Review | ‘Cape Fever’ by Nadia Davids examines the quotidian nature of colonial exploitation

The predominantly Muslim neighbourhood of Bo-Kaap in Cape Town, South Africa. Nadia Davids’s novel is set in a city modelled on Cape Town, where a young woman leaves the Muslim Quarter to work for a British widow.

| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Cape Fever, the second novel by celebrated South African author and playwright Nadia Davids, is set in an unnamed city known simply as the Cape in the aftermath of World War I. It could be classified as historical fiction, but it might be more appropriate to read it as a work of postcolonial gothic.The plot revolves around Soraya, a young Muslim woman, who secures a job as a maid in a large colonial mansion, home of the lonely Mrs. Hattingh, a British widow, who lives in financial precarity under the veneer of fading grandeur. However, they are not the only characters in the house. Soraya is able to feel the spirits inhabiting the house: Rosa, the girl in the painting who curiously resembles her, and Fatima, the previous housekeeper. These spirits are not malevolent, even though they add to the sense of impending doom in the novel. Davids painstakingly details the quotidian nature of Soraya’s exploitation. Mrs. Hattingh is unable to afford any other servant, and every aspect of cooking, shopping and cleaning is added to Soraya’s duties. There is a stark contrast between Mrs. Hattingh’s life of leisure and relative ease and the crushing roster of domestic duties entrusted to Soraya. But even more insidious is Mrs. Hattingh’s attempt to exert control over every aspect of Soraya’s life, including her visits to family in the Muslim Quarter and her relationship with her fiancé, Nour.A decolonised subjectivityMrs. Hattingh’s life is a series of deceptions. Not only is she still clinging on to the aura of wealth, but she also deludes herself into believing that her life’s mission is philanthropy. Under this guise, she inserts herself in the correspondence between Soraya and Nour. She professes to be helping the young couple when, in fact, she is actively attempting to alienate Soraya from Nour and her parents.