Shortcut to Success

Lazarus Motshabi sent his short story to our competition from his home in Tembisa in the northern area of Johannesburg. His biography includes the engaging remark “I took to amateur boxing and was K.O.'d by a lass named Martha… together we raised two children.” He works for a large British company in South Africa but “my real hobbies are reading and of course writing.” Mr. Motshabi's tale intrigued the judges particularly for its tone, a curiously picaresque and cheeky independence that gives his characters a blunt and engaging reality. There has of course been a great deal of material written on the difficulties of life for the African in the great urban centers of South Africa. These have ranged from documentary reports to savage polemics. Although one shares the indignation that necessarily suffuses such writing, many of us are aware that they do ignore the human note that must be consistently present for all the social disrepair of the system. It is this aspect that Mr. Motshabi's story delightfully p...