Three newly published books landed on my desk — each chronicling the lives of fellow travellers from South Africa’s epic struggle era and beyond.
These richly textured works spotlight a Robben Island commissar and confidant of Nelson Mandela; a streetwise photographer who worked outside the confines of the mainstream media and a bold Indian woman news broadcaster-turned-author documenting life across the country’s colour lines.
All are South Africans of Indian descent, who shaped, and were shaped by, the political and cultural evolution of Durban and our nation.
Spanning over 650 pages, Shades of Dif ference: Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa (Penguin Random House), by Padraig O’Malley, offers blockbuster insights into the life of Sathyandranath Ragunanan “Mac” Maharaj.
Once a garbage collector in white-run Newcastle, Maharaj became a central figure in the liberation movement — famously smuggling Nelson Mandela’s essays off Robben Island, written on sheets of toilet paper, which would become the manuscript for The Long Walk to Freedom, later adapted into a film by Anant Singh.
O’Malley, an Irish academic and seasoned negotiator who played a role in the Northern Ireland peace process, brings his deep understanding of resistance politics to the Maharaj story.
The book features a rare and heartfelt 20-page foreword by Mandela himself: “Writing the foreword to Shades of Dif ference holds a special place of its own. Mac is a longtime friend and confidant … He put the struggle for South Africa’s freedom above everything else in his life.
“Mac became a legend for the torture he endured … I respect Mac and I love him. I call him Ngquphephe, after the one-eyed hero in Xhosa folktales. O’Malley does my Ngquphephe proud.”
Mandela reminisces about how Maharaj smuggled essays off the prison island — later published as Reflections in Prison, edited by Maharaj — and praises his underground work during Operation Vula.
Maharaj’s clandestine leadership helped maintain the ANC’s readiness in case the transition to democracy faltered.
He was later rewarded with a cabinet post as South Africa’s first democratic transport minister under Mandela’s presidency.
O’Malley first approached Maharaj in the early 2000s and what followed was a painstaking, years-long collaboration. The result is a comprehensive, sometimes controversial, portrait of a freedom fighter of Indian origin who walked the tightrope between loyalty and leadership in exile, in prison and in government.
For readers, activists and post-Mandela politicians alike, this biography is a compelling education in resistance, resilience and political sacrifice.
Through the lens of struggle
In Available Light: Omar Badsha and the Struggle for Change in South Africa (NIHSS), author and Yale historian Daniel Magaziner documents the life and art of Durban-born freelance photographer Omar Badsha — one of the unsung visual chroniclers of South Africa’s liberation journey.
For over five decades, Badsha, often operating solo from his base on Douglas Road in the Grey Street area, captured the pulse of political resistance across Durban and beyond — from mass rallies at Curries Fountain to arrests, funerals, faith gatherings and township uprisings.
Armed only with his camera, rolls of film and a keen political instinct, he built an extraordinary archive — often developed in his own darkroom, plastered with posters of Albert Luthuli and Steve Biko.
The book’s title, Available Light, reflects both his technical mastery and artistry and the metaphorical illumination he brought to apartheid’s darkest corners.
Magaziner skillfully reconstructs Badsha’s life through 316 pages and an array of powerful photographs, including family portraits and frontline images from the struggle.
His acclaimed works — The Law and the Prophets and The Art of Life in South Africa — positioned him well to present Badsha not only as a shutterbug but also as a political artist. This is a tribute to a man whose lens gave voice to the voiceless — and whose images remain vital testimony in an age of fading memory.
From the newsroom to the village
Vanessa Govender’s latest book, The Village Indian (Jacana Media), offers a spicy, satirical and deeply personal account of her life in a rural setting as a city-bred Indian woman married to a reserved white man.
It’s her third literary offering after Beaten But Not Broken, a raw memoir of abuse, and the children’s book The Selfish Shongololo.
In this 299-page collection of anecdotes, observations and family escapades, Govender narrates her transition from a newsroom firebrand to a barefoot villager dealing with cockerels, stray dogs, deadly snakes, curious neighbours and the quiet prejudices that still bubble beneath South Africa’s post-apartheid surface.
Peppered with Durban-style humour and Indian lingo, the book reads as a diary of survival, reinvention and self-discovery — with a generous glass of red wine in hand, as the cover photo suggests.
Govender’s storytelling blends the absurd with the poignant, showcasing the realities of mixed-race marriage in a village still grappling with social transformation.
Her Indian identity, media past and cultural flair animate every page. Her work, while not overtly political, is in itself a subtle act of resistance — a woman’s right to define her space and script her own story.
Final word: Revisiting the legacy
Each of these authors — Maharaj, Badsha and Govender — traversed Durban’s contested streets and storied communities.
Their books offer us mirrors to our past, maps of our memory and markers of how far we’ve come, individually and collectively, in also contributing to the struggle.
In revisiting their journeys, we are reminded that the story of South Africa is never singular. It is a chorus of voices, a kaleidoscope of experiences and a history still being written — page by page.
Marlan Padayachee is a veteran correspondent from the transition from apartheid to democracy and is a freelance journalist, photographer and researcher.