BARREL OF A GUN: A War Correspondent’s Misspent Moments in Combat
Al J Venter
Casemate Publishers
Al Venter is reckoned to be the last of the genuine old African hands and this, his 28th book, is his most autobiographical so far.
He has covered war zones in Congo/Zaire, Nigeria/Biafra, Somalia, Mozambique, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Uganda, Angola, Sierra Leone and even Beirut/Lebanon, El Salvador and Croatia.
He was also active in the field during the Soviet-Afghanistan war and only found out afterwards that his documentary films had been sponsored by the CIA.
Paul Moorcraft, also active in Afghanistan, had the following to say about Venter in his own excellent book, Guns & Poses: “I admired his chutzpah, but was wary of his reputation for sending people off on crazy and usually dangerous missions.
“They came back with little help from Al, and on occasion after a stay in the calaboose.”
In the days before faxes, cellphones and satellites, the reporters covering deepest Africa, known in Fleet Street parlance as “our man on the spot”, were a varied bunch which, despite the rivalry of their newspapers, were also friends who shared many adventures together, not only in obtaining the story, but the equally difficult one of getting it to their sub-editors’ desks.
There have been some wonderful books on the subject, notably Chris Munnion’s Banana Sunday, David Lamb’s The Africans, Ed Behr’s Anyone here been raped and speaks English?, and Peter Younghusband’s Every night a honeymoon, every meal a banquet.
What makes Barrel of a Gun stand out is that it is also an excellent reference work on the background of many long-standing conflicts that seem to have no visible end.
I wonder whether there are any other journalists who have been shot at and blown up for so many years in so many countries and are still walking around to tell the tale.
As an example: during the last days of Idi Amin’s Uganda, Venter arrived in Kampala at roughly the same time as the invading Tanzanian forces.
Taking a room at what had formerly been the swish Intercontinental, he and the other hacks would sit on their balconies after dark, gin and tonic in one hand and binoculars in the other, watching the “fireworks”.
Idi Amin’s security apparatus was centred in the Uganda State Research Centre in posh Nakasero Hill, home of most of the foreign diplomat corps.
Apparently, the French embassy was just across the road and the screams from the prisoners so unnerved the ambassador’s wife that she had to be flown to France for treatment at a clinic.
This is an immensely interesting and hugely adventurous book.
In being markedly different to anything else in the genre, it deals mostly with history that still remains contemporary.
It also sheds new light on old problems, and is historically quite significant in that it is a concise summation of many of the origins of various former and current conflicts over a period of about 50 years. - Cape Times