Emmanuel arrives in South Africa alone.  A child.
This lone young refugee is the protagonist of The Antbear Cabin, the other is Winter, his elderly white-woman ‘rescuer’. Both are outsiders, but what they also have in common is loss. Emmanuel’s loss is not just that of his country but of his whole family, principally his now missing mother.  Although it is not expanded on, Winter’s loss is her son, Taylor. He makes an appearance only through his painting set that Winter bequeaths to Emmanuel. The young man is initially reluctant to be this eccentric woman’s ‘rescue project’ – but things change as the two find common ground, quite literally through nature, and eventually, through shared stories.
Fittingly, this self-published book is dedicated to ‘all the many displaced people of Congo and other conflict zones, in their search for home and wholeness’. But there is an unmistakably personal undertone to the story. On her website, Elana declares “Most of my writing is based on my own experiential knowledge of what I write. I’ve hunkered down at the Bushmen fires in the Kalahari Desert (Kalahari RainSong); seen firsthand the wild beauty of Congo lakes and forests (The Antbear Cabin)” so you know that she has witnessed, and felt, a large part of what she is talking about, and that she is moved to pass it on. I know now, for instance that amongst other things, the antbear is a good mother – a small but significant detail.
Years ago, around 2004, I had the opportunity to read Kalahari RainSong, the book that Elana co-wrote with Belinda Kruiper wife of the late poet and artist Vetkat Regopstaan Boesman Kruiper. In the author’s note she talks about her ‘own feelings of being different, an outsider’. So to read The Antbear Cabin, is not just to learn some of the cripplingly hard lessons that a refugee suffers on the streets of South Africa, but also some of the writers worldview, wisdom and knowledge.  ​

started writing it back in 2017 but then stopped. Unable to continue, she was gripped by the paralysing fear familiar to so many of us. The fear of what people might think and say about us when we expose our most inner terrors.
It was only in the second year of the Covid pandemic, in 2021, that she took the deep leap of faith and wrote on. ‘Bamboozled’ is a fascinating read about the author’s controversial spiritual pursuit to fix herself, to find freedom, forgiveness and joy in a troubled world.
Before reading it however, I was concerned that I might not get the full picture of Melinda’s life experience since I haven’t read her first book ‘Smacked’, nor the follow-up ‘Hooked’ and then ‘Crashed’. My worries were laid to rest as the book delves into her early childhood right up to her current state. And what a rollercoaster ride her life has been. It was at the tender age of four that she was introduced to vulnerability – her sense of safety shattered by her father’s sudden death. She will start drinking by the time she’s nine. “My childhood was steeped in alcohol,” she reveals. “After my father died, my mother took to the bottle.” For the author, alcohol was the gateway drug to heroin and crack cocaine.
During a seven-year insatiable drug binge she loses everything. Her two sons are taken away by her mother-in-law, her husband is gone, and so is her career as an actress and an award-winning filmmaker. She’s utterly broken, penniless and homeless in Hillbrow. For a fix, she steals, begs and whores.
The road to redemption that follows is a long and lonely one. Against all odds, she soldiered on the mammoth journey to life recovery – clutching at anything that would give her a sense of purpose. She was thrown a lifeline when the opportunity to write her debut memoir came along. In 2005 ‘Smacked’ was published, a runaway success which saw her parachuted to glory. In 2011, she went back to university and earned an Honours degree in Publishing with distinction. But all the accolades in the world do not fill the gaping hole in her heart.  Something profound was missing.
Then her world literally comes crashing down again after the near-fatal Ferrari car accident. She developed extreme PTSD and checked into a mental-health clinic for three weeks. It was during this time of disconnect and anxiousness that she stumbled across the healing effects of psilocybin mushrooms. In late March 2015, she embarked on her first mushroom ceremony in Monica’s Healing House. The experience is life-changing.
Then the Covid pandemic hits the globe and the world is left in disarray. On 15 March 2020, the president announces that South Africa is in a National State of Disaster. Even though she has been clean and sober for 20 years, she’s overwhelmed by “out-of-control panic.” “Overnight” she says “the virus has, like some psycho vacuum cleaner, sucked away all my inspiration.“ 
To escape the pandemic, she finds a piece of heaven nestled in the remote Matroosberg mountains. Her place of joy and freedom. But, as cruel fate would have it, a brutal murder changes everything. For crying out loud…. when will this woman find eternal peace I wonder? Are the gods forever scheming against her?
Two decades earlier, Melinda sold her soul to the devil that is crack and heroin. She was a one-woman tsunami destroying everything on her path.  In ‘Bamboozled’, she owns up to her self-destruction as she tackles her darkest fears. Confronting buried memories, childhood wounds, guilt and unresolved pain. Eventually she finds a loyal friend in Joe, the dog she rescued and who ends up being her liberator….but there’s so much more in this book. Read it with your seat belt firmly fastened.  ​

​story that was fortunate enough to find its way onto her tongue was brought to colourful life.’ Ndlovu has truly inherited that gift of storytelling and, while the origins of the story may have been a while back, here she prologues the novel with this story based on what her grandmother told her…and so the doors to her magical world are opened.
As the novel progresses, she invokes that spell that blurs fiction and myth bringing a cast of what I can only describe as technicolour characters. Larger than life, their quirks create a stage set for a story of unheralded adventure with heroes, murderers, mistaken identities, mistresses, guerrillas, ex-soldiers and heartbreak in this bustling story.  But it is enduring love that both begins and ends this deliciously engaging story.
There is a busyness that hauls you inside the pages making you part of the evolving action as we enter the mythical African City of Kings. These are not quiet streets or quiet people now that ceasefire has been declared. Independence is on the horizon and colonialism is about to be replaced with a post - colonial state. Spokes Moloi, a policeman with spotless integrity is about to retire and his wife Loveness could not be happier. He has had an exemplary career, with only a couple of cases that remain unsolved – the ‘Daisy case’ being one, something that has irked him. As the City settles into its new status Emil Coetzee, the powerful Head of the sinister Organisation of Domestic Affairs walks into the bush, and disappears. This is a mystery to be followed up, and, with conflicting reports it is up to Spokes to solve this, his last case. Was Emil murdered or could he have committed suicide?
Piece by piece, tangle by tangle, myth by myth Spokes peels away the layers of the embattled Coetzee’s life to reveal some surprising and baffling information. Along the way we meet the mistress, the ex-wife - mourning for the loss of her son and ex-husband, the impersonator and the madam. With each character wanting to contribute some information on the feared Emil there are an awful lot of red herrings which lead Spokes into a maze of contradictions and lead to unexpected outcomes. And does he solve it? Well that’s for you the reader to discover.
Delve into the pages of this book and you will be simply captivated. It’s a book that you live as you follow the footsteps, the sickly sweet perfume of the stalker, watch the skulduggery  between politicians and secret service characters (very close to the truth methinks!) and follow intrepid journalist and biographer Saskia Hargrave as she weaves her own web of deceit.
Ndlovu’s writing style is uniquely decisive, her phraseology defining her meaning. She writes about social issues and does not shirk at the horrors, the violence and the heartbreak that affects us all. She is a brave writer, bringing a new style of literary fiction that is accessible, readable and totally absorbing. Many of her characters deserve a book of their own, but I urge you to enter the wonder that is Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s world. You will never be disappointed.
Born in Zimbabwe Ndlovu has already proven to be a talent to be followed. She won the Sunday Times fiction prize in 2019 for the bestseller The Theory of Flight. She is a winner of Yale University’s 2022 Windham Campbell prize, is a writer, filmmaker and an academic with a PhD from Stanford University, and directed and edited the award-winning short film Graffiti.

dentity rose, as they do with so many immigrants, and the reasons why Indians would come to South Africa to the sugar and tea plantations. As a writer this drove Mottai to research extensively, visit India and dive deep into the back stories of what being an indentured Indian really was. As she remarks: “The novel began as a testament to my great-great-grandfather but very quickly it was clear that the novel had taken on a life of its own. The lost voices of the women of indenture raised their voices and, through me, they would be heard and finally their stories would come to light.”
And bring them to light she certainly has, with authentic and memorable characters that tell a story that is harrowing and yet an integral part of South African history and the Indians who are so much part of our demographics.
Indenture, a system of bonded labour was instituted after the abolition of slavery in 1833 when the British colonies needed labourers. Recruits were found within the poverty stricken streets of India and the workers came to what they hoped was a better life in Natal. A casteless life that would after five years, result in freedom and, if they were lucky a small plot of land.  But for the ‘coolies’ (and I use this advisedly as this is how Mottai refers to them in the book) the ‘promised land’ was never quite what it was cracked up to be – as it rarely is. It is the time of Gandhi and his influence is clearly narrated.
Mottai paints a fine picture of Sappani as a kind and gentle man, unlike some of his contemporaries, but it is the four women who become bound together in support and friendship that form the rays of the story.  The shy young widow Lutchmee who escaped a vengeful mother-in-law and self-immolation on her husband’s funeral pyre; Brahmin caste and educated Vottie whose abusive husband holds on to his caste at all costs, Chinmah, heavily pregnant, married to a simply useless man as part of an unpaid debt and Jyothi a dazzling young girl whose fate is tied in with her beauty.
Kala Pani means Black water and the crossing is merciless-but life on land has its own challenges and Mottai paints a grim picture of how the indentured labour was treated. I am not giving away any spoilers, the story will envelop you. Harsh as it is this is an integral part of our history - the cruelty of colonialism is well documented.
It is a beautifully written story, and Mottai’s prose is smooth and lilting as the story unfolds.  Well -structured it evolves as if in the swirls of a sari -the colour, words and contrasts clearly celebrating the Indian heritage. The use of Indian words and phrases adds to the authenticity and a glossary gives meaning. The power of women take centre stage and, in telling who her great –great- grandmother might have been, shows their strength in facing adversity.  Whatever the conditions they always pulled together to make life a little more tenable.  A precarious existence for both men and women, the friendships forged surmounted the hardship, prejudice, loss and cruelty and clearly show the strength of the foundation of today’s Indian population. We learn a lot from historical fiction and this is a novel that offers a clear picture of this part of South African history. ​