Which South African journalist was imprisoned by the first prime minister of Rhodesia to be native to the country?
The Word of a Gentleman The Word of a Gentleman (1981) (later retitled "Undercut") was the third of five novels written by Peter Niesewand, the South African journalist who spent 73 days in solitary confinement for his coverage of Ian Smith's government in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Set in the fictional former British colony of St David's Island, it has no principal protagonists beyond the corrupt trio of Claud Montrose, Alec Clifton, and Stephen Luther, but the subversive influence of the American agent Clive Lyle is progressively revealed as the story unfolds. The fate of the unjustly imprisoned Stephen Ayer and his wife Nora are the focus of many chapters (and the book opens with a quotation from Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"); these reflect Niesewand's detention by Desmond Lardner-Burke under P. K. van der Byl and Smith, and his subsequent deportation, leaving behind his wife of three years, Nonie Niesewand (née Fogarty).
Kaguvi Sekuru Kaguvi (Kagubi, Kakubi), was a "svikiro" (medium), a nationalist leader in pre-colonial Zimbabwe, and a leader in the Shona rebellion of 1896-1897 against European rule (the First Chimurenga). The soubriquet "Kaguvi" was given to him because he was said to speak for the traditional Shona spirit Mwari. When the rebellion collapsed, Kaguvi was charged with the murder of a policeman (whom he had accused of collaborating with the colonial authorities), found guilty and hanged.