11We Making If a MARY BENSON I&Ankkk
A A PAR '11we Making if a MARY BENSON I&ANkkk 'Moving and entertaining.., what a life!' - Joseph Lelyveld, author of Move Your Shadow 'A true lover of South Africa', Athol Fugard says of Mary Benson. That was not always so, A starstruck teenager, bored by a life centred on the country club, she escaped from Pretoria, first to 1-follywood then, in 194 1, to serve with the British Army in the Middle East and Europe, an experience both comic and harrowing. In 1948, while secretary to David Lean, Marys life was transformed by reading Cry, the BeloVed Country. Now, as she tells her own story in A Far Cry, site recalls how through an amusing correspondence she came to know Alan Paton, and with poignant honesty she describes her long and intense partnership with the Reverend Michael Scott, the selfless, magnetic campaigner for Southern Afiicas dispossessed Africans - 'halcyon days, which ended in painful seplration. In this enthralling book, the darkness of apartheid is illuminated by the indestructible courage and humour of Chief I losea Kutako in Namibia and the other men and women, of all races, whom Mary encountered as she travelled South Africa gathering material 1br her writings and for her lobbying in America. Hier friendships with Athol Fugard, Nelson Mandela, the Sisulus, Brain Fischer, Albert Lutuli, James Calata and Tshekedi Kharna are nemorably pertrayed, and so too N. the search Ir her own identity as a South Aht an actively involved in tile destiny of her country. Exiled Itom South Africa in 19i, Mary Bvn in was allowed home only to watch over her dying fithrei herself watched over by the Se"urity Polite, Writing ot' 'the passion that caused spiritu l amputation in Oxiht; she says, 'even while I agonized over my lather,'s low dying, I Ilt alive, exhilarated at being hak anong people I loved, in the country where the dust and brittle air had the power to move me'.
[Show full text]