Born in Africa: Uprooted by the Winds of Change

About the Book

This book was written to explain a situation where those who seemed to have everything became only dust to be swept into the sea. Or so it seemed, but that dust had life within it and was to sow another future in another land.

About the Author

Former East London City Councilor Rosemary Venter was born in the Transvaal in 1928. She met her husband, Neil, at Rhodes University, where they both studied. They married in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, in 1950. Rosemary stayed home to raise their two children, while Neil followed his career. They were optimists with faith in themselves. Life threw them many challenges as they moved from Southern Rhodesia, to Zambia, and back to South Africa, always aiming to provide a better life for their children. Their horizons widened to include business and civic affairs. Pressure grew as apartheid policies crippled the divided country. Adapt or sink called for new talents and strengths. The country needed leadership where all people could take their rightful place in society. Reconciliation meant adjustment and sacrifice. Rosemary and Neil now live quietly in New Zealand. Bruce Venter was born in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1951. Educated in South Africa, he went on to study dentistry at the University of the Witwatersrand. In the late 1970s at the age of twenty-seven, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. His previous book, “Paranoid Schizophrenia, My Label, My Life,” tells his remarkable story. Now he spends his time writing as well as studying music theory, the piano, and clarinet, in order to enter university again to obtain another degree, in music.