Book 1
Fury and Revenge in Cape Town
Book 1 covers the 1976 post-Soweto student revolt which leads to the eventual collapse of apartheid in South Africa in 1994. Like the rest of the country, Cape Town is in a state of upheaval, especially on the Cape Flats, long regarded as the dumping ground of apartheid. The student-led insurrection is on the boil while Dr Stanley Gershon, a well-intentioned general practitioner, works under stress in a slum environment dealing with poverty-related diseases. He, his girlfriend Fay Ismail, close friend Jim Davids and Detective Adams and his student activist daughter, Lydiah, are caught up in the overlapping dramas of police brutality, and township criminal activity, including a series of brutal attacks on paedophiles. In a township in revolt, the twin dramas of political fury and personal revenge enmesh all the characters. Who will survive the turmoil of insurrection in the shadow of Cape Town’s emblematic Table Mountain?
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Book 2
Toyi-Toyi, Cape Town's War Dance
In Book 2, four young Cape Town activists hatch their radical plans during the tragic events of 1985-1986. With their schemes fuelled by the dramas of the march to release Nelson Mandela, followed by the Trojan Horse and Gugulethu 7 massacres and the Fires of 1986 in Crossroads, they also have to deal with their romantic entanglements.
Once again, Dr Stanley Gershon and his girlfriend, Fay Ismail, are caught up in much of the action swirling around them in Elsies River, Gugulethu and Crossroads townships while also dealing with poverty-related health consequences. Both of them become involved with the infamous security police officer, Hammer van Zyl.
On the Cape Flats, in the shadow of Table Mountain, all the characters become embroiled in the political brutality of South Africa’s struggle towards majority rule. Will they all make it to the end?
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Book 3
Cape Town's Necklaces of Fire
Book 3 starts with Nelson Mandela’s release in 1990. Ivan Pettersen and Thembani Dlamini, two brilliant university students are haunted by their past activist lives. While trying to settle down, Thembani marries Nkosinati Khumalo, and Ivan falls in love with Lydiah Adams. Both women were widows, the result of the violence of police and their proxies, the Witdoeke (White cloths).
Dr Stanley Gershon, and his friend Fay Ismail, are again caught up in the escalating conflicts.
In the segregated Black townships, necklacing of victims with burning tyres around their necks becomes popular.
Ivan and Thembani cross paths with Leeu (Lion) Kloppers. The security police officer, and ex-member of the South West African Koevoet anti-insurgency group, had a fearful reputation as part of the territory’s death squad. On his return to Cape Town, he goes on a spree of chaos in the townships as a member of the sinister Balaclava Gang, a reactionary police group trying to derail the march towards majority rule.
In 1994, the main characters’ hopes for the future all peak in the shadow of Table Mountain on the day of the first democratic elections in South Africa.
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