Writer and musician, Rian Malan, doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable topics. The following excerpt from his latest book, Resident Alien, is a case in point. Malan describes attending the Mighty Men Conference led by lay-preacher Angus Buchan:
Angus Buchan is a white African of Scots extraction, born in Zimbabwe and raised in Zambia, where he farmed as a young man. When Zambia's economy collapsed in the 1970s he bought some wasteland near Greytown, built a crude mud house in the Zulu style and set forth to hew a living from the soil. He had no water, just one tractor and too little capital.
For a while, it was touch-and-go. Buchan started dropping tranquillisers, drinking heavily and taking out his frustrations on his labourers. Shamed by his actions, he turned to the Lord on February 18, 1979, and lo, miracles ensued. His crops flourished. Boreholes struck water. Rain quenched a bush fire that threatened to ruin him, and a Zulu woman struck by lightning was raised from the apparent dead by prayer. These and other wonders were recounted in Faith Like Potatoes, his 1998 autobiography, made into a movie in 2005.
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