The Choice The Gayton Makenzie Story as told to Charles Cilliers

The Choice - The Gayton McKenzie Story as told to Charles Cilliers -  Printed wraps, 259pp, illus col. photos. A very good copy. X-Concepts Books, Cape Town 2007. Postage & packaging R25.00.
The Author was a man who was ready to leave jail and continue his life of crime when he saw something so jarring and horrific that he changed. Well known for his insprirational talks, his story and the shocking facts of prison life are told now for the first time.

The Choice is about a black man's journey in South Africa, beginning with petty crime and running through the whole gamut all the way to crime lord. But it was only during his prison term that McKenzie, on whom the book is based, witnessed the ultimate horror: a skinny white boy whom the author describes as "16 or more, but looks no older than 14," placed in his cell (with at least 80 occupants) and raped by at least 20 men for 8 hours or more. This debauchery finally awakened the human heart in the criminal's body, and lead to the inner change that culminated ultimately in the telling of this story.

Gayton McKenzie is a big, powerful man. He rose through the criminal ranks, and saw it all, or did it all. His inside story provides both a compelling and stomach-turning account of the desperation and deprivation that lies behind South Africa's crime stats.

The book is written with uncanny details, such as the giving of the chocolate bar to the white boy by the 28 gang members, on the morning of the great rape. Other criminals knew the significance of the giving and eating of the chocolate bar, and if the white boy didn't, he would soon find out how he was expected to repay the kindness.

The Choice is also a frank account of the racism in a black man's heart, and how the hardness of heart is finally softened by being exposed firsthand to that self-same inhumanity, though inflicted in the opposite direction. "In suffering, we are all the same," Cilliers, telling McKenzie's story, writes. "How can I step over this cosmically battered body, and sit down to breakfast? How can anyone?"