“Imagine as a little girl, shovelling big dogs’ shit daily, being forced to go home always through the back door, being regularly sexually abused by your step-mother’s two brothers, and dancing at gun point with drunk, groping men.
“That was debut author Claudine Shiels nightmare reality when her ill blood mother walked out on the family. Shiels describes SA’s oldest sex abuse case poignantly and deftly in her memoir, Walking Through Front Doors(Bookstorm). The key to her survival was never losing hope. The case comes to Court later this year.
Distinguished author and historian, Jacob Dlamini, has used a National Archives album with over 7 000 photos of apartheid’s enemies, collected by then Security Police, to blow apart the myth that the brutal, murderous State was efficient and organised. The Terrorist Album will be published by Harvard University Press shortly. Watch this space.
