Hein Scheffer

The author of A Journey of Choice, Hein Scheffer, was born in South Africa in the 1960s and lived there for over forty years before emigrating to the UK with his wife. The story of his personal life is intermingled with depictions of the memorable events from that period as well as a wide-ranging and well-researched description of his native country’s tortuous, 350-year history.

Hein was witness to many seismic changes to South Africa, including the perpetuation of an Apartheid regime in the face of sustained international condemnation and the rise of anti-Apartheid resistance movements, some of which pursued violent methods. Perhaps most significant has been the country’s emergence as ‘the rainbow nation’, which arguably began in 1990 with the release of Nelson Mandela from his long imprisonment on Robben Island.