OUT OF THE BLACK SHADOWS
By Stephen Lungu with Anne Coomes
Monarch Books. 253 pages
ISBN 1 85424 554 6
Stephen Lungu gives his experiences in the years when independence was coming to South Africa. It is an astonishing story.
The marvel is that Stephen survived his childhood at all, physically or emotionally. He was abandoned on the street by his mother whom he did not see again for many years. He then lived out of refuse bins and slept under a bridge or in the street. The description of his utter desolation and despair is moving. The Black Shadows were a gang of boys who were so desperate they did not care what they did. In the course of their experiences they became politicised and the book is worth reading for the moment when Stephen is converted at a tent mission with bombs ready in his pocket!
