Clare Stewart was born in South Africa but grew up, and lived for different lengths of time, in Lesotho, Malawi and Kenya, the US, UK and Ireland before returning to SA in the 70s. A single white mother of two mixed-race children living in Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal) during the height of apartheid faction fighting, she was recruited by Ronnie Kasrils into the ANC’s armed wing Umkhonto weSizwe (MK). Aware of the dangers she faced as an ANC activist, she’d asked her sister Rachel to take care of her children should the worst happen. Soon after, on 10 November 1993, Clare went missing...
What made you want to write Clare’s story and what did you feel you had in common with the storyline?
Clare’s story came to me, and then stuck with me, through a combination and coalescence of different factors, including a certain amount of coincidence.
I first heard about Clare and her murder about a decade ago from my
