Wyndy's Reviews > A Dry White Season

Set in Johannesburg, South Africa in the mid-1970’s during the Soweto youth riots, this is a tense, disturbing story that exposes the Jim Crow policies of apartheid and the corrupt law enforcement/judicial system of the time. It is also a remarkable account of the commitment and bravery of those individuals who took a stand against it, at great personal risk. This is fiction, but as author André Brink writes in the copyright for the book, “Nothing in this novel has been invented . . .”

Ben Du Toit, a white schoolteacher, becomes entwined in the life of his school’s black cleaner, Gordon Ngubene, when he agrees to assist with educational expenses for Gordon’s oldest son Jonathan. When first Jonathan and then Gordon ‘vanish’ after incarceration in the local jail, Ben, with the help of the unforgettable Stanley Makhaya, a Zulu taxi driver, embarks on a perilous investigation into exactly what happened to them. Although Ben is the key character in the story, Stanley was my personal hero. As a black man living under apartheid, the risks he took were far greater than Ben’s but as an Afrikaner, Ben had more to lose. Their unlikely friendship was a powerful part of the book for me.

With 3.5 stars for a weak ‘Foreword’ that I almost didn’t make it past and for an unnecessary, predictable love affair and 4.5 for the rest of the book, I land at a solid 4 stars for my first André Brink. Kudos to this author for taking his own personal risks in writing this “fictional” story and self-publishing it after it was banned. Despite being 40 years old, this novel is still incredibly relevant.

“If I act, I cannot but lose. But if I do not act, it is a different kind of defeat, equally decisive and maybe worse. Because then I will not even have a conscience left.”
~ Ben Du Toit