WeeklySA_AdminFLASHBACK: Updated biography revisits the iconic liberation struggle figure’s assassination to mark the 30th anniversary of his death…
By Jacob Mawela
The timing of the review of this tome by fellow journos, Beauregard Tromp and Janet Smith regarding the life of South African Communist Party and liberation icon, Martin Thembisile Hani, is tantamount to the South African history reaching full circle.
It is a fortuitous alignment of epiphanies of the iconic liberation struggle figure’s assassination on the verge of the country’s democratic breakthrough 30 years ago – and the current disillusionment among the mainly African electorate, which had looked to Hani’s liberating movement to unburden it from the yoke of centuries old racist oppression, but now in a state of collective despair!
The book’s arrival shortly before this Easter of 2023 is clearly timed to coincide with the memory of the Easter of his assassination in 1993 – 30 years earlier!
In a chapter homing in on Hani’s assassination, the poignant reaction in the aftermath of the incident on April 10 1993 by one of his three daughters, Nomakhwezi, then 15-year-old, is revisited: “I’m a Catholic and I believe there is a God, and He is supposed to be powerful enough to protect good people. It puzzles me that God did not stop these killers.”
The killers she alluded to include erstwhile nun and gay club owner Gaye Derby-Lewis – described by renowned lawyer George Bizos SC., as “smart, she was the brains, and I detested her” – her husband and Conservative Party MP Clive Derby-Lewis and Polish émigré Janusz Walus, the assassin who pulled the trigger and about whom Nomakhwezi had unsuspectingly alerted Hani: “Hey daddy, he’s greeting you,” as Walus approached her dad on that fateful day on the East Rand’s Dawn Park.
Ironically, Hani had been barred from carrying his Makarov pistol – along with his bodyguards – by being denied licenses – whereas Walus had been – in contrast – issued with an illegal Z88 pistol with which he carried out the cold-blooded execution, teetering the country close to civil war and almost derailing underway Codesa negotiations!
An updated paperback, the book also features a chapter on the Wankie Offensive which gave a then USSR trained Hani a taste of combat when uMkhonto we Sizwe’s Luthuli Detachment – under his command, and sanctioned by then ANC leader Oliver Tambo – joined forces with Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU in an armed campaign against the then Ian Smith-ruled Rhodesia, in 1967.
A reserve teeming with elephants, lion and other game, Wankie (now Hwange National Park) was to become an unlikely frontier to one of the most enthralling encounters in the liberation struggle history of Southern Africa.
With a tinge of nostalgia, it also traces his humble beginnings in the Eastern Cape village of Sabalele, including his sojourn at Lovedale College – which inculcated an awareness of the struggle for liberation in him.
Smith (author of Patrice Motsepe: An Appetite for Disruption) and Tromp (the African editor of Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) drew on interviews with those who were a part of Hani’s existence and the duo’s text is complemented by visual contributions from photojournalist Rashid Lombard – as well as those of other lensmen who have been dedicated documentarists of Hani’s pre-exile, exile and post-exile periods. –
*Distributed by Jonathan Ball Publishers, Hani A Life Too Short retails at R310
WITTY TOME LACED WITH NOSTALGIC CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
By Amanda Ngudle
Welcome to Lindiwe Nkutha’s world, where she is the director of happy and sad stories from yesteryear.
It is true that documenting childhood stories is like writing a love letter to your future self and it is not hard to detect the author’s love in how she paints stories of these individuals from her childhood and important times. She immortalises these people and gives you the first-row chair as these characters play out their lives, which would otherwise be forgotten. Her stories will trigger memories of your own growing-up, fables, nostalgia, rumours, and legends. The book has only eight chapters but be assured you will not be stripped of colour and faces.
She has what many call a photographic memory and a great story-telling ability. There are times when it looks like the chapters are long. Although she writes all eight of her chapters with much zest, it is when topics of queer relationships emerge that she seems in her element. This is a necessary holiday book – witty, poignant and beautifully written. A true South African book.
*69 Jerusalem Street-Lindiwe Nkutha (Modjadji Books) (R220)
GRITTY SHORT STORIES TEMPERED WITH HUMOUR
By Amanda Ngudle
You will be forgiven for thinking White Chalk is an anthology. From the very first short story, you get a sense that the author is based in Cape Town and is within a certain age bracket until you move to the next story.
The only common denominator is the coloured community whose stories she tells with such wonder! The first story is a chronicle of an expectant mother’s milestones with the pregnancy and the people it brings in. Then we swiftly move to the next story of young boys which for a long time seems stagnant until the very last two sentences. Fascinating stuff!
It’s a book that captures grief phenomenally; and, funny enough, there are some comical moments, but the book is far from light-hearted. It explores such topics as death, being half-coloured, half-black, being an albino, burying your own child, dying for someone else etc.
It would be so sad if it was not written with so much flair. I counted zero errors. This writer is going places.
*White Chalk-Terry Ann Adams (Jacana) R220
Published on the 93rd Edition.
