FOR some two decades Getaway Magazine has taken us on journeys to some of the most remote destinations on the planet allowing us, through the lenses of its cameras, to view these amazing places from the comfort of our homes.
The magazine set the benchmark for travel journalism in Africa and really opened the continent up for the average traveller to explore the land north of our borders.
Elke boek deur Antjie Krog, een van Suid-Afrika se handjie vol internasionaal gerekende skrywers, is ’n happening. Ook Begging to Be Black, ondanks die bohaai wat dit ná bekendstelling (om die verkeerde redes?) ontketen het.
Dit is die boek waarin sy haarself as ’n wit Suid-Afrikaan in die plek van ’n swart Suid-Afrikaan in ons land met sy veelbewoë rasverlede stel.
Dus, hoe vir ’n witte om jouself swart te verbeel, swart te probeer word.
James Ngculu’s memoirs cover the full uMkhonto weSizwe experience, from leaving South Africa for exile and training in Africa, the Soviet Union and socialist Europe, to playing a frustrating waiting game in Angola – and witnessing the 1984 mutinies and the horrors of camp Quatro:
But a great deal is dedicated to Angola in the book. Ngculu explains how that war-ravaged country dispelled any romanticism about armed struggle.
Although being an MK soldier and understanding the discipline that goes with that is an honour, Ngculu does not shy away from the frustrations and utter despair that many recruits felt in the camps. These had many causes, but two come across quite strongly: idleness and abuse of power. Ngculu writes: “The most traumatic thing in the camps was waiting. This waiting became the source of all our frustrations and feelings of despondency.”
Most who’ve served will have been told at one time or another: “You don’t have to be uncomfortable to be a soldier.” Many of these “elites” (the term is used generously) made a virtue of it, though. Of the three ancient Greek selections – the Spartans, the Sacred Band of Thebes and Alexander the Great’s Companion Cavalry – the first certainly lived roughest… and from the age of seven, no less.
This book is about the Basotho people of the kingdom of Lesotho: how they live, play and work amid the beautiful landscapes. They come across as hard- working and peace-loving.
The pages and pictures are well co-ordinated in their layout. Gosselin’s skill shows in the way his subjects are relaxed as they go about their daily lives as he documents them; one can see that the photographer spent time with them, learning about their ways before documenting their lives.
Jare gelede, op die voorblad van Esquire, vertel Rian Malan hoe hy Afrikaans, die Afrikaner en apartheid ervaar het. Onder tussen het daar ná My Traitor’s Heart baie water in die spreekwoordelike see geloop.
Hy het nou onlangs in By saam met Pik Botha verskyn. (Terloops, dit is ’n interessante verskynsel hierdie saambring van teenstrydige figure: Zuma en Steve Hofmeyr, nou onlangs.)
Resident Alien – wat beskryf word in die London Times as die werk van Suid-Afrika se Hunter S. Thompson – bevat 27 artikels (ek huiwer om die woord essay te gebruik) waarin die aard van ons uiters komplekse land beskryf word. Om hierdie soort boek te geniet, moet jy uiteraard “in koop” in die persona van die skrywer, en nie om dowe neute nie word die boek aangeprys deur Koos Kombuis wat Malan as ’n “one-man cultural revolution” beskryf. Kombuis is self ’n ikoon wat of teenstand of goedkeuring ontlok. Lin Sampson, daardie skerp stilis, beklemtoon weer hoe goed Malan skryf.
Verdict: carrot for a book that’s not SA Lit, but that holds lessons for SA and all countries that hold freedom of speech dear, as Maureen Isaacson explains:
A mother of two, the daughter of Russian diplomats, Politkovskaya was born in America but lived in the Russia she adored, and was shot dead on October 7, 2006.
Politkovskaya’s murder has not yet been resolved. It is believed to have been possibly related to an article about torture that she was preparing, and which she had announced on Radio Liberty two days before her death.
The fragments from eyewitness accounts of torture, in this newly published collection, Nothing But the Truth; Selected Dispatches (Random House), are difficult to countenance, as is much of the violence she stares down, clear-eyed.
Wie is Max du Preez? Dit is lekker om die vraag te vra, omdat dit so ’n interessante antwoord ontlok: Max du Preez is ’n koerantman van formaat en “hardegat-joernalis” (ek haal die bekendstelling op die omslag aan), stigterslid en eens aan die roer van die onafhanklike baanbrekerskoerant Vrye Weekblad, later navorser en aanbieder van ’n reeks televisieprogramme oor die Waarheids-en-versoeningskommissie, sowel as van die Special Assignment-reeks. Hy is ’n skerp en onverbiddelike maatskaplike en politieke kommentator en hy is ook ’n demokraat, ’n aktivis en ’n skrywer. En dan is daar ook Max du Preez: Sewe keer vir laster gedagvaar en oorlewende van drie vliegtuigongelukke, twee sluipmoordpogings, ’n bomaanval en ’n menigte geswore vyande. Max is ’n kleurryke karakter, maar ook iemand om ernstig op te neem.
Dwars, Max se nuwe boek, is ’n vertaling van die voorafgaande Pale Native. Natuurlik staan sy status en ervaring as joernalis sentraal tot hierdie boek. Dwars raak van die mees beduidende geskiedkundige gebeure in Suid-Afrika se geskiedenis aan, stel die leser aan besonderse mense voor en dek aangrypende ervarings wat dikwels die groter samelewing beïnvloed – alles deur Du Preez as joernalis waargeneem en aangeteken.
Verdict: carrot
