South African Writer Jeremy Gordin Murdered in Burglary

South African writer Jeremy Gordin, 70, was murdered on Saturday in his home, sending shockwaves through the literary and journalistic world.

Murder is not uncommon in South Africa, which has become an increasingly deadly country, but Gordin’s death has caused more of a sensation than most.

Not only was Gordin, a former local Playboy editor, well-known throughout South African media and beyond, but he was also celebrated for his wit and humor.

He was the author of countless columns, and a recent biography of the corrupt former president, Jacob Zuma.

His last editor, James Myburgh of Politicsweb, mourned Gordin in an obituary on Sunday:

As you may have heard or read by now Jeremy Gordin was murdered in his home in Parkview, Johannesburg, on early Saturday morning. The house was ransacked, and his car and other items taken. He was alone at home, as his wife Deborah was in Cape Town at the time.
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Jeremy was recently also becoming increasingly despondent over the general decay and collapse that he was witnessing around him. In a column in October last year, written as a letter to his two children, he sought to explain “why I’m feeling so blue today; why, at the risk of being theatrical, the lines ‘It’s gettin’ dark, too dark for me to see,’ from Bob Dylan’s ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’, came into my head.”

In his conclusion, he appealed to them to consider leaving South Africa, as “there comes a time when things are clearly falling apart and there comes a time when the general moronicism, greed and lack of care grow really annoying. It becomes as though “It’s gettin’ dark, too dark see.” And you, who have your whole lives before you (as they say), need to consider seriously going to live elsewhere. We’ve been doing it for centuries, after all.”

Gordin was also remembered by fellow columnists as a formidable critic — and an endearing bon vivant. Fellow columnist David Bullard wrote:

Jeremy (or JG as I used to call him) and I got off to an interesting start. Back in the mid 2000’s he wasn’t a great fan of mine. We both had columns in rival newspapers and when I finally got the boot from the Sunday Times in April 2008 he celebrated my sacking in his column that week. But the column was so elegantly constructed and the vitriol so exquisitely served that I felt the need to phone this Gordin chap and congratulate him.

I also suggested that we have breakfast together at a restaurant called Scusi in Parkview.

To cut to the chase, we got on famously, found we had far more in common than we could ever have imagined and that we both loved salacious gossip, especially if it was media related.

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JG was undoubtedly one of the finest and most erudite journalists of his time as his Politicsweb columns clearly demonstrated. Absurdly well read, always curious to learn more and a master of witty language. The comments following his weekly Politicsweb columns attest to this. But JG was also a man of the utmost integrity whose soul could not be bought.

Murder is on the rise in South Africa, and people of all races are victims. The country is enduring a particularly difficult period, as corruption and mismanagement destroy public services such as law enforcement and electricity generation.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Photo: file