Category : Creative Non- Fiction Award
Author : Dikgang Moseneke
Book : My Own Liberator
This a wide-ranging memoir in which the author traces his roots and pay homage to the people and institutions which shaped into becoming a leading juridical figure by overcoming many daunting challenges in the course of his life. In 1963, on the third anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre, at the age of fifteen he was arrested, charched with sabotage and sentenced to ten years of incarceration on Robben Island for participating in anti-apartheid activities as a member of the Pan Africanist Congress. He recounts how his family values passed on to him by his paternal and maternal grandparents, his parents and teachers which emphasised honesty, respect, dedication, hard work and perseverance as the foundations for a just and ethical life.
By turning his years in prison into a period of intensive study and self-cultivation, he emerged from Robben Island having completed a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in English and political science and a B Juris degree and eventually a Bachelor of Law from the University of South Africa. This narrative spans some eight decades and sheds light on a remarkable and distinguished life as well as on of the history of South Africa and leading figures in changing times to paint a compelling double portrait of his personal life and the history of South Africa’s journal from apartheid to democracy. As such it is a fine biography of the author and of his country.