The Shame of Imperfection unfolds through the autobiographical notes and letters of a black Xhosa man, Jonguxolo, during a most grotesque period in South African colonial history – the Cape Frontier Wars (1779 – 1879) and Millenarian movement of Nongqawuse (1856 – 1857).A tale of high romance laced in letters and notes unravels itself wherein Jonguxolo courts the love of an aristocratic woman named Nomvula. In his writings, Jonguxolo reveals his inner-world; enduring sense of love, longing and despair admixed with fleeting ruminations on black existentiality. We note his nature vacillating between love and distaste for the banality of everyday life, and later, his revolt against the soporification of his critical senses by custom and religious belief. In these fragmentary pieces, there manifests the first blush of a complete geography of the personal life of a black man in the torrent of a difficult historical period.
