Book honours black soldiers of the sunken Mendi
EMOTIONS rose at the Amathole Museum in King William’s Town when Brenda Shepherd discussed her book, Men of Mendi.
The book honours the black soldiers who were lost when the SS Mendi was rammed by a meat ship and sank during WW1 100 years ago this year.
The steamship was carrying more than a thousand South Africans, many from the SA Native Labour Corps, to the warfront in France to support the British.
In the early hours of February 21, off the Isle of Wight, Darro, travelling at full speed in thick fog, rammed into the Mendi, which took down 615 soldiers from the corps to their deaths.
Many were from Pondoland, wrote Stephanie Victor, curator of the museum.
Shepherd said: “I first heard about the story of the Mendi on a radio station and I was moved when I heard about how the men stood united and danced and sang when they realised they were sinking and going to die with the ship.”
In 2004 Shepherd wrote the story of the men of Mendi as a film script, which won the best action drama at the Sethingi Film Festival.
“As much as everybody was excited about the film script, nobody was willing to produce the film because they said it would be extremely expensive, and I felt they needed to tell the story regardless which is why I wrote the book.”
Shepherd said the 300-page historical novel required extensive research and took her more than seven years to complete.