“YET ANOTHER SEMI-FICTI0NAL MASTERPIECE.” Dave Savides – A Family Affair On the Warm Shores of Africa continues the annals of the Allison family, first encountered in A Family Affair. Jake, the lawman turned dark avenger. Abby, whose passion for another child transcends society norms. Kirk, their son, who has to choose between the greed of British colonialism and the insular nationalism of the Boers. The novel is wide ranging in history - from the Ninth Frontier War to the Anglo-Boer War –...

This novel is a sequel to Chameleon Mountain. Two generations later, Falk Baartman is born in Die Hel. He attends school in Oudtshoorn and represents SWD in the first ever Craven Week. Later he starts a business in Prince Albert for artists and writers. There, a jealous rival objects to his race classification and writes to the Population Registration Office in Cape Town. Falk receives a letter in a buff envelope that changes his life: it informs him that he has been reclassified Cape Colo...

In the winter of 1981 Luke Calder was taken into custody by the security branch of the South African Police Service as he attempted to enter the pedestrian gate into his residence at Rhodes University. In many ways Luke was an extraordinary young man: top of his law class three years running, a provincial long distance runner and a leader, elected Senior Student of College House and a member of the Students’ Representative Council. It didn’t help him, and in the next week he was kept in so...

Chameleon Mountain follows the fortunes of several generations of the Baartman family from the mid-18th century into the 20th century. It is a unique family, formed from the genes of a Khoikhoi woman and a Dutch settler. The characters are as intriguing as the Swartberg Mountains which foster them. Ahad, the courageous shepherdess from whose loins came the first of the Baartman’s. Benji 80-years later, a man of temper and passion who settles in Die Hel, and Dan his son, who leaves the vall...

The battle of iSandlwana in 1879 was the worst defeat suffered by a British army in the colonies. The names of some of the combatants resound even today in the chronicles of the Victorian era. One of them was Colonel Anthony Durnford, Irish-born Royal Engineer, an enigmatic man both loved and maligned, and seen in some quarters to have contributed to the appalling defeat. Yet others see in him a man ahead of his time, a man of liberal views and steadfast integrity. But who was this man? Wh...

“The people will cry when they see their sacred lands being eaten by the river.” The heartland of the Himba people is threatened by the proposal to build a hydro-electric dam on the Kunene River. Adam Geard is hired by Rivers for Life to lobby for a less damaging solution to Namibia’s power needs. His quest becomes personal when a Himba friend and his family is savagely tortured and murdered for the crime of speaking out against the dam. Strong forces are at work: greed for the financial s...

Adam Geard is only 8-years old when he witnesses a brutal rape and murder by the notorious Red Brigade on his parents’ farm on the Khami River near the Zimbabwean town of Bulawayo. The victims of the ethnic cleansing are their farm foreman, his wife and two young children. For decades Adam has had unexplained behaviour, often extreme, the legacy of the stress disorder condition he suffers. He chooses to work as a geologist in the wilderness of Namibia, believing he might discover the sourc...

He volunteered to join the war to liberate Namibia of its colonial masters. His intentions were never honourable, driven as they were by boredom and a desire for self-gratification, and he found what he wanted in the lust of killing and in sexual domination. They called him Kaptein. Adam Geard returns to Namibia after a two year absence, his desire a peaceful rest in the red dune country of the Kalahari. At the first overnight stop, in the town of Gochas, he hears rumours of young Nama gir...

Late nineteenth century Britain gave few breaks for those born poor and of low social standing. So it was for Fynn Armstrong the youngest of six children born to croft farmers in the Scottish town of Perth on the River Tay. He elects to change his dismal life options and visits the local recruitment centre for the Black Watch Highland Regiment and signs up for duty in the Second Anglo Boer War. It could result in his death, or it could be his ticket to a life of opportunity and adventure i...

Caleb is a modern African tragedy. It is a tragedy arising from the terrible wars which sweep the continent, and out of the clash of cultures and beliefs. Caleb Jordan is born into a family of pastors. He becomes a servant of God, suffers a devastating failure of a marriage and chooses to start a mission in deep rural Africa. He has much success but lives constantly in the shadow of a dark reality of ancestor worship and witchcraft and the challenge they bring to his faith. The setting is ...

He was a rising star, credited with the success of a major coup in the market, but there was a deeply hidden flaw – a shameful family secret – and when it surfaced his achievements crumbled, dissolving his fragile self-worth. * * * * * The context of this novel is the fiercely competitive South African light commercial vehicle market and the brilliant challenge being mounted by the usurper, Ford’s Ranger, on the decade-long dominance of the leader, the Toyota Hilux. It is also a human dram...

War raged in the eastern territories of South Africa for nearly one hundred years. The wars were not continuous, nor were they single-faceted in instigator or causal factors, although issues of power or land were at the heart of all of them. Into that conflagration came the Belmont family: a simple storekeeper, his wife, and six children. They lived in Salem, a small farming village which was attacked on Christmas Day, 1834. The warriors were part of the army of the Xhosa chief, Maqoma, se...