White Paper, White Ink

Welcome to Picketberg Prison and to the historic moment in time when the gang-lord keepers of the code, for their own reasons, decide to publish the entire Pure White Book. Two prisoners, neither of them gangsters, find themselves drawn into this project as ghostwriters. They are Sipho Madini—a street kid and gifted writer and poet wrongfully imprisoned for burglary—and Don February, in his late 60s, who grew up in District 6 as a young gangster but who has since distanced himself from a gangster identity. Don, who did time on Robben Island in the 1970s, when it was still called “the University,” has made it his mission to transform this backwater prison into a place of higher learning. Even the gangsters begin to show interest in Don’s weekly discussion groups which deal with the themes of colonization, dispossession, and slavery. Through this process they begin to interrogate their own gang histories, inscribed on their bodies in the form of tattoos, and their own stories begin to unfold and weave in ways they never could have predicted. This is the story of two men’s efforts to not only survive harsh prison conditions but also to bring mental freedom and higher consciousness to the other inmates, challenging them to ask what the difference is between a freedom fighter and a common criminal. It is a crash course in South African history presented as a prison thriller.