Shanville Brandt

As a child, Ali Neuman narrowly escaped being murdered by Inkhata, a militant political party at war with Nelson Mandela's African National Congress. Only he and his mother survived the carnage of those years. But as with many survivors, the psychological scars remain.

Based upon the real-life story of Ernie “Lastig” Solomon, a legendary gangster from the violent and crime-ridden area known as the Cape Flats, a depressed peri-urban sprawl abutting the world-acclaimed city of Cape Town. Ernie Solomon is a man in search of his identity. Is he the product of his circumstances, a victim of fate, or a violent criminal destined to live on the periphery of society? Or is he a “lucky man”, one who discovers that he must become a self-directed agent, a master of his own destiny? “A Lucky Man” explores the question of identity and morality in a society circumscribed by social engineering and by fate. A complex, powerful life story told through the eyes of a “lucky man” who spent most of it watching his back and who now faces the future in the knowledge of his hard fought-for and found sense of self.