Wessel Ebersohn

African Aftermath Wessel Ebersohn

In the closing years of the apartheid regime many who resisted the regime were killed. Among them was Davie Mbau, a young activist. The killing was witnessed by his very attractive sister, Ntombi, and her American lover, Jonathan Sheldrake. A year after Davie's killing, the authorities decide to neutralise Ntombi's husband, a powerful anti-apartheid figure, by publicly humiliating him. They do this by arresting Ntombi and Sheldrake under the Immorality Act that forbids sex across the colour line. The arrest is carefully planned to take place while Ntombi and Sheldrake are in bed together. Jonathan is deported so, without her partner in the act, Ntombi is released. Despite this, the authorities have achieved their goal. Ntombi's husband is now much less effective, he is seen as a cuckolded older man who should perhaps not have been married to a young woman. Within hours of her release, Ntombi and her child by Jonathan disappear without a word to anyone. The love between Sheldrake and Ntombi is real and deep. This was not just a third-world adventure for him. For the next thirty years he tries to discover what happened to her. Her friends are all certain that she must have been murdered by agents of the regime. When he is finally able to return to the country to search for her, he is horrified to find a danger as great, and from a completely unexpected direction, as the one he faced in apartheid years. He could not anticipate how his presence and the truth about Ntombi is troubling to some very powerful individuals. Eccentric prison psychologist Yudel Gordon, an acquaintance of Ntombi's husband, and Abigail Bukula, his close friend in the Department of Justice, find themselves drawn into the centre of a potentially tragic and very dangerous confrontation.