At Theatre on the Square in Sandton, Kurt Egelhof sinks into a couch in the lobby. In front of him are his four books. He picks up The Accidental Death of a Good Coloured Man and begins to read aloud.
Then, mid-sentence, he breaks into song. Phil Collins’s In the Air Tonight spills from him like it’s been waiting at the back of his throat for years. Egelhof is here for the Johannesburg launch of his books. Four fictional autobiographies that mine memory, grief, race and manhood.
His career spans more than four decades and refuses neat definitions. A drama graduate from the University of Natal, he first stepped onto the stage as a professional actor in 1981. Since then, he’s become one of South Africa’s most quietly consistent creatives, taking on roles as actor, director, producer, playwright and now author.
His face is familiar from films such as The Ghost and the Darkness, Zulu Love Letter and The Last Victims. His directing credits include more than 250 episodes of Isidingo, Scandal! and Backstage. He’s toured internationally with his one-man plays and has earned a reputation for telling stories that are sharp, unflinching and deeply human.
“Theatre was my first love in my naïve days. And as I evolved, I took the misplaced love and tried to see where else the art world wants you. Theatre opened my eyes to the world and other opportunities. And now I accept that every art form is my love. Not first or second or third,” Egelhof says.
When we meet, he’s wearing blue workers’ overalls and scuffed black boots. It’s not a costume. It’s a tribute to the men in his family who gave up their dreams so that he could chase his.
“There were these men, and every time I get a highlight in my life, I’ve got three of these blue overalls. I put one on to remind myself that those hard-working, good men gave up their dreams so that I could get a chance at achieving mine. I dress like this when I need to remember that my dream is coming true,” he says.
His grandfather was a saxophonist who gave up music to fight in World War 2. His father, a talented singer, never got the chance to advance his career.
Egelhof never knew his father, who died in a workplace accident at the Durban whaling station when his son was just over one year old. The loss shaped almost every part of his life, including the way he writes, performs and understands his place in the world.
I started to embrace death at an early age and then realised that every day that you’re living is every day that you’re dying. I felt so liberated
“As soon as I came to the realisation at a certain age that my father had died, I decided, ‘Oh, mortality is real. We are all going to die.’ I started to embrace death at an early age and then realised that every day that you’re living is every day that you’re dying. I felt so liberated.”
That thread runs through all four of his books, as a reminder of how closely life and loss sit beside each other.
“I wrote The Accidental Death of a Good Coloured Man in the first person. I was trying to be arty and also dangerous,” he says. The book circles his father’s death, with silence, grief and rage. It asks what happens to a family when the good men die too soon and no-one speaks their names again.
Each book is a different kind of ache.
The Adventure Boys follows a soft-spoken teenager who’s sent to a leadership camp in 1976. It starts out with good intentions but unravels into something more brutal.
The Palace of Broken Dreams slips between present-day Johannesburg and the theatre world of the 1980s. A struggling actor finds a suitcase full of money and tries to buy his relevance back. But the story runs deeper. It asks what it means to be talented in a system that was never built for you to succeed.
Man Overboard, set on a luxury cruise liner, draws a sharp line between the extravagance of the passengers above deck and the quiet desperation of the crew below. It’s about survival. Service. And the cost of staying invisible.
The books are political without being preachy, emotional without being sentimental. They are angry but also deeply tender.
“I realised that South Africa’s my market. African people will understand what I’m trying to do. So I took my scripts, lined them up, and said to myself, this is autobiographical fiction. Go for it. Don’t be shy,” Egelhof says.
When he’s not on stage, he’s in the ocean, which is sacred to him. Not only because his father was a whaler, but because it’s where he came closest to death.
“I got taken once by the ocean,” he says. “And it said, ‘Would you like to die today?’ And I was like, ‘maybe not’.”
He was out on his longboard when a wave caught the back of the board and flung him forward. The leash snapped. His board drifted off while he stayed under, fighting for his life.
“The first five seconds I was like, ‘oh s***’. Then I remembered my yoga and just calmed right down. I knew I had to bring my oxygen demand down. Because I can’t breathe under there. So if I calm down, I won’t need to breathe as much. I’ll last longer.”
The ordeal lasted about 10 minutes though it felt like forever.
Every chance he gets, he heads to Muizenberg. The ritual is always the same. Before he takes to the water, he pauses and says: “Hello God, this is Kurt. I’ve come to play. If today is my day, so be it. Now let’s play.”
For Egelhof, surfing is a kind of surrender. To the sea, to memory, to the stories that won’t leave him alone. When he’s out there, floating between sets, there’s no panic. No performance. Just a man in the water, breathing, waiting.
It’s the same surrender that runs through his books and his theatre, a quiet agreement with life and death that says you tell the truth, take the hit, and keep going.
• Each book can be read as a stand-alone story, but together they weave the journey of one character from age 16 to 60. They are available as e-books at Lulu.com
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