Dark White Light Black

A captivating chronicle of our fragile country's unspoken truths

Publication Info:

AuthorMalvory Adams
ISBN9781928530947
PublisherNaledi
Year Of Publication2023

Online Availability:

Available here:

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About Dark White Light Black

Dark White Light Black probes some of the most pivotal issues facing South Africa today: race, ‘othering’, unremembering, identity, gangsterism, addiction, and the process of making meaning of a society that has become unhinged from its moorings.
The writer walks with the reader through a lion-hearted personal lens and through the purgatory of his travelogue, which starts 15 years before his birth in the tiny Eastern Cape hamlet of Breidbach. He dramatically recounts how his German grandfather robbed him of his grandparents.
Premised on that epoch-making deed, he takes the reader on a painful journey of uprooting, an agonising coming of age, and the intricacies of navigating cultural belongings and a bloodline concoction.
Next, he plummets horrifyingly into a netherworld of alcoholism culminating in a spine-chilling desperate act.
On this treacherous odyssey to restoration and redemption, the veils of darkness lift, and he now lives in a world that is not stark black and white but where the grey mitigates the storms.

A British music reviewer describes Malvory Adams, a.k.a. MeZZo, as a writer who teaches through song.
MeZZo's musical career started in small-town halls and private homes in his hometown Breidbach, King William's Town in the Eastern Cape in the 70s -- no electricity and a generator fuelling the music flames.
Away from music he plies his trade at the public broadcaster, the SABC, as a TV News Bulletin Writer for Afrikaanse TV Nuus on SABC2.
His media career started in 1983 at Die Burger in Cape Town.
At Die Burger, he coined the phrase 'Santos Jou Lekke Ding' when the 'People's Team' still had PSL status, and in 1996 at City Press, the phrase 'Xhosanostra' about the then sports rulers who hailed from one region, the Eastern Cape. Western Province Rugby adopted the same slogan: “WP, Jou Lekke Ding”.
He is also the singer-songwriter MeZZo, who released a 16-track album 'No Color' and numerous Singles – e.g. 'Do It Now, 'Let Humanity Reign', 'Real Love', and a "Song For The Nation" titled 'Togetha As 1, This song encourages a spirit of oneness.
He first honed his vocal and song-writing prowess under the watchful eye of musicologist RJ Benjamin.
Malvory occupied senior editorial positions at numerous mainstream newspapers -- both Afrikaans and English publications - in 38 years.
He also received accolades, such as:
a) A Commended Award in the category Analysis and Commentary at the prestigious 2007 South African Mondi Shanduka Newspaper Awards for a 3-part series on transformation in sport.
b) Between 2004 and 2007, he co-owned and edited a multi-award-winning Western Cape community newspaper, West Xpress. Xpress scooped three national awards - including Best Emerging Publication at the Sanlam Community Press Awards.
c) He is also a Clive Menell Fellow for senior journalists at Duke University (2001) in North Carolina, USA (2001).
In 2021, he penned a memoir titled Als is nie net swart en wit nie, followed up by ‘Dark White Light Black’.