Love, Apartheid and Other Tales from Africa (The African Quartet Book 2)

Love, Identity, and Reckoning in a Divided Land

In Love, Apartheid and Other Tales from Africa, Emerson Grossmith shares a deeply personal account of his 1984 journey through apartheid-era South Africa and beyond. What began as an adventure turned into a confrontation with a country gripped by systemic injustice—and with his own assumptions as a white outsider.

As Grossmith reunites with his Afrikaner girlfriend, he’s drawn into a country where love and ideology collide. From the segregated streets of Johannesburg to the post-colonial Frontline States of Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania, he chronicles the tension of navigating both privilege and resistance in a land defined by sharp racial divides and political turmoil.

This memoir is more than a travel narrative. It’s a raw, honest reckoning with complicity, identity, and the personal cost of witnessing injustice up close.

Discover a story of love and moral awakening in one of the most complex regions of the 20th century—order Love, Apartheid and Other Tales from Africa today.

Excerpt from the book

Living away from your home for a year takes its toll on you in unexpected ways, some that you do not recognize or are unable to acknowledge. Eighteen months of living as a nomad in Africa, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and the Far East is quite another matter.

When I finally returned home to Canada in 1983, some of my friends did not even recognize me.

That being said, I did not recognize Canada either—it must be culture shock.

During my year long journey, I had fallen in love with a South African woman, whom I will call Annakie. We had met on the Ma’ayan Baruch Kibbutz in northern Galilee during my summer of love—1982.

It was now one and half years since we had said goodbye at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel, but I was still madly in love with her.

Naturally, we had kept in touch with weekly long-distance aerogrammes, but words did not suffice, and we longed for each other’s warm embrace.

I needed to get to South Africa pronto.

Getting to some place is one thing; the reason for going there is another.

‘Why would you want to go to South Africa?’ A question I was often asked by my friends and family.

Why would anyone from the ‘Western’ world want to go to visit a country that was called the ‘the skunk of the Free World”?

What could I say?

I had been struck down by the oldest of ailments—I was in love.

However, there were two hurdles to overcome before embarking for the African continent, and this was just the beginning of many such obstacles that would dog me throughout my upcoming trip.

For starters, I would need a visitor visa for South Africa—not an easy visa to obtain during the apartheid era since most countries had cut off diplomatic ties with them.

First, I needed a new Canadian passport to replace my temporary one.

‘Sir,’ said the passport officer at Calgary’s Immigration Canada counter, ‘Why is your present passport only good for three months?’

‘Because my last one was stolen in New Delhi.’ I countered.

However, a passing female colleague momentarily distracted him.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘How did you lose your passport again?’

‘I didn’t lose it. It was stolen.’ I was losing my patience.

I reminded him. ‘Just enough time to get back to Canada.’

To be fair, this was 1983, before the cyber age, before watermarks and scan codes cluttered up our passports, and way before 9/11, so obviously, this chap had not seen this scribbling in a passport before, and you could not blame him for being a tad suspicious.

It was as if I had written the comment myself.

I paid the fee and left the office but quickly had to turn around and cut back into the line-up.

‘What is it now?’ the officer snapped.

‘I need my old passport back when you are finished.’

‘Why?’

I gave him a weird look, ‘Because of the visas and stamps in it.’

I wondered if this person had ever set foot outside Canada.

I had just travelled around the world and even know this was a newish passport, it still had a story to tell like the one I am about to tell you.