The Story of an African Doctor

Matt Forbes was born in Cape Town in 1937. Shortly thereafter his parents took the family, Matt and his sister to America. His father attended a psychiatric fellowship at Princeton University and thereafter his parents toured Canada and America for two years. Matt and Gwen were left with a lady friend in Leonia New Jersey until they returned two years later. World War II had had broken out and they returned to South Africa across the U-boat infested Atlantic in a tramp steamer. Matt’s stormy early years, his mother’s induced labour, his parents American adventure and shortly thereafter a messy divorce left an indelible mark on him. The story details his struggles through his early years, through school and university and his early life as a doctor in the Apartheid era, during which his patients were mainly non-white. But he treated everyone the same.