Amabookabooka: The Quarantine Chronicles - Chris Whitfield

Amabookabooka, the literary podcast produced by Jonathan Ancer and Dan Dewes, travels into the heart of the lockdown to bring you quick and quirky interviews with SA's finest authors via everyone's favourite isolation mode of communication, Zoom.

Today’s guest has written two very different books - On Your Bike, which is a guide to mountain biking in South Africa.

The second is Paper Tiger: Iqbal Survé and the Downfall of Independent Newspapers, which is a riveting account of what happened to the Cape Times when it was taken over by the controversial businessman.

Chris Whitfield, who wrote On Your Bike with his brother Tim, is an accomplished mountain biker with four Cape Epic Finisher’s T-shirts hanging in his cupboard. He wrote Paper Tiger with Alide Dasnois, the erstwhile editor of the Cape Times who was fired by Survé the morning after Nelson Mandela died.

Chris, who was the most senior editorial person in Independent when it was taken over by Survé, had a front-row seat to the unfolding drama.