Shaun Johnson Books

Book by Hadland, Adrian, Rantao, Jovial

As a Native Commissioner through the 1940's to 1960's, George Jameson was responsible for the welfare of the natives' in his appointed region. He prided himself on furthering relations between communities, speaking several tribal languages fluently and developing a reputation as a man to be trusted and sought after for help and advice. With a thriving young family, a devoted wife and a quick succession of promotions, George is proud of everything he has achieved so far, in particular the understanding he is fostering between whites and blacks. Then, in the wake of the 1948 elections, George feels a shift in the Native Affairs Department's agenda. As he is shunted from one outpost to another, his role becoming ever more hopeless, his place in South Africa's future increasingly hazy, he feels the weight of his powerlessness and finds himself fighting off a crippling depression. "The Native Commissioner" is a heart-wrenching portrayal of a kind and conscientious man who felt himself cast adrift under the weight of South African apartheid.

Sam Jameson was eight years old when his father George died in shocking circumstances. He decides some forty years later, to finally open the box of his father's papers which his mother had passed on to him, and he left sealed for two decades. In trying to piece together a picture of his unknown father, Sam discovers a troubled, doomed, but extraordinaly man - and an extraordinary story. George was a Native Commissioner in the old South Africa, deeply unsure of the morality of his work, but unable to escape it. The backdrop is the lush and harsh landscape of South Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, in the early years of apartheid ....