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Chris Marnewick was born in Rustenburg on 12 August 1948. He attended
six different primary schools before he went to high school in
Potgietersrus/Mokopane. He served for nine months in the South
African Navy as a draftee and joined the Department of Justice in
1967 as a clerk. He attended university at Potchefstroom on a
Justice bursary and completed a BJuris degree in 1970. He was
posted to Pinetown where he prosecuted for two years and had to
learn to speak English at the same time. He was a magistrate for a
year and completed his LLB degree at Unisa in 1973. Chris then
entered articles of clerkship and was admitted as an attorney in
1976, but felt that he was not suited to that profession and
started practising as an advocate a short time later. After
conducting a number of murder trials during his early years as an
advocate, Chris decided to concentrate on commercial cases. He was
awarded senior counsel status in 1991 and practises in Durban.
While practising he completed an LLM (1990) and a PhD (1996) from
the University of Natal.
Chris is especially interested in the training of newly qualified
advocates and is the author of the Workbook Programme employed at
the various centres where advocates receive training. His
textbook, Litigation Skills for South African Lawyers (Butterworths 2002), is
a prescribed work for LLB students, candidate attorneys and pupil
advocates. Chris started writing Shepherds
& Butchers in 2003 while teaching in New Zealand. It was
published by Umuzi in 2008. The
Soldier Who Said No was published in 2010. Chris is working on
a third novel in which two of the principal characters in Shepherds
and The Soldier will
take on an old enemy for the final time. He is also writing a work
of creative non-fiction in Afrikaans. This book will attempt to
solve an old murder case which resulted in an execution in 1957
but where the true facts were never disclosed by the murderer or
the authorities.
In 2009 Shepherds was
shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Africa Region)
in the first book category and was shortlisted for the M-Net Main
Award and also in the Film Category. The University of
Johannesburg awarded Shepherds its prize for creative writing in the debut category in
2009. The last time Chris had received an award was in 1960 when
as a twelve year old he received a prize – Somer
by Ouma by Edith Unnerstad – for an essay on the battle
between the Voortrekkers and Mzilikazi at Vegkop.
Chris ascribes his interest in reading and writing to two factors. The
first is that his mother had taught him to read and write even
before he went to school, and later, when she was the head matron
of a small school in the Bushveld, she sent him to the school
library during the school holidays to keep him from mischief.
There Chris found that the world extended beyond the small farming
community where they lived, and discovered Jack London, Zane Grey,
Daniel Defoe and Trompie en
die Boksombende, amongst others. The second reason for his
interest in writing is that, as an advocate, he reads and writes
for a living since much of the legal process is conducted in
writing. And in the courts, he has found, fact is often stranger
than fiction!
Chris is married to Ansie and they have two sons, Jacques and Michel,
and one granddaughter, Layla.
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