Books
Breaking the Bombers by Mark Shaw Jonathan Ball, 2023
Dr Mark Shaw (BA 1991, BA Hons 1992, PhD
1997) is director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime and has vast experience in issues around crime, security and justice reform. His previous books include Hitmen for Hire (2017) and Give Us More Guns (2021). In Breaking the Bombers, he looks back a key story of violence that gripped Cape Town between 1996 and 2001. In a detailed way he looks at how Pagad, which started as a community protest action against crime, mutated into a vigilante group wreaking destruction across the city. More than 400 bombs rocked the city – most famously at the popular Planet Hollywood restaurant at the V&A Waterfront – and there were countless targeted hits on drug lords and gang bosses. Dr Shaw writes about how seemingly former foes joined forces to bring an end to the violence. “A few good men and women stepped forward, SA style: former apartheid-era detectives and intelligence personnel
formed a combined force with newly integrated liberation struggle cadres and guerrilla fighters. They represented the full spectrum of the new rainbow nation and had widely divergent political views, but after a period of squabbling they began to work together.” He says the central message of the book is: “With the right mix of people and support, the country can overcome today’s challenges no matter how dire they seem.”
The Ghost of Sam Webster by Craig Higginson Picador Africa, 2023
This latest novel by award-winning novelist and playwright Craig Higginson (BA 1994, BA Hons 1995, MA 2010, PhD 2018) tells the story of writer Daniel Hawthorne, who hears about the disappearance of a friend’s daughter, Sam Webster. When her body appears on the banks of the Buffalo River, Daniel decides to investigate. Under the pretence of researching a disgraced ancestor, the lepidopterist Lieutenant Charles Hawthorne, who fought in the Battle of iSandlwana, Daniel starts to investigate the reasons for Sam’s disappearance in the heart of Zululand. The publisher writes that this novel is Higginson’s “most haunting and ambitious novel to date”, a combination of a war novel, a murder mystery and a multi-layered love story. It contains familiar psychological complexity of his previous prizewinning novels The Landscape Painter (Picador Africa, 2011) and The Dream House (Picador Africa, 2016), which was written for his PhD in creative writing at Wits. Fellow Witsie Hamilton Wende (BA 1985, MA 2015) says: “It’s an astounding book.” 62 Wits Review October 2023
Listen to Craig Higginson discuss his latest novel and its setting
