The first story broke in the morning: a local doctor’s farmhouse had been hit during the night. He returned home to find two men inside — one in the bathroom, one rifling through drawers. The doctor reached his shotgun before either intruder reached the door. One shot. One body. A detective later described the scene, […]
Read more "Chapter 5: Ghosts in the Veld"Land had always been the true currency of power in southern Africa, and its ghosts travelled freely across borders. When Zimbabwe unraveled into land seizures, bloodshed, and the collapse of its farming regions, many South Africans feared the same omen drifting south like dust on a restless wind. Rumour painted a picture of ancestral tribes […]
Read more "Chapter 4: Borders of Hunger, Borders of Fear"The road tilted gradually upward, then levelled out into an endless straight. The Karoo had thinned behind me, its silence replaced by the faint hum of human activity and the shimmer of heat. Each town along the way seemed smaller than the last — a scatter of houses, a few trees, but dust – everywhere, […]
Read more "Chapter 3 (Pt. 4): The Journey North"The diner’s ceiling fan turned lazily overhead, a mechanical sigh that barely stirred the air, just enough to discourage the flies from settling on the sugar shaker. From the kitchen, a radio played Brenda Fassie’s “Weekend Special,” the joyful notes battling a constant, metallic haze of static. The waitress, a woman whose body had settled […]
Read more "Chapter 3 (Pt. 3): The Diner and the People"I woke with the sunrise, though I felt nothing close to radiant. My body was stiff, my leg still aching from the previous day’s drive, and the air in the Beetle carried the metallic bite of cold and petrol fumes. The windscreen was glazed with frost, and the light that broke through it seemed almost […]
Read more "Chapter 3 (Pt. 2): The Karoo"I had set off early that morning, the kind of departure that feels both hopeful and weary at once. By late afternoon, my leg had begun to cramp on the accelerator, and I’d wound down the window to keep myself awake. The warm air buffeted my face and made my eyes sting — they felt […]
Read more "Chapter 3 (Pt. 1): The Roadtrip"The night was warm, a calm breeze stirring small dust devils in the parched farmland soil. Newly strung power lines brought much-needed electricity to the surrounding townships. In the distance, a shimmering oasis of light hung over the horizon as the ground released the day’s blazing heat. It was in moments like these that one […]
Read more "Chapter 2: Tipping Point"Dedicated to my uncle Johann. Thank you for making my teens and beyond bearable. Thousands of supporters lined the route from Paarl, where Mandela had spent his final years in a small house within Victor Verster Prison, to Cape Town, where thousands more gathered at the Grand Parade before City Hall. The city was a […]
Read more "Chapter 1 (Pt. 3): Unity in Chaos"Mandela is to be released from prison today, and for four long years the South African government has toyed with the phrase civil uprising in anticipation of this moment. Anxiety gnaws at the middle-aged men in their immaculate pinstripe suits, men whose brute certainty once steered a formidable economy. Now, with international pressure mounting, the decision to […]
Read more "Chapter 1 (Pt. 2): On the Edge of Freedom"The most profound realisation is that you were shaped more by absence than presence. Malawi was a good man. Whether that was his real name, I could never be sure. Like many Africans at the time, he may have altered it to accommodate the white man’s naiveté, who found true African names too bothersome to […]
Read more "Chapter 1 (Pt. 1): Lipstick"