KZN LITERARY TOURISM
Information Services in Durban

Part memoir, part history, part personal meditation, Hazara is the story of a sugar farm north of Durban and the family who lived on it for five decades during the last century. The Arrowing of the Cane was set on the same farm, or if not the same, certainly its palimpsest, where owner James Colville, haunted by a colonial past and a claustrophobic present, knocks back the J&B as cane fields burn in the night and he feels compelled to write a first-person account articulating his predicament. When Mia (née Keith-Fraser) married James Woollam in 1924 her father bought her a farm as a dowry. Its undulating hills planted with vivid green fields of cane were offset by the blue of the Indian Ocean in the distance. James named the farm Hazara as a reminder of his service in the 106 th Hazara Pioneers during World War One; the Hazaras being one of the peoples of Afghanistan drawn under the umbrella of the British Raj. In time, Mia and James’s ownership of the farm was passed on to their adopted daughter Anne and her husband Mick Conyngham, the author’s parents. The story of Mia and James, Anne and Mick, and their extended families, provides the warp and weft of time and memory at the heart of Hazara. Yes, there are the drinks on the veranda and the tennis parties, but behind such surface distractions Conyngham details the accidents, happy and tragic, that make up the real work of living: childhood deaths, abandoned marriages, adoptions, fractured families. In honour of Biko Google has created a Google Doodle on their site’s homepage (pictured) to mark his birthday. From a KZN literary tourism point of view, the province marks several areas pertinent to Biko’s life. In 1966, he attended the Durban Medical School at the University of Natal (now the University of KwaZulu-Natal) Non-European section (UNNE) and it was here that he took part in the University student movement. In the early 1970s, he was a central figure in The Durban Moment, which formed an important part of the on-going struggle against Apartheid. Biko’s legacy in KZN includes the renaming of Mansfield road to his name in his honour. There is also a campus at the Durban University of Technology that bears his name. We encourage you to take the opportunity to visit these areas in order to learn about the places that shaped Biko’s life. We are a multi-faceted project which has conducted research on literary tourism, done reviews, interviewed authors, covered literary event and we’ve built up an online archive of authors linked to the KZN province. So from us at KZN Literary Tourism have a wonderful festive season and lots of love.