A devastating journey through the life of a morally corrupt but likeable man – The Mail & Guardian

Short, sharp shock: Nigerian filmmaker and writer Onyeka Nwelue’s new book is the Sopranos of the novella form. Photo: David Levenson/Getty Images

Ask any man of my generation (40-something) what the best TV series he’s ever seen is, and I bet the vast majority of them will answer: The Sopranos.

Like many other TV shows in its vaunted category, The Sopranos — which aired from 1999 to 2007 — was successful because it was a soap opera/family drama cleverly disguised as something else.

For example: The bad news relies heavily on the fake father-son relationship between Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. Both Friends And The Big Bang TheoryThe two biggest limited-run sitcoms of the past 40 years featured a group of friends who functioned like a family.

Game of Thrones is the ultimate battle between warring families. And The Sopranos gives us a group of deadly serious, relatable family members who occasionally kill each other for money.

The family drama of The Sopranos is told largely from the perspective of Tony Soprano, an up-and-coming mob boss whose mob career is on the verge of a huge upswing at the start of the series.

While many other characters’ perspectives are explored over the course of six seasons, Tony is our North Star. The show begins when his professional life begins to explode with success, and ends (spoiler alert, though you should know this since the last episode aired 17 years ago) when Tony is betrayed and murdered.

The appeal of Tony Soprano is that he’s a relatable family man who also happens to have an unusual job.

Amidst all the killing and blackmailing, Tony desperately tries to cling to his failing marriage; tries to build a relationship with an increasingly distant son; tries to nurture perhaps his most important relationship, his loving interaction with his clearly favorite daughter; and tries to process old emotions with his rapidly aging mother.

Struggling with conflicts with his uncle, his “cousin,” and rival families, all the while undergoing therapy for his increasingly deteriorating mental health, if he were an accountant instead of a hitman, we wouldn’t find him special at all.

But because of Tony’s humanity, we love him and identify with him, despite the fact that he’s a despicable human being. The show goes out of its way to remind us that we’re rooting for someone who is, without a doubt, a selfish and evil person. But because “selfish and evil” doesn’t translate to “free of internal complexity,” and because the show pivots on this axis, it’s compelling beyond the usual “fuhgetaboutit” mafia tropes.

I mention all this because prolific Nigerian novelist Onyeka Nwelue wrote a short and powerful story The Nigerian Mafia: Johannesburg relies on a similar protagonist.

Former Nollywood star Uche is a man who, to paraphrase his own words, decided to take more than life would give him. This leads him into organized crime, and after a deal in São Paulo goes wrong, Uche crosses the Atlantic and lands in South Africa, ready to exploit any criminal enterprise that wants to use him.

By tapping into Johannesburg’s vast network of Nigerian expats, Uche quickly finds work as a hired muscle with the occasional foray into murder. But Uche wants more, not just financially but in terms of personal fulfillment.

But when xenophobic riots cost him his only chance at a legitimate business, Uche is forced to rely on drug dealers to try to recover the large sum of money he lost. When this goes badly, he is forced to flee Joburg for his life.

Despite the book’s title, the second and perhaps more interesting half takes place in Cape Town. In our country’s first city, Uche finds love, more problems and starts doing business with the country’s biggest Nigerian drug lord.

The book is as short and sharp as the stabbing knife Uche carries to protect himself. At just under 150 pages, it is a novella in length and is briskly paced. The hits, accidental and otherwise, keep coming for Uche and it is with breathtaking urgency that we are carried through the events of a brief period in his life.

A lot of deus ex machina seems to work in Uche’s favor. While I was initially annoyed by this, I eventually realized that this was probably the author’s way of saying that the devil takes care of his own people.

Make no mistake, Uche is of the devil. Although the book is told from his perspective, there is no doubt that we are listening to a selfish and evil man telling his story.

Uche does little to moralize—he knows what he is—but justifies his actions by saying he does what he has to do to survive. While this does little for him as a decent member of society, it does help generate pathos for the character: Uche is evil, yes, but he is evil because he has to be.

Uche lives in a bad world that forces him to do bad things, he will tell you, but little respect is shown to those who still try to do good things in the face of similar circumstances. They are weak lambs led to the slaughter; he is the lion feasting on their carcasses.

It’s hard to cheer for the lion when you’re the lamb. But this book finds a way to make you do just that.

All in all, The Nigerian Mafia: Johannesburg is a devastating run by a morally corrupt but interesting man trying to find a new life in a new country. An interesting, if extremely short, read.

The Nigerian Mafia: Johannesburg is published by Jacana Media.