The Lost Language of the Soul

It's not easy writing a review of a book written by a friend. It's always a bit worrying. I have enormous respect for Mandla Langa. After reading The Lost Language of the Soul, that respect has grown.
Few people could write such a book. Even fewer have the depth of knowledge and personal experience of Mandla Langa, not to mention his gift for story-telling.
The Lost Language of the Soul is, to a large extent, our ability or inability to tell the truth – to bring pain and deception out into the open. It's an intimate look at treason and the traitors we believe we can trust but who ultimately turn on us. As Mandla Langa so eloquently writes – every organisation has traitors, even at the highest levels, and the African National Congress is no exception. The old white government in South Africa turned members of the same family in order to infiltrate the movement; some of those traitors are almost certainly continuing to occupy positions of authority and influence. Some of these people are responsible for the deaths of heroes, but the likelihood of the facts being made available for public consumption us low.
Mandla Langa is writing about a war, and, as the well-worn cliché goes – truth is the first casualty of war.
I am thankful for what this book has taught me. The Lost Language of the Soul should be prescribed reading in South African secondary schools – especially in former Model C schools and their private equivalents.
The Lost Language of the South is not only a history book – it's a gripping thriller. Bravo Mandla!