BOOK REVIEW: Insightful look at the social reality of South Africa

Reviewer: Riaan Engelbrecht

Book: One Man

Author: Anonymous

Publisher: Kwela Books

One Man offers an insightful, yet thought provoking glimpse, into the lives of six people, whose paths strangely intertwine in South Africa, and how their lives will change in ways they could never have imagined.

We first get acquainted with Gwaza, who wants revenge and he doesn’t care who he has to go through to get it. Seven years in a maximum security facility have turned the young tsotsi into a warrior and now he has only one thing on his mind – to kill the woman who put him away.

Then we have Kiki (9) who hungers for love, yet goes through life unnoticed.

We also meet an Afrikaans man, Du Toit, who struggles with his own personal demons and finds no peace with his wife, his mistress and certainly not the South African government who endlessly moves the BEE goalposts.

Precious, an overworked prosecutor for the South African justice system, wants justice but she fails every day to achieve it.

We also encounter Mira, who wants to believe in a future where she can help to make the world a better place. However, she is stuck in a dead-end job with no hope of anything more.

Joseph reflects the life of a struggling foreigners in South Africa.

As a graduate from a medical school in Zimbabwe, he got caught up in politics at home and is now forced to be a gardener in a Johannesburg suburb, scraping together money to send home to his wife and daughters.

One Man tells it straight.

The anonymous author dishes up a brutally honest yet refreshing dissection of SA’s society, with these six individuals trying to find their feet in an ever changing, volatile country and not knowing how fate will provide for a spectacular explosion of personal collisions.

This is riveting read which pulls no punches.

The characters, with their dark realities, might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but reality is seldom embraced with open arms.