JDFJones
LAURENS van der Post, who has died aged 90, was a man of many achievements. He was an Afrikaner and, by long residence and cultural familiarity, also a European. He had been a soldier ‘ and a prisoner of war who discovered and preached forgiveness for his enemies. He was a farmer who became a writer, a journalist and also an internationally successful novelist and film-maker. His life always brought together literature and public affairs.
Born in the Orange Free state, the 13th of 15 children of a distinguished Afrikaner family, he often said his Bushman nurse was a seminal character in his life. At 17 he became a journalist in Durban and at 20 was briefly associated with the influential literary magazine Voorslag.
Van der Post married Marjorie Wendt in 1928. They had two children. He came to Britain and combined farming with journalism, also writing his first novel, In a Province, one of the earliest fictional indictments by an Afrikaner of what was to become apartheid.
During World War II, he served in Java, where he was captured by the Japanese and held for three years. The Seed and the Sower (1963), his book about the experience, eventually became the film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. After the war, he received an OBE and a CBE.
In 1949, he married again, to Ingaret Giffard, a Jungian analyst who introduced him to Carl Gustav Jung. In the 1950s Van der Post had made journeys to the Kalahari, documented in works such as The Lost World of the Kalahari (1958).
He was also a man of public affairs, which he conducted very privately. We now know that he was awarded his knighthood in 1981 because of his role as intermediary in the negotiations over a Rhodesian settlement. He supported Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi and opposed sanctions ‘ a matter in which he probably influenced Margaret Thatcher. He played the role of sage and counsellor to the British royal family, especially Prince Charles.
As the years passed Van der Post’s books became increasingly mystical, and in recent years he became an influential leader of the worldwide ‘wilderness’ concept.