Janice Warman – författare

One boy's struggle for freedom during South Africa's anti-apartheid movement.1970s South Africa. Eleven-year-old Joshua lives with his mother, who works as a maid for the Malherbes in a white middle-class area in Cape Town. We see this enclosed world through Joshua's eyes as we share his longing for his family and his past life in the rural Ciskei. When a boy enters the garden one night, Joshua offers him refuge. The stranger turns out to be a freedom fighter on the run. As riots sweep the country Joshua becomes more and more aware of the political situation around him and is determined to help bring about change for himself, his family and ultimately his country.

One boy's struggle for freedom during South Africa's anti-apartheid movement.1970s South Africa. Eleven-year-old Joshua lives with his mother, who works as a maid for the Malherbes in a white middle-class area in Cape Town. We see this enclosed world through Joshua's eyes as we share his longing for his family and his past life in the rural Ciskei. When a boy enters the garden one night, Joshua offers him refuge. The stranger turns out to be a freedom fighter on the run. As riots sweep the country Joshua becomes more and more aware of the political situation around him and is determined to help bring about change for himself, his family and ultimately his country.

Out of the class of 1979 at Rhodes University one of the quietest girls in the class, Marion Sparg joined the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC) Umkhonto we Sizwe, trained in exile in Angola, and was eventually convicted of bombing three police stations. The Cape Times journalist Zubeida Jaffer was imprisoned, poisoned, and tortured for her writing and her union activism, yet chose not to prosecute her torturer. Guy Berger, also a student and later a lecturer at Rhodes University, was arrested and interrogated for possession of banned books. He spent seven months in custody, three of which he spent in solitary confinement. He was ultimately sentenced to four years in prison. For them, it began at the moment that each of them realized that what was happening in South Africa was wrong, and that they simply could not tolerate it. And for all of them, that moment came at Rhodes University. Each of them chose to reject their backgrounds and take the path of resistance, following in the footsteps of the famous few. Among these were the writers Breyten Breytenbach, Nadine Gordimer, Ingrid Jonker, Alan Paton; and the fighters Albie Sachs, Ruth First, Trevor Manuel, and Joe Slovo. This book is for all those who suffered under apartheid, and suffered to end it, and in particular for Marion, Zubeida, and Guy, who have shared their story so generously.