Soweto is a bewildering place for the average outsider, but also an incredible, throbbing universe of people rich and poor living side by side in anything from mansions to tin and canvas shacks. It can be a very dangerous place, but it has a mystique and warmth, a richness of colours and textures and sound all of its own.

This is one of many old mine dumps surrounding greater Johannesburg, taken over the roof of one of the Tracker vehicles.

The special delicacy sold at taxi ranks and traffic lights all over Soweto: in the local vernacular it is known as ‘Skop: derived from the Afrikaans word ‘kop”, meaning the cooked offal meat of cattle and sheep, the heads, shins, knuckles.

One of thousands of sangomas of Soweto doing her divining.

The bones thrown by a sangoma.

Johannesburg by night.

The badly decomposed body of an unknown man, found in one of the acid lakes among the mine dumps.

Power pylons marching past one of the mine dumps.

Some of thousands of shanties in the underprivileged neigbourhoods of Soweto.

The guys of Tracker in hot persuit of a hijacker that has fled to a mine dump.

The green tranquility of the historic wine town of Stellenbosch near Cape Town. This is a historic homestead that’s been converted into a luxury hotel: Lanzerac.

A river runs through it: the Eersterivier.

Download the podcast here.

Read the full interview here.

Here, she answers questions about Weeping Waters, the translation of her debut Afrikaans novel, Plaasmoord. ]]> https://karinbrynard.com/an-interview-with-karin-brynard/feed/ 0 https://karinbrynard.com/background-to-weeping-waters/ https://karinbrynard.com/background-to-weeping-waters/#comments Wed, 22 Oct 2014 11:39:44 +0000 http://karinbrynhard:8888/?p=234 I started writing books late in life – first I had to hunt and gather some life experience as well as stories. But I don’t regret this. After a long and interesting career as a journalist covering mostly politics in a turbulent South Africa, I could afford the luxury of turning into longer stories, writing about the things about life that interest me.

Been reading murder mysteries and thrillers since I can remember, so it was natural for me to turn to this genre when I started writing books.
One of the things that will never cease to amaze me about the reality we live in, is the human capacity for violence – and especially in men.

My ideas for books come from all over – from family arguments that are interrupted by violent events in every day South African life, to the beauty and magic of the natural world where we live.
Weeping Waters came from a fascination with a particularly nasty South African crime phenomenon, murder on a farm. The isolation on a big farm and the brutality of such murders became one of the central features in Weeping Waters.

Another aspect of the story is the historical background to a cultural minority , the Griqua people, who live in the outstretched and parched areas of the North Western Cape province. This is a forgotten group with an amazing history and a distinctive, ticklish and most poetic language.

North Western Cape Landscape