Paperless gives new perspectives on the lives of ordinary South Africans working and living on the margins of English society

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

Author: Buntu Siwisa
Publisher: Jacana Media
Title: Paperless

Not only are they a distinct community in this rather exclusive English society, but are also conspicuous due to their skin colour in a sea of white faces. These are Africans who find themselves in this English town, famous for being a home of the prestigious oxford university, an institution of higher learning that many a student both from the British society as well as from the international community yearn to be admitted at.

This is a disparate community of African who are not only struggling to fit in in this alienating environment, but are pursuing their various dreams. These are African from different backgrounds hailing from the continent. Some are from West African countries such as Nigeria, Togo and Ghana, while others are from East Africa, with countries such as Kenya and Uganda, well represented. Yet another group is from southern Africa, with a good population among them hailing from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland.

These Africans find themselves in Oxford for different reasons. Some are students at Oxford, while others are what one would call ordinary working class Africans, who have been lured to this European island by the promise of a better life, with the prospects of securing that job that will see them earn the much sought after Pound to better their lives and that of their dependency and families back home.

But what the find here is a tough life, hard to navigate the streets of an English town that is so foreign and not that much embracing when it comes to the other. Life is certainly better for the students, almost all of them on a health scholarship, that makes sure that the holder of such a scholarship is able to live pretty comfortable as they pursue their academic dreams, but more importantly they enjoy legal status and protection from the ever watchful English immigration police who give those they find themselves on the wrong side of the law a hard time.

These are people who have to play hide and seek with the police everyday and every hour to avoid being sent home, a place they prefer rather not to go back to soon. It is these characters’ precarious lives that Buntu Siwisa in his novel Paperless manages to capture so poignantly, so beautifully and so gripping that a reader is taken into the web of their sophisticated and yet precarious lives they live in oxford. Siwisa’s paperless is about all Africans in general and a group of South Africans n particular, finding themselves eking out a leaving or nursing their dreams of bettering their lives by taking advantage of job and academic opportunities.

Siwisa tells the story of these African on the margin of English society through the years of a character called Luzuko Goba, who hails from the Eastern Cape and who is a PHD student at Oxford. Goba’s life as a student on scholarship is pretty much privileged as compared to the majority of South Africans, who are paperless, rendering their position vulnerable in a society that not only frowns on such people based on their legal status, but also on their skin colour.

These are people who are at the lowest rank of employees in that society, working mainly as streets cleaners and factory workers, inevitably competing for such low jobs with immigrants from Eastern Europe, who flooded the English labour market when the borders were flunk open after the formation of the European Union (The UK has since left the union). There is clearly not love lost between these Africans and their white blue colour jobs counterparts as the fight for these low jobs gets real, with the Eastern Europeans having an advantage over their African counterparts simply because their legal status is on solid grounds, while that of their African counterparts is on shaky grounds.

In fact almost all the of the characters who are ordinary south knocking on factory doors and supermarkets for jobs are illegally in the UK as either their VISA have expired and have no reasons to remain there legally. However the last thing they think of is to come back home to a uncertain life, whereas in the UK low as their jobs are and position in society, they earn enough to buy houses in middle classes suburbs and are able to send their children to good private schools. In fact as cleaners, care givers and factory workers, they earn more than teachers and nurses back home. The exchange rate of the British Pound to a rent is in their favour as well.

So none of them want to be caught out and send home by Thames Valley, the British immigration police who give these South Africans a hard time.

In paperless you will meet interesting characters and their stories in Oxford, such as Khumalo, a former taxi driver who insist that he will not come back home “until I have eaten a white woman”, Big Mavis a factory worker who has turned traitor to fellow South Africans, tormenting them by threatening to snitch on those who cross her path so that they are send back home by Thames Valley, Nomsa whose future in the UK hangs in the balance after an unfortunate incident with her young child who the British Welfare threatens to take away from her for child neglect, Mavis, Nomsa’s mother who after visiting her daughter, ostensibly to take her for raising back home, decides she was no longer not only gong home, but to separate from her abusive husband back home and instead falling in love with her Irish supermarket supervisor at work, the hard drinking Bongani, who has been on the run from the police since he ran away from a deportation holding centre at Heathrow Airport.

Other interesting characters you will meet in Paperless are Dela a PHD student at oxford, hailing from Togo, who claims that every chapter of his PHD is ground-breaking, and who unfortunately was exposed for his fraudulent claim of having been rendered stateless by the Togo authorities who wanted to kill him for his political activism and writing, and Nigerian –student turned spy for the British intelligence M16 and Josh a medical student also at Oxford, among others.

And so Paperless is an interesting book that gives a perspective of life lived by South Africans who are working as ordinary workers in the UK, their issues with immigration, as well as the lives of students that find themselves at British institutions of higher learning.

It is a book that gives light on the complex issue of immigration and how Africans find themselves being othered, excluded from mainstream society, leaving them to live on the margins of white societies. The development of the characters is tight, and their stories are quite engaging and convincing. This is certainly a book that gives a fresh perspective on the complex issue of global migration and the precariousness of the circumstances that those who decide to leave home find themselves embroiled in new environments that simply do not welcome them warmly.

The book brings these stories closer home, especially as South Africa finds itself dealing with the sticky issue of migration as it grapples about introducing new migration policies in response. It is not an easy issue. And the Characters of South Africans that Siwisa has created demonstrate the complexity around immigration.

Paperless is an excellent read which leaves a reader not only entertained, but also better informed about the circumstances surrounding ordinary South Africans who find themselves eking a living in the UK to support their families back home. Siwisa researched this book thoroughly and the fact that he was himself a student at Oxford when he started writing this book, gives it a level of authenticity, and it shows by how he captures so well the details of English life on the streets and in the bars of oxford. He makes the reader feel like they are there and can smell, hear and see what the writer is talking about.

Siwisa is a senior researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) at the University of the Witwatersrand. His most recent book, Rugby, Resistance and Politics: How Dan Qeqe Helped Shape the History of South Africa was published in 2022. Paperless is his debut novel and was shortlisted for the James Currey Prize for African Literature.