The Heart of Redness by Zakes Mda is very different from any other novel we have been asked to read for apartheid South Africa in class. I had a love/hate relationship for the book because it intrigued me, but I had to read it way too quickly and I don't think I understood the true value of the book by reading it quickly. The first thing I noticed about the novel was of course the colorful cover, but when I thought about the title long enough, I noticed that it looked vaguely familiar. I had to read Heart of Darkness in high school, and it wasn't until I did some research on the book on the internet that I was able to actually correlate the title between the two. Apparently the title Heart of Redness is actually an allusion to the Heart of Darkness by presenting an opposing presentation of themes. Heart of Redness delves into the past of tribal life and opens our eyes to another side of South Africa. When reading the first page, the reader is introduced to two categories of people: believers and non-believers. Apparently, the believers have valued the history of the past and are carrying out the message of the teenage prophetess Nongquwase by burning crops and killing livestock, which would supposedly drive the English back to the ocean through ancestral powers, but this provokes conflicts for non-believers. who blame believers for the famine of their people, the amaXhosa. Despite the fact that this happened a long time ago, the descendants of these two groups of people split into two and animosity still exists between them in today's South Africa. Even the color red, used in the title of the book, signifies a schism between the two groups of people. So, one group sees the color red as meaning respect for traditional beliefs, while for the other group it signifies darkness, which is another allusion to the title "heart of darkness". It is a societal conflict between modern urban life, past civilization and a valued history. The main believer in Prophet Nongquwase is a man named Zim, and his rival in terms of belief is Bhonco. Naturally, there is animosity between the two men. I was confused reading the book because I expected Bhonco, who you are first introduced to, to be a main character, but apparently the first chapter dealt with a more historical perspective..