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CRY HAVOC by SIMON MANN

2011, African authors, Non Fiction, Reviews No Responses »

Mar 232012

If ever a book needed to be a biography rather than an auto-biography, it is Simon Mann’s “Cry Havoc.”

What could have become, in the hands of a writer, a rather exciting derring-do, gung-ho type of book about white mercenaries trying to stage a coup in Africa is, instead, a badly written, profanity-laced, confusing story.

Not that I have any sympathy whatsoever with white mercenaries trying to stage a coup in Africa, you understand.

No sympathy whatsoever.

But I used to live in Africa, and was there all during that rather bizarre time when Simon Mann and his band of merry men were captured and put on trial. Given the South African angle, the fact that the coup-implicated Mark Thatcher was living in Cape Town, the whole drama played out to a slightly bemused African audience, including us. It was even rumoured, gleefully, in South Africa that Mr.Mann’s Equatorial Guinea coup plot was lifted from Frederick Forsyth’s 1974 thriller “The Dogs of War.”

So I was prepared to be open-minded.

Also, since the copy of the book I read was loaned to me by an old and dear friend of Mr. Mann, I was also possibly prepared to be a tad more sympathetic than usual.

But so alienating was the tone and style of the book, so utterly confusing was the narrative, that any flicker of sympathy was extinguished almost as soon as the book started.

This is his opening page acknowledgment, for goodness sake :

Confused ?

Mr. Mann tries, through his staccato, verb-less, effing and blinding style to portray himself as some kind of ethical saviour of the poor oppressed African blacks.

A word of warning, Mr. Mann mentions race and colour and being white a lot.

This saviour of the poor oppressed African blacks etc etc is how he talks up the previous mercenary coups he led in Sierra Leone and Angola. Yet the opening sentence of his prologue actually says it all.

“This about oil. Oil wars. In Africa mostly”

Precisely.

On the dust cover of Mr. Mann’s book is a quotation :

“When I set out to overthrow an African tyrant, I knew I would either make billions or end up getting shot…”

Precisely.

The book goes back and forth between the earlier coups and the preparations for the disastrous coup to Equatorial Guinea. A straight-line narrative would have helped clear the murky waters of politics, confusing acronyms, top-heavy descriptions of weaponry but Mr. Mann prefers to swing back and forth, rapidly losing the reader in the swirl of events and the random introduction of characters without any explanation.

The one constant in the book is his liberal use of the f word.

No-one is a prude these days, but the f word is not a consistent substitute for vocabulary :

I’ll spare you more quotations.

Mr. Mann sneers openly at the people he meets, be they African politicians :

or potential coup-backers and contacts, be they foreign :

or British :

Nor does he spare his former chum and investor, Mark Thatcher :

His dislike of his former friend knows no bounds :

“Loves to play the officer and gentleman” - harsh words from Mr. Mann, who tries to shield Mr. Thatcher later on, when he is being interrogated, because - well, because, Mr. Thatcher has connections :

The book covers in great detail Mr.Mann’s imprisonment in Zimbabwe, where the effing and blinding style gives way – just a little – to a searingly graphic account of the life he leads in prison. Mr. Mann is definitely a more sympathetic character in this section of the book, surviving what is clearly great deprivation, cruelty and terror.

And then the book stops. Just like that.

The Equatorial Guinea part of the book simply doesn’t happen.

One minute he is on a plane on the way there, terrified of facing torture and almost-guaranteed death, and then the next moment he is out, back in England with his beloved Amanda. Of his trial, he tells nothing.

Why ? Legal reasons, one presumes. Must be for the same reason that we never hear about the trial.

I never worked out who the Boss was. I thought it must be Tony Blair for a while, but am not so sure now.

Perhaps, one day, someone else will write the story of this failed coup attempt and fill in the blanks for us.

“Cry Havoc” is published by John Blake and the hardback costs £19.99

50 PEOPLE WHO STUFFED UP SOUTH AFRICA by ALEXANDER PARKER

African authors, Indian Authors, Reviews No Responses »

Aug 112011

What I want to know is, how did Mr. Parker get away with writing such an utterly gripping, but desperately naughty book as this ?

How is he not being hauled up for libel or slander or whatever it is that famous people do, when they are publicly described as – and I quote - ” egomaniac: ; traitor ; twat ” ? Kevin Pietersen, take a bow.

No seriously, how does Mr. Parker do it ?

I have sat in the Kruger Park, these last 3 days, riveted by this brilliant book about a country I love dearly - reading a book that, well, that title tells you everything you need to know, really.

I used to live in South Africa, so although not a Saffer, I know the country pretty well, and this book had me enthralled.

It is a beautifully written romp through colonial stuff-ups (Bartle Frere, take a bow) and recent-ish politicians - that would be you, ex-President Thabo Mbeki (who was “my” President, so I know exactly where Mr.Parker is coming from).

I cheered - sort of – when I read Mr. Parker’s section about Dr Death, the infamous Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. That wretched woman was Health Minister when I lived in this glorious country, and to think that she told the hundreds of thousands of AIDS victims who died on her watch to eat beetroot…well, it’s fitting that she is part of this Rogues Gallery. It’s the leasy she deserves.

It obviously helps if you are a Saffer, or know the country well, but this book is nevertheless a master class in elegantly-written character assassination.

I couldn’t possibly pick a favourite, out of such a deliciously horrid cast of characters.

I couldn’t.

I really couldn’t…

…well, OK, since you insist…

Sepp Blatter ?

Sol Kerzner ?

Hansie Cronjie (that’s because I had to explain to my children why he was crying on TV)

Steve Hofmeyr ? (that’s just because)

OK, if I can only quote only one out of these 50 stuffer-upperers as my absolute favourite, then is has to be Julius Malema.

Read this absolutely delicious intro and I dare you not to rush out and buy the book, Saffer or not :

“Julius Malema’s a fat little man. How he got fat is obvious. He’s fat because he’s got lots of government-tender money and has no class whatsoever, and the classless rich always get fat.”

Quite takes your breath away, doesn’t it ?

I love this book, and am giving it as Christmas pressies to those of my South African friends who may (God knows why) not yet have read it.

Published by Two Dogs, the paperback costs R 169.00

SUNDOWNERS by LESLEY LOKKO

African authors, Fiction, Reviews No Responses »

Jul 262011

Any book that has the expression “a rattling good read” quoted on its cover sounds ideal for holiday reading, and so this big fat first novel, published in 2003, was a nicely satisfying pick for a rainy European holiday.

I have a pronounced weakness for any book about South Africa, and admittedly, it was the title that first drew me to this novel.

Sundowners are a delicious way of life in Africa, particularly in the bush, where you watch the African sun set against a backdrop of animals at a waterhole…but I digress. Lovely as the title is, I couldn’t see how it related to the novel, but never mind, I read it anyway.

The novel follows the lives of 4 friends from spartan boarding school in rainy England, through to adulthood, love affairs, marriage, motherhood. One of the four girls is a wealthy, blonde, beautiful, brattish South African who has much to learn about life and co-existing and sharing, and especially dealing with people who are not white.

Rianne has been brought up all her pampered life in Johannesburg by black South Africans, but has never had a black friend.

And so we follow all their lives, with more or less degrees of commitment and interest, as they make mistakes, make bad choices and good decisions, but always stick together.

The school days, the early scene-setting, bonding part, is way too long and detailed. But it does provide a backdrop for Rianne to meet Riitho, who is at the neighbouring boys’ school. A fellow South African, Riitho is black, the son of a leading political activist.

And thereby hangs a tale.

Which it would be mean to divulge, since “Sundowners” does make for a good page-turner.

Far and away the most compelling parts of the book are those about South Africa. The author writes with warmth and knowledge and compassion about Johannesburg and the struggle, and her cast of African characters, both major and minor players, are convincing and affectionately drawn. The inclusion of many real South Africans, especially in those turbulent times around the end of the apartheid era, add to the effective atmosphere.

Yes, obviously I am talking about Nelson Mandela.

Published by Orion, the paperback costs £6.99

PEOPLE LIKE OURSELVES by PAMELA JOOSTE

African authors, Earlier, Fiction, Reviews No Responses »

Jun 262011

“People like Ourselves” by the South African novelist Pamela Jooste is both engaging but also ever so slightly disappointing at the end.
Perhaps it’s because I lived in Johannesburg for several very happy years, in a gated community that is featured in the novel, that I felt an instant connection to the world described. In fact, the writer even mentions my former street, so there was an immediate feeling of engagement and familiarity about this well-written book.
Johannesburg in the early years of the “new” South Africa still runs on traditional lines.
The rich, white South Africans live in their elegant homes in the northern suburbs, attended to by an army of black staff. Although cautiously aware of the need for reform, and new attitudes, and new language – for instance you no longer refer to your maid as a maid, but rather as a house worker – old habits otherwise die hard.
We follow the closely inter-connected lives of Gus and Caroline, Julia and Douglas, all born into the wealthy upper crust of Johannesburg society. Their mothers and mothers-in-law are friends, they all frequent the same parties, they are expected to inter-marry, and usually they do.

And when they don’t, as Douglas did in his first, frowned-upon marriage to the rebellious young English woman Rosalie, just look how things turn out. She runs away with another man, gets involved in politics, but now, thank goodness is far away, back in London.
And so the privileged of Jo’burg live out their middle-aged lives, worrying about rebellious children, and loveless marriages, with financial woes crowding ever closer.
Plus, of course, there is the new South Africa to deal with.

Crime.

The new order of things.
The whites may think they are reaching out to their fellow – read black – compatriots, but the feeling is hardy reciprocated. There is trusty old Gladstone, whose name is absolutely not Gladstone, but that’s what his white employers think he is called. There is the canny, ambitious small-time actress in TV soap operas, whom we see through the eyes of her young daughter, Tula. Her mother, who is absent from her life most of the time, is categorical about the rules in the new South Africa, contemptuous of the way her own mother treats her white employers :
“Do I look to you like I was born to know anything about “back gate,” “servants’ entrance” kind of rubbish ? No more “master” and “madam” and “yes, sir” and “thank you, miss.”
The book weaves all the varied stories together skillfully, shifting from one character and view point to another, not only within Johannesburg, but also to and from London, where Rosalie is heading inexorably towards her own nightmare.
Possibly because the Jo’burg parts of the novel are so well written, finely attuned to every verbal and social nuance, the London chapters are not quite as convincing. We are not as interested in the minor English characters as we are in their African counterparts.
The end of this very enjoyable novel comes upon us rather abruptly, with several loose ends untied.

I, for one, could have down with many more chapters, to finish off the many stories in as leisurely a way as they started.

“People like Ourselves” is published by Black Swan, and the paperback retails for 6.99 or Can $19.95.

THE DOUBLE COMFORT SAFARI CLUB by Alexander McCall Smith

African authors, Fiction, Reviews No Responses »

Sep 202010

The eleventh novel in the delightful No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, “The Double Comfort Safari Club” takes the reader on yet another series of sleuthing adventures across Botswana, with the charming, compassionate, and very traditionally built Precious Ramotswe.

With his elegant and affectionate prose, Alexander McCall Smith evokes the sights and sounds, the smells and the dust, and the very essence of Botswana. People are kind and considerate. They retain their traditional values – and their traditional build – and never lose sight of their village origins. There is a palpable sense of community and compassion in the world of Precious Ramotswe – values that have been lost in many other seemingly more developed parts of the world.

“The Double Comfort Safari Club” features two of the secondary characters whom we have met over the preceding books.

Poor Phuti Radiphuti – soon to marry the clever Grace Makutsi, or so we hope – meets with an accident.

And the woman we all love to hate, the scheming, shameless “arch-Jezebel” Violet Sephotho (who could only manage 50% in the final exams of the Botswana Secretarial Ciollege) shows her true colours. And she is certainly no shrinking Violet.

This novel also travels further afield, out of Gaborone, Botswana’s dusty, friendly, low-key capital city, and off to Maun and the Okavango Delta.

Alexander McCall Smith has done more to put Botswana on the literary map than anyone else, and his unerring ear for dialogue and his obvious love of Africa and her people, all combine to make this eleventh novel in the series every bit as charming as the earlier books.

“The Double Comfort Safari Club” is published by Little Brown and costs £12.99