Emil Coetzee Character Analysis

Husband to Kuki and father to Vida’s first love Everleigh, Emil is a cruel, blond, macho man who is born in South Africa of Afrikaner descent but moves to an unnamed, colonized country implied to be Southern Rhodesia (pre-independence Zimbabwe) to make his career in its white-dominated colonial government. He marries Kuki because her family is well-established in Southern Rhodesia and he thinks the marriage will help his push to found a domestic surveillance organization that will keep “the African” in “his place.” He hates his and Kuki’s son, Everleigh, because Everleigh is sensitive, artistic, and very close to a mixed-race friend named Vida (who is, in fact, Everleigh’s boyfriend). After Emil browbeats Everleigh into fighting for the colonial government in a conflict implied to be the Zimbabwe War of Independence (1964-1979), Everleigh dies by landmine—and Kuki divorces Emil. At some point during Emil’s tenure as a colonial spymaster, Eunice Masuku informs on her abusive husband to Emil, claiming he and his friends are African nationalists—information that leads to her husband’s arrest and death in prison. Just before the country gains its independence, Emil dies by suicide at home—and later, Dingani Masuku is able to buy Emil’s mansion at a lower price as a result. Emil’s fundamental similarities to the postcolonial political leader The Man Himself shows the continuity between corrupt, oppressive governments across the country’s colonial and postcolonial history.