This is me.
I grew up on edge of white suburbia in South Africa, where the wild bunnies hopped and the ant-hills were higher than we could climb.
My best friend and I spent our days skipping stones across the small dam on the Jukskei river, or pushing over logs to see what surprises would scuttle out. I loved being under the African sun.
In contrast, I despised school. History, science, geography, and biology were all fascinating to me, but I could memorize none of it. I tried and failed. Exams were a waking nightmare, and I suffered terribly from migraines and an eating disorder. And just like that, I was fat and dumb. I was a laughingstock in physical education classes and a loner on the playground.
My creative writing scores were great, though.
The 1976 riots and the presence of military forces everywhere were impossible to ignore. We knew terrible things were happening to black people, but there was a moment when it all came into stark relief. One evening in the early 80s, I witnessed the assault of an old African couple. White police officers beat them to the ground with sticks and threw them into the back of a paddy-wagon. Their crime was leaving home without a dompass, the passport black people needed to move about in white areas. That moment remained burned into my retinas. By the time I graduated high-school, I was ready for the good trouble John Lewis liked to talk about.
In 1985, I threw everything I owned into my clapped-out Mazda 323 and went off to Rhodes University in Grahamstown. My first year was an explosion in a fireworks warehouse. I started a non-racial rock band, took a lunchtime and evening spot on Rhodes Music Radio, founded a student organization and a clutch of student publications, and took to marching alongside my fellow students for justice and racial equality. None of what I did found any friends in the university administration or government.
I made it out with my life, and a degree in Journalism.
Over the intervening years, I have worked in corporate media, public relations, and advertising. Now, as an aging adolescent, I have gone back to my first love, writing.
What People Are Saying
“
You have a lovely voice, Leon.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
”
Nurit M. - Beta Reader for The Moon Below
“
I found the Podcast on Spotify. I almost pissed myself laughing at the Lion Shit story.
”
Darren B.
