Ways of Staying: Prof Leon de Kock with Max du Preez, Andre Brink, and Kevin Bloom at the CTBF

by CTBF on Jun 13th, 2009

Daily we are faced with the issue of South Africans emigrating to safer shores: but many choose to stay and negotiate the difficulties of living here. Three South African writers, with the guidance of Professor Leon de Kock, discuss some of the most pressing issues for writers in South Africa. How does a writer navigate between fiction and fact? Is a memoir a fact or a fiction about its author? Or is it about the country they write from within? Or all of the above? Max du Preez, veteran journalist and renegade writer of history (but never an historian), spoke from his experience as an African writer comfortable in a tough country. Andre Brink looked at the problem of negotiating the “grey area” between truth and fiction, his recent memoir A Fork in the Road a case in point. Kevin Bloom drew on his new book Ways of Staying, an examination of the existential crisis faced by many South Africans, living with a love-hate relationship with their country.

Quote of the hour: “I am an African… Not even crime would make me wonder whether to leave or not. If I am an African then I should be interested in Africa.”
-Max du Preez