ORIGINAL APARTHEID HUSTLER, the fiction and fabrications of Dugmore Boetie

340pp., illus., maps, paperback, Wits University Press, Johannesburg, 2026

ISBN: 9781776149865

A fascinating study of the life and times of Dugmore Boetie, remembered for his posthumously published autobiographical novel, Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost (1969), that narrates the life of a fictionalised Sophiatown-born youth from the 1920s to 1950s.

Based on archival research and interviews with Boetie’s family and friends today, the authors unravel the webs of fact, fantasy and myth surrounding Boetie’s life, providing insight into his background, his resilient self-fashioning, multiple fabricated identities, his struggle to find his place as an artist and writer, his concealment of his disability and political activities, his collaborations with prominent intellectuals, including Ruth First, Nat Nakasa, Nadine Gordimer, and Barney Simon, and the highly racialised violence he and his legacy have suffered.

"Original Apartheid Hustler provides for the first time a full account of the largely unknown Dugmore Boetie/ Buti's life. It resituates his work in the context of the social and cultural history of the 1950s, and the networks which shaped Black cultural production." Isabel Hofmeyr, Professor Emeritus at Wits University and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at New York University

"Lawrance and Kumalo brilliantly unravel the intertwined histories of authorship, race, disability and literary production under apartheid, revealing the creative strategies through which Dugmore Boetie fashioned both his life and his art. This is an indispensable contribution to South African literary, intellectual and social history." Joel Cabrita, Professor of History at Stanford University and Director of the Center for African Studies

Benjamin N Lawrance is Professor of History at the University of Arizona and a research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study. His books include Amistad’s Orphans: An Atlantic Story of Children, Slavery, and Smuggling (2014).

Vusumuzi R Kumalo is Senior Lecturer in History at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha. He is author of From Plough to Entrepreneurship: A History of African Entrepreneurs in Evaton 1905–1960s (2020) and South Africa’s Struggle for Independent Education (2023).

This book unravels webs of fact, fantasy, and myth, exposing the highly racialised socio-cultural, political, legal, and intellectual violence Boetie and his legacy suffered during and after apartheid. It reveals Boetie’s resilient self-fashioning, his multiple fabricated identities, and the concealment of his disability and political activities.

Original Apartheid Hustler is a profoun