Career
Poverty and need compelled him to join the army in October 1940. He had to present himself as being 21 although he was only 17. It was a requirement that he have a driver's license for joining the Cape Corps. He however did not have on thus joining the artillery entity. Here he is accepted as a white and concedes to this, as he puts it, "to feed his family not to be accepted as a white man". This experience has a lasting impact on him: being a soldier in a whites only battalion, he carried this secret for five years. Five years later he returned, alas, too late for as his father had passed on and after serving in Kenya, Ethiopia and Egypt. He also spent twenty months in the North of Italy as a prisoner of war before he escaped.
On the 12 June 1948 He married Gazina Ortell (Siena), the mother of his twelve (12) children, in a court in Kimberley. He worked for a while in Swaziland and Botswana, using the trade taught to him earlier in his life and settled as a building contractor in Mafikeng, South Africa (then Bophuthatswana). As a result of the Apartheid legislation he could never realise his lifelong ideal in owning a cattle farm although he could afford to acquire a farm in cash.
In 1995 Andrew Henry Martin Scholtz debuted, at the age of 75, with his debut novel Vatmaar. Although the novel has an Afrikaans mindset he writes it initially in English, in neat, fully written hardcover books before his daughter Elizabeth translates it. He worked on the story for a period of three years before sending it to Divid Phillip in Cape Town, Who then forwards it to Kwela Books (Afrikaans Publishing Company) as the story does not translate so well. Kwela Books is a newly established company with the goal of finding new talent, identify the talent and to exploit it. Annarie van der Merwe of Kwela Books expressed that it is an Afrikaans story so it should be published in Afrikaans
Scholtz wrote two more books while waiting for the publication. They were then published later. In 1996 Langsaan die vuur: vyf lewensverhale and in 1998 Afdraai: ’n kroniek van seermaak en seerkry, van vrede en verandering and Tapisserie which handles the Anglo-Boer War and its ramifications.
Read more about this topic: Andrew Henry Martin Scholtz, Biography
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