Change for Sixpence

Where Sixpence Lives
By Norma Kitson
London: Chatto and Windus. 1986. 350 pp.
Reviewed by Connie Frazer

Not a new book, but one you can't put down. The intriguing title caught my eye as I entered the Adelaide public library.

Where Sixpence Lives is the story of Norma Kitson, who grew up in Durban, South Africa, surrounded by black servants who chided her when she was naughty. “Look at Sixpence, how he listens to his mother. Sixpence can't have a house like you. He doesn't have toys, books. Not much water. Where Sixpence lives is nothing! You very lucky girl.”

Sixpence was the small son of her mother's black maid, who could visit his mother only for a few weeks every year. Her father used to tell her bedtime stories which, she later discovered, were the disguised radical history of black South Africa not taught to her in school.

At 18 years of age, no longer able to accept the status quo, Norma joined the African National Congress, working in the underground for the cause of black liberation. She met and married fellow rebel David Kitson. In 1964 after the arrest of Nelson Mandela, David was captured and sentenced to 20 years in jail. Norma herself was arrested and interrogated. In exile in London, she continued to fight.

Familiar names like Mandela and Oliver Tambo pass through her life and others, both black and white, whose courage makes you marvel at the determination of the human spirit.

Written in an easy style, this is a forceful political indictment and a warm and moving story of what the fight for a free South Africa is really like.

This article was posted on the Green Left Weekly Home Page.
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