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These are universal stories which anyone who has been involved with a divorce – and who hasn’t? – will enjoy.
They are stories of shattered dreams, broken hearts and all the intricacies and frequent humorous absurdities that accompany the ending of the most intimate of human relationships.
Samuel John Frederick Platt was born two months prematurely and rushed into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. It soon became apparent that the new-born had a rare disease, confounding specialists and sending his parents, Melissa and Fred Platt, on an emotional rollercoaster as his condition was misdiagnosed several times.
His distraught parents stood by Sam’s side and advocated for his needs, while feeling ignored by some of the health care professionals assigned to Sam’s care. After more than a year in a private hospital in Johannesburg, Sam’s parents managed to get a second opinion and secured a transfer to a hospital in Cape Town.
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.
I am a Coloured woman of South Africa. The blood flowing through me was despised by apartheid, for it was not pure and it was not White. Because of this, I struggled with feelings of self-doubt and shame.
BEING BLACK AND BI-POLAR IN SOUTH AFRICA
‘My struggles with mental illness were in some ways like a child crying out for attention; more than that they were a cry for help from the mind I felt trapped in. There was a darkness in me that many times swallowed me whole.’
This is how Keamogetswe Bopalamo introduces her account of her troubled early life. It is an intensely personal account, and yet it speaks to a reality much broader than itself. In the exciting whirl of South Africa’s post-apartheid society, there is this darker side: the confusions, the fears, the rebellions, the degradations and emotional pain.
Growing up in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa in the 1950’s and 1960’s the emphasis on the way of life was completely different to the present day some nearly 70 years later.
He writes of his reminiscences of his school days and especially his involvement in sport which was compulsory. Many of life’s lessons were learnt young on the rugby or cricket fields.
