'You couldn't have crime fiction under Apartheid. You can't have a copper who worked for that government as a hero'

Deon Meyer arguably knows more about crime fiction, chaos and reconciliation than most. Born and raised in South Africa, he grew up under Apartheid, bore witness as his nation tore itself to pieces, and began writing his intelligent, addictive thrillers as it instigated the long process of coming to terms with its past and repairing itself for the future.

His latest thriller is 7 Days, which continues a love affair with time-sensitive plots (his previous novel was the excellent 13 Hours), and the adventures of Benny Griessel, Meyer's irascible but decent police detective. In 7 Days, a sniper holds Cape Town to ransom. He threatens to kill one police officer a day until they reveal who murdered Hanneke Sloet, a wealthy lawyer involved in a Black Economic Empowerment initiative.

When I meet the 54-year-old in London, it's possible to detect hints of Griessel's hard-bitten persona in his own. Meyer, like Griessel, is an Afrikaner living on South Africa's west coast. Physically imposing, he talks in short, tough sentences and does not, I suspect, suffer fools gladly. A question enquiring whether 7 Days' multiple perspectives reflect a newly diverse South Africa is given short shrift. "No. Story is paramount. Writing is one long process of solving problems. The driving force behind moving from one character to another is to deliver information, or withhold it, without the reader feeling cheated."

Nevertheless, there is a softly-spoken thoughtfulness and sensitivity about Meyer that Griessel keeps buried beneath his taciturn exterior. He finds it hard to stomach the crime scenes he witnesses during research for his novels and takes special care to distinguish the pleasures of crime fiction from the melancholy reality of everyday violence. "Crime fiction has got to be entertainment. The vast majority of real world crime is terrifyingly sad and tragic. Whether it is London or Cape Town, the statistic is universal: 85% of crime is domestic in nature, and alcohol or drug related. Mostly it takes place in less advantaged communities. There is no mystery or entertainment."

At one point, indeed, Meyer even softens his earlier hardline stance on multiple perspectives – something the stubborn Griessel would never do. I ask whether writing has helped him come to terms with Apartheid's legacy. "Writing helps you look at things from many angles through different characters' eyes. That is the way you enrich your own point of view. One of the major lessons I learned living under Apartheid is you must never trust just one point of view."

It is tempting to see this slight inconsistency as a reflection of South Africa's many complexities, contrasts and tensions. They are certainly visible in Meyer's own experience. He was born in 1958, in Paarl, a small town on South Africa's Western Cape. One of three sons, he describes his upbringing as typically Afrikaans, with elements of non-conformity. "We were very poor, but my parents were both very intelligent people. They both read."

Meyer's mother was of Scottish-English descent. He describes his father, who grew up in Zululand, as an "incredible man". Sent to work as an electrician aged just 14, he completed his apprenticeship at various theatres around Cape Town. "He stood behind the stage watching opera and Shakespeare. When I went to university he would write me letters quoting speeches from Julius Caesar."

If this love of literature was not typically Afrikaans, his family's politics were more conventional. Meyer describes his father as a "fairly staunch Nationalist", although he adds that he was in no way racist. Ask Meyer to describe life under Apartheid, and he hesitates. "It's probably the most difficult thing to answer. Whatever I tell you will be 1% of a total reality. Growing up in a small town, I was totally unaware of Apartheid. Half my friends were black kids. We played together day and night. They were a part of my life."

His first exposure to racist violence came when he was 12 years old: he saw a white man beat up a black man for hitting his shin with his bicycle. "It upset me extremely. I asked my dad why it happened, and he replied that this is the way the world is. That was my first realisation that this world was not as it should be."

The long road to political consciousness began shortly before Meyer left school in the mid-1970s, a period that coincided with an increase of political uprisings across South Africa. The process challenged Meyer to interrogate many of his deepest social preconceptions. "The priest, the headmaster, the mayor were all telling you this is the way things should be. These are the people you trust. To start doubting these authority figures was a big move for an 18-year-old."

Politics and writing converged at university. Meyer constructed a research project that allowed him to examine the banned books held by the university library, revealing sides to his country that had previously been obscured by government propaganda. "That really was my political awakening. That was when I realised what a horrible system Apartheid was."

Meyer faced the sort of political and moral dilemma that drives his work: what can an individual do to achieve justice? "What could I do? I came from a modest background. I had to work for bursaries. Then I had to find a job. I couldn't just go and join the struggle." Instead, Meyer began working in the townships with a group of students, teaching black children excluded by the Apartheid school system. He was followed by the security police for his pains. "We felt that if we could get them past their matriculation exams, we would be making a real contribution."

It would be many years before he made a different sort of contribution with his fiction. In between, he completed a compulsory round of military service, and initiated more than one successful career: in journalism, and later in advertising and brand consultancy. But once again, Apartheid itself was the biggest obstacle to the budding crime writer. "You can't have crime fiction under Apartheid. You can't have a copper who worked for that government as a hero. I think most authors instinctively knew that. I was only able to start writing after the end of Apartheid. I thought, now I can start telling the stories I want to."

Meyer's stories essentially narrate South Africa's long and frequently troubled journey from Nelson Mandela's release to Jacob Zuma's presidency. In conversation, he is almost relentlessly upbeat about the progress that has been made. "If you look at where we were and where we are now, it is a miracle," he says boldly. "We have probably the best constitution in the world. We have a very dynamic civil society. Even under Apartheid there were people across cultural and racial lines doing wonderful things for each other. We have a strong democracy and it is working."

There are times when you wonder whether the crime writer doth protest too much. Ask him to name the major challenges facing South Africa today, and he quickly names poverty. But even here he accentuates the positive. "The disparity between rich and poor is closing. We have a black middle class growing exponentially. But it still needs to happen a lot faster. We need to create new jobs."

I suspect his pugnacious optimism is the result of being asked endless questions about racism, Aids epidemics, corruption and South Africa's terrifyingly high rape statistics. He is quick to tell me the unbalanced perceptions of Great Britain by the man on the South African street. "Isn't the economy shot in the UK? I saw people burning cars in the streets and they were rioting. If you ask most South Africans what they think of Britain, it is the place where it floods."

He mounts this attack to counter-balance what he sees as the negative portrayal of his homeland by the global media. "Only the bad news about South Africa gets reported internationally. I invite you to take the UK crime rate and the South African one and tell me what the difference is. They are virtually the same."

For now, perhaps a safe way to measure South African progress is to salute Meyer's own literary success, which would have been impossible only two decades before. To prove the point, he recalls a letter he received after his previous book, 13 Hours. It was from the man who used to run the publications board of the South African censor. "He said, 'Do you realise this book would have been banned in my day?'" Meyer laughs. "I took that as a great compliment."