Bala’s Hill and Beyond

In 1942, Jay Sadhai was born into a sleepy sugar cane village in South Africa. Part of an Indian minority that existed displaced between the White and Black worlds of South Africa, Jay witnessed those worlds collide.

He grew up amongst the hardship, oppression and violence of apartheid era South Africa and was dragged into struggle against it when his father became a freedom fighter. His adolescence was spent in service to the struggle, helping to organise the local resistance and to hide political refugees, including Nelson Mandela, in his home.

As an adult, he became a medical doctor and saw first-hand the brutality of the apartheid regime, helping to patch up the bodies of political prisoners after interrogation. Moved to take a large role in the freedom struggle, he found himself hunted down by the secret police as a terrorist and finally fled to South Africa to save his family. He found refuge in Australia, only to learn that his adopted home had its own dark history, along with a few uncomfortable truths about our own multicultural society.

Part memoir, part meditation on the nature of racism and the forces that continue to shape our society, this story turns its unflinching gaze on the dark legacy of slavery everywhere it finds it. From the Indian ghettos of South Africa to Europe, to the halls of power in Australia and our own unspoken history of racial segregation, this luminous exploration of fear, hatred and forgiveness is a story no thinking person – in any country – can afford to miss.

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