Veteran anti-apartheid journalist Gavin Evans bares his life as son of Jewish man-turned preacher man in this memoir

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

When Covid-19 hit the globe, we were all confused, worried about our lives and those of our loved ones. The existential question became a big issue occupying many people minds around the world. We all started reflecting on our lives, whether or not we had fulfilled our purpose on earth. It was really a time of personal crisis.

But it was also a time for the creative juice to be provoked. Writers wrote books and emotionally touching verses and poetry. Songs were composed and biographies and memoirs were written as some among us started to think hard about telling our own stories. Just in case. We wanted our footprint to be imprinted here on this earth, to just say we once lived here, so that if the world could accommodate and nurture other creatures like us after our demise, they would know that we also once lived here. Walked this earth. It was also the same time when Master KG came up with the song Jerusalema, or was it his fellow collaborator vocalist Nomcebo. Anyway, that song became the global hit that in a way assisted people to navigate the difficult time of Covid-19 as they saw their loved ones perish, they themselves got sick, unsure as to whether they would survive another day. The depressed and worried took to the dance floor and danced away their existential worries, thanks to Master G and vocalist Nomcebo who gave the world the much-needed comic relief through Jerusalema.

It, was also during that time, when I did my bit. I wrote my own reflections about the world and my space in it. But that is a story for another day.

The story today is not mine. It rather is the story of one brave writer, veteran journalist Gavin Evans. While some of us wrote things that we never finished and therefore never published any books, he wrote his and finished. And published.

His memoir written during that existentially difficult time, from 2020, at the height of the global pandemic, titled Son of a Preacher Man, is however not about Covid-19 and the conundrum it brought to his existential self. Of course, the urge to write this memoir, he told me in an interview when he was here in South Africa in June, on a short visit to promote the book, was triggered by the pandemic. That is as he, and just like the rest of us who could write took pen to paper, provoked by this global pandemic.

“I wrote this book during that time. I started reflecting on my life as the world faced that global pandemic. I was encouraged by my wife Margie (The author Margie Orford, a South African journalist, film director and author of crime fiction, children’s fiction, non-fiction and school who is now based in London),” Gavin told me.

Gavin’s book is about his life as he grew up in South Africa during apartheid. His life as captured in this book was quite eventful, including his evading of the much-dreaded conscription into the army by continuing to study, and in the process getting spared from being drafted into the apartheid army, and his tempestuous relationship with father, the late well-known Bishop of Port Elizabeth Bruce Evans who did not think twice about giving the young Gavin and his brother Michael physical punishment at the age of 14. After that fateful event, their relationship was never completely repaired till the father passed on, unfortunately at a time when father and son were getting closer, and they were about to let the past be and live on. Death did not give them that chance however as it strike at the most unfortunate time when father and son were eventually on the path of finding each other, repairing their fractured relationship.

This book is mainly about Gavin and his father. Of course, you will get bits and pieces about the other family members, but in the main, this is a book that tells of Bruce, a Jewish man who converted to Christianity and became a staunch Christian. After his conversion as an influential figure in Christian circles, including counting the late Arh-Bishop Desmond tutu in his close circle, was strict to his children, particularly his two sons, Gavin and Michael as he wanted them to walk the straight path of being Christians. This a faith he seemed to have committed himself to whole heartedly, even as he was still a proud Jew, that pride only extending to respecting the traditions, but not faith.

However, Gavin eventually drifted from the Christianity and became an atheist, something that of course made his father to feel guilty that he did not do enough to inculcate the love of Christianity as an unquestioned faith firmly drilled into his children’s hearts and minds.

“I was flying from Rio to San Marcos, Texas, in December 1977 for my year as a Rotary student, but it was hard to concentrate on the book I was reading on American history. I got to a bit on Roosevelt’s New Deal. This would have normally fascinated me but I struggled to focus because I knew I had an essential task to fulfil: a prayer to deliver. Finally, I closed my eyes: “Dear Lord, I know what I’m about to say will upset you, but I am taking a year off from being a Christian. I am having a year’s break. Amen.” That prayer marked the end of his Christian faith right up there in the skies.

However, this book will take you into spaces of vulnerability that Gavin was exposed to. For example, he was almost assassinated by the apartheid goons just as the country was about to become free, just before 1994. This I due to his underground work as an MK operative being handled by ANC leaders in exile. You will also get to know about Gavin, the journalist for the investigative anti-apartheid publication, The Weekly Mail.

But of course, currently Gavin lectures at Birkbeck, University of London and is the author of nine books, and remains a journalist writing for Aeon, The Conversation and the Guardian. He holds a doctorate.

Son of a Preacher Man is published by Jacana Media.