19

Apr

Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Impostor!

My good friend, Mr Bright, told me a story about how the late dictator and father of the nation of Malawi was not Malawian at all.

He was, said Mr Bright, an American impostor. I did a little investigating and when a new Banda took office in Malawi I decided it was time to write about it. The Argus published it – see below for the story. (By the way, that’s not Mr Bright waterskiing in the picture. Nor is it Hastings Banda or Richard Armstrong – it’s a waiter at a resort at Lake Malawi in about 1980. He came out every day at 5pm, for show, and they sold these postcards at reception. Cringingly colonial, wouldn’t you say, old sport?)

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Non-Fiction

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16

Apr

The Fight the World Forgot

While I was doing a little research for my novel I came across an event from my childhood I’d completely forgotten about. I remember it fascinating me, my best friend and all the adults in my far northern Transvaal town back in 1979. It was the heavyweight title fight between Gerrie Coetzee, a white South African, and John Tate, an African American.

My family weren’t boxing fans, not even sports fans, really. But this fight was huge because we were so cut off from the world at the time. The more I researched, the more I was sucked into the story: it was black vs white at the height of apartheid; the fight took place in the middle of a worldwide sports boycott; the money involved was huge; the crowd was the biggest for a boxing event worldwide in 50 years; it happened in Loftus Versfeld, the crucible of rugby in SA; Tate’s life and death is so tragic it’s a fascinating story on its own; and to top it all off there was a massive, shocking sex scandal!

But people don’t remember the fight, or confuse it with another. So I decided to write about it. Ideally, I’d like to turn it into a documentary one day, but right now it’s an 8000-word article.

I’ve sent it to a few magazine editors… I’ll let you know what their feedback is.

11 years ago Short URL 3 Comments

Favourites/Non-Fiction

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16

Apr

What is the Writer at Large, Medium and Small?

The Writer at Large, Medium and Small is a place I’m going to collect thoughts on starting out as a freelance writer. I’ll tell you what I’m working on, what it’s like trying to get published, what it’s like researching something, how I find topics to write about, my successes and failures and a few samples of my completed work.

My name is Trevor Sacks and I’m a recovering copywriter. I’ve been clean for two years now… well, I had a few relapses when some freelance came my way. You know how hard it is to resist. But really, I’ve spent the last two years writing a novel and I’ll spend the rest of this year polishing it before I beg a publisher to do something with it.

I love to write fiction and hope one day I’ll be able to support myself doing it. But I realise I’ll have to be extremely lucky to do so. Being good isn’t good enough. So in the meantime, join my while I try to find a way to not starve. I’ve written a few non-fiction articles and found I really enjoy researching and writing about things other people have forgotten about or overlook. I hope somebody will be interested in reading them.

So, essentially, this is a blog about writing, writing about writing, writing about being a writer. And probably a few other things that will come to me as I get into it. This is my first blog, so go easy on me.

Trevor

11 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

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