In the spring of 1999, in the beautiful hills of the KwaZulu-Natal
Midlands, a young white farmer is shot dead on the dirt road running
from his father's farmhouse to his irrigation fields. The murder is
the work of assassins rather than robbers; a single shot behind the
ear, nothing but his gun stolen, no forensic evidence like spent
cartridges or fingerprints left at the scene. Journalist Jonny
Steinberg travels to the Midlands to investigate. Local black
workers say the young white man had it coming. The dead man's father
says that the machinery of a political conspiracy has been set into
motion, that he and his neighbours are being pushed off their land.
Initially thinking that he is to write about an event in the recent
past, Steinberg finds that much of the story lies in the immediate
future. He has stumbled upon a festering frontier battle, the
combatants groping hungrily for the whispers and lies that drift in
from the other side. Right from the beginning, it is clear that the
young white man is not the only one who will die on that frontier,
and that the story of his and other deaths will illuminate a great
deal about the early days of post-apartheid South Africa. Sifting
through the betrayals and the poisoned memories of a century-long
relationship between black and white, Steinberg takes us to a part
of post-apartheid South Africa we fear to contemplate. Midlands is
about the midlands of the heart and mind, the midlands between
possession and dispossession, the midlands between the past and
present, myth and reality. Midlands is a tour de force of
investigative journalism.
