Highveld Ways

Recollections of life in Johannesburg in the 1990s

By: Valerie Poore

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This is the third book about the author's life in South Africa. In Highveld Ways, Valerie and her daughters join her husband in Johannesburg and begin a decade of life in and around the city. During the years that follow her arrival in 1989, Valerie explores the Highveld area on which Johannesburg is built and despite her rural leanings, she learns to love South Africa's biggest, baddest city and its environs. The family move house five times and each new home brings its own memories and adventures, including trips to Namibia, Zimbabwe and other parts of South Africa. The backcloth to this memoir is the turbulent political upheaval of the early nineties as well as the emergence of the New South Africa under Nelson Mandela. While no story about South Africa at the time can escape the often violent lead-up to the changes, Valerie's memories are focused on the events, the places and above all, the people who filled her life at the time. Anecdotal rather than chronological, this book mixes the ups and downs of family life with history, political change and descriptions of local places. To do the decade justice would really take five books, not one, so the intention is rather to give an impression of what it was was like to live in Johannesburg in the notorious nineties.