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!
“Our people have been oppressed enough. It’s time somebody comes forward and speaks about police brutality. There are hundreds of policemen like me who see their credibility in the communities they serve undermined by the actions of riot police. But they are scared to talk because regulations bind them. I’m not willing for the regulation to bind me any further. I’m defying them,” - Lieutenant Gregory Rockman, speaking to Gaye Davis of the Weekly Mail, September 1989.
The story of POPCRU (the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union) is embedded in the story of South Africa’s bloody journey to democracy.
Seventeen years old and faced with the most difficult situation of her young life. The only problem was that she had no idea what was actually wrong with her. Leukaemia? What is that? It’s cancer. ‘Am I going to die’, she asked.
Many thousands of South African children are brought up by their grandmothers. This is one of the many manifestations of an unstable and distraught society, where the mother to child bond is too often broken, causing pain and a deep-seated sense of loss to both parties. Each Gogo-raised child’s story is different, but the general theme is the same: it deals with abandonment, with only qualified acceptance, but most of all with the simple absence of a real mother presence. The title of Vanessa Neo Mathope’s book – Orphaned, with Living Parents – tells it all. A monstrous imbalance has occurred, and the consequences run deep.
The author was just like many other children who grew up with nothing and felt that the world was against them.
Hearing hurtful words like, ’you will be nothing in life’, made him realise how cruel the world could be. But in response he kept these powerful words in mind:
HOPE
DETERMINATION
A WILL TO SUCCEED
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.