Memory is a peculiar and unyielding entity. It lingers in the taste of sun-warmed mangoes, the
smell of rain on parched ground, and the sound of a language spoken in low tones. Memory
serves as a bridge between Dr. Norman Nathan’s childhood South Africa and the life he created
far abroad. In Apartheid – South African Memories, his memoir, the threads of personal history,
medicine, and an unwavering moral compass are sewn together to create a living, breathing
mosaic of a world that is both beautiful and horrific.
Nathan was born in Johannesburg during the apartheid era, and his life plays out like a movie
reel: a young man clutching a rifle during mandatory military service, a doctor tending to
wounds at a Zululand clinic where the atmosphere buzzed with resiliency, and a youngster riding
a bike through streets laced with jacaranda. However, this is more than just a memoir; it’s also a
protest, a plea, a eulogy, and a love letter.
Nathan’s Greenside childhood is painted in vivid contrasts. There’s the idyllic: free ice cream at
the bioscope, soccer games under thunderclouds, the earthy aroma of Franz’s pap en vleis
simmering in the backyard. Then, the jarring: the crack of a police truncheon splitting a Zulu
man’s scalp, the terror of Jeremiah vanishing into apartheid’s machinery, the silent grief of a dog
dying in his arms after a racial attack.
These moments aren’t merely recounted; they’re felt. Nathan’s prose doesn’t flinch from the
grotesque inequalities—the “boys’ meat” parcels delivered separately, the whispered warnings to
carry a pass—but it also refuses to reduce his world to darkness. Instead, he shows how joy and
injustice coexisted, often in the same breath. His family’s warmth, the loyalty of servants like
Franz and Lizzie, and the quiet rebellion of teaching Nomaan to read under apartheid’s nose
become acts of quiet defiance.
Key Moments from Nathan’s Childhood:
Nathan’s love for wildlife threads through the memoir like a golden seam. The Kruger National
Park chapters are lyrical, alive with the drama of predator and prey: lions scaling a ruined
staircase in Gorongoza, a kudu bull leaping over the family Hudson, the haunting silence of a
post-war Mozambique where landmines replaced elephants. His descriptions—whether of a
chameleon’s “Egyptian gait” or the Milky Way arching over a campfire—reveal the eye of a
photographer and the soul of a naturalist.
But even here, politics intrude. The park rangers’ tales of Cold War-fueled destruction mirror
South Africa’s own unraveling. Nature, like humanity, becomes a casualty of ideology.
Wildlife Encounters That Shaped Him:
The transition from army barracks to Wits Medical School is where Nathan’s voice sharpens.
The absurdity of apartheid logic—training him to shoot “communist guerrillas” while denying
Black students admission—fuels his awakening. His medical training is a masterclass in
apartheid’s contradictions: dissecting cadavers alongside Indian classmates (but no Africans),
volunteering at Alexandra Clinic where asthma kills for lack of an ambulance, smuggling banned
films like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner into dimly lit living rooms.
The Charles Johnson Memorial Hospital chapters are particularly arresting. In Zululand, Nathan
stitches wounds, extracts teeth (badly), and learns from sangomas whose scars map diagnoses no
textbook taught him. The hospital, a microcosm of integration, draws police surveillance like
flies—proof that healing, too, could be subversive.
Turning Points in His Medical Journey:
Then, the terror. The late-night calls from John Vorster Square, the phantom accusations of hit-
and-run and murder, the loaded rifle in his hands as he scans the roof for spies. These scenes
pulse with a thriller’s tension, laying bare the cost of dissent. Nathan’s relationship with Jay, an
Indian classmate, becomes a dangerous act of rebellion—one that could end careers, or lives.
Yet, even under siege, humor flickers. A professor diagnosing Mr. Universe as a “true
mesomorph,” the escapades of Des (the cousin who jammed with Cuban musicians while dying
of cancer), the hyena that sniffs out biltong in a motel room—these moments refuse to let
oppression monopolize the narrative.
Moments of Fear & Defiance:
The memoir closes with Nathan boarding a plane, Johannesburg’s mine dumps shrinking beneath
him. America, with its Kennedys and King, beckons as a beacon—but the grief of exile is
palpable. Decades later, as a physician treating coal miners and cystic fibrosis patients in the
U.S., Rwanda’s Kibogora Hospital volunteers at his side, the question lingers: Can you ever truly
leave?
The answer, perhaps, is in the pages of this book. Memory doesn’t release us; it demands we
bear witness. Nathan’s memoir does exactly that—not with the sterile detachment of a historian,
but with the wounded hope of a man who still hears the echoes of Miriam Makeba’s voice in the
Wits Great Hall, still smells the blood on Tiger’s fur, still tastes the dust of Tunduma on his
tongue.
In an era of rising global authoritarianism, Apartheid – South African Memories is more than a
memoir. It’s a compass. Nathan’s journey—from complicit bystander to compassionate dissident
—mirrors the choices we all face when systems demand our silence. His prose, at once tender
and unsparing, reminds us that resistance isn’t always grand gestures; sometimes, it’s in the
mundane: a shared meal, a secret lesson, a refusal to look away.
Lessons for Today’s World:
And so, the book endures—not as a relic, but as a rallying cry. Under African skies, the past is
never past. It’s a ripple in the water, a scar on the land, a story that refuses to be buried.