The Strangers of Braamfontein

"Why do Africans need visas to travel within Africa? Why do Africans consider themselves 'strangers' to themselves? Osas is a young and impressionable Nigerian painter, who escapes poverty and hardship in Benin City, into the chaotic and crime-ridden belly of Johannesburg, through the help of a travel agent. But to survive, he must live a life of adventure and spontaneity and criminality. As Osas walks through the corners of Braamfontein, a suburb of Johannesburg, he encounters the Nigerian Janus-faced Chike, the Zimbabwean Machiavellian Chamai, the pawky Papi, the duplicitous Ruth, the saavy April and the fiendish Detectives Jiba and Booysen, leading to a bolt from the blue. The Strangers of Braamfontein follows the lives of immigrants: the Nigerian drug-dealers, assassins, prostitutes, scammers, cultists, the Ethiopian human traffickers, the Congolese kidnappers, down to the Zimbabwean male-to-male prostitutes and drunks, the Malawian forgers, Angolan and Francophone syndicates, down to the South African blackmailers and gang. Laced with Nigerian and South African ethos, the sights and sounds of Braamfontein are subtly painted in this narrative of well-orchestrated and stereotyped characters."--Page 4 of cover.