The End of Normal

In 1976 Max du Preez witnessed the first stones thrown and the first shots fired in Soweto on June 16 as a young newspaper reporter. Having grown up in the heart of Afrikaner nationalism, it was the end of his normal. It was also the end of normal for white South Africans, most of whom were living in blissful ignorance. The events of 1976 set in motion a continuous series of developments that led to the ruling National Party and the main liberation movement reaching a settlement in 1994 that brought democracy to South Africa for the first time. Over the last fifty years, Du Preez has had a front-row seat witnessing South Africa’s darkest and brightest moments as a journalist. He paints a colourful story as a child of apartheid, doing his military service, studying at Stellenbosch University and starting his career at Afrikaans newspapers. But what he experienced and had to report on, eventually led him to rebel and become a traitor to his volk and a media terrorist exposing apartheid’s darkest secrets. In The End of Normal he explores how otherwise decent people came to implement and support an evil system like apartheid. He examines the long-term impact of June 16 and takes a hard look at white and black attitudes today, in particular the resurrection of Afrikaner nationalism A raw and honest account spiced with fascinating anecdotes, confessions and revelations.

Max du Preez is an author and journalist. He was the founder and editor of Vrye Weekblad, the first anti-apartheid newspaper in Afrikaans, in 1988. Among his numerous awards are the Pringle Award for advancing press freedom, honoris causa degrees from the universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch and the Free State, the Nat Nakasa Award for courageous reporting, the Louis M Lyons Award for conscience and integrity in journalism from Harvard University, the 2006 Yale Globalist Journalist of the Year Award, the Ahmed Kathrada Leadership Award and the Versnit and ATKV Prestige awards for his contribution to the Afrikaans language and culture. His previous book, A Rumour of Spring, received the Alan Paton Prize for non-fiction.