The Lost Boys of Bird Island, by Mark Minnie and Chris Steyn with a foreword by Marianne Thamm, is out now from NB Publishers.

It is the late 1980s. Serious allegations surface against three prominent National Party cabinet ministers, one of them the second‐most powerful man in the land. They are, it is said, regularly abusing young boys on an island just off the coast of Port Elizabeth.

From opposite ends of South Africa, a brave cop and a driven journalist investigate. Mark Minnie and Chris Steyn independently uncover evidence of a dark secret. But the case only surfaces briefly before it disappears completely.

Thirty years later, the two finally connect the dots to expose this shocking story of criminality, cover‐ups and official complicity in the rape and possible murder of children, most of them vulnerable and black.

About the authors

Mark Minnie is a former cop who worked as a Narcotics Bureau officer for the South African Police during the 1980s. He left South Africa for England in 2007, and acquired a CELTA qualification for teaching English as a foreign language through Cambridge University in London. Shortly thereafter he began working as an English examiner for Cambridge University and the British Council in China. He is currently employed as an English teacher at a university in Guangzhou, China. Watching sport with expats, especially games involving South African teams, is his favourite pastime in a country far from home.

Chris Steyn is a writer and former journalist. Over the years she has worked for the Rand Daily Mail, The Star and the Cape Times. In 1986 she went into exile to avoid imprisonment for refusing to testify against a source. When she returned to South Africa, she was arrested and tried for protesting against an apartheid government proclamation that drastically curtailed press freedom. Chris later became editor of the investigative unit of the Independent Newspapers group. She is the proud co-owner of a bookshop in the seaside village she now calls home.

Categories Non-fiction South Africa South African Current Affairs

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