Silf

SILF is an acronym for "Sweet Innocent Little Farmboy," the author's alter-ego. SILF: Book 1 is the story of a mischievous white child who grew up in a dysfunctional family on his parents' tobacco farm in southern Africa in the early 1950s and 1960s in British colonial Southern Rhodesia. His story is one of growing up as a little bwana with his shamwari, Dickson and other farm Africans, and attending boarding school in the early 1960s. The book deals with the first twelve years of Silf's life. His anecdotes are reminiscent of the "SPUD" series of schoolboy antics, combined with a touch of Bryce-Courtney's "Power of One." Silf's story is one of parental neglect and unwilling parenthood. He experiences a tempestuous relationship with his father and struggles for approval, recognition and affirmation by his father. Silf and his sister Foofa become unwilling sacrifices on the altar of their mother's political dreams, which she uses to escape from her humdrum existence as a farmer's wife and a mother. The children come to the painful realisation that that they are unwanted, and that their parents are flawed creatures made of clay. They are effectively raised by an aunt and Nanna, their grandmother.
About the Author: Graham Bursey, the author of the SILF series, was born in June 1952 in Southern Rhodesia, which was a self-governing British colony in Africa. It later became known as Rhodesia, and then Zimbabwe. He grew up on a farm owned by his parents in the Banket-Sinoia area which was about 120 kilometres north-west of the Capital, Salisbury. He attended various schools in Southern and Northern Rhodesia, as a day scholar and then as a boarder in the 1950s and 1960s. He attended University in South Africa in the 1970s and graduated with B.A and LL.B degrees. While studying, he got married. In between studies, he also farmed with his father, and worked on Alaska Mine, near Sinoia. He worked-off his Rhodesian government bursary as a Public Prosecutor in various Magistrates Courts in Rhodesia and eventually became a Magistrate in Sinoia from 1978-1980. As magistrates were "essential services," he became a volunteer Police Reservist doing "Ops Room" and radio duties over weekends, to make him feel a bit better about not "doing his bit" with the rest of the Rhodesians, who were heavily involved in the war effort, and on endless "call-up" duties in the bush fighting terrorists. He and his wife and two sons moved to South Africa in 1980 after the bush war ended, where he became an attorney (solicitor) and then a Public Prosecutor in the Magistrates Courts in Natal. He was later called to the Bar and become an advocate (barrister), where he served as Deputy Attorney-General on secondment to Venda, (1984-1987) one of the so-called independent homelands in South Africa, on the Zimbabwe border. The author and his family eventually moved to Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape in 1988, where he prosecuted many murder trials, including the infamous "necklace murders" and farm murders. He later joined the Bar in Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth as an advocate in private practice. He later remarried. He and his wife enjoy bush camping in various African countries, game-viewing, exploring and snorkelling.