THE NATIVE COMMISSIONER

283pp., paperback, Reprint Johannesburg, (2006) 2007

Winner of the 2007 Best Book in Africa Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the M-Net Literary Award.

Sam Jameson's father died when he was eight years old. Some forty years later, he opens the box of his father's papers and tries to piece together a picture of his father, who was a Native Commissioner in South Africa in the 1950s and 1960s.

 Journalist and author Shaun Johnson (1959-2020) was one of the early staff members of the Weekly Mail (now the Mail & Guardian), deputy editor and political editor of The Star, and editor of several newspapers, including the Cape Argus, Saturday Star and The Sunday Independent. In 2003 he was appointed deputy chief executive of Independent News and Media South Africa, and asked by Nelson Mandela to establish the Mandela Rhodes Foundation. He is the author of Strange Days Indeed (1993), which chronicles the years up to South Africa’s first democratic election, and editor of South Africa: No turning back (1998) a collection of essays on contemporary South African politics.