Umuzi

Coming this May from Umuzi

The Soldier Who Said No is the new novel by Chris Marnewick, author of Shepherds & Butchers.

When a Bushman arrow is used in an assassination attempt on the New Zealand Prime Minister, South African bush war veteran Pierre de Villiers, who works for the International Crimes Unit in Auckland, seems to be a logical link, but also a suspect.

Suffering from cancer and suspended, disgruntled De Villiers has seen similar arrows made by !Xau, a Bushman with whom he had to flee from Angola in 1985 after refusing to follow orders during a Military Intelligence operation. Now De Villiers is forced to return to South Africa to treat his cancer, find the origin of the arrow and face his own uncertain past.

[Shepherds & Butchers is] possibly the most gripping, most gruelling novel I’ve read. – Vivien Horler, Cape Argus

About the author

Chris Marnewick grew up in the northern Bushveld. He obtained law degrees from three universities, including his doctorate from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He is Senior Counsel at the Durban Bar, and acting judge and lives in Durban with his wife Ansie. He was admitted to practice in New Zealand and New South Wales and spent 5 years teaching litigation skills in New Zealand.

Shepherds & Butchers (Umuzi, 2008) was longlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, and shortlisted for the M-Net Literary Award, the M-Net Film Award, and the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize First Book, Africa Region. The book won the University of Johannesburg Prize in the Debut Category.

Book details

• The Soldier Who Said No by Chris Marnewick
  EAN: 9781415201084
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Over the weekend, Sunday Times columnist Fred Khumalo published a piece that compared his first visit to a Greek restaurant – which left him shaken, as plates flew all around – to journalist Narissa Subramoney’s haste to conclude that president Jacob Zuma had accidentally fallen at his recent wedding. Subramoney, it seems, doesn’t know her Zulu customs too well. Ask before you assume! is Khumalo’s lesson:

Back in the ’80s when darkies dining in white suburbia were still a rarity, one of the magazines I was freelancing for commissioned me to do a review of a Greek restaurant in Durban.

It will probably sound silly to the born-frees who don’t know what it was like then, but it took a lot of agonising on my part to agree to the assignment: I just couldn’t see myself dining at a restaurant owned and patronised by white people.

• Complete article in the Sunday Times

Book details

• Touch My Blood by Fred Khumalo
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  EAN: 9781415200049
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Apartheid offered rich soil for many evils to grow in – one being the almost absolute power of the South African Police, as personified by the “general” in Alan D Elsdon’s new novel, The Tall Assassin, based on the life of one Hendrik van den Berg.

In the following article, lessons are inferred from the book by a Weekend Post columnist, with a caution given against National Police Commissioner Bheki Cele’s recent exhortations to “shoot to kill”, as well as his plans to introduce a military-style rank system within his forces:

MEMBERS of the South African Police (SAP) in the apartheid era had ranks, and generals in particular seemed to take them sinfully seriously.

This gave them some weird powers and enabled them to decide the fate of the helpless individuals.

I was reminded of this when National Police Commissioner Bheki “Shoot to kill” Cele made the fearsome pronouncement that the South African Police Service would return to military style ranks. It set my mind racing back to the malicious performances of some SAP generals of the apartheid era

• Read the complete article

Book details

• The Tall Assassin: The darkest political murders of the old South Africa by Alan D Elsdon
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  EAN: 9781415200803
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• Die lang generaal: Die duisterste politieke sluipmoorde van die ou Suid-Afrika by Alan D Elsdon
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781415200926
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Alan D Elsdon has unleashed a minor storm of gossip and scandal, catalyzed by his new book, The Tall Assassin – a novel centered on the life, and more specifically the bloody work, of General “Lang” Hendrik van den Bergh who was once described as “the most feared man in South Africa”.

It is well known that he was responsible for orchestrating Nelson Mandela’s arrest, but rumour and speculation are rife when it comes to his supposed, BOSS-driven hand in the deaths of Hendrik Verwoerd, Nic Diederichs and Steve Biko, to mention a few. For many people Elsdon’s book will serve as a confirmation of their long held suspicions. Jimmy Matyu and Mike Oettle both offer their opinions on The Tall Assassin and the stories behind it:

The ghost of an American doctor of philosophy and anti- apartheid activist, Audrey Rosenthal, who died in the Rietbok disaster near East London 42 years ago, has found space in a recently published book. The Tall Assassin: The Darkest Political Murders of the old South Africa by Alan D Elsdon says Rosenthal’s death in the SAA Vickers Viscount crash was a well-calculated murder.

About two years ago in this very column I wrote that questions about the air crash were still unanswered. Now on reading the book by Elsdon, a former security policeman, I know the air crash was the work of Gen “Lang” Hendrik van den Bergh, alias “Lofty”, the head of the Bureau of State Security (Boss).

• Read the complete article in the Weekend Post

The face on the cover (an old newspaper picture) is that of “Lang Hendrik” van den Bergh, long regarded by many as the evil genius behind John Vorster.

And across the earpiece of his spectacles are the words “based on facts”.

That the author is a former member of the Security Police is a strong indication that his reconstruction of events is accurate, although one can only wonder to what extent.

• Read the complete article in The Herald

Book details

• The Tall Assassin: The darkest political murders of the old South Africa by Alan D Elsdon
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781415200803
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Die lang generaal: Die duisterste politieke sluipmoorde van die ou Suid-Afrika by Alan D Elsdon
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781415200926
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Umuzi and the Book Lounge are delighted to invite you to the launch of Professor Francis Wilson’s new short-short history of South Africa, Dinosaurs, Diamonds and Democracy.

Wilson will be in conversation with Dr Mamphela Ramphele. We look forward to welcoming you at the event!

Event Details

• Date: Thursday, 08 October 2009
• Time: 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM
• Venue: The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland
  cnr Buitenkant
  Cape Town | Map
• Guest Speaker: Mamphela Ramphele
• RSVP: booklounge@gmail.com, 021 462 2425

About the book

An asteroid the size of Table Mountain crashed into what was to become South Africa over 2 billion years ago, marking the spot. The country’s history since then has always been robust and full of energy. Francis Wilson’s Dinosaurs, Diamonds & Democracy takes you in record time from that moment, when the earth’s richest gold reefs were shaped, to the advent of democracy in 1994, another event that stunned the world.

Along the way you will encounter some of the most ancient dinosaurs on record, the very first people on the planet, and the first cultures. You will see outsiders moving in to reshape history: hunters and gatherers, cultivators and herders, iron-workers from the north, and immigrants from Europe and Asia. They fought and made peace; they stumbled upon gold and diamonds; they rose to the heights of excellence and sunk to the depths of oppression, until on one day they all queued as equals to elect a government.

That is the story marked by dinosaurs, diamonds and democracy.

Book excerpt

Let’s start at the site of the small town of Vredefort, 120 km south-west of Johannesburg. Here, around 2.02 billion years ago, an enormous asteroid, somewhat larger than Cape Town’s Table Mountain, came hurtling in from space at approximately 100 times the speed of sound and hit the ground with a force estimated to have been 7 or 8 billion times greater than that of the atomic bomb which destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. The asteroid turned the earth inside out as the pressure of its impact caused soil and rock to rebound from 20 km below the surface. The rock and soil formed a dome in the centre of the crater, which itself settled into a relatively shallow basin with a diameter of 250 to 300 km.

• To read on (pdf download)

Book Details

• Dinosaurs, Diamonds and Democracy: A short-short history of South Africa by Francis Wilson
  Book Homepage
  EAN: 9781415200865
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South Africa’s person of letters emeritus, Njabulo Ndebele, contributes an extraordinarily nuanced essay on race in South Africa; the work is the centrepiece in the Mail & Guardian’s special “race issue”, out this week – and will doubtless anchor Ndebele’s next book of writings, to follow on from Fine Lines from the Box when the time is right:

At the end of his recent Mail & Guardian article, “In the rainbow nation, colour and class still count”, David Smith recalls “a cynic whispering” in his ear that’s not easy to forget: “The whites are pretending it didn’t happen; the blacks are pretending to forgive.” As I thought further about this, I concluded that, in the light of the interracial events Smith recalls in his article, there may in fact be a positive value to pretence.

Pretence could be a coping mechanism in which one owns up to the fact that one is unable to respond confidently and appropriately to human relations conundrums of the kind that race, gender and class tensions can throw up from time to time. Resorting to pretence may not necessarily be an indication of hypocrisy, but rather a desire to buy time or a muted cry for help.

The situation that leads to pretence may work somewhat this way: if you are a white South African, you may realise the many times you recognised and acknowledged that you were complicit, willingly or by default, in social, economic and political practices in the past that resulted in the extreme pain and suffering of others. You further recognised that although that past was unsustainable, you have not entirely shaken off the hold that its emotional and material benefits once had on you. This is a most distressing realisation. How then do you translate your distress into corrective behaviour?

• Complete article in the Mail & Guardian

Book details

• Fine Lines from the Box: Further thoughts about our country by Njabulo Ndebele
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781415200377
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Photo courtesy Victor Dlamini

Imraan Coovadia tells the Sunday Times on what he would be, if not a writer. Lucky for all of us that he never veer off onto a different track!

If I weren't a writer, what would I be? Well, like most people who daydream, I have a number of fantasy lives in which I could play tennis, or fix engines, or make movies, or solve complicated mathematical problems …

Lives, in short, in which the last thing I’d be doing would be writing a list of all the other paths I could have followed.

The situation is asymmetrical. Writers, just to write, have to dream about bankers, and beggars, and jugglers. Whereas to bank, beg or juggle, you don’t have to let the faintest thought of writers cross your imagination.

• Read the complete article

Book details

• Green-eyed Thieves by Imraan Coovadia
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  EAN: 9781415200094
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• High Low In-between by Imraan Coovadia
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  EAN: 9781415200704
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Sihle Khumalo, author of the bestselling travel book, Dark Continent My Black Arse, and the forthcoming sequel, Heart of Africa, is not one to pull verbal punches.

In a piece whose trenchancy and tack is reminiscent of Zukiswa Wanner’s recent rant about book marketing, Khumalo lays it all out on the table: “Black people and reading just do not mix,” he writes in the Sunday Times – a sentence that’s prelude to a bemused j’accuse toward his “fellow darkies’” disinclination to pick up a book, any book.

Khumalo’s piece drew many spirited responses – both for and against – in the Times‘ letters section. Here’s the roundup, starting with the original article:

It’s a fact: darkies just don’t read

by Sihle Khumalo

Black people and reading just do not mix. First things first: before anybody tells me about the string of degrees they have, I am talking about general (i.e. non-academic) reading.

In this country, with almost 50 million people, a book has to sell only 5000 copies to be regarded as a bestseller. That can only mean one thing: South Africans – of whom almost 90% are black and about 95% of those African – just do not read.

I have often wondered why blacks don’t read. I have narrowed it down to two reasons: Firstly the inferior Bantu education – which most of us were exposed to – never, ever encouraged us to read. The last thing the National Party wanted was vast numbers of knowledgeable blacks.

Go to any black household and you will find lots of music tapes, LPs, CDs and DVDs and a handful, if any, of general books. That, by the way, includes blacks in the suburbs. The lack of reading is a black thing, irrespective of where you live. It is way more fashionable to have loads of music than to be truly knowledgeable. But then again, will it suit the ANC government all of a sudden to have a vast number of broad-minded, knowledgeable black South Africans? I have my doubts, because that would mean singing talent alone would not make you a senior government official.

• Complete article in the Sunday Times

Responses from the Times letters page

Concerned librarian: The lack of general reading interest so sadly lamented by Sihle Khumalo extends also, I’m afraid, to those custodians of knowledge, the librarians, who also do not read. Read more.

Dr PFG Mtimkulu: Sihle Khumalo’s article, “It’s a fact: darkies just don’t read”, is sad but true. When the book shop he referred to opened at Maponya Mall, I was excited, thinking that this would inculcate a culture of reading among blacks. Read more.

Monde Ndandani: Along comes the “author of the bestselling book”, Dark Continent My Black Arse, which, in the midst of millions of what this author calls “darkies”, I have no intentions of reading. Read more.

Bathini Masina: I write in response to Sihle Khumalo’s article: “It’s a fact: darkies just don’t read”. His scathing and poorly (if at all) researched article was a repulsive attempt to market himself and his ideologies to other radicals. Read more.

Book details

• Dark Continent My Black Arse by Sihle Khumalo
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  EAN: 9781415200360
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Photo courtesy Victor Dlamini

New from Umuzi

The Tall Assassin, by Alan D Elsdon, tells of a reign of terror marked by several political murders in one man’s zealous quest to combat communism. For many, General “Lang” Hendrik van den Bergh was the most feared man in the old South Africa. He was the head of BOSS, the Bureau of State Security, and The Tall Assassin tells of his dealings. The book, a novel, draws on facts, reconstructing likely scenarios where details were not obtainable.

Van den Bergh, who was responsible for the arrest of Nelson Mandela, built a formidable intelligence network linking into MI5, the CIA, Mossad, and French and German intelligence agencies. According to this book, he may have been involved in the assassination of HF Verwoerd, the death of Nic Diederichs, Steve Biko’s murder, as well as the murder of Anton Lubowski and Prof. Johan Heyns.
Two of the most infamous murders in which this book implicates the general are those of Dr Robert Smit and his wife in 1977. This murder mystery has never been solved, but here a compelling explanation is offered for the meaning of the mysterious words “RAU TEM” painted on the Smits’ kitchen wall.

From a meeting of minds in an internment camp at Koffiefontein, to the paranoid sixties, the tumultuous seventies and the Information Scandal that rocked the Nat establishment, The Tall Assassin paints a terrifying picture of ideology driving a regime’s agents into a moral free fall.

from The Tall Assassin, page 114:

In the dirty game of international espionage, the tool that gave one agency the edge over the rest was their technical ability. Van den Bergh spent massive amounts of money to ensure that BOSS had the most sophisticated technical equipment in the world. Having the finest radio, surveillance and countersurveillance devices in the correct places gave BOSS the edge over many of its competitors. To properly install and train his staff, technical experts from Israel were secretly brought into the country. Van den Bergh was intent on having listening devices placed in every quarter where friend and foe operated.

“There ’s nothing closer to the truth,” he told his subordinates, “than straight from the horse ’s mouth.” Of course he added his favourite line, “And remember, knowledge is power!”

The first fully-fledged radio spy station was erected on a hill outside Pretoria.

The second was erected on the site occupied by Sharp and his two colleagues.

In an incident labelled “Spies in the Sky”, it was discovered that BOSS agents had recruited and trained cabin crew employed by SAA. BOSS agents studied daily passenger lists supplied to them by sources within SAA. On local but especially international flights, the trained SAA staff placed listening devices in secret hiding places above the seats of identified passengers. In that way the conversations of political “suspects” were recorded. The tape cassettes were then placed in diplomatic bags and handed to BOSS agents at the various destinations. The media ripped into the State body and accused them of violating the basic human rights of their targets.

• Read on (pdf download)

Ook in Afrikaans beskikbaar as Die lang generaal:

Hierdie boek deur Alan D Elsdson vertel van ’n skrikbewind wat besaai was van politieke moorde in een man se fanatieke oorlog teen die kommunisme. Generaal Lang Hendrik van den Bergh was vir baie mense die mees gevreesde man van die ou Suid-Afrika. Hy was hoof van die Buro vir Staatsveiligheid (boss, op Engels), en dis van sy bedrywighede dat Die lang generaal vertel – op ’n feitelike basis, maar met die inkleding van waarskynlike scenario’s waar feite nie bekombaar is nie.

Volgens die boek sou Van den Berg betrokke kon gewees het by die sluipmoord op HF Verwoerd, die dood van Nic Diederichs, en van Steve Biko, asook die moorde op Anton Lubowski en prof. Johan Heyns.

Twee van die opspraakwekkendste moorde waarmee hierdie boek die generaal verbind, is dié op dr. Robert Smit en sy vrou in 1977. Hierdie moordraaisel is nooit opgelos nie, maar hier word oortuigend aangevoer wat die geheimsinnige woorde “rau tem” kon beteken wat op die Smit-egpaar se kombuismuur gevind is.

Vanaf ’n ontmoeting van geesgenote in die Koffiefonteinse interneringskamp, deur die paranoïese jare sestig, die omgekrapte sewentigs en deur die Inligtingskandaal wat die NP-establishment geskud het, teken hierdie boek ’n skrikwekkende beeld van ’n bewind se agente wat deur ideologie oor die morele afgrond gedryf is.

Uit Die lang generaal, bladsy 109:

In die vuil spel van internasionale spioenasie is dit tegniese vermoë wat een agentskap ’n voorsprong bo die ander gee. Hendrik van den Bergh het reuse-bedrae geld bestee om te verseker dat Boss van die mees gesofistikeerde tegniese toerusting in die wêreld het. Met die beste radio-, waarnemings- en teen-waarnemingstoerusting op die regte plekke, kon Boss baie van sy mededingers die loef afsteek. Om die toerusting behoorlik te installeer en sy personeel op te lei, het Van den Bergh in die geheim tegniese deskundiges uit Israel na Suid-Afrika gebring. Hy was vasbeslote om meeluistertoestelle in elke hoekie en gaatjie waar vriend en vyand bedrywig was, aan te bring.

“Jy kom nie nader aan die waarheid as uit die perd se bek nie,” het hy aan sy mense gesê. Dan het sy geliefkoosde spreuk gevolg: “En onthou, kennis is mag.”

Die eerste volledige radio-spioenasiestasie is op ’n heuwel buite Pretoria aangebring, die tweede op die terrein waar Sharp en sy twee kollegas gewoon het.

In ’n voorval wat later “Spioene in die lug” gedoop is, is ontdek dat Bossagente kajuitbemanningslede van die Suid-Afrikaanse Lugdiens gewerf en opgelei het. Boss-agente het die daaglikse passasierslyste bestudeer wat bronne in die lugdiens aan hulle verskaf het. Op plaaslike, maar veral internasionale vlugte, het die opgeleide SAL-personeel meeluistertoestelle in geheime plekke bo die sitplekke van bepaalde passasiers geplaas. So is die gesprekke van politieke “verdagtes” opgeneem. Die kassette is in diplomatieke sakke gesit en by die onderskeie bestemmings aan Boss-agente oorhandig. Die media het op Boss losgebrand en hom daarvan beskuldig dat hy die basiese menseregte van sy slagoffers aantas.

• Lees verder

Book details

• The Tall Assassin: The darkest political murders of the old South Africa by Alan D Elsdon
  Book homepage
  EAN: 9781415200803
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Die lang generaal: Die duisterste politieke sluipmoorde van die ou Suid-Afrika deur Alan D Elsdon
  Boekbesonderhede
  EAN: 9781415200926
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

The publication of JM Coetzee’s Summertime, the third book in his “fictional autobiography” triology (which began with Boyhood and then moved to Youth) is undoubtedly the literary event of the year.

In Summertime, a young English biographer is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee. He plans to focus on the years from 1972-1977 when Coetzee, in his thirties, is sharing a run-down cottage in the suburbs of Cape Town with his widowed father. This, the biographer senses, is the period when he was “finding his feet as a writer”. Never having met Coetzee, he embarks on a series of interviews with people who were important to him – a married woman with whom he had an affair, his favourite cousin Margot, a Brazilian dancer whose daughter had English lessons with him, former friends and colleagues.

You can read excerpts from the book here and here. Meanwhile, a fresh sampling from Summertime has appeared in the UK’s Telegraph, featuring a conversation (by correspondence?) between the biographer and a certain Dr Frankl:

Dr Frankl, you have had a chance to read the pages I sent you from John Coetzee’s notebooks for the years 1972–75, the years, more or less, when you were friendly with him. As a way of getting into your story, I wonder whether you have any reflections on those entries. Do you recognise in them the man you knew? Do you recognise the country and the times he describes?

Yes, I remember South Africa. I remember Tokai Road, I remember the vans crammed with prisoners on their way to Pollsmoor. I remember it all quite clearly.

Nelson Mandela was of course imprisoned at Pollsmoor. Are you surprised that Coetzee doesn’t mention Mandela as a near neighbour? Mandela wasn’t moved to Pollsmoor until later. In 1975 he was still on Robben Island.

Of course, I had forgotten that. And what of Coetzee’s relations with his father? He and his father lived together for some while after his mother’s death. Did you ever meet his father?

Several times.

Did you see the father in the son?

Do you mean, was John like his father? Physically, no. His father was smaller and slighter: a neat little man, handsome in his way, though plainly not well. He drank on the sly, and smoked, and generally did not look after himself, whereas John was a quite ferocious abstainer.

(more…)