Bloody Sunday
Extract
Shortly after 4 pm, as the Remembrance Day service was about to close and the police were preparing to break up the Duncan Village meeting, a small black Austin A40, registration CE 10753, turned into Oxford Street and drove past the Cenotaph to Eastern Beach. Anyone who saw the car would have noticed that the driver was a nun – the white habit and wimple would have been unmistakable. If they had followed the car to the beach, they would have seen the driver walk to the rocks. She would have made a striking image – young, tall, strong, covered from head to foot in billowing white cloth, with only her hands and face exposed. They might have watched her stare out to sea awhile before walking back to her car and, less than an hour later, driving past the Cenotaph again.
By now, the Remembrance Day service was well over, and the meeting in the location too. At the Cenotaph, council staff were clearing away the chairs and litter, mindful of the gathering clouds. In Duncan Village, the police were on their way back to their station, satisfied they had dispersed an illegal meeting. On Bantu Square the people of the locations were collecting their dead and wounded – bludgeoned with batons, stabbed with bayonets, shot through with military-grade sub-machine guns. At least eight had been killed and scores injured.
That is how the day might have come to a close. Then the nun in the black car drove by, past the Cenotaph, into Connaught Road, past the Panmure station, into Frederick Street and then Bantu Street. Those who saw her pass wondered why she was going that way, for she was a white woman, and that was a road that few white people dared or cared to take.
Awards
WINNER
Sunday Times (Alan Paton) Literary Award for Non-fiction (October 2022).
SHORTLISTS
Shortlisted for Sunday Times (Alan Paton) Literary Award for Non-fiction (September 2022).
Shortlisted for Best Non-Fiction Monograph, National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) (April 2022)
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PRE-PUBLICATION RESEARCH AWARDS
2019 Henry Nxumalo/Taco Kuiper Fund for Investigative Journalism – research grant to complete the field and archival research for Bloody Sunday.
2018 Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) – five-month fellowship to write Bloody Sunday.
2016 Association of Non-Fiction Authors of South Africa (ANFASA) – grant for field and archival research for Bloody Sunday.