True North – African Roads Less Travelled

Louis looked at me ‘So you want advice?’ He put his fork down. ‘Look here,’ he told me. ‘You’re lucky, things are changing just at the right time for someone like you. The whole of Africa is opening up to you. If I were your age, the first thing I would do is put on a rucksack and go north. I would go and see Africa, and write about what I saw.’

Hamilton Wende returned to South Africa in 1991. He travelled across Africa changing in the wake of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of apartheid. He witnessed a continent full of the most confusing contrasts: ageing Soviet jets on their way to strafe UNITA positions against a backdrop of palms and an azure sea; the almost serene stillness of the Tete corridor in Mozambique where pristine bush hid a nightmare scenery of burned out vehicles and the possibility of ambush. Through it Wende travels deep into the reality of the Rwandan genocide in 1994.