COMRADE KING

206pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Johannesburg, 2023

 

As a teenager Khulu Radebe participated in the Alexander township uprisings in 1976. Arrested and sent to Robben Island, he was one of the youngest prisoners there. On his release he returned to the township and participated in the 1986 Six Days War. Later he joined MK, the armed wing of the ANC. At the age of 50, he was informed that he was the ruler of the AmaHlubi people of the Embo Nation.

"Jeff has enabled Khulu Radebe to tell his story in his own voice. And what story it is. We follow Khulu through the 1976 uprising, Robben Island, the ANC underground, exile, the battles of the 1990s, and his coronation as King. It is full of surprises and insights. Despite all the tough experiences he describes, Khulu is a man who gives one hope and faith in the triumph of humanism over a lifetime of obstacles/" Anton Harper, Director of the Henry Nxumalo Foundation and Professor of Journalism, University of the Witwatersrand

Jeff Kelly Lowenstein is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism. He is also the Padnos/Sarosik Endowed Chair of Civil Discourse at Grand Valley State University. In 2016 he was the Taco Kuiper Visiting Fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand, and in 2017 he was a Fulbright Specialist there. He lives in Grand Rapids. His books include The Chilean Chronicles: moments and memory forty years after the Pinochet coup.