Review: Vivien Horler

The Lions’ Den, by Iris Mwanza (Canongate/DoubleDay)

It isn’t a good thing to be “deviant” in Zambia. To this day, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people face 15 years’ imprisonment – or possibly life.

Wikipedia says: “LGBTQ persons are subjected to human rights violations by police and authorities. Subject to arbitrary arrest and detentions, they suffer violence and abuse in custody.”

In South Africa we have our problems, but also some constitutional rights to be proud of. It’s hard to believe a fellow SADC country can still enshrine such mediaeval laws, which date back to the legal system of Britain, its colonial occupier until 1964.

But Britain, along with us and most of the Western world, has moved on.

All of which is a rather clunky introduction to a review of an extremely readable novel. The Lions’ Den, which begins in 1990, is about a nervous yet brave young Zambian barrister, Grace Zulu, who is thrilled to get her first case but discovers she got it only because no one else will touch it. Continue reading →

Review: Vivien Horler

In Search of Nongqawuse, by Treive Nicholas (Kwela)

That’s a real picture of Nongqawuse

It has taken a Cornishman to shine a new light on Nongqawuse and the Great Cattle Killing of 1856/57, the ghastly story of how the amaXhosa people decimated their own nation amid a cauldron of indigenous and Christian beliefs, racial hatred, war and a horrific level of mutual distrust.

As a young man about 40 years ago, Treive Nicholas spent some time teaching English in the Eastern Cape, and fell in love with the place and the people.

This ignited a lifelong interest in the area, and he spent years researching the local history. And then, reading Noel Mostert’s magisterial 1 300-page Frontiers: The epic of South Africa’s creation and the tragedy of the Xhosa people, he came across a reference to a historical horror he had never heard of.

He had already read most of the book, expecting a conclusion of “a familiar tale of gradual colonial encroachment”, when the narrative “suddenly segued into the most unbelievable tale of hallucination, bad faith, mass delusion”. Continue reading →