Sex, politics and very little else: A look at The Sweetest Taboo

Mail & Guardian

30-04-2025

An explicit, ambitious debut novel that delivers on sensuality but struggles to balance story, substance and seduction
Right off the bat, let me say the following. This one was tough for me. Like many men of my generation, my relationship with the erotic arts and entertainment is, well, complicated.
I grew up in a time where such things had just started to become widespread and easily available, and I think this is a fairly unique place to be, historically.
People in the generations before me either had to go to great lengths to get their hands on any form of eroticism, or had no access to it at all.
This goes double because I grew up in apartheid-era South Africa and our country's calvinistic and backward stance on sexuality and sexual materials had to be seen to be believed.
Conversely, people in the generations after me have the internet, where any form of eroticism is literally at your fingertips, merely a search away, and so many of the previous dubious feelings towards it have begun to evaporate.
Now, let's just make it clear, I am extremely pro-sex and pro-sensuality and I believe that a healthy expression of those two things is core to any person's psychological make-up.
I also used to think I was very libertine in that there was very little in the way of such things that could shock or even surprise me.
What I have subsequently discovered is that I am very libertine for my generation. There are things that the world has subsequently conceived that I will admit have occasionally had me muttering, 'What the tin-plated fuck is going on here?'
But my stance remains now what it always was — as long as everyone involved is consenting, and no one involved is getting hurt — unless they want to be, feel free to go nuts.
But I also have this weird thing where I feel as if there can be too much sex in a given situation. Don't get me wrong, I am the guy in my circle of friends who has a 'nudge nudge, wink wink' comment for almost every occasion,but I have also learned through bitter experience that there is a time and a place for everything.
I also detest it when eroticism devolves beyond a certain level of explicitness into pure smut.
Pornography is one thing — you engage it with a certain expectation. No one reading pornographic books or magazines is expecting Noam Chomsky's treatise on Universal Grammar. No one viewing a pornographic movie is expecting a performance from anyone involved that rivals Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood. It is what it is and it exists to do what it exists to do.
But when something bills itself as art but is executed as something you'd find behind a paywall on a website that you would rather delete from your search history, it infuriates me. Just call it what it is and move on. We're all grown-ups here.
I mention this because I need to explain it before I launch into the paroxysm of contradictory emotions Rams Mabote's first novel The Sweetest Taboo has thrown me into.
Rams Mabote is a respected veteran of South African journalism. He is, by all accounts, a witty and educated man, with strong, balanced and well-thought-out viewpoints on a variety of topics. He is a shark in a pool full of minnows. And he has chosen to debut his first work of fiction in the realm of the erotic.
The book proudly bills itself as a South African Fifty Shades of Grey and boasts a symbol on the cover warning about sex, nudity and language. (I confess, I chuckled at the warning of 'nudity' on the cover of a book that has no pictures in it.)
The blurb is also very careful to mention just how much sex you're about to get yourself into, buddy.
I can confirm all of this is well-earned. The book is positively brimming with sex scenes, like Jilly Cooper or Elizabeth Gage on testosterone supplements. (I apologise for the dated reference but I've told you guys before — I'm old)
They are as explicit as advertised, and if Mr Mabote conducts himself with real-life partners as his fictional protagonist Morati Sello does with the unending parade of willing women who cross paths with him, then kudos is in order. He could teach Don Juan deMarco a thing or three.
But outside of that — I don't know. The blurb also promises the sex is as hot and wild as the politics and I would like to understand that statement better. The book takes place in 2008 and Morati is an envoy sent to Australia by the ruling party to learn about banking. But other than that — a few cursory mentions of the South African political situation in 2008 and the three-headed news juggernaut of Mbeki, Zuma and Malema and a slightly long-winded explanation of the famous 'apology' by Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd to the indigenous peoples of Australia — politics is more or less absent.
I might be missing the point. This book might entirely be about the very, very explicit male sexual wish fulfilment it centres around, and if that's the case, fine. It is what it says on the packaging and delivers in spades. But if it's not, then it's lacking.
The interstitial scenes serve merely as filler to get us from one unbelievably adventurous sexual encounter to another. I would say the dialogue is expositional, but there's no plot to expose, other than, 'All hail Morati, the sexual god!'
Much is made of the book's humour, but it fell flat with me, although I do acknowledge that I am probably not the target audience.
All in all, if you're a (specifically male) person who needs a spicy read to brighten up a dreary work night, you could do worse than this book. But do engage it on its own terms.