Archive for the ‘Biography’ Category
by Protea Boekhuis on Jun 11th, 2013
Pieter Cilliers, TV-vervaardiger en gay oudpredikant, wat in 1997 sy opspraakwekkende outobiografie ’n Kas is vir klere die lig laat sien het se Pilgrim het onlangs by Protea Boekhuis verskyn. Pilgrim is die Engelse vertaling van sy boek Soeker. Die Burger se Susan Booyens het met hom gesels oor geloof, menseregte, pyn en verwerping.
Potpourri, Carte Blanche, Première, Evita’s Funigalore, Pasella, Kwêla – Pieter Cilliers se naam is al 30 jaar lank sinoniem met gehalte-TV.
Maar hy is ook om ’n ander rede bekend: Sy boek ’n Kas is vir klere het van sy reis na selfaanvaarding vertel en destyds die debat oor homoseksualiteit in die Afrikaanse kerke aan die gang gesit.
Sy jongste boek, Pilgrim (by Protea Boekhuis), is die Engelse vertaling vir die wêreldmark van sy boek Soeker, wat twee jaar gelede verskyn het. Dit is ’n vervolg en uitbreiding van Kas, wat ook in gesprek tree met die baie briewe, ontroerend én veroordelend, wat Pieter sedertdien gekry het.
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by Protea Boekhuis on May 22nd, 2013
Pieter Cilliers launched his autobiography, Pilgrim, in the Central Methodist Church in Cape Town on 21 May 2013.
In his speech he shared snippets of his own story and he pleaded for understanding on behalf of young, gay Christians. He warned against a bill that some churches want to put before parliament next year that would allow them to ignore the constitution under the guise of religious freedom.
Pilgrim is published by Protea Book House.
The Central Methodist Church, which once a safe haven for campaigners against apartheid, is today a leading hub in the fight against homophobia. Alan Storey, head of the Central Methodist Church, and Laurie Gaum, head of the Centre for Christian Spirituality, were the speakers at the event.
A number of high-profile campaigners, journalists, activists and artists attended the event. Among them were Ecclesia de Lange, whose court case against the Methodist church was heard that same day, professor Andries van Aarde, singer Lize Beekman, Susan Booyens, Hanlie Retief, Dr Fritz Gaum, Riaan Visman and Jean du Plessis.
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by Protea Boekhuis on May 15th, 2013
Peter Stark, “The White Bushman”, passed away on 7 May at the age of 84. Travel News Namibia commented thatm “Stark was renowned for his in-depth knowledge of the bushveld and his adventures with wildlife and the bushman of the Etosha National Park” and said that, “His fascinating life in and near the Etosha National Park was captured succinctly” in his autobiography, The White Bushman.
Travel News Namibia republished a 2007 tribute to Stark, written by his friend and colleague, the late Hu Berry:
Peter Stark, self-proclaimed white bushman and self-confessed poacher turned protector of lions, died yesterday at the age of 84 in South Africa. Born in Windhoek in 1929, Stark was renowned for his in-depth knowledge of the bushveld and his adventures with wildlife and the bushman of the Etosha National Park. His fascinating life in and near the Etosha National Park was captured succinctly in his autobiography The White Bushman.
Here is authored by the late Hu Berry, which was published in 2007, and gives an in-depth view into the life of his friend and colleague, the legendary White Bushman, Peter Stark.
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by Protea Boekhuis on May 13th, 2013
Protea Boekhuis is proud to announce that two of our titles, Clarence van Buuren by Chris Marnewick and Disputed Land by Louis Changuion and Bertus Steenkamp, have made it onto the longlist for the prestigious 2013 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award.
The longlist was announced yesterday and the shortlist of five will be revealed on Saturday evening at the Franschhoek Literary Festival.
Best of luck to Marnewick, Changuion and Steenkamp!
About the books
Disputed Land gives a comprehensive review of the origin of the problems surrounding land ownership in South Africa from 1652 and how it still continues in 2011. The book describes how it happened that the white minority of the South African population could own in 73% (in 1980) of the land while the black population only owned 14%. (The state owned 12%.)
When Apartheid ended, this imbalance in land distribution had to be set right. Today, it is an ongoing process. In this process it is expected of white farmers to sell their land to black farmers. Some South Africans feel that South Africa as a whole should be in the hands of black farmers.
Louis Changuion and Bertus Steenkamp question whether land reform by means of dispossession is the answer to South Africa’s land distribution problems. Are there other possible solutions and can white South Africans have a claim on South African land?
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Clarence van Buuren: Knew the Words But Not the Music is the English translation of Clarence van Buuren: Die man agter die donkerbril.
In 1957 Clarence Gordon van Buuren was convicted of the murder of Myrna Joy Aken and executed. He denied murdering her up to the very end. A young boy, Chris Marnewich, read the details in the newspaper and he had nightmares about them: Why was Van Buuren hanged if he had maintained his innocence?
The case was sensational for several reasons: It was alleged that a clairvoyant found the body after a séance; There were indications of a sexual relationship between Van Buuren and Aken
There was the crude sexual mutilation of the corpse.
The press leapt at the sensation: Women queued outside the court in long lines, trampling each other when the doors opened. Van Buuren enjoyed the attention and he flirted with them during the entire hearing.
Despite all the attention focused on the case, the author found that the evidence led in court simply was the tip of the iceberg. The police dossier revealed so much more. Information indicated that Van Buuren was a narcissistic psychopath, a sadist who battered women. He was an emotional vampire and a sadistic sex murderer. Or was he? None of this was mentioned in the court case, nor in the newspapers.
When Marnewick decided to reinvestigate the case, the case record had disappeared. Eventually Marnewick tracked it down.
Today, more than 60 years after the murder, we are in a position to relive the crime through Marnewick’s legal eye. The book tells the story of the murder, but it also traces Marnewick’s own journey with the book.
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- Disputed Land: The Historical Development of the South African Land Issue 1652-2011 by Louis Changuion, Bertus Steenkamp
EAN: 9781869197742
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by Protea Boekhuis on May 10th, 2013
Annie Klopper, uitgewer by Protea Boekhuis en skrywer van Biografie van ‘n bende: Die storie van Fokofpolisiekar, het vir JIP ’n brief aan haar jonger self geskryf. Lauren Beukes, Werner Olckers, Bouwer Bosch, Farryl Purkiss en Nechama Brodie het ook aan dié artikel deelgeneem.
Klopper skryf aan haar jonsger self dat “alles oukei gaan wees” en dat alles nie nou al uitgepluis hoef te wees nie.
Liewe Annie,
Raai wat? Als gaan oukei wees. Ontspan en geniet die avontuur wat voorlê. Jy hoef nie nou al als uit te pluis nie. Jy hoef ook nie nou al jou sielsgenoot te vind nie. Hou op worry, los jou simpel ou en spandeer meer tyd met jou vriende.
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by Protea Boekhuis on Apr 25th, 2013
Well-known TV journalist Ruda Landman, who co-presented the investigative television programme Carte Blanche with Derek Watts, introduced Pieter Cilliers to the guests at the launch of his new book, Pilgrim. Landman met Cilliers thirty years ago when he asked her to do a voice-over for a programme he was making about dying people on their last journey. Her own mother was dying of cancer at the time and the programme provided Landman with the tools to cope with that terrible time.
Landman and Cilliers were colleagues and then friends when he produced Carte Blanche from 1989 to 1992. She described the excitement of being a journalist in South Africa at that time. There was a new story every day, and they were in a position to capture them. Carte Blanche under Cilliers’ direction did this through telling the stories of individuals’ experiences. “Stories are the strongest way of getting into people’s heads, and this is what Pieter has done in this book,” she said. It is a beautiful, moving and simple story, but it illustrates a larger reality.
Pieter Cilliers hoped that the launch of his book on World Book Day would be a good omen! Pilgrim is a book in two parts: the first part, Different, was published in Afrikaans sixteen years ago, titled ‘n Kas is vir klere. It’s the story of his struggle and journey to self-acceptance as a gay Christian, a minister of a church, a television journalist and producer and, later, a public figure. The second book, Sixteen Years Later, revolves around the many eye-opening letters he received after the publication of ‘n Kas is vir klere. “It mostly contains the stories of others, but it is also a reflection of an on-going journey in a country where we may have a progressive and inclusive Constitution, but where homosexuals still find themselves being marginalised and ostracised by the community at large and by the church in particular,” he said.
Cilliers described how he fell in love for the first time in high school at the age of sixteen, with a boy called Andries, and how his bewilderment at these feelings drove him to seek answers from the Bible. Romans 1 revealed that his feelings were punishable by death, and he became increasingly isolated and depressed. He hoped God would help him, and he enrolled to study theology at the University of Pretoria and become a minister of the Hervormde Kerk. When he realised after two years that nothing had changed, Cilliers consulted a psychiatrist. He read a harrowing excerpt from his book about the ensuing electric shock aversion therapy he underwent for two years in order to “cure” his homosexuality.
Cilliers spent years in the closet while he was a minister, and remained so when he started working in the religion department at the SABC. There he produced a programme on gay Christians, and described the experience thus: “On the monitor in front of me each face was clearly recognisable but in the editing room they would become faceless. They sat there as a collective indictment against the respective churches where they were not welcome. I hid behind the monitor, too afraid to reveal myself even to my fellow gay Christians. The faceless voices of the gay Christians were a plea for understanding, but the message the viewers were left with was non-negotiable: Turn or burn.”
When Cilliers left the religion department he also left the ministry. His career in television took off, but his inner struggle remained. He finally came to accept his homosexuality and ended the first part of the book with the words, “An inner peace settled within me. I finally knew who I was – a forty-four-year-old white gay Christian Afrikaner. Nothing more, nothing less.”
The second part of Pilgrim describes the many responses Cilliers received after publication of ‘n Kas is vir klere. There were personal stories that resonated with his own, letters of praise and also of condemnation. “There were also many letters published in the press over the years in which I was called an abomination, a monster, a sinner and a freak. One such writer proclaimed: ‘Homosexuality is like Satanism, a satanic binding from which Pieter Cilliers must be delivered. It is not a medical or psychological problem. No church that is worth its salt will allow it in the life of a child of God’.”
“What became obvious from these letters was that our inclusive Constitution did not necessarily find its way to the heart of the church or society at large in South Africa. On the contrary. What is happening in Africa today and in South Africa in particular is cause for great concern. 37 of the 53 countries in Africa have anti-gay legislation. The current wave of homophobia that is washing across Africa is connected to the religious upsurge on the continent. American evangelical groups are increasingly spreading bigotry throughout Africa. In the last decade or so attitudes towards homosexuals have become visibly worse in South Africa as well. So-called ‘corrective’ rape – where lesbians are raped by men to turn them heterosexual – is on the increase. A recent survey showed that bullying at school is on the rise and that homosexual children and teenagers are specifically being targeted. Social networks such as Facebook, Mxit and Twitter increase their vulnerability and make them easy prey. The emotional degradation leads to anxiety, depression, suicide – and sometimes even murder.”
Cilliers quoted UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. He said, “I respect culture, tradition and religion, but they can never justify the denial of basic human rights.”
Cilliers ended by saying, “I have often wondered about the last paragraph in ‘n Kas is vir klere. Whether I would end the book with the same words if I had to write it today. I am still white, Afrikaans and gay. But do I still consider myself a Christian? What I am sure of is that I can identify with the teachings of Jesus. It’s just a pity that the church finds it so hard to implement those teachings. I think if I had to rephrase the last paragraph of ‘n Kas is vir klere – Different – today, I would change it to read: ‘At last I knew who I was – a sixty-one-year-old white gay Afrikaner. A pilgrim. Nothing more, nothing less’.”
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by Protea Boekhuis on Apr 10th, 2013
Exclusive Books and Protea Book House cordially invite you and your partner to the launch of Pilgrim by Pieter Cilliers.
Ruda Landman will introduce the author at the event at Exclusive Books Hyde Park on Tuesday 23 April. The launch will start at 6 PM for 6:30 PM.
See you there!
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by Protea Boekhuis on Apr 3rd, 2013
Pieter Cilliers’ Afrikaans autobiography, ’n Kas is vir klere, was hailed for its pioneering role in the debate on homosexuality in Afrikaans churches. For many gays, it opened the way to a more honest way of life.
This autobiography, first published in South Africa in 1997, is a heartrending story of a gay pastor’s struggle to come to terms with his homosexuality. It was hailed for its pioneering role in the discussion on homosexuality and the church. The many letters he received since then has resulted in a comprehensive update of the original book. In Pilgrim (the translation of the Afrikaans title Soeker) Cilliers challenges the church’s attitude towards homosexuals and argues that South Africa’s inclusive Constitution has not yet led to an unconditional acceptance of gays. The book is about compelling stories within a greater narrative concerning spirituality and faith.
Like so many other people Cilliers seeks for acceptance as well as for answers to questions on spirituality, faith and religion.
About the author
Pieter Cilliers was a minister of the Reformed Church for six years before he became a television presenter and then one of South Africa’s most outstanding television producers. He received several awards for programmes such as Carte Blanche, Potpourri and Evita’s Funigalore and SigNature. For the past 11 years he is best known for the production of the kykNet programme Kwêla.
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by Protea Boekhuis on Mar 5th, 2013
The fascinating case of Clarence van Buuren, who was hanged for having killed Joy Aken, has disturbed and invaded Chris Marnewick’s conscience to the extent that he wrote a book about it: Clarence van Buuren: Knew the Words But Not the Music (in Afrikaans, Clarence van Buuren: Die man agter die donkerbril).
With the Oscar Pistorius case making headlines around the world, and mirroring the attention around the Van Buuren case, Marnewick spoke to Margaret von Klemperer of The Witness about his attempt at finding out why Van Buuren was driven to murder. His book is a look at the idea of evil, and why a man might kill.
OPEN a local newspaper in February 2013, and it is all about the Oscar Pistorius case. The level of obsession was the same back in 1957 when it was the Clarence van Buuren case.
Those papers are yellow and brittle now, and alongside the murder there is more international news than you can see in these days of the so-called global village. But it was murder that grabbed the headlines.
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by Protea Boekhuis on Feb 21st, 2013
While South Africa is currently gripped by the proceedings of a different murder case, Chris Marnewick’s Clarence van Buuren Knew the Words But Not the Music, a work of non-fiction about a murder trial from the 1950s that intrigued him since he was eight years old, was launched at Adams Books in Musgrave, Durban.
Originally written in Afrikaans, and called Clarence van Buuren: Die man agter die donkerbril, the translation was published by Protea Boekhuis late last year. At the launch, Marnewick, a retired senior advocate who worked in Durban for many years, but who now lives in New Zealand, explained that writing the book enabled him to find closure for his “obsession” with this case.
In 1956, 18-year-old Myrna Aken was given a lift by a salesperson, Clarence van Buuren, in Durban. A few days later her naked disfigured body was found on the south coast with the help of a medium. Marnewick, who was at the time only a boy, living in Johannesburg, followed the story closely in the newspapers. By day he would read about the case and Van Buuren’s eventual hanging. By night he would be haunted by nightmares about the murder and the accused’s claims that he was innocent.
“A psychic was the first person to find the body. My book is partly about whether there is any real substance in that claim,” he said. He also examines Van Buuren’s claims that he was innocent, investigating rumours that Aken had had an affair with him. “I also look at the curious parallel between the lives of the police officer, Frans Steenkamp, investigating the case, who left school at 16 because he had no money for school books, and ten years later became a detective sergeant, and the killer who ran away from school at 16, stole a car, was involved in several crimes and imprisoned for five years before writing his exams, qualifying as an engineer, and then for three years leading what appears to be an ordinary life with his wife and two children,” he says.
Marnewick mentioned some of his main sources: a journalist called Gehri Strauss, who had done a series of interviews with the accused while he was imprisoned, and published the stories in The Star. He said Strauss was “objective but empathetic”. After Strauss’ death, his long-term partner Ricky Hamilton gave Marnewick a battered old cardboard suitcase that Strauss had kept full of newspaper reports and magazine articles on the case. Also in the suitcase were notebooks, revealing Strauss’ thoughts as he followed the case, and photographs of the crowds at the trial, the accused and the policemen who caught him, the prosecutors and various locations identified in the investigation. Marnewick brought the suitcase with him to the launch, saying that without it there would have been no book.
He also mentioned the late investigating officer Frans Steenkamp’s wife, Maxi, who had kept the Van Buuren docket after her husband’s death, and allowed Marnewick to use it for his research.
Marnewick explained that the book works as an analysis of Van Buuren’s mental state, and possible motivations for the murder. Why, when he led such a comfortable life, did he commit such a heinous crime? He said the same questions can be asked about Oscar Pistorius, who has been charged with murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Marnewick said he believes in tangible evil that exists in men, that makes them commit crimes against women.
During the question and answer session, a member of the audience asked Marnewick whether he believed in capital punishment. He said he did not, although he invites the reader to make up his/her own mind in this book. He expressed concern that the act of killing changes one, saying he thought it was bad for the executioners to be doing such work.
Next up for Marnewick is a legal book about bail, followed by a novel, with “lots of sex”. He said he plans for it to be a detective story set in South Africa.
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