John Conyngham - a short biography and bibliography of this KwaZulu-Natal author.
John Conyngham (1954 - ) grew up on a sugar farm on
the North Coast of KwaZulu-Natal. He now lives in the
KwaZulu-Natal Midlands and is an award winning novelist
and editor of Pietermaritzburg's newspaper, The Natal
Witness. John Conyngham won the 1988 Olive Schreiner award
for prose with his first novel, The Arrowing of the
Cane (1986) set on the North Coast.
Selected Workfrom The Arrowing of the Cane (1986)
The road from Nonoti into the hills rises slowly out of
the mugginess of the town, switchbacking its way past deep
old houses seething with wispish Indian children, mango
trees with their glossy leaves, car and bus carcasses, and
fluttering flags on tall bamboo poles. Slowly,
reluctantly, the sprawling suburb succumbs to the
ubiquitous cane. Labouring under its load, the Land Rover
edges into the sighing greenness, rising and falling with
its ebb and flow.
Clusters of palms indicate farmhouses hugged to their
outbuildings by high hedges. Signs on the verge announce
the company's sections - Carrickfergus, Quantock, Umsundu
and Kerry Dale - each with its own manager, overseers,
sirdars, indunas and army of labourers. Next the polo
club, its team once provincial champions, holders of the
Waterford Cup, but now fighting relegation to the third
division. Then the company hospital with its two white
doctors and shuttered wards, and the little St John's
Church with its cemetery. Planter families lie neatly in
rows while the Indians' crosses wander from the bottom
fence into a grove of gums.
Gradually the air becomes more rarified. Coolness jets
through the vents. Far below to the left the Umvoti River
coils through another finger of KwaZulu which was a
hotspot during the Bambata Rebellion. Now overpopulated,
overgrazed and rutted, the valley looks idyllic to
strangers crossing this neck miles above it. There is a
lay-by from which tourists can take photographs of the
picturesque hutted kraals. As with anything gross,
distance placates the onlooker.
After another steep ascent I reach Manning's Post, the
local trading store and bus terminus where each morning
one of the gardeners collects the newspaper, and returns
in the afternoon for the post. The familiar sign - Rangoon
Estate - is on the right, swaying gently from twin chains
above the T-junction. Beyond it spreads a neighbour's
plantation of bananas, the ripening bunches swathed in
hessian.
The wide district road with its harsh all-weather surface
bisects the farm and descends to the mill in the valley.
Around it capillaries a network of private roads and
cane-breaks. Continuing past the mouth of the avenue, I
weave along a series of overgrown tracks to the cutting
where I consult with the induna. Several men are absent;
otherwise all seems to be well. A tractor and loaded trailer
move slowly across the row corrugations and I dart ahead of
them, doubling back to the avenue.
As I enter the vaulted shadow, a puff adder is crossing
the pink gravel, writhing its chain pattern across the
open ground. Hideously distended like a length of diseased
bowel, it hurries as the Land Rover approaches, entering
the path of the right front wheel. To continue would mean
popping it, but I decide against it, bearing fractionally
to the left as it disappears into the undergrowth
bordering the Indians' houses. Why the sudden magnanimity?
I ask myself, but the answer isn't forthcoming.
Bibliography1986. The Arrowing of the Cane. Craighall : Ad
Donker.
1990. The Desecration of the Graves. Parklands: Ad.
Donker.
1998. The Lostness of Alice. Johannesburg: Ad Donker. - Nonoti -
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