Stones against the mirror – Friendship IN the time of the South African Struggle
by Hugh Lewin
(Umuzi Publishers, R180)
Many people have incredible stories to tell, but how many of them are accomplished writers? Hugh Lewin has such a story and is well equipped to tell it in a most readable way.
Jock (aka Harals) Strachan rightly made this exact point when encouraging “Hughie” to approach the book with the freedom of an artist standing in front of a blank canvas. The writing is beautiful and more than makes up for those times that the reader is not quite on the same page as the author because the writing is done in the style of a personal memoir and comes straight from the heart.
The story itself, as the subtitle indicates, looks at the pressures a friendship comes under in times of political strife. The author was “given up” by his best friend when standing trial in 1964. Much light is shed on the underground body ARM (African Resistance Movement), which is much misunderstood because of member John Harris’s placing of the Joburg station bomb which killed one person.
We are taken through that incident at which time Lewin and many co-conspirators were already in jail awaiting trial. The bomb hung like a cloud over all of them who had only participated in non-violent acts of sabotage. The death penalty was held over their heads as the security police interrogated them in an attempt to end the activities of ARM.
Struggle heroes jump from the pages of this read. We are walked by the author through his childhood right up to time when he met his erstwhile friend in an attempt to understand why he had been exposed in such a life-changing way.
One hopes all participants will have someone urging them to tell these stories of this clandestine time so that we forge our history. – Robbie Scholtz