The Transaction

Raghavee Srivastava the niece of Uncle Raju who happened to be a prominent member of the Communist Party was the daughter of an Indian rural shopkeeper. The shop was located on the edge of the national road connecting Johannesburg to Durban. Her friend Martin Marshall, a white boy, lived on a small farm across the road from the shop. They had been friends since childhood. In race-obsessed apartheid South Africa it was indeed rare that genuine friendships between white and black or white and Indian could ever become established. Eventually, Martin inherited the farm following the death of his great grandparents. Tragedy struck the Srivastava family. On the night that their shop burnt down Raghavee's father died of a heart attack. When her mother and siblings decided to relocate to Newcastle in Natal, Raghavee moved in with Martin. She became his housekeeper. Their arrest and trial became headline news mainly because she happened to be the niece of Uncle Raju Srivastava. Right up until their arrest they slept in separate rooms. In response to Martin's kindness and generosity, she tried to initiate a transactional arrangement where she would provide Martin with sexual services in exchange for being looked after by Martin. Martin was paying for all her living expenses, including her studies. She liked him, but did not love him, and so felt obliged to pay for her keep and her university studies towards a law degree, in the only way she could, and according to what she thought would be a fair transaction.

As a son of a miner, I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg. I matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school, I was conscripted into the South African Defence Force for compulsory national military service when I was 17 years old. After my military service, I went to the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree I worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. As an obligatory member of the South African Citizen Miltary Force, I was called up to do 3-month camps on the 'Border' which was the theatre of the so-called counter-insurgency 'Bush War'. In between postgraduate university studies I also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales rep. In my career as an academic, I was a molecular biologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, where I lectured courses in microbiology, molecular biology, biotechnology and evolutionary biology. On the research side, I was involved in genomics, and plant and microbial biotechnology. I also conducted research into the genomics of strange and weird animals known as entomopathogenic nematodes. I retired in 2019, however, I am currently an honorary professor at the University of the Witwaterand and I also work as a research writing consultant for the University of Johannesburg.