KIN BENTLEY’S OEUVRE AS OF MARCH, 2026

My books are PDFs, as opposed to e-books of the kind sold directly online for Kindle and the like.

The difference is that each copy that is downloaded from my Google Drive is a separate “book”, to be stored on a flash drive, external hard drive or simply your laptop or PC, provided you have the storage. 

There is even a “dual drive” available on which you can store my books and read them by plugging the drive into your smartphone.

My aim is to make the books easily accessible, low-cost and available in large PDF format.

Given that my books usually feature photographs and other images, PDF is the perfect vehicle for viewing them. Images can be magnified and enjoyed at scale. 

I have a welter of material, written since about 2000. 

With the 2002 printed version of Apartheid's Child

My credentials:

I was a hard-news reporter on the Evening Post and later the Eastern Province Herald in Port Elizabeth from 1984 till 1994, including a two-year secondment to the London office of SA Morning Newspapers as a correspondent in 1990-1991.

I covered the UDF-led uprising of the 1980s, but was happy to go subediting after the advent of democracy in 1994.

I kept writing leader-page articles for the Herald and the occasional letter to the editor, but was prevented from doing so from around 2002 when my criticism of the ANC's support for Mugabe as he destroyed Zimbabwe was clearly frowned upon by the ANC, who are big funders of the mainstream media through government and municipal advertising.

After being censored in this way I decided to write my autobiography, Apartheid's Child, Freedom's Son, which I self-published in 2003 (just 30 copies). In 2019, Footprint Press released an expurgated version as After the Storm and Before the Rainbow. They had done an excellent job with Mike Bruton’s biography of Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, Curator and Crusader, but I wasn’t very happy with their treatment of my book. They only used my drawings, not the many important photographs from the era, especially the 1980s. They also edited out my political introduction.

I correct those shortcomings in the PDF version, which also updates my thinking on many geopolitical issues I was indoctrinated into accepting at face value, but which have subsequently proven to have been untrue.

I’ve also added the words “… And the ANC’s Fool” to the title, since I, having effectively campaigned as a young man for the ANC to be unbanned and to lead the transition to nonracial democracy, have felt utterly betrayed by the ANC’s numerous failures in government.

Not only has it reracialised society through laws like BEE and the Employment Equity Act, it has also proven to be a haven for corrupt and incompetent cadres who have used their positions in government for nefarious purposes. Few showed any of the qualities which made Mandela a leader whom one could trust and even respect.

I branched into historical books around 2019 as the 200th anniversary of the arrival of the approximately 3,500 British settlers of 1820 approached.

I was living in Algoa Bay, so it was obviously something close to my heart, given that some of my forebears were among those hardy pioneers. I was lucky to get Gutsche Family Investments (Coca-Cola’s founders in SA) to finance the publication, with most of the 800 copies of this coffee-table book sold through their gallery in PE as well as selected book shops.

I have reworked that book as a PDF. It is the first of a series of now several dozen such books that I am selling as downloads.

Since reworking the PE book, I have done similar projects on East London, Grahamstown, Cradock, Somerset East, Bathurst and Graaff-Reinet in the Eastern Cape. 

Unless you know the Eastern Cape’s history, you probably won't realise what a pivotal role it played in SA’s development. All our ports, including Cape Town, really arose as a result of the British taking over the Cape Colony finally in 1806.

Among the 1820 settlers were people who ventured as far north as the Limpopo, possibly further, even before the Great Trek of 1838. Others made it to Natal, also before the arrival of the Trekkers. They established harbours at Port Elizabeth, Port Alfred, East London and Durban. 

The many towns across the Eastern Cape and indeed Natal and even the Transvaal and Free State owed much to the advances which the 1820 settlers and their descendants brought with them from Industrial Revolution Britain.

I believe my writing captures the mood and spirit of the Eastern Cape, where I have lived and worked for all of my almost 70 years, apart from those two years in the UK.

These are the PDF books I currently have in a completed state:

PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORIES OF EASTERN CAPE TOWNS

Kin Bentley's Port Elizabeth

This is a comprehensive documentation, or record, of the development  ̶  using photos, drawings and a few maps  ̶  of SA’s second oldest major city. As with all my other similar visual histories, these PDFs are in A4-square format, which means vertical and horizontal images can be given equal prominence. It is also a fun format for composing pages comprising multiple images, which is the case with most of these books, except where I let just the beauty of buildings, street scenes and the natural environment do the talking.

Kin Bentley’s East London

Kin Bentley’s Grahamstown

Kin Bentley’s Cradock

Kin Bentley’s Somerset East

Kin Bentley’s Bathurst

Kin Bentley’s Graaff-Reinet

As per the PE book, these are photo-dense personal histories of these important frontier towns, some comprising several parts. 

DEEP DIVES INTO HISTORIC PARTS OF PORT ELIZABETH

Having walked the most historic parts of the city on numerous occasions since 2014, I have accumulated a wealth of photographs of these characterful streets. I used a few of these pictures in Kin Bentley’s Port Elizabeth, but in this project I take you along on each of these walks as we follow the trajectory of the city’s development/decline in these areas over the past decade and more. Several key buildings have been lost or inappropriately “restored”, losing their character. A few, like the Opera House, Campanile and Tramways building, have been properly refurbished. Important landmarks like the Main Library and Harbour Board building are under threat of terminal decay.

My deep dives have covered three areas, thus far, and are titled as such:

The Donkin Reserve Precinct

This covers the reserve and adjacent buildings, especially the Donkin Row of terraced houses which have been inappropriately “restored” as part of the Donkin Village project. Here, too, important early 19^th century buildings have been irredeemably altered, while entire streets of historic houses have been flattened.

The Market Square Precinct

Here I look at the buildings around the square, as well as the whole historic area between the railway station and St Mary’s cemetery. Here, too, buildings like the Feather Market Hall and Old Post Office somehow survive, with the latter having been left in limbo for decades.

Central Hill

The first real residential suburb is covered in this project, which includes St George’s Park. It is arguably even more significant than the other two areas because of the extent of the heritage sites. Trinder Square, the PE Club, Bird Street, Havelock Street, Pearson Street, Lawrence Street, Russell Road, Military Road, Fort Frederick, Cuyler Crescent, Cora Terrace … I could go on. Here, too, I have witnessed the steady deterioration of some areas, including the demolition of buildings occupied for decades by vagrants and drug dealers. But, as usual, there are pockets of excellence, where private and state money has somehow retained the integrity of important buildings. 

PHOTOGRAPHIC HISTORIES OF WESTERN CAPE TOWNS

Kin Bentley's Cape Town, Parts 1-9 

This is my personal history of the Mother City. The series does not purport to be a definitive history, but I think it explores, through pictures, the development of Cape Town more than adequately and reveals something of the scenic beauty of the peninsula and its buildings, mainly through photographs. This has been a labour of love, and again I don't think there is anything like it in the book market. I am not creating coffee-table books to sit on display and never be read. As PDFs I expect purchasers to open these books on their laptops and soak up the images and engage fully with the concise text, essentially just captions after briefish introductions.

Kin Bentley’s Stellenbosch

Kin Bentley’s Swellendam

Kin Bentley’s Mossel Bay

Again, some of these come in multiple parts and are dense with photographs.

NO FRONTIERS: PHOTOGRAPHIC EXCURSIONS IN RURAL REDOUBTS

While I have tackled all these cities and towns, my travels have also taken me to many a rural town and farm. This series I have called “No Frontiers”, as I have experienced the “intimacy of wide-open spaces from the Cederberg to Kei Mouth and from Bethulie to Cape Agulhas.

The series now comprises more than 20 parts.

‘No Frontiers’, in A4-landscape format, encompasses smaller towns and nature reserves in the former Cape Province, including places in the Great and Little Karoo like the Suurberg range near Steynsburg, where I have spent many a holiday.

Also covered are part of the Cederberg, Oudtshoorn, Prince Albert, Hermanus, Kei Mouth, Morgan Bay, Katberg, Hogsback, De Rust, McGregor, Cape Agulhas, Cape St Francis, Willowmore and Storms River. A recent visit to Nieu Bethesda generated more photos, so another book on this area of the Sneeuberg range is imminent.

ARTWORKS, BIOGRAPHY AND CREATIVE WRITING

Apartheid’s Child, Freedom’s Son … And the ANC’s Fool, an illustrated South African memoir 

Here I have revised sections to set the record straight on things like the US invasion of Iraq. I have learnt recently just what a mistake and injustice that was.

Little K and the Big World

Here, borrowing from the title of part one of Anthony Burgess’s memoir, namely Little Wilson and Big God, this is a follow-up in almost poetic form to Apartheid’s Child. It deals with many issues, including my clashes with authority, in particular with the politically correct leadership of the Herald newspaper, which essentially forced me out, aged 59, in 2016, after 32 years’ dedicated service.

Beyond the Platonic

Like the previous short autobiographical work, here I look at the difficulties of finding a decent woman for a wife. There were many mishaps along the way, but happily I succeeded in doing just that. There is plenty of socio-political commentary in here, too. 

Azanian Apocalypse

This is a satirical novella from 2005. In it, inter alia, I parody Mbeki's stance on HIV-Aids, but have subsequently discovered he was probably correct, so this book stands as an example of my own brainwashing in that regard. But primarily this is a prediction of the anti-colonial, Rhodes-must-fall farce that bedevilled universities and the country from 2015. Attacks by government-led mobs on our heritage monuments and buildings form the basis of the narrative.

Conversations 

In this novella I use imaginary discussions between ordinary South Africans at key junctures to illustrate the development of the country. Here, too, I may be caught out in having been indoctrinated by the Western agenda, but I think it still stands as a useful look at our history.

A Birder's Diary 

This book comprises a dozen or so articles I had published in PE newspapers, along with another couple of dozen that weren’t published. Each covers an outing I did with my son, starting when he was eight, as we discovered the world of birds.

Groothond: A Dog’s Life

This is an “autobiography” written by the “hippest hound of the psychedelic seventies”. In it, the Alsatian-Rhodesian ridgeback cross narrates events that occurred to him and the notorious Bentley brothers during a turbulent period of about five years.

Twins: The Dangers of Dogma

In this historical novella I follow two young identical twins with the power to travel back in time. They experience the travails undergone first by Galileo Galilei, and then by Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Roman Catholic priest who protected Jews from Nazi persecution.

Life Lines 

This is a collection of probably more than 1,000 sketches and drawings I did from life between about 1977 and the early 2020s. Important are those done as a military conscript.

Imagine 

Stealing John Lennon's song title, this is a similar collection of probably also over 1,000 drawings done from the imagination and subconscious during the same period, as well as photos of my more substantial paintings and carvings.

HOW TO BUY MY BOOKS

I invite people to send me an email at bentleykin@gmail.com, outlining which books they want to purchase.

I send them my banking account details, they pay and I send the link or links to download the relevant PDF or PDFs.

THE COST

I believe R200 is a reasonable price for each PDF, but will give special deals to anyone buying several, such as, for instance, the Cape Town series. The final sum is open to negotiation.