I was born in 1965 in Natal, South Africa. I was uprooted at 9 when my father landed a job on a wine farm in the Cape. At 14 I discovered South Africa was a world pariah and that black men were shot in their call for freedom. Baited as a kaffirboetie (a niggerlover), I became an outsider at Paarl Boys' High. I studied at Rhodes University and then I was drafted into the army. I would not carry a gun to defend the apartheid regime. Nelson Mandela was in jail during all this time. My novels so far (novels: Karoo Boy 2004 and Blood Orange 2005) draw on memories of my boyhood in apartheid South Africa. Bafana Bafana: a story of soccer, magic and Mandela (a fable for young folk) is a bid to draw the eye to the hazardous fate of street boys in Cape Town and to teach young folk around the world something about Mandela.