Zoo City

“The problem with being mashavi is that it’s not so much a job as a vocation. You don’t get to choose the ghosts that attach themselves to you. Or the things they have with them.”

Zinzi reflects on her shavi, finding lost things. She describes the lost objects she sees throughout the day as “ghosts,” noting that she has no choice but to see them, as well as the people attached to them. This existence is the case for all mashavi: Magical power itself is a ghostly attachment that cannot be eliminated.

“The Maltese is blank. Some rare people are. They’re either pathologically meticulous or they don’t care about anything. But it still creeps me out. The last person I encountered with no lost things at all was the cleaning lady at Elysium. She threw herself down an open elevator shaft.” 

Zinzi meets Mark, the Maltese, for the first time. Since her talent is finding lost objects, she knows that most people have connections to the people and things they regret losing. When someone does not have these attachments, it is disturbing. This is her first evidence that there is something suspicious about Mark and Amira.

“I never watched the news. But then, lifestyle journalists don’t have to. And normal people don’t have to pay off their drug debts by writing scam letters for syndicates. Or hide their sideline from their lover, who would definitely not approve.” 

Throughout the novel, Zinzi reflects on the differences between “FL”—former life—and her life as someone animalled. She used to be privileged and unaware of the world around her. Now, as a victim of prejudice and as someone indebted to a crime syndicate, she feels more aware of her place in the world, as well as the ways those close to her (Benôit) may disapprove of her choices.

“When you eat, you are eating things from planes. The plastic forks they leave a mark on you.” 

In the first of several mysterious emails Zinzi receives in response to her phishing emails, she finds the message difficult to interpret. Eventually, she decides that they are sent from the dead, perhaps accounting for their strange content. As the story progresses, the emails sometimes connect with Zinzi’s muti-induced visions, helping guide her toward those who sent them.

“The whole thing is grotesque, yet some perverse part of me is getting off on it. The same way I ticked off points on a scoreboard when my parents actually believed the bullshit I spun them about my car breaking down, about needing help paying the fees for a master’s degree in journalism that I never even registered for.” 

Zinzi feels ambivalent about scamming Jerry and Cheryl Barber. She cannot help but enjoy it, even though she knows it’s wrong. This ambivalence led to her complicity in her brother’s death and her estrangement from her parents. She went to manipulative extremes to finance her drug debt, taking pleasure from substance abuse even as it caused others pain.

“In Sun City, I would sometimes go along to the Neo Adventists’ services […] They said that animals were the physical manifestation of our sin. Only marginally less awful than the theory that the animals are zvidhoma or witches’ familiars, which would qualify us for torture and burning in some rural backwaters.”

Zinzi explains how she coped with Sloth in her early mashavi days. Some organized religious groups view the animals as evidence of guilt while some pagan groups view the animalled as witches punishable by death. The animal is a highly visible entity that some love and others hate.

“After the assassination of his penguin in a Taliban ambush, his very public death by the ‘black cloud’ was televised internationally. It was the first time the event had been captured on camera, and it caused widespread panic, leading to the establishment of quarantine camps in many countries and executions in others.” 

One of the book’s textual artifacts, a list of movie reviews, provides a thorough overview of the life of Dehqan Baiyat, and his death by the Undertow. It provides further context for the enduring fear of the mashavi and the way they are treated in different parts of the world.

“‘Animalists everywhere […] they’d bring back the quarantine camps if they could.’

‘What do you call Zoo City?’ I say.

‘Just be glad we don’t live in India,’ Amira says.” 

Here, Amira refers to people who are prejudiced against mashavi as “animalists,” equating them to racists. We learn that animalism has led to quarantine camps, perhaps similar to Japanese internment camps and other concentration camps. While Zinzi notes the ongoing ghettoization of their kind, Amira reminds her that prejudice is much worse in other nations.

“People tend to think animals are better than humans. But birds have their own serial killers. Chimpanzees commit murder. The only difference between us is that animals don’t feel guilty about it.” 

While eating lunch with Arno and Des, Zinzi reflects on people’s views toward animals. Some animals are helpful to their human companions, but others can be just as destructive as humans.

“Objects want to have a purpose. They’re happy to be told what to do. People less so. A hack spell to scramble SMSs on your business rival’s phone—easy. An affection charm to make someone feel more tenderly towards you, whether it’s a teen crush or an abusive husband—a little trickier.”

Zinzi further explains her shavi as well as her preference for working to find objects rather than people. Her magic works because objects have no choice but to comply. As she searches for Song, a missing person with free will, her magic is less effective.

“Therapists who themselves, either tacitly or (in rare cases) overtly, subscribe to the idea of Aposymbiots as ‘animalled’ or ‘zoos’ and shadow-self-absorption as ‘Hell’s Undertow’ or ‘The Black Judgment’ perpetuate this stigmatization and very often fail to see the very real trauma that Aposymbiots experience.”

Written from the perspective of a psychologist, this passage introduces the trauma experienced by those who have animals. Slurs like “animalled” and “zoos,” and spiritually based views of mashavi identity as a curse based on sin or God’s judgment, contribute to a view that Aposymbiots somehow deserve hardship and trauma. Aposymbiots already fear the Undertow and know that their lives are probably going to be short, a fact that drives many toward hedonistic or self-harming behavior.

“They burned this neighborhood down in the early 1990s to prevent the spread of the bubonic plague, and it occurs to me that they should consider doing it again, to purge the blight of well-meaning hipsters desperately trying to paint it rainbow. I should really try to be less cynical.”

When Zinzi meets Vuyo in hip Newtown, she is annoyed by hipsters’ cultural appropriation: their efforts to embrace all identities, including those they don’t inhabit or understand, and to which they aren’t entitled. In a passage typical of her style as a narrator, Zinzi says something dark, and then admits that she should try to be less cynical.

“Is it twins? Twins are very powerful. In Zulu culture we used to kill one of the pair to kill the bad luck.”

Zulu healer Dumisani Ndebele asks Zinzi if the person she is searching for is a twin. Twins, although not mashavi, are considered magical. This foreshadows their exploitation by Odi later in the book.

“The shadows start to drop from trees, like raindrops after a storm. The darkness pools and gathers and then seethes. The Japanese believe it’s hungry ghosts […] Some eyewitness reports describe teeth grinding and ripping in the shadows. Video recordings have shown only impenetrable darkness. I prefer to think of it as a black hole […] Maybe we become stars on the other side.”

Although most believe that the Undertow is something dark that absorbs and kills a person, even taking them to hell, Zinzi reveals a surprisingly optimistic point of view. She imagines that the Undertow as a portal to a new life rather than a grim ending.  

“You don’t strike me as the tuna fish type. You’re more of a shark. Were you really inside the container, Amira? Or were you on the outside, arranging passage? Another kind of procurement?”

Earlier in the novel, Amira tells Zinzi that she was brought to South Africa in a shipping container. After Amira finds Song, Zinzi asks her if that was the truth. She finally understands what Amira and Mark procure: illicit goods, including animals and people, dead and alive.

“Gio writes about all the ways we have sex […] This, at least, is based on past experience, but he makes up the rest. How Sloth shivers and yowls when I come because we’re connected like that. How he gets a little squeamish about it all. Calls it his pseudo-bestiality threesome. A gang-bang really, because the shadow of murder, of my sin, is like a fourth in the bed with us.”

Zinzi learns that Gio has taken revenge by publishing nude photos of her and a fake account of their sex life. He uses Zinzi’s status as mashavi to write a sensationalized, fetishistic piece that strips her of her personhood, all in the name of clicks. As revenge, Zinzi later implicates him in her phishing scam.

“I have a whole outbox of messages promising untold riches. How do you know you’re not just another moegoe, pinning everything on a dream that’s patently impossible?”

Benoît confronts Zinzi about her scam emails, In turn, she asks how he can convince himself that the people he has heard from are truly his family. As a scammer, she knows how easy it is to pretend to be someone you’re not. 

“In my chest, the poison flower bursts open, an explosion of burning seeds. I imagine Mr. and Mrs. Barber experienced something similar whenever they realized that the bearer bonds were forged. It is the death of hope.”

After hearing the real reasons for Benoît acquiring his Mongoose, and seeing Benôit’s anger with her for the scams she pulls, Zinzi feels her hope die; she knows he will surely leave her. She learns that her lover of many years killed men under duress and in self-defense. She, on the other hand, commits crimes because she is enslaved to her drug debts. There’s nothing noble or innocent in her actions.

“I danced until my feet broke off. Until my shoes turned red with blood. I always wanted to be a girl in a storybook.” 

When Zinzi’s reply to this final cryptic email bounces back, Zinzi begins to understand their common root: murdered mashavi. Unlike the other emails, this message’s author has suffered violence. The message leads her to the woman with the Sparrow, which helps her uncover Odi’s scheme.

“‘They’d cut off its paw to sell it for muti. They offered to do the same with Sloth. Someone’s buying.’ But then, someone’s always buying in this city. Sex. Drugs. Magic. With the right connections you can probably get a two-for-one deal.” 

Zinzi shares her theory about the reasons for the mashavi murders. Having encountered Nasty and Yellow Eyes, she knows that there is a black market for the body parts of animals, from which sangoma make muti. 

“This is your fault, you know. Odi and Carmen were so happy together until you got her all riled up with your crazy accusations. As if he would have risked tainting little Song. It was bad enough that idiot Jabulani was fucking her.”

Mark blames Zinzi for Carmen’s self-mutilation. He insists that Odi was only sleeping with Carmen, not with Song, because he wouldn’t have wanted to “taint” her. Mark may be portraying Odi as having concern for Song’s well-being, or he may be saying that Odi preferred her innocent because he planned to use her in a magical ritual.

“Horrified, he tries to shove it away. The same way I did with Sloth, until I realized he was the only thing between me and the rising dark. Of course, Sloth didn’t have my sibling’s blood on his teeth.”

Zinzi narrates S’bu’s reaction to his new Crocodile. She reveals that when she first met Sloth, he horrified her. Now, she sees her animal familiar not as a curse, but as the thing keeping her from “the rising dark,” whether that rising dark is the Undertow or her own worst impulses.

“It’s a simple matter for the Crocodile to just reach up and fold its jaws on him. It’s almost gentle. But then it clamps town. Its teeth rip into his stomach. Huron screams like a slaughter-house pig in a PETA video.”

After being severed from Odi, the Crocodile takes its revenge. The Crocodile attacks Odi with a force that implies it has the intelligence to hold Odi personally responsible.