When Redi Tlhabi is eleven years old, two years after her father’s death, she meets the handsome, charming and smooth, Mabegzo. A rumoured gangster, murderer and rapist, he is a veritable ‘jack roller’ of the neighbourhood. Against her family’s wishes, she develops a strong connection to him. Tlhabi herself doesn’t understand why she is drawn to Mabegzo and why, at eleven, she feels a brokenness that only Mabegzo can fix.

'Endings & Beginnings' is Tlhabi’s emotional journey back into her past to finally humanise this man whose hollowness mirrored her own and who was hated and abhorred by so many when he was alive. Through interviews and deep emotional conversations with his family, friends and those who knew him, Redi finally gets to fit together the pieces of the puzzle that was Mabegzo. Her revelations do not in any way excuse who and what he was, but they go a long way in shedding light on the scourge that is violence in our societies and why young black men are consumed by anger.

'Endings & Beginnings' is published by Jacana Media