These Are Not Gentle People

Book cover of These Are Not Gentle People by Andrew Hardingby Andrew Harding
@AndrewWJHarding

Fast-paced South African true crime – the case that has defined a nation – by BBC Africa Correspondent

Since early 2016 South Africans have become gripped by a trial that has been taking place in the small town of Parys, south of Johannesburg, where are group of white farmers are accused of murdering two black farmhands. The white farmers say it was a question of self-defence: the two black labourers were threatening them and their families. The black community claim that the farmhands had simply gone to the farm to ask for unpaid wages. The case is a microcosm of the racial, political and financial tensions that are increasingly worrying South Africans, but also a gripping character-driven tale of grief, fear and anger in a small-town community. The truth of what actually happened has been slippery.

Andrew Harding, the BBC’s Africa correspondent, lives in Johannesburg. From the moment the murders took place, Andrew has been following this case closely, interviewing everyone involved, from the accused white farmers, to the bereaved family of the black farmhands, to the female Indian magistrate, to the policemen and detectives on the trail of the truth (or not). He has sat through hours of the trial, and has put together a brilliantly kaleidoscopic picture of what might have happened, and who thinks what about it – weaving all these various points of view into an extraordinarily fast-paced work of true crime. All the dialogue is meticulously based on real interviews and yet it reads like a novel. Andrew’s powers of description – of landscape, people and place – as well of his sense of a good story, are phenomenal.

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Interview with the Author

Podcast Art for Little AtomsaLittle Atoms 
668 – Andrew Harding’s These Are Not Gentle People 
1/28/21        25 min

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