Gags, Quirks and Facts
This is an unusual little book. In a South Africa in economic trouble with daily power outages and a 60% youth unemployment rate, we might think there’s not much to smile about. Don’t you believe it!
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This is an unusual little book. In a South Africa in economic trouble with daily power outages and a 60% youth unemployment rate, we might think there’s not much to smile about. Don’t you believe it!
One day I suddenly thought, “My goodness, where’s Gareth?” So, I started looking. Last I heard, he was working with the British Army in Iraq, doing long stints: I tracked him down to prison cell in Kuwait. He had been used as a drug mule, nabbed and sentenced to death by hanging. His death was commuted to life and then further reduced to 15 years. When I located him, he had already been inside for four years. Thereafter I sent him a letter, every month, for 67 consecutive months. My Letters to Kuwait, were received by Gareth on his hidden device: news and comment on life in South Africa, my reflections on humanity and our world.
From skylarking at school to a professorship at the best university in Africa. It's all here in this collection of loosely related memoir-essays: all twists in the winding road the author travelled to become a female computer science professor at the University of cape Town. Born and schooled in the Netherlands, Ms Keet didn't stay home for long. Her winding road had a distinctly international flavour. She has worked and studied in Ireland and Italy, and briefly in Peru and Cuba, before finding her way back to South Africa. The author herself says of her essays: ' They offer a peek into a kitchen where underway is making of a woman into an academic scientist when the yeast has been gender-spiked against her chances of rising.'
Speaking as I Want is the outcome of conversations between a father (lecturer) and a daughter (student) on life and living in a period of intellectual uncertainty within and outside of universities. It seeks to provoke wider reflection on the way we live and the narratives that currently influence us.
Greg Margolis (founder of NYPD Security) was for decades intimately involved in dealing with ‘random victims’ of crime or conflict, whether the victim was an individual, a family or even someone close to the victim(s), in many instances if they could, they often chose to leave the country ‒ this included the vast majority of Greg's extended family.
But Greg embodied the antithesis of a victim mentality – and chose to stay in SA, founding a non-profit security company in the late 90's, which then later expanded and evolved into a commercial security service provider in Johannesburg.