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Pure Fiction

AWOL in Swaziland in 1981, I came across Nelson Mandela's book, No Easy Walk to Freedom. It was a time when I had difficulty with any reading besides pornography and Doris Lessing. The devils of the military were on my tail and I struggled to concentrate. But I read Mandela's speech from the dock and finally realized why he was in jail. It came as a shock because it was so simple. So down home, common sense simple. The lies about why he was in jail were convoluted and gothic. I grew up on gruel of those lies.

I was born in South Africa in 1955 and until I fled the army I had little idea who Nelson Mandela was. I grew up on a farm called Highlands in the Amatole Mountains. Amatole is a Xhosa word meaning "the calves". The Xhosa are a cattle-loving nation and the name is a measure of their affection for the high forests and grasslands where they took refuge from their enemies, and fattened their cattle when the pastures were sweet.

"Pure Fiction" is a memoir with novel elements. On a peak overlooking Highlands, my father is in conversation with a Xhosa Chieftain. The men, long dead, observe my life as I pass through childhood, education and a kind war. And they swap stories. Rharhabe tells of the cattle killing, and the hundred-year conflict that ended with his land passing into English hands. My father tells of his battle with the Hun, and of the English bullet that sent him to Africa so that he could marry a German and buy the land that once belonged to Rharhabe's people.

The book is about growing up in white, rural, South African under apartheid.

Pure Fiction

Now  available as an Ebook.

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Otelo Burning

Is going to No Borders.

District 9

Okay it's good. The bastard offspring of The Office and Alien and an acute satirical portrait of contemporary SA. All it's missing is a Thabo Mbeki figure siding with the industrialists in private and blaming white racism and the CIA in public.

It's also a morality tale, a fairy story with two morals:

1 - Never piss off a Van de Mevwe
2- Be kind to prawns.

The Other View on District 9

“You fucking mizungo [white person], I’m gonna get you!,” screams the menacing black Nigerian cannibal. ...District 9 illustrates the strange new state of racial and political identity. It suggests some lingering Afrikaans’ fear or, possibly, how Jackson really thinks about the Maori and Aborigines.

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Rolling Stone on District 9

This baby has the stuff to end the movie summer on a note of dazzle and distinction.

District 9 - There's always something new out of Africa?

...the locals are fed up and pushing for segregation...

...violent clashes between impoverished black South Africans and Zimbabwean refugees...

...Unemployment is rampant, healthcare is nonexistent...

LA Times

The Beast & Sandy Superstar

The Most Peaceful Place in Cyberspace

Adderley - a small village in Shropshire