AWARD-winning journalist and former newspaper editor, Russell Eldridge, has penned the book, Harry Mac, inspired by his father, Stan, who edited The Witness newspaper in Pietermaritzburg from 1961 until his death in 1974.

“I was looking for writing ideas while waiting to hear back from a publisher on a different manuscript,” Eldridge, who lives in Australia, said. “It struck me that I had always avoided writing about the richest, darkest vein of my life — the menacing 1960s, when apartheid was reaching the peak of its powers, leading to the start of the armed liberation struggle.

“The trigger for the story was something my father had told us as small kids; about some Maritzburg men who had come to him as editor of The Witness to gain his support for a plot to kill Verwoerd.

“My father would have nothing to do with it and laughed them off as fools. But now, years later, and my father long dead, I thought, what a good introduction to writing a fictional account of those appalling times.

“My dad might have laughed at the plot, but it was a time when The Witness editor’s home phone was tapped by the authorities, and when he was sued by the security police for his editorials. There was also a secret resistance organisation at work in Pietermaritzburg, the members of which are not generally known to this day.

“I wanted to show how everyday life for all South Africans was affected by the increasingly repressive laws, and the atmosphere of uncertainty and fear cultivated by the government.”

To write Harry Mac, Eldridge — who was born in Pietermaritzburg in 1951 and attended Scottsville Primary School and Maritzburg College and then the Pietermaritzburg campus of the then University of Natal — drew on his childhood memories and a lot of recent research.

“Of particular value was Natalia, the historical journal of the Natal Society. Editor Jack Frost, my old history teacher at Maritzburg College, kindly gave me permission to use material from the Natalia archives,” he said.

“I also drew on the stories my father told us about his adventures in Imfolozi and Hluhluwe when he travelled up there to report for The Witness on rhino conservation. He forged a friendship with the great conservationist Ian Player, and some of those stories are reworked into Harry Mac.”

Eldridge started his journalism career on The Witness in 1971 before moving to Johannesburg in 1974 for a brief stint with the South African Press Association. He then joined the sports staff of the Johannesburg Star, becoming one of the country’s leading sports writers.

Eldridge emigrated to Australia in 1979 to work for the Sydney Morning Herald before moving to New South Wales to take up a post with The Northern Star. He rose to become that paper’s editor and took early retirement after a career which saw him receive many Australian journalism honours, including a commendation in the national Walkley Awards.

Eldridge, a founding member of the Byron Bay Writers Festival, has written short stories and poetry, and co-wrote and edited Tennis: The South African Story.

He lives with his partner, Brenda, in the small community of Ocean Shores, two hours south of Brisbane.

• Harry Mac is being distributed in South Africa by Wild Dog Press.

WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT?

Harry Mac centres on Tom and Millie, best friends who live in a quiet lane on the edge of Pietermaritzburg.

The country is in turmoil. Nelson Mandela is on the run and the apartheid regime’s reign of terror reaches into every home.

Tom and Millie rely on each other to make sense of what’s going on in their lives and in the lives of their families, especially Harry Mac’s. Mac, the editor of a local newspaper, is a man of silences and secrets.

At school, Tom sits through lessons on the arms race and President Kennedy, waiting until he can be back on the lane where life is far more interesting…
Why does a black car drive slowly up the lane at night? Who is the mysterious crippled soldier who lives across the lane and pierces the quiet evenings with his shrieks? And what did Harry Mac mean when he wrote in his newspaper that ‘people disappear in the night’?

A series of shocking events and discoveries lead Tom closer to the truth, but threaten to tear his world apart.