num_pages: 264
description: In 2016 South African film audiences were mesmerised by the film Noem My Skollie which was written by  and based on the life of  John W. Fredericks. In this book Fredericks tells the full story on which the film was based. Growing up in a dusty township on the Cape Flats Fredericks formed a gang with his friends and at the age of seventeen he was arrested for robbery and sentenced to two years in Pollsmoor prison. A number gangs vied to initiate him into their ranks but he resisted their advances offering instead to help them push their time by telling stories. And so he became the prison cinema drawing on his storytelling abilities and cementing his ambition to become a writer. Life after prison became a nightmare when he was arrested for a murder he hadnt committed his childhood friends were sentenced to die on the gallows and a gang boss tried to kill him. Slowly he turned his life around getting a job and building a family but society kept judging him as a gangster. Struggling to deal with his past he turned to storytelling again and painstakingly learnt the art of scriptwriting. The result was Noem My Skollie which was watched by almost 90 000 people and won numerous awards. Written in a powerful and authentic voice Skollie is a gripping memoir of life on the Cape Flats of prison and gangs and of one mans struggle to survive all this by telling stories.
language: None
title: Skollie: One man’s struggle to survive by telling stories
publisher: Zebra Press