55 pages • 1 hour read
Lauren BeukesZoo City
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-16 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
Zinzi wonders whether Benôit has slept off his hangover; he’s been taking security guard shifts for his friend Elias, who is coughing up sputum. It could be lung disease, or a reaction to asbestos or black mold; “Proper diagnoses are as rare as real doctors around here” (137). D’Nice urges Benôit to get some of Elias’s sputum and try to sell it on the black market.
In the absence of doctors, sangomas and other faith healers fill the gap. They sell muti, claiming that their mystical medicine heals people: “crushed lizard balls and aspirin. Guess which ingredient does all the hard work?” (137). Zinzi compares their medicine to the glossy magazines she used to write for, which always promised a “better you” but never really delivered. She says objects like the ones she searches for want to be told what to do, but people are trickier. Those who have a real mashavi that helps people heal are too expensive for people like Elias.
Zinzi arrives home to find Benoît cooking dinner. He insists that the two eat on the building’s roof, and he brings out his camera. Benôit has a habit of recording every step of his journey by taking photographs. When he tries to take a photograph with Zinzi, she realizes that he’s leaving. He tells her he is already in the process of organizing his papers.
At 2 o’clock in the morning, Zinzi receives a call from Arno. Choking back his tears, Arno tells her that Songweza and her boyfriend are ruining everything for S’bu. She realizes Arno doesn’t have a crush on Song; he’s in love with S’bu.
Chapter 14 Summary
Zinzi calls Songweza’s friends, based on a list that Prim has given her. She constructs a general profile of a rebellious teenage girl who likes to party, but she gets little useful information. She suspects that better information would come from friends Prim doesn’t know Song has, like the mysterious boyfriend that Arno mentioned. One thing she does suspect: Des is trying to help the twins connect with another music producer besides Huron.
Zinzi enlists Vuyo to find out whether Song’s cell phone has been used, to access her MXit account, and to see if a life insurance policy has been taken out for her. He adds his fee to her debt, but she’s confident that she can pay him off. She also decides to ask Gio for help, and she meets Gio and his friends at the Biko Bar. She wishes she could leave Sloth behind, but “the feedback loop of separation anxiety is crippling. Crack cravings have nothing on being away from your animal” (147).
Gio’s friend Dave, a photographer for The Daily Truth, has images of a homeless man recently murdered in Zoo City. He and two other people—someone whom Zinzi calls “Piercing Girl,” and Henry, “the fag to Songweza’s hag” (150), who runs social media at a local agency and specializes in the music industry—interrogate Zinzi about her shavi.
Henry reveals that Song befriends bouncers, including one at Odi’s club, which is called Counter Rev. He also mentions that Song once had a boyfriend named Jabu, who dumped her via text message. Dave, describing Odi as “dodgy,” tells Zinzi that many suspect a link between Odi and the disappearance of his former protégé, Lily Nobomvu. He also mentions Odi’s old bar, Bass Station, which closed down after a robbery that went bad.
At the end of the evening, Gio escorts Zinzi to the front of her building. They share a kiss, and Sloth bites Gio’s ear, making Gio angry. Afterward, D’Nice harasses her: “What’s a sweet darkie girl like you doing with an umlungu like him?” (162).
Chapter 15 Summary
A 2010 Credo article about Odi Huron, entitled “The Once and Future King”: Odi, “dogged by controversy and tragedy” (163), hasn’t left his property since 2001, when robbers broke into Bass Station and killed two of his employees. Lily Nobomvu died two years later, seemingly by suicide; her daughter accused Odi of pushing her too hard.
Now, despite rumors of ill health, Odi hopes to make a comeback with iJusi. He has opened a new bar, Counter Revolutionary, which features animalled dancers—“everyone deserves a second chance” (173).
Chapter 16 Summary
Zinzi sets off for Haven, a rehab facility, in her ’78 Ford Capri provided by Huron’s chauffeur, James. She meets Naisenya, a staff member and former patient who tends the herb garden. Naisenya tells Zinzi that while S’bu was shy, “had a really hard time,” and was “too sensitive for this world” (180), Songweza had many boyfriends and was “nuts.”
Claiming she is writing a story on rehab tourism, Zinzi speaks to the director, Dr. Veronique Auerbach. They discuss metaphors for addiction and for being animalled; Toxic Reincarnation theory, for example, suggests that pollution has troubled the spirit world, causing people to pair up with the animals they were supposed to become in their next life. Zinzi tries to find out whether Songweza had a boyfriend in rehab, but Dr. Auerbach reveals nothing. Zinzi also asks Dr. Auerbach to identify the herbs she found in Song’s bathroom; Dr. Auerbach the herb is African wormwood, used by naturopaths for cleansing rituals.
Chapters 13-16 Analysis
Widely seen as a suspicious figure, Odi Huron is surrounded by death. A bar he owned was robbed, and two of his employees were killed. One of his star singers drove her car off a bridge. As Zinzi digests this information, along with Arno’s phone call, she begins to suspect that Songweza is currently somewhere with a boyfriend and that she likely left of her own free will.
Modern medicine and traditional healing readily mix in Zoo City. Where doctors are expensive and hard to find, sangomas fill in the gaps with “magic” and folk remedies. Yet sangomas also provide both counsel and concoctions to the rich and famous. Odi consults a sangoma to choose the right time and day to do his interview with Credo, and Song’s herbs, according to Dr. Auerbach, are commonly offered by nontraditional healers. Muti created with a mix of animal parts and other elements, whether herbs or actual medications, are offered by sangomas; muti made with mashavi animals, as will be revealed later, is thought to have even more magical value. Dr. Auerbach herself relies on methadone for treating patients, but she reminds Zinzi never to discount the value of the placebo effect.
As she investigates and pretends to be a journalist once again, Zinzi must navigate her mashavi identity. She wishes she could leave Sloth behind when she goes out, but the crippling separation anxiety she (and others like her) experience make separation from the animal impossible. Some view her animal as a trendy token; others find her suspicious. Henry holds Sloth and speaks of how heavy he is, and yet how soft—a perfect way to express Zinzi’s relationship with her animal. The conversation at Biko’s reveals that while countries like the U.S. do brain scans to unlock the secrets of the mashavi, South Africa protects its citizens from such involuntary medical testing.
At Haven, Zinzi shares yet another hypothesis about how people become animalled: the Toxic Reincarnation theory, which says the spiritual realm has been disrupted by modern events (e.g., climate change, BPA plastics). When people experience trauma, part of their spirit breaks away and returns as the animal they are to be reincarnated as later. Gio’s friends assume that because she has an animal, her journalistic projects should focus on that rather than on pop music.
Meanwhile, it seems that Zinzi and Benoît’s relationship is coming to an end. He declares his intention to leave, and she kisses her ex, Gio, even though Benoît is still at their apartment. When she kisses Gio, Sloth bites him, which makes Gio angry. It’s one of several slights that will cause Gio to seek vengeance against Zinzi in later chapters, and it’s another example of how Sloth tries to take care of Zinzi and warn her against taking risks.
