Ernst Havemann, now living in Nelson, was born in Zululand, South Africa in 1918. The son of a privileged landowner, he grew up with Zulu children as his playmates. "The more I look back," he says, "the more distressing it is to realize how things have deteriorated under the apartheid system." Stories in his first collection, Bloodsong and Other Stories (Thomas Allen), are sad commentaries on the South Africa he chose to leave behind. With Afrikaans as his native tongue, Havemann credits his creative writing teachers at Nelson's defunct David Thompson University for molding his work since his arrival in Canada in 1978.

[Winter / BCBW 1989]