BOOK REVIEW: Boss lady combines duty, guts and sense of humour
Helen Zille’s story is at times a thriller, a political soap opera and a South African tragedy but it is always fascinating, writes Sue Grant-Marshall
Not many South Africans know that Western Cape Premier Helen Zille was shot, starved into a skeletal state, humiliated in a beauty contest and faced hundreds of Robert Mugabe’s guerillas armed only with a pen. Her autobiography has been described as one of the most fascinating political stories of our time, which it undoubtedly is — but there is much more to it than politics. It is at times hilarious, poignant and pertinent but always insightful and educational for anyone whose daily diet is not laced with SA’s political power struggles and machinations. It’s a 500-page hardback door-stopper, yet I raced through it because it’s so readable — in parts like a thriller. Zille first made a name for herself at the Rand Daily Mail newspaper, where she blew apart the apartheid government’s lies that Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko died on a hunger strike. Doctors, too scared to be named, denied the government story, with one of them telling Zille that Biko was overweight when he died...
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