Blog
‘It isn’t safe’: South African first responders attacked while saving lives Ambulance crews and paramedics are increasingly being robbed, their vehicles hijacked while they are working, in a country with one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime.
My Xhosa teacher Ally Weakley (seen here centre) was a powerful advocate of non-racialism in apartheid South Africa. He was tragically gunned down in rage after Chris Hani's assassination. Rhodes honoured him this weekend by naming their main sports field after him. Here, published in the Sunday Times this weekend, I remember just what a powerful influence he had on my life.
Years ago I went to the Svalbard islands in the Arctic circle. What a powerful, magical experience it was! Under the little-known Svalbard treaty, South Africans have the right to live, trap, fish and prospect for minerals in a remote archipelago deep in the Arctic Circle. Hamilton Wende went there to try his luck.
Al, ex-British army and our security advisor, spread a map out on the hood of our vehicle. ‘We’ll take the Amarah road,’ he said. ‘The other road through Nasiriyah is not too good. Bandits are operating on that route.’ He paused. ‘I must make one thing clear. There are no weapons on this convoy. If bandits pull us over, we comply 100%. There must be no threatening gestures.’
Al, ex-British army and our security advisor, spread a map out on the hood of our vehicle. ‘We’ll take the Amarah road,’ he said. ‘The other road through Nasiriyah is not too good. Bandits are operating on that route.’ He paused. ‘I must make one thing clear. There are no weapons on this convoy. If bandits pull us over, we comply 100%. There must be no threatening gestures.’
Al, ex-British army and our security advisor, spread a map out on the hood of our vehicle. ‘We’ll take the Amarah road,’ he said. ‘The other road through Nasiriyah is not too good. Bandits are operating on that route.’ He paused. ‘I must make one thing clear. There are no weapons on this convoy. If bandits pull us over, we comply 100%. There must be no threatening gestures.’
Al, ex-British army and our security advisor, spread a map out on the hood of our vehicle. ‘We’ll take the Amarah road,’ he said. ‘The other road through Nasiriyah is not too good. Bandits are operating on that route.’ He paused. ‘I must make one thing clear. There are no weapons on this convoy. If bandits pull us over, we comply 100%. There must be no threatening gestures.’
‘I never knew Hemingway was that witty,’ my friend Allan said as we chatted in his apartment in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. I was reading aloud to him from Hemingway’s classic memoir about his early days as a struggling writer: A Moveable Feast.
The toxic legacy of a century-old lead mine in Kabwe, Zambia, is still poisoning children. A years-old class action suit on their behalf has moved to the Supreme Court of Appeal. Hamilton Wende went to Kabwe to film a documentary for Al Jazeera and reflects on the legal, moral and humanitarian dilemmas surrounding these children and their ongoing suffering.
There is something eerie about the beauty of an old bomb crater at 20,000 feet.
Poetry to me has always been a form of travel. I first learned to love poetry at boarding school in the Eastern Cape in South Africa.
I’m no supporter of the Taliban regime at all, but the news that South Africa will play Afghanistan in the World Cup caught my attention. It reminded me of my Afghan translator and fixer in the village of Khuja Bahauddin in northern Afghanistan only weeks after 9/11. I’ve never forgotten him and his love of cricket.
“Today we’re going to look for the ‘Big Five!’” South African guide Eelco Meyjes announces from the front of his safari vehicle - a strange thing to hear on the streets of suburban Johannesburg.
I was commissioned to write a piece about my face years ago and for various reasons it never saw print. I thought it would be interesting to post now.
Memory is layered into our lives. Our understanding of what happened in the past grows as we grow. And the southern autumn for me for the last decade or so has always been a time for memories.
Recently, the President of Botswana, Mokgweetsi Masisi, frustrated by European moves to ban the import of hunting trophies from his country recently threatened to send 20 000 elephants to Germany so that they “should live with animals the way you tell us to.”
At the far western end of Bulawayo’s wide streets lies a small, well-tended garden. It is the city’s railway museum. A neat lawn and a few bright coloured flower beds swelter in the heat.
Murchison Falls is one of the great natural splendours of Africa. The best way to see it is to take a boat up the Victoria Nile through the hippo and crocodile that throng its clear, deep waters.
A full moon emerges above the horizon. Slowly at first, and then rapidly, the sound of hard, calloused palms beating the skin of drums rises from the huts all around us.
The images, and the memories, never go away, even after nearly 30 years. Recalling them, or looking at photographs from that time, always raises my heartbeat - fear runs through in my head, it always happens, making me feel the old ghosts rising up.
On a long ago trip to Alaska I met some fascinating people who are the type of people who now believe in Trump's MAGA vision. We don't have to agree with them to try and understand them.
Years ago, in my childhood, I was being driven in a car down Louis Botha Avenue. Ahead of us, prominent on the Linksfield Ridge, was a magnificent white house. ‘That,’ the adult in the car told me, ‘is the house where the Shah of Iran lived during the Second World War.’
It was his eyes I remember best, carefully watching us through his glasses as he listened, and we spoke. It was the early 1980s. Apartheid was at its height. The power of white supremacy and the tyranny that went with it seemed unassailable.
The town of Jenin is a tiny enclave of Palestinian territory surrounded by Israel. Since the start of the new intifada over eighteen months ago, the town has been virtually sealed off by Israeli tanks and soldiers. As violence has escalated in Israel and the occupied territories in recent months tensions have spilled over into open conflict. Nearly 60 Palestinians have been killed in fighting with the Israeli military.
Military Fiction By Hamilton Wende
Red Air
When CIA operative Al Morris is kidnapped in Afghanistan, it sets off a dizzying chain of international terrorist intrigue. His son, Danny, is a foreign correspondent who has never respected his father’s choosing a career in spying. However, he writes an article about the terrorist group which unwittingly betrays an Afghan warlord, Azmaray Shah, and leads to his son Turan’s capture....
Only the Dead
Deep in the Ugandan jungle, a mysterious new presence has infiltrated the Claws of God – a cult of child soldiers led by the depraved General Faustin. The children are now being controlled by the sinister Papa Mephisto, and believe he is possessed by the magic and power of a lion. Psychologist Tania Richter is struggling to penetrate the minds of these dangerous and brainwashed children.
House of War
Sebastian Burke, a British academic, has spent his whole life trying to understand the secret life of Alexander the Great and his slave bride Roxane. Now, with the Taliban forced underground, he finally has the opportunity to undertake the journey he has dreamed of for almost his entire adult life, a journey into the heart of Alexander’s world, a journey to the lost city of Ay Khanoum in northern Afghanistan.