Wessel Ebersohn

Wessel Ebersohn is an internationally published author. Here is a piece he wrote about himself:

I was born in Cape Town in 1940 and attended various schools in the Western Cape. I started work as a pupil telecommunications technician in the engineering branch of the Post Office (Telkom today) in 1955 after finishing standard eight.

According to my mother, I started writing at the age of eight. Certainly I did try to write stories and plays through my teenage years, twenties and thirties, first seeing myself published at the age of 37.

I was married to Miriam in 1964. We are still married, have three children and five grandchildren. Our son is an attorney in the employ of Crown Law, New Zealand. Both of our daughters are managers in Succeed. One of our grand daughters is also a manager in the company. An American visitor, herself female, asked me how I survive being surrounded by so many powerful women. I told her that they help me to survive.

My first novel to be published was A LONELY PLACE TO DIE in 1979. Because of the nature of the subject matter, my position in the Post Office became increasingly difficult after that. I resigned at the end of that year.

I had written a novel, entitled THE CENTURION, the year A LONELY PLACE. It was published by Ravan Press in 1980.

My next two novels, STORE UP THE ANGER and DIVIDE THE NIGHT were both banned by the authorities, but released by the Publications Appeal Board under the chairmanship of Professor Kobus van Rooyen. STORE UP THE ANGER had separate publishings in the UK and South Africa. As a result, it had the distinction of being banned in South Africa before being published here. On publication in the UK, before a copy had been printed in South Africa, the banning came through. The banning was fought by Professor John Dugard of Wits. When it was lifted, the committee struck back by banning the cover. A second cover was also banned and the book eventually appeared in the country carrying only the title, my name and publisher’s on the cover. It was published by Ravan Press.

By the eighties Miriam and I were running a small production business, concentrating on corporate publications. We also had a hand in producing a number of political periodicals, such as Ecunews for the SA Council of Churches while Archbishop Tutu was their general secretary.

The eighties were years of disillusionment for both of us. Perhaps we expected too much from those resisting the government. The reality was that while government agents were regularly killing activists, the side of freedom and justice was as regularly, without the semblance of a trial, murdering people by the necklace method. Many who were killed that way were guilty of nothing at all. Few leaders of the liberation movement ever spoke out against it. When two strike breakers were murdered on Cosatu premises, that organisation’s most senior person would not even admit to me that it had happened. The confusion in my mind affected my ability to write about our society and was certainly a contributing factor to the slowing down of productivity in my fiction writing. It also contributed to the rather strange choice of subject matter for KLARA’S VISITORS, an imaginary look at Hitler’s diaries. The book received good reviews but was a commercial disaster.

The result of all this was that we fled Johannesburg in late 1986 – dropped out of the country – to live on the edge of the Knysna forest, where we stayed until 1993. We came back to Johannesburg with the purpose of starting Succeed and so contributing in our own way to the recovery of the country. We are still running the magazine which is the third biggest selling business magazine in the country.