Hitler, Verwoerd, Mandela and me. A memoir of sorts Marianne Thamm Tafelberg Eyes in the Night. An Untold Zulu Story Nomavenda Mathiane Bookstorm Memoirs of sorts, tracing the bitter past in SA, have been published by two well-known journalists — but there the similarity ends. Marianne Thamm traces her family’s journey from Hitler’s Germany to Verwoerd’s Pretoria before finding new beginnings with Mandela’s democracy. A chance remark at a family gathering galvanised Nomavenda Mathiane to start digging up her grandmother’s story a century after the Battle of Isandlwana that tore apart her gogo’s childhood as it ripped up the Zulu nation. Both books deal with seismic historical events. And while we all bear scars that are stories and history written on the body, to misquote author Kathryn Harrison, that is more true for some than it is for others. For Thamm, born in England to a German father who fought in Hitler’s Wehrmacht and a Portuguese mother, the how, the why and the where she...

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