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Every country in the world defines itself as the product of a righteous struggle — a historic fight driven by heroes and martyrs who persevered to liberate a people and immortalise an identity that now lies sacred within the national borders.

African countries vehemently champion these narratives — from the breathtakingly fast colonisation between 1870 and 1900, to the dizzyingly quick decolonisation between 1960 and 1975 — Africans tell a tale of brutal oppression, courageous struggle and eventual liberation from imperial rule.

The trouble is that every free African State falls quickly into a diabolical political chaos that generates ceaseless suffering — a spiralling descent whose inertia is amplified by political ramblings about past suffering and the persistence of colonial evils yet to be fully overcome.

“Aluta Continua!”

South Africa’s 1994 liberation story has an awkward twist. The end of “Apartheid” represented the final victory for Africa — an iconic end to colonial rule. Ironically, South Africa was in fact the first African country to gain autonomy from Europe (not counting Liberia) and like all African countries, its post-independence minority government soon became nationalistic and oppressive.

“…and the first one now will later be last…”

As independence swept across Africa in the 1960s, the West began pulling out and the East began pushing in. "Communist Russia” and its potent cousin, Cuba, thrust themselves into the turning tide and helped to accelerate war.

The white Afrikaners who governed South Africa looked north with horror and could only conclude that the red wave of communism would soon break across their borders. So they frantically began to buttress the country by forming a range of unlikely allegiances and hasty alliances. They worked with the British — their former oppressors; they collaborated with the Americans — the icons of hedonism and debauchery; they conspired with the Mozambicans — the uncivilised and dubious bandits; they coordinated with the Rhodesians — the pompous and self serving; they even joined forces with clans from Angola and Namibia — the black savages. 

The Afrikaners contrived a whole new history — one in which an all powerful God had ordained this place as the final front and these people as the fatal force that would defeat the prime evil; the antichrist; the communist.

From the 1960s to the 1990s, all white South African males and a great many young black men joined the South African Defence Force (SADF). Most were destined to fight in the Border War — some defending the borders from an anticipated attack and some deployed to take the fight north.

The Border War became known as the Bush War but like most wars, its end was neither victory nor defeat. It was the anticlimax that is reached around diplomatic tables in a distant and enigmatic land; the unwanted conception of an alien future spawned by foreign leaders compelling the warring sides to embrace; to trust; to submit.

Sanctions, protests, speeches and propaganda propelled South Africa into a new era where all black people felt briefly united, many liberal whites felt vindicated and large swathes of ordinary Afrikaners felt bewildered and anxious.

By the mid 1990s, Black rule had come to South Africa and though it sounded reasonable when described as “Majority Rule,” it tended to stick in the throat when the mechanics of who and how unravelled.

The transitional years were jubilant enough though and for a while, it seemed like this may well be a miraculous story of hope, humanity and exception.

Then the factions began to form, the fat began to thin and the new black government began to loose its grip. Corruption became rampant, infrastructure deteriorated, schools and hospitals slipped into degradation and a fresh wave of radical calls burst forth for liberation from the remnants of White Domination.

Men No More tells the story of Nantus van Heerden — a white South African who is carried along by the momentum that drew young Afrikaners from school to war and then set them adrift in a new future where all South Africans are destined to suffer in equal measure.

This Literary Fiction is both historic and contemporary.  The formative years of Nantus’ life are set within the events of the Bush War but Nantus’ story is centred on the Erotic Romance that unexpectedly comes to dominate his life. 

There are many stories to be sure — stories and songs about heroes and martyrs — about victories and defeats. The stories that are most deserving though, are often the ones that animate the banal — the struggles of forgettable people from indiscernible societies in irrelevant lands. 

For all of life’s contrived histories, the actual path from adolescence to adulthood to old age is one of perpetual struggle punctuated by brief, unexpected joys. So too, communities grow into societies that swell to form nations and these pull their people along from the indescribable darkness of a distant past to the bearable miseries of the here and now — then onwards towards an aspirational future where life is fair and God is good.

Unfortunately, contemporary African societies are vexatious and calamitous. The narratives of the ruling groups are crudely simple and stark — designed to overshadow any poetry and to crowd out sophistication. Victory has a political face and all else is denigrated to an implied tale of the cultures, clans and ideologies who’s irrelevance is evidenced by their place in today’s history.

Men No More tells one out of a billion possible stories. It tells this story honestly but it knows that tales like these mean nothing and are valued by no-one other than the characters themselves.