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).
George Steer George Lowther Steer (1909 – 25 December 1944) was a South African-born British journalist, author and war correspondent who reported on wars preceding World War II, especially the Second Italo-Abyssinian War and the Spanish Civil War. During those wars he was employed by "The Times", and his eye-witness reports did much to alert western nations of war crimes committed by the Italians in Ethiopia and by the Germans in Spain, although little was done to prevent them by the League of Nations. He returned to Ethiopia after the world war started and helped the campaign defeat the Italians and restore Hailie Selassie to the throne.