This is me.
I grew up on the edge of white suburbia in South Africa, where the wild bunnies hopped and the anthills were higher than we could climb.
My best friend and I spent our days skipping stones across the small dam on the Jukskei River, or pushing over logs to see what surprises would scuttle out. I loved being under the African sun.
At school, I was a laughingstock in physical education classes and a loner on the playground. My creative writing marks were great, though.
The 1976 riots and the presence of military forces everywhere were impossible to ignore. We knew terrible things were happening, but there was a moment when it all came into stark relief for me. One evening in the early '80s, I witnessed the assault of a black couple. They were old and frail, but white police officers beat them to the ground with sticks and threw them into the back of a paddy wagon. Their crime was leaving home without a dompas, the passport Black people needed to move about in white areas. That moment remained burned into my retinas.
In 1985, I threw everything I owned into my clapped-out Mazda 323 and went off to Rhodes University in Grahamstown. That’s where I met my best friend, started a non-racial rock band, took a lunchtime and evening spot on Rhodes Music Radio, founded a student organisation and a clutch of student publications, and took to marching alongside my fellow students for justice and racial equality. Little of what I did made me any friends in the university administration or government.
I made it out with my life, and a degree in journalism.
Over the intervening years, I have worked in corporate media, public relations, and advertising. Now, as an ageing adolescent, I have gone back to my first love, writing.
What People Are Saying
“
You have a lovely voice, Leon.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
”
Nurit M. - Beta Reader for The Moon Below
“
I found the Podcast on Spotify. I almost pissed myself laughing at the Lion Shit story.
”
Darren B.
