Franschhoek Literary Festival 2015

I am pleased to say that I'll be visiting the Franschhoek Literary Festival on the evening of 16 May to hear the announcing of the Alan Paton Award shortlist and I'm looking forward to chatting to my fellow authors!

DWG on the 2008 Pogroms - and my new take on the problem as terrorism & genocide

In Drinking with Ghosts, I wrote about visiting Atteridgeville, Tembisa, Jeppestown and Soweto, in September 2009 to revisit the causes and aftermath of the 2008 Pogroms. At Madelakufa, I interviewed Mozambican Paul Nhanguva, 40, who said: "I am not afraid... If [the attackers] knew what they are doing to their own future, they won’t do it again. I have lived through two wars [in Mozambique] and can go without food for five days, but they have never seen war. They are like children playing with matches – and they will burn their own house down!” Last week, The Star ran my op-ed on my argument that the current attacks should be treated by the police as terrorism under the 2004 Terrorism Act, and prosecuted as intent to commit genocide under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide:http://www.pressreader.com/…/20150…/283334700826459/TextView

DWG long-listed for the 2015 Alan Paton Award

I'm proud to announce that Drinking with Ghosts has been long-listed for this year's Alan Paton Award - up against some really stiff and extremely able competition. Congratulations to all my fellow authors on the list - and I'll no doubt be seeing many of you at the Franschhoek Literary Festival next month! http://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/sunday-times/20150405/283609578705717/TextView

Robert McBride, an intriguing yet divisive character

Read the DWG section on my rather unique relationship with McBride, straddling my friendship with his sisters and one of his Magoos victims' only-child daughter. Here's City Press' take on his suspension this week: Robert McBride suspended

Remnants of SA nuclear weapons programme worry the USA

The Washington Post has written about a long stalemate between US and SA officials as the prior try to convince the latter to surrender SA's stockpile of highly-enriched uranium (HEU): US unease about SA highly enriched uranium stockpile. DWG tells the tale of the acquisition and eventual dismantling of nukes by the apartheid regime, though certain "dual-use" elements, like the HEU stockpile - sufficient to build six Hiroshima-yield nukes - remain under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) supervision and have been used to produce medical isotopes - a huge foreign-exchange earner for SA. The US is concerned about the HEU stockpile's security after a narrowly-foiled robbery at Pelindaba in 2007. I had argued in DWG that dual-use electronic relays and detonators were inadequately supervised and in 1998 - five years after the nuke programme was declared dead by FW de Klerk - caused a premature detonation east of Pretoria that killed four workers.

DWG sales figures so far

I received the sales figures for Drinking with Ghosts from our sales agents and my publisher says "it looks rather good for a new title in its first year. The total sales to date: 819 copies. We have also submitted it to Exclusive Books for the yearly sale promotion Homebru, where they showcase local books and we hope this will give it a further boost."

Weird reversal of SA-Israeli relations on missile tech

For those of you following the Spy Cables saga currently unfolding (which is *everybody*), the bit where Israeli citizen Yitzhak Talia stole Denel anti-tank missile blueprints and gave them to Mossad is a weird reversal of times past when, as related in DWG, the Israelis sold ballistic missile technology to apartheid SA for its nuke programme:  Al Jazeera story on Israeli theft of SA missile tech