Landscape of my Youth

April 6, 2024April 22, 2024 / stidyatkusane / 16 Comments

*Mt Muozi from the remains of the old Somershoek house*.

I have often wondered what it is that attracts one to a particular place? Why one would feel such a deep connection to it but not feel the same connectedness to somewhere else, even though it is an equally beautiful spot. How and where do these sensual tastes generate themselves? Like one’s attraction to a particular woman, it is not easy to explain – and perhaps it is best it remains that way – although, in my case, I suspect it may have something to do with the farm where I grew up.

The farm, which my father was determined to bully into productiveness (it had sat, virtually unused, since the original Dutch settlers, who had been granted the land by Cecil Rhodes, had abandoned it many years before) was situated at the northern end of the Nyanga valley, just where the European-designated farmland gave way to Tribal Trust Land. The first few years on the farm were, accordingly, spent erecting fences, clearing bush, digging furrows, cultivating the land and erecting buildings. During my school holidays – when I was not being roped into helping with all of this – I set about familiarising myself with my surroundings.

Towering above our end of the valley, the great brooding presence of Mount Muozi rose sharply. Behind it lay the main Nyanga range which was connected to it by a saddle. Back then, no one lived in this mountain fastness. In my youth, I liked to explore these mountains (and the plains and kopjes below). I loved the sense of freedom and discovery that came with it, knowing I was alone in a place where hardly anyone had set foot in years. As you climbed upwards, the terrain and flora began to change, becoming less African, almost Alpine. There were springs, mountain pools, waterfalls and rocky cascades. Sometimes I stripped off my clothes and plunged into these or simply scooped my hands down in it to have a drink. It was cold, crisp, clear and tasted wonderful. Coming straight out of the mountain you did not run the risk of contracting bilharzia, the debilitating disease that required long and tiresome treatment and was – and still is – the scourge of so many rivers and dams in Africa.

Refreshed, I would continue my climb. Patches of forests and glades of trees clung to the more protected spots; eagles, hawks, kites, falcons and kestrels circled overhead. There were kudu, duiker and klipspringer that would stand outlined on the crest of the big boulders, regarding this odd, blond-haired, fair-skinned intruder with curious eyes before bounding away. Leopards still lived in the mountains. I never saw one but they did occasionally come down from their lofty lookout points to kill the odd calf (one actually mauled the elderly black caretaker on the next farm, Somershoek, He survived, thanks to the intervention, with an axe. of his equally elderly wife but he was never quite the same afterwards).

Shrouded in legend and mystery, no matter where you went on the farm, you could never quite escape Muozi’s magnetic pull. It always seemed to be there, hovering watchfully on the horizon, inviting attention to itself, like some ancient giant turned to stone. Shreds of cumulus cloud hung around its summit, as if they, too, had been summoned by its unseen inner denizens. It is little wonder that the mountain played such an important role in the local inhabitants’ religious and spiritual beliefs and was considered a powerful rain-making site.

*Mt Muozi – always hovering in the background and inviting attention to itself*…

There is only one stony track, which, after a hot climb, will bring you to the summit. On the flat plateau, atop the soaring rock, where the winds howl, the mists gather and lightning strikes, are the lichen-stained remains of many old clay pots and other detritus – reminders that this is hallowed ground where offerings to the spirits of the mountain in exchange for rain, were (and I suspect still are) made. The view from the top is breathtaking. Down below the country rolls away seemingly endless, patterned with shadows, shimmering with heat, until it eventually merges into the distant blue haze.

*Aerial photo of the summit of Mt Mouzi. Notice the saddle on the right of the picture, plus signs of human activity. Pic provided by Paul Stidolph*

Our farm lay directly beneath Muozi. The northernmost section (Wheatlands and Barrydale) was covered mostly with treeless vleis and waving grassland that glowed gold in the late afternoon sun. Elsewhere it changed gradually to woodland out of which the odd baobab thrust itself, bulbous and ancient – who knows how much history they had witnessed? Many of them must have been fully grown when the area’s earlier inhabitants had arrived for, in many cases, they had been incorporated into their stone walls.

At the base of the mountain, we discovered a hole, with a large rock wedged into its entrance, bored into a solid slab of rock. What purpose it had served, how deep it went, when and how it had been made and by whom we had no idea. A hive of bees had now made it their home. This was but one of the mountain’s many enigmas.

There were also terraces along the entire mountain range, row after row after row, ascending upwards to the uppermost ramparts. Covering thousands and thousands of kilometres, these terraces are considered to be one of the largest and most impressive concentrations of stone structures in Africa. Further evidence of this vast agricultural complex – which dates from the 14^th to early 19^th century – can be found in the innumerable lined pit structures, hill-top fort settlements, stoned-wall enclosures and track-ways that dot the area. Although a fair amount of research had been conducted on the uplands sites and around the Ziwa/Nyahowe complex, the extensive ruins in our area had been scarcely touched by the archaeologists. I imagine that is probably still the case today.

Aerial photo of terracing leading up to hill top fort. Pic provided by Paul Stidolph

The locals, we spoke to, seemed to know very little about their origins and so – in the absence of any other evidence (although my father did later obtain a copy of Roger Summers’s Inyanga, Prehistoric Settlements in Southern Rhodesia, considered a ground-breaking book on the subject at the time) – I had a lot of youthful, unscientific, fun trying to imagine who the vanished race was who had built them? My mind still uncluttered by the matter of reason, I would clamber along the fort walls, stare through the loopholes, and let my imagination run unhindered and free, picturing spear-waving armies sweeping across the veld while the anxious defenders huddled inside the walls.

I was not the only member of the family to be intrigued by the archaeology of the region. In my elder brother Paul’s case, it would become an all-consuming, lifelong passion which would see him travelling the length and breadth of modern-day Zimbabwe, searching for little-known ruins and other places of historical interest.

There was, indeed, something wonderfully mystical about the whole Nyanga North landscape. On the western side of the farm, the geology changed, the solid bank of the eastern mountain wall replaced by a mass of granite “dwalas” (of which Mt Nani, which lay between our farm and the Ruenya River, and Mt Dombo, on the other side of the Nyangombe River, are probably the most striking examples although there were many more), mountains, hills and kopjes that seemed to tumble haphazardly on forever. There were San paintings in some of them; for some reason, they occurred mostly on the west of the Nyangombe (or so Paul had deduced).

The rains usually arrived towards the end of October. Each day soaring thunderclouds would gather on the horizon and the wind would fling dead leaves and wild grasses at us as we scurried for shelter. The cattle would grow restless, sniffing the air in anxious anticipation. Often, the huge build-up would peter out into nothing but every now and again the malevolence of the heavy air would be shattered by a bolt of lightning, followed by a roll of thunder and huge drops of welcome rain would come pelting down on our corrugated iron roof. The din would often be so loud we could barely hear ourselves speak.

By the end of March, the rains had waned, and the grass become dry and dead. Wildfires scoured the countryside, leaving behind heavy plumes of smoke that half-obscured the valley. At night, their flickering flames created meandering, zigzag patterns on the mountainside and winked at you in in the dark.

Lying in my bed at night, reading, a small tongue of candlelight quivering quietly on the table next to me, the wind would, on weekends, bring a chant and the thump of drums from our worker’s huts across the other side of the main Nyanga to Katerere road (a sound, unfortunately, you seldom hear today). Schooled, from the earliest age, in the modes of European thought, the spirit world, which they were summoning up, was a place I could never really access but the rhythmic pounding of the drums still exerted a strange fascination over me. At times like this, I realised I would never fully understand Africa on the level they did.

*Our worker’s huts alongside the Pendeke River*. *Picture provided by Patrick Stidolph*.

The night was alive with other furtive calls and noises. Owls hooted from the trees, and from various points around the house, came the plaintive, quavering call (usually rendered as “good lord deliiiiiver us,,,”)of the Fiery-necked Nightjar, surely one of the most iconic sounds of the African night which touches a depth in me virtually no other bird call can. Concealed from sight, the crickets chirruped out their messages in stuttering cricket Morse code. From the reed-fringed edges of the weir below our house, a motley assortment of croaking frogs vibrated their nightly courtship serenades. In the moonlight, the horizon would occasionally be crossed by the cringing, bear-like silhouette of a hyena with its bone-chilling howl. It was easy to believe the widely held superstition that witches rode on their backs and sometimes even took their form.

Every now and again, the dogs would rush out barking in the dark at what they perceived to be the threatening noise of a potential intruder. On one occasion, this turned out to be a massive python which had slithered up from the reed-beds and had coiled itself around one of our geese and was proceeding to squeeze the life out of it. The rest of the flock had retreated into the corner of the run, cursing and cackling furiously at this unwanted intrusion into their private goose space.

This, then, was my boyhood domain, my fiefdom. Over time, the farm and its environs became more and more my refuge. Its wide open spaces and emptiness provided an escape, if only a temporary one, from the conventions, the restrictions and the monotonous routines of boarding school life. I think that is why I never invited any of my school friends to stay there. It would have felt like an invasion, an intrusion into my richly imagined, intensely private world.

It was – and, in a sense, still remains – a sacred place for me. I have never again felt such a connection with a landscape, even though it could be a little frightening at times. There was an otherness about it, a sense of mystery. Its beauty imprinted itself on my brain, became part of my psychic makeup, helped shape my personality and profoundly influenced the way I came to see the world. Equally important, it taught me about the redemptive power of nature.

*Granite mountains on the western boundary of our farm. Our freshly cleared lands are in the foreground. Picture provided by Patrick Stidolph*.

Part of my father’s vision, when he bought the farm, had been that his sons would, one day. inherit and work the land but that was never to be. Like many other whites, we failed to read the writing on the wall. We didn’t fully appreciate we were living at the tail-end of an era. Just over a decade later, the whole country would become plunged into a vicious Bush War. With guerilla forces pouring over the Mozambique border, our isolated farm became an all too obvious target; we had little alternative but to abandon it to its fate or face the dire consequences. In the short-lived Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, it became part of a black resettlement scheme. We were amongst the fortunate few who received some compensation for our loss. When Robert Mugabe subsequently came to power he just seized the white-owned farms, under the pretext he was liberating them for the “povo” (people), but, in reality, he mostly parcelled them out amongst his corrupt senior cronies and cohorts, a reward for their participation in The Struggle.

In an eerie coincidence, my brother Pete happened to be on army patrol in the adjacent tribal lands when he received a report that our empty house had been attacked by a guerilla force, the night before, and reduced to a smouldering rubble.

Later, I would come to realise, that when those rockets exploded into the walls of our much-loved home where we had all spent so many happy times, the innocent world of my childhood had ended. I also knew that I would never live there again.

I often wonder if my subsequent restless quests and wanderings, searching for scenes and places that provoke a similar passion, the same intense love, do not form part of my grieving for this lost landscape of my youth?

Soldiering On…

March 26, 2022 / stidyatkusane / 21 Comments

For most of my life, I have lived with uncertainty although I have not always been consciously aware of it.

Indeed, as a child, growing up in a remote part of Rhodesia’s the Eastern Highlands my world seemed as secure as the mountains that surrounded our farm. With a sweat-stained hat on my head, veld skoens on my feet and wearing the regulation khaki shirts and shorts that had got too worn from continual use to take back to school, I would set out in the early morning, a gun cradled in the crook of my arm. In front of me, the farm dogs would range freely back and forth, panting happily. They were not trained to hunt but were still good at flushing out the birds, sending them clattering into the skies, a trail of feathers and bitching noise drifting behind them.

Often I forgot that I had come to shoot, striding cheerfully across the bush through waist-high grass and leaping over rocks and feeling my life ahead of me while all the worlds ‘birds seemed to be calling. Sometimes I would disturb a duiker or startle a small herd of kudu or see a klipspringer peering down at me from some tall pillar of rock but I felt too exulted by their presence to want to put an end to their lives.

I always found the bush a good place to go to when I was upset or needed to sort out my feelings about the world.

Our local radio station and the occasional newspaper we bought did, of course, give us some inkling of the ferment and tensions created by new ideas and awakened hopes but, at that stage, these “troubles” seemed to be confined mainly to the cities and urban areas. Walking on my own across the farm I never felt a moment’s uneasiness.

The fact that I would shortly be witness to the last days of White Rhodesia did not occur to me. Nor did I realise how beleaguered the farming community would soon become, with farmhouses turned into mini-fortresses, equipped with Agric-alerts and surrounded by security fences, while their owners rode around heavily armed over dirt roads that frequently had land-mines buried in them.

The reality of what lay in store would, however, hit home when I received my call-up papers.

My drafting into the Rhodesian Territorial Army on the 3^rd January 1972, came at an auspicious moment in the country’s history.

A fortnight earlier, ZANLA forces had launched what would become known as the second chimurenga war (the first being the 1896 Shona uprising against white colonial rule) with an attack on Marc de Borchgrave’s d’Altena farm in the Centenary district during the course of which his nine-year-old daughter, Jane, received a slight wound in the foot.

Although there had been several military incursions in the 1960s from neighbouring Zambia these had been easily dealt with by the Rhodesian Security Forces leading most whites to believe that the country’s small defence force could defeat any conventional invasion or guerilla infiltration.

While hardly a resounding military success in itself, the attack on de Borchgrave’s farm signalled a new phase in the war of liberation, one that saw both a change in direction and a gradual intensification of the conflict. The liberation army had obviously learnt from their previous mistakes. Avoiding direct confrontation with the enemy they now employed classic hit-and-run tactics, attacking white farms, mining dirt roads and going all out to undermine the government’s authority and hold over the tribes’ people.

The growing fears about the country’s security led, in turn, to an increasing militarization of civilian life.

It was my bad luck, too, to be called up for the army (Intake 129) just as the government decided to increase the initial period of service from nine months to one year in response to the growing threat. For me, that extra three months was destined to seem like an eternity.

*Waking up in the bush. National Service 1973*.

This was only the beginning. Between 1974 and 1975, the years after I completed my National Service, worked for the District Commissioner’s Office in Wedza and then went to England for a year’s holiday, attacks on whites other than farmers still remained relatively rare. This all changed, however, with the overthrow of the government of Portugal by a junta of disillusioned officers which led, in turn, to a rapid transfer of power in Mozambique, where independence was recognised in 1975. This had the immediate effect of opening up the entire Eastern border of Rhodesia to guerilla infiltration.

Most of this area was mountainous and wild making it extremely difficult to monitor and patrol. As someone who had grown up in the area, I knew only too well, just how difficult it would be to police or stop any groups of heavily-armed soldiers from slipping undetected into the country. Because of its extreme isolation and close proximity to the border, my family made the decision to get my mother off our cattle ranch in Inyanga North, which she was then running all on her own. Although my mother was understandably reluctant to leave, it turned out to be a wise precaution because our only two neighbours were subsequently killed.

*Mountainous terrain. Nyanga, Eastern Highlands*.

Over the following months and years, thousands of insurgents would come pouring over the border in an escalating conflict that saw minds and bodies shattered, and many left dead. I was to discover just how much the situation had changed when I returned home from an extended holiday to England and found myself back in uniform within days of stepping off the plane.

For the purposes of this particular call-up, we were deployed to the Sipolilo (now Guruve) district, a fairly remote farming area that stretched up to the edge of the Zambezi escarpment and which was known to have been heavily infiltrated by ZANLA guerrillas. Arriving at our base camp – an old farmhouse that had been recently abandoned by its occupants after they had been subjected to several attacks – our major wasted little time in sending us into action. At 10 o’clock that night we clambered aboard the waiting convoy of trucks and headed off, under the cover of darkness, into the white commercial farmland. To keep the element of surprise on our side we were dropped off at another deserted farm homestead and then proceeded to march, in single file and as silently as we could, along an old footpath that led us deep into the adjacent Tribal Trust Land.

The track wound up through great blocks of granite fringed with trees and across the dusty stubble of ancient mielie fields. As I walked I tried to empty my mind of everything except what I could see and hear around me. I had no desire to be caught with my defences down. Despite growing fatigue, I was aware of the adrenaline coursing through my body.

Every now and again a breeze would spring up and I would smell the smoke drifting across the veld from countless wood fires. There was something both eerie and beautiful about the night. The moon was vanishing behind the distant hills but everywhere the dogs were barking. High up on a ridge ahead of us we could make out the dim shapes of a group of conical-shaped huts. As we got closer the phantom dogs, picking up our scent, grew more hysterical, breaking into a series of short, angry yelps.

Drawing alongside the hut line, a dark figure suddenly emerged from the central brick building, paused, looked carefully about and then stepped quietly and purposefully towards where we had all ground to a stop. To our collective astonishment, he then proceeded to call out the archaic challenge: “Halt! Who goes there?”

In a different, more chivalrous, age this might have been an appropriate response. In this war, it was signing your own death warrant. Not needing any further prompting we all dived for cover. There was a moment’s silence and then all hell broke loose as the fire of thirty rifles was bought to bear on the sentry who had called our bluff.

As the mass of lead buzzed towards them, a group of dimly lit figures came spilling out of the huts and darted for cover from whence they began to return fire at us. Lying low on the ground I fired off several volleys of my own even though I had nothing clear to aim at.

And then there was silence once more. I gripped my rifle and lifted my head carefully above the grassy verge, on the side of the path, behind which I had tried to conceal myself. I could see no sign of movement. At the platoon commander’s say so we rose and moved forward cautiously, in extended line, through the settlement but it soon became obvious that the enemy had fled. We decided to clear out of the area as quickly as we could and find a good defensive position in case they returned with retribution on their mind.

Floundering around in the impenetrable darkness our stick somehow managed to get detached from the remainder of the group. Realising it would be dangerous to keep moving blindly around we opted to stay put and hide as best we could in the surrounding bush.

Lying half concealed in a grove of trees, my ears tuned to any sounds that might indicate what was out there waiting for us, the cold reality of my situation began to sink in. It was a strange sensation – as if time had suddenly stopped and the past had become as irrelevant as the future. I found it hard to believe that only a week before I had been sitting in the dim-lit, cosy Red Barn pub near South Godstone sipping pints of English bitter, reflecting on how good life was while listening to rock music.

Hoping to provoke a reaction, the guerillas fired off a few mortars in our general direction. After what seemed like an eternity – actually only a few seconds – I heard the flat blap! blap! of their explosions as they landed harmlessly, some distance from where I lay huddled in a ball. Shortly afterwards a machine began to traverse but again it seemed they had no real idea where we were. Not wanting to give away our position, for fear of attracting a more accurate barrage, we refrained from returning fire.

This was to be but the first of several contacts we had over the next six weeks of intense patrolling through this remote, chequerboard landscape of hills and fields and villages. What I saw was enough to convince me that the war had become a whole different ball game from what I had previously experienced and that the insurgents had established a big foothold in the country. I also realised that this was but a warm-up for what lay ahead as we desperately tried to hold the front line. This war was not going to be over any time soon and I knew many similar call-ups and a lot of intense fighting lay ahead…

And so it proved to be.

On the 21^st December 1979, the seventh anniversary of the attack on Altena Farm, the end finally came into sight with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement by all parties. In terms of the agreed-to cease-fire, the Rhodesia security forces were to be confined to their bases while the Patriotic Front was supposed to bring all their forces into the proposed sixteen Assembly Points which would be administered by the British Monitoring Force.

Edgy and distrustful, the guerilla forces, initially at least, showed little inclination to enter their designated AP’s fearing, no doubt, that if they did they would be providing a perfect target for the Rhodesian Air force. For a while it looked like the whole operation might be doomed to failure. Despite the supposed ceasefire attacks on civilian targets also continued.

It was also becoming increasingly obvious that many of those entering the APs were not genuine guerrillas but ‘mujibhas’ (collaborators) and that their more experienced troops had been instructed to remain at large in the countryside

At this crucial point, the British Monitoring Force who had been tasked with ensuring an orderly and peaceful transfer of power suddenly got cold feet and decided to pull their troops out of the Assembly Points. As members of the Rhodesian Territorial Army, we were ordered to step into the breach. In a sense, we were being called upon to supervise our own defeat.

And so, in a final ironic twist, I found myself back at Mary Mount Mission (Assembly Point Charlie) in the extreme North-East corner of Rhodesia, the very place where I had had my first real encounter with the enemy back in 1973– although we had barely got there when we were given orders to redeploy to Assembly Point Alpha at Hoya in the Zambezi Valley.

Close to the Mozambique border, it was an area of intense heat and thick bush. The ZANLA forces already at the Assembly Point had taken good advantage of this, spreading themselves out, no doubt with an eye for both attack and defence, over a wide area. A few of their commanders did set up camp near us but the rest of their troops remained hidden well out of sight. Knowing they were out there somewhere, probably very suspicious and trigger-happy and with their weapons pointed towards us, was not a comforting feeling. To say we were both outnumbered and outgunned would be an understatement – there were over 1 600 ZANLA guerillas and only 26 of us, living under tents supplied by the US Army.

Although on the surface, we were able to establish a sort of peace between us there was no escaping a deeper atmosphere of distrust and hostility. This was hardly surprising considering how long we had fought as bitter enemies. This would lead to several scary incidents – including one when I had an AK47 barrel shoved up against my head by a drug and alcohol-crazed guerilla who threatened to blow my brains out as another soldier and I were escorting him and a group of his unruly comrades down the infamous Alpha Trail. Fortunately, he toppled over backwards and passed out before he could carry out his threat

Meeting of opposing armies, Assembly Point Alpha

I can’t say I was sorry when it all came to an end with Robert Mugabe’s victory in the election or that, in spite of winning so many little battles, I had wound up on the losing side. Most soldiers like clarity and in the end it had become increasingly difficult to work out just what we were fighting for or hoping to achieve. I had long ago realised that we just did not have the resources or manpower to contain the conflict. Certainly, the situation on the ground wasn’t improving, in fact, it was getting worse. Nor was it possible for me to convince myself that we held the moral high ground.

I was just glad it was all over and that I had got out of it alive and in one piece. I did not have a coherent plan of what I was going to do with my future. Mostly this was because I had been so deep in the war I had closed my eyes to everything else.

All I knew was that, in the interim, I wanted to go somewhere quiet, a place where the eyes of the world might overlook me. More than anything I wanted a little peace. Bowmont – the small farm near Kadoma where my parents had recently retired to – seemed the ideal fit. For the next four years, I holed up there although my stay would be steeped in sadness because my father would finally succumb to the form of bone cancer that had ravaged his body.

Much as I loved Bowmont I came to realise it was time to close this chapter of my life. And so I joined the general exodus to South Africa, knowing full well that country was also in political turmoil and that I faced an equally uncertain future down there (if I had any sense I would have left the continent but Africa has this way of gnawing itself into your soul). Driving. on my own, down that familiar road through an empty landscape where only a few years before I would have run the risk of being ambushed I found my mind drifting back to the war.

From the very outset, I had had my doubts as to the justness of our cause. Although I could never be sure whether my decision to ignore these niggling feelings was just another form of moral cowardice I had done what was expected of me.

I had stayed on through basic training, I had sweated it out in the “sharp-end”, I had resisted the temptation to stay put in England when I went over on holiday, I had remained (sort of) cool under fire. I had lost a few friends and found a few more. I had discovered how much I could take and still carry on.

I had both endured and survived.

Book Review

October 16, 2021 / stidyatkusane / Leave a comment

Published by Jonathan Ball Publishers

With the benefit of hindsight, it is strange to think that there was a time when the mere mention of the name ‘Peter Hain’ was enough to send the average sports-loving, white South African into an apoplectic fit. Reading his well-written, unflinchingly candid memoir, however, certainly brings it all back home.

From the start, Hain was nothing but contrary. Both of his parents were active members of the South African Liberal Party and as a young schoolboy, growing up in Pretoria, he found himself rubbing shoulders with the likes of Allan Paton and other such luminaries. Inspired by their core principles and selfless example, he rebelled against the country’s official policies at an early age learning, in the process, what it was like to live under constant state surveillance.

Later, Hain’s fierce opposition to Apartheid would see him become not only an irritating thorn in the flesh of the National Party government but also a loathed figure in the eyes of a large portion of their supporters (and a few liberals as well), who saw him as nothing more than a grandstanding, young upstart.

In 1963 Hain’s parents were served with a five-year banning order which restricted their movements and prevented them from entering certain areas. Faced with a ruthless regime that crushed all peaceful protest, many other anti-Apartheid activists began calling for a rethink of tactics. Hain’s parents, however, remained steadfast in their commitment to change through non-violent means but their close friendship with the Johannesburg station bomber, John Harris, brought them under increasing scrutiny by the country’s security services. They were harassed to the point where his father was unable to find employment and although reluctant to do so his family were eventually forced to leave the country.

Exiled to Britain, Hain did not forget his roots nor his steadfast opposition to the South African government and its policies. Mad about sport himself, he knew only too well how important this was to the white South African sense of self. He began organising militant campaigns in the UK against touring South African rugby and cricket sides as his contribution to the struggle. It had the desired effect. In no time Hain found himself dubbed ‘Public Enemy Number One’ by the South African media.

As successful as his tactics were they did not go unchallenged. In 1972 he was hauled before the court on conspiracy charges in a trial that would become something of a cause celebre. After that got thrown out, he would be maliciously framed for a bank robbery. Behind all of this, he sees the malignant hand of the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS) – with some assistance from elements within MI5 – who wanted to both discredit and neutralise him.

With the release of Nelson Mandela from Victor Verster prison on 11^th February 1990, the public perception of Peter Hain underwent a startling metamorphosis. No longer the despised young firebrand of yore (‘Hain the Pain’), his formerly controversial views now became part of – in his words – ‘mainstream opinion.’ To his bemusement, he even had people apologising to him for previously dismissing him as nothing more than a troublemaker.

A career in British politics followed, culminating in him becoming a minister in the Labour government and then getting elevated to the House of Lords.

Wishing only what is best for the country of his birth, Hain has remained true to the values his parents instilled in him. When President Jacob Zuma’s malfeasance was becoming harder and harder to ignore he returned to South Africa and at the behest of several senior ANC members went on to use British Parliamentary privilege to expose the extent of the looting and money laundering. He also testified against Zuma and the Gupta brothers before the Zondo Commission. Nor did he confine his condemnation of wrongdoing to South Africa. As Britain’s Africa minister, he publicly castigated President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for betraying the ideals of democracy and human rights they had both ostensibly fought for.

Part autobiography, part history primer, A Pretoria Boy serves as a salutary reminder, at a time when memories of those dark days have taken on a rosier tint, of just how grim and brutal life was under a regime that used fear to mould human behaviour and where people could be driven into exile – or, in some cases, killed – for expressing dissenting beliefs.

Although Hain displays little rancour or ill will towards his one time adversaries, his book will make uncomfortable reading to many of those he holds to account across the political spectrum.