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Midlands
Author: Jonny Steinberg
Published by Jonathan Ball
259pp; size 222 X 152mm
Softcover; ISBN 1-86842-124-4
Non fiction

‘ . . . The Mitchell property lies on the slopes of one of the most beautiful valleys I have ever seen. It is in the heart of the southern midlands of KwaZulu-Natal . . . from there, if there is no mist, you look down on one of the fairest scenes of Africa . . . Later I will tell you more about that landscape, and how it changed during the course of my investigations; a spectacular backdrop of giant shapes and colours when I first saw it , a myriad dramas of human anger and violence when I left . . . ‘

In the spring of 1999 in the beautiful hills of the KwaZulu-Natal midlands, Peter Mitchell a 28-year-old white farmer was shot dead on the dirt road that led from his father’s farmhouse to the irrigation lands. The murder was the work of assassins and not robbers; a single shot behind his ear, no forensic evidence like cartridge cases or finger prints were left at the scene and only his gun was stolen.

Journalist Jonny Steinberg travelled there to investigate. The dead man’s black workers said Mitchell had had it coming. His father said the machinery of a political conspiracy had been set in motion and that he and his white neighbours were being pushed off their land.

Initially believing he was going to write about an event in the recent past, Steinberg found that much of his story still lay in the immediate future. He had stumbled on a festering frontier war, the combatants groping hungrily for the whispers and lies that drifted in from the opposing battle lines. From the outset it became clear that Mitchell would not be the only one who would die on that frontier. And that the story of his and other deaths would illuminate a great deal about the early days of post-apartheid South Africa.

In his explorations of the betrayals and poisoned memories of a 120-year-old relationship between the white man and the Zulu in that area, Steinberg takes us into a part of post-apartheid South Africa that most of us will fear to contemplate.

Midlands is about the midlands of the heart and mind, the midlands between possession and dispossession, the midlands between the past and the present and the midlands between myths and realities. It is a tour de force of investigative journalism.

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Readers' comments

Midlands . . . will make considerable impact in this country, as it deserves to.
John Conyngham

Midlands . . . goes to the heart of questions which are so sensitive that most people shy away from them. A fine piece of investigative journalism.
Shaun Johnson

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