[imagesource: FP / John Wessels]

Around two months ago, Andrew Harding released his non-fiction thriller, These Are Not Gentle People.

You may recognise his name from his reporting with BBC Africa, and he’s also the author of the internationally acclaimed The Mayor of Mogadishu.

If you can’t be bothered to read a book, there’s also the option of listening to Blood Lands, a five-part podcast series that covers the same story.

It was released back in mid-September, but we’ve just stumbled across it now, and it’s a remarkable combination of a true-crime thriller and an examination of South Africa’s political and social fault lines.

Let’s get the basics, via the episode one write-up:

Blood Lands is a true story told in five parts which takes us to the heart of modern South Africa. At dusk on a warm evening in 2016, two men arrive, unexpectedly, at a remote South African farmhouse. The frenzy that follows will come to haunt a community, destroying families, turning neighbours into traitors, prompting street protests, threats of violence, and dividing the small farming and tourist town of Parys along racial lines.

Blood Lands is a murder investigation, a political drama, a courtroom thriller, and a profound exploration of the enduring tensions threatening the “rainbow nation”.

Image: Pan Macmillan / The Reading List

Over the course of three years, correspondent Andrew Harding has followed every twist of the police’s hunt for the killers, the betrayals that opened the door to an explosive trial, and the fortunes of all those involved – from the dead men’s families to the handful of men controversially selected for prosecution.

It isn’t easy listening, but it beats listening to South African talk radio, or hearing five minutes of music interspersed with 15 minutes of advertising and waffle.

You can listen to the first episode here, and you’ll find all five episodes on the ‘Seriously’ podcast channel via PlayerFM.

[source:playerfm]