Fluctuations Between Tradition and Modernity: Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness and Ecofeminism

ABSTRACT: Since its publication in 2000, Zakes Mda’s historical novel The Heart of Redness has often been interpreted as a postcolonial narrative that grapples with the brutality of the nineteenth-century British colonization of the Xhosa people. However, underneath the exterior of this postcolonial, epic text there are ecological concerns and feminist issues such as women’s empowerment, gender equality, and sustainability. Such ecofeminist issues are equally if not more important. The present article, therefore, examines The Heart of Redness from the lens of ecofeminism. It explores the ecological concerns and feminist issues that sporadically permeate the text. Similarly, it raises the issue of modernization and progress at the cost of ecology and tradition. These topics are all set against an ancient saga from the past, which had violently bifurcated the amaXhosa people into two warring dichotomies: Believers and Unbelievers.