.

The book has highlighted possibilities of coincidences that may occur when you least think they may happen. In the book, the coincidence that happened was that psycho kid went into a wrong hotel and was able to see fernandez’s face before the incident and could now identify him to the police as the person he had seen on that day in the room of Dodie Katz.

I can link this book to another African book that I have read named “Lenong la Gauta”, though they do not share the same setting, “Lenong la Gauta” talks about a woman who have murdered her own mother-in-law for a Golden necklace. Before knowing the truth, the police had suspected that the murdered woman’s house maid was the killer.

For months and months had her husband devoted himself to finding the truth about who really killed his step-Mother and came to closed dead-ends on several occasions until he had had a breakthrough. Having evidence that links his wife to the murder.

I think that the books link because in both cases, the truth about who killed the subjects eventually came out and the law had took its course, in “Lenong la Gauta” the murderer killed herself when she
was being chased by the police while in Bite of the Banshee the murderer killed himself after his trial and conviction.

 
I would also like to know how RSA came about to have a female president in this book, what where the reasons that led the writer to frame it as such. Unfortunately, this matter was never entertained anyhow in the book though I think that it would have also made it an intriguing factor that she have mentioned it.

I feel that I could have added prosecution of uncle Max, the drug lord in attempt of informing my audience that taking young children for granted and making them your scapegoat for your personal vendetta especially when you have them to transport illegal material is a ruthless deed one shall be prosecuted.

My overall evaluation about this book is that it has the ability to rise feelings. I felt disgusted by the way Dodie was killed, I felt sorry for her family for no knowing who killed their daughter and it angered me to see the that an adult can plead not guilty to a case that he had committed and expected a teenager to take the fall for him.

For that, this is an award winning material. I, as the audience, have received it well, therefore recommend it to the public at large.