Download or read book My Life Growing up White During Apartheid in South Africa written by Philip Hummel and published by Author House. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a short collection of memories about being white and living in South Africa during Apartheid. I wrote this book for the reader to easily understand what it was like to live in this environment. It is not a history lesson, but some personal experiences that I went through living in South Africa at the time. Living through apartheid I never even realized that it even existed, because we were brought up to believe that it was normal. Life was paradise for me and hell for others! Many of us did not know or care, and even if we did try to change the system, it would have resulted in prison or death. We believed that changing apartheid would have caused the country to fall into the hands of the communists, and many white people were fearful that black rule would have destroyed South Africa and their lives. The other side of the coin is that I cant comprehend what the lives of most blacks was like, which was excruciatingly difficult, something that I didnt personally experience. Our history books never taught us anything good about blacks. I cant remember ever learning anything positive that blacks did. What I did learn was that they were lazy, uneducated, dangerous, and drank a lot. Stay away from them, and if they bother you call the police. There were serious injustices in South Africa, and many black people suffered under the Apartheid Regime.

Download or read book Country of My Skull written by Antjie Krog and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. Repressive laws mandating separation of the races were thrown out. The country, which had been carved into a crazy quilt that reserved the most prosperous areas for whites and the most desolate and backward for blacks, was reunited. The dreaded and dangerous security force, which for years had systematically tortured, spied upon, and harassed people of color and their white supporters, was dismantled. But how could this country--one of spectacular beauty and promise--come to terms with its ugly past? How could its people, whom the oppressive white government had pitted against one another, live side by side as friends and neighbors? To begin the healing process, Nelson Mandela created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by the renowned cleric Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Established in 1995, the commission faced the awesome task of hearing the testimony of the victims of apartheid as well as the oppressors. Amnesty was granted to those who offered a full confession of any crimes associated with apartheid. Since the commission began its work, it has been the central player in a drama that has riveted the country. In this book, Antjie Krog, a South African journalist and poet who has covered the work of the commission, recounts the drama, the horrors, the wrenching personal stories of the victims and their families. Through the testimonies of victims of abuse and violence, from the appearance of Winnie Mandela to former South African president P. W. Botha's extraordinary courthouse press conference, this award-winning poet leads us on an amazing journey. Country of My Skull captures the complexity of the Truth Commission's work. The narrative is often traumatic, vivid, and provocative. Krog's powerful prose lures the reader actively and inventively through a mosaic of insights, impressions, and secret themes. This compelling tale is Antjie Krog's profound literary account of the mending of a country that was in colossal need of change.

Download or read book The Art of Life in South Africa written by Daniel Magaziner and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-09 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1952 to 1981, South Africa’s apartheid government ran an art school for the training of African art teachers at Indaleni, in what is today KwaZulu-Natal. The Art of Life in South Africa is the story of the students, teachers, art, and politics that circulated through a small school, housed in a remote former mission station. It is the story of a community that made its way through the travails of white supremacist South Africa and demonstrates how the art students and teachers made together became the art of their lives. Daniel Magaziner radically reframes apartheid-era South African history. Against the dominant narrative of apartheid oppression and black resistance, as well as recent scholarship that explores violence, criminality, and the hopeless entanglements of the apartheid state, this book focuses instead on a small group’s efforts to fashion more fulfilling lives for its members and their community through the ironic medium of the apartheid-era school. There is no book like this in South African historiography. Lushly illustrated and poetically written, it gives us fully formed lives that offer remarkable insights into the now clichéd experience of black life under segregation and apartheid.

Download or read book Towards a New Deal written by Rob Davies and published by Jonathan Ball Publishers. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'As the world economic system stumbles, as trade wars intensify and the dangers of a diminishing global multilateralism threaten, Davies' new book offers a unique blend of astute analysis and personal experience. It is a must-read.' – Jeremy Cronin, former Deputy Minister of Transport Africa's past quarter century has been shaped by the decisions and reach of one of the oldest political alliances in southern Africa, that between the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party. In this memoir, Rob Davies, one of the government's most articulate former senior ministers, looks back on the politics, policies and inner workings of the South African government in the democratic era. He offers and insider's account of the evolution of trade and economic policy over the last 25 years, up to the presidency of Cyril Ramaphosa and the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Leavened with intriguing anecdotes and informed by the author's very personal and humanising history of activism and exile, Towards a New Deal makes the case for an economic policy transformation that is focused on creating jobs and reducing poverty, that highlights South Africa's role in Africa, and that addresses the challenges of economic stagnation, climate change and the fourth industrial revolution. It will be essential reading for economists, businesspeople and ordinary readers keen to grasp the political and economic dynamics of the moment.

Download or read book Long Walk to Freedom written by Nelson Mandela and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2008-03-11 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book that inspired the major new motion picture Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's antiapartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality. LONG WALK TO FREEDOM is his moving and exhilarating autobiography, destined to take its place among the finest memoirs of history's greatest figures. Here for the first time, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela tells the extraordinary story of his life--an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph.

Download or read book My Life in the New South Africa written by Ted Leggett and published by Human Sciences Research. This book was released on 1997 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My Life in the New South Africa is written by the youth themselves, and gives a unique insight into the thoughts and concerns of South Africans under the age of 30. In 1996 the Quality of Life Monitoring Unit at the University of Natal held a letter-writing contest, and this book is a digest of the responses they received. Young people from across the nation wrote in-shack dwellers and suburban scholars, boarding school pupils and prison inmates. The diversity and distinctiveness of the rainbow nation's youth are represented here. This is their message to their fellow South Africans.

Download or read book What if there were no whites in South Africa written by Ferial Haffajee and published by Pan Macmillan South africa. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In What if there were no whites in South Africa? Ferial Haffajee examines South Africa’s history and present in the light of a provocative question that yields some thought-provoking discussion and analysis. From round-table discussions with influential South Africans, to research, personal thoughts and powerful anecdotes, Ferial takes the reader through the rocky terrain of race rage in our country and grapples with what it means to be South African in 2015.

Download or read book Born a Crime written by Trevor Noah and published by One World. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than one million copies sold! A “brilliant” (Lupita Nyong’o, Time), “poignant” (Entertainment Weekly), “soul-nourishing” (USA Today) memoir about coming of age during the twilight of apartheid “Noah’s childhood stories are told with all the hilarity and intellect that characterizes his comedy, while illuminating a dark and brutal period in South Africa’s history that must never be forgotten.”—Esquire Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and an NAACP Image Award • Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Time, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Esquire, Newsday, and Booklist Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.

Download or read book The Struggle is My Life written by Nelson Mandela and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book My Life with the SA Defence Force written by Magnus Malan and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a schoolboy at the age of thirteen, Magnus Malan had already run away to join what was then the Union Defence Force.

Download or read book My Traitor s Heart written by Rian Malan and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2012-03-11 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essay collection that offers “a fascinating glimpse of post-apartheid South Africa” from the bestselling author of My Traitor’s Heart (The Sunday Times). The Lion Sleeps Tonight is Rian Malan’s remarkable chronicle of South Africa’s halting steps and missteps, taken as blacks and whites try to build a new country. In the title story, Malan investigates the provenance of the world-famous song, recorded by Pete Seeger and REM among many others, which Malan traces back to a Zulu singer named Solomon Linda. He follows the trial of Winnie Mandela; he writes about the last Afrikaner, an old Boer woman who settled on the slopes of Mount Meru; he plunges into President Mbeki’s AIDS policies of the 1990s; and finally he tells the story of the Alcock brothers (sons of Neil and Creina whose heartbreaking story was told in My Traitor’s Heart), two white South Africans raised among the Zulu and fluent in their language and customs. The twenty-one essays collected here, combined with Malan’s sardonic interstitial commentary, offer a brilliantly observed portrait of contemporary South Africa; “a grimly realistic picture of a nation clinging desperately to hope” (The Guardian).

Download or read book The Law and the Prophets written by Daniel R. Magaziner and published by Jacana Media. This book was released on 2010 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""No nation can win a battle without faith," Steve Biko wrote, and as Daniel R. Magaziner demonstrates in The Law and the Prophets, the combination of ideological and theological exploration proved a potent force. The 1970s are a decade virtually lost to South African historiography. This span of years bridged the banning and exile of the country's best-known antiapartheid leaders in the early 1960s and the furious protests that erupted after the Soweto uprisings of June 16, 1976. Scholars thus know that something happened--yet they have only recently begun to explore how and why. The Law and the Prophets is an intellectual history of the resistance movement between 1968 and 1977; it follows the formation, early trials, and ultimate dissolution of the Black Consciousness movement. It differs from previous antiapartheid historiography, however, in that it focuses more on ideas than on people and organizations. Its singular contribution is an exploration of the theological turn that South African politics took during this time. Magaziner argues that only by understanding how ideas about race, faith, and selfhood developed and were transformed in this period might we begin to understand the dramatic changes that took place."--Publisher description.

Download or read book Always Another Country written by Sisonke Msimang and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2018-07-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If I were given five minutes with my younger self—that little girl who cried every time we had to leave for another country—I would hold her tight and not say a word. I would just be still and have her feel my beating heart, a thud to echo her own—a silent message that, no matter the outcome, she would survive and be stronger and happier than she might think as she stood at the threshold of each new home. Sisonke Msimang was born in exile, the daughter of South African freedom fighters. Always Another Country is the story of a young girl’s path to womanhood—a journey that took her from Africa to America and back again, then on to a new home in Australia. Frank, fierce and insightful, she reflects candidly on the abuse she suffered as a child, the naive, heady euphoria of returning at last to her parents’ homeland—and her disillusionment with present-day South Africa and its new elites. Sisonke Msimang is a bold new voice on feminism, race and politics—in her beloved South Africa, in Australia, and around the world. Sisonke Msimang was born in exile to South African parents—a freedom fighter and an accountant—and raised in Zambia, Kenya and Canada before studying in the US as an undergraduate. Her family returned to South Africa after apartheid was abolished in the early 1990s. Sisonke has held fellowships at Yale University, the Aspen Institute and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and is a regular contributor to the Guardian, Daily Maverick and New York Times. She now lives in Perth, Australia, where she is head of oral storytelling at the Centre for Stories. ‘Few of us have felt the grinding force of history as consciously or as constantly as Sisonke Msimang. Her story is a timely insight into a life in which the gap between the great world and the private realm is vanishingly narrow and it bears hard lessons about how fragile our hopes and dreams can be.' Tim Winton ‘Brutally and uncompromisingly honest, Sisonke’s beautifully crafted storytelling enriches the already extraordinary pool of young African women writers of our time.’ Graça Machel, Minister for Education and Culture of Mozambique ‘Msimang is a talented and passionate writer, one possessed of an acerbic intelligence...This memoir is also full of warmth and humour.’ Saturday Paper ‘Sisonke Msimang kindles a new fire in our store of memoir, a fire that will warm and singe and sear for a long, long while.’ Njabulo S. Ndebele, author The Cry of Winnie Mandela 'An excellent blend of both the personal and political...a bold memoir...a tale that will sustain itself for generations.’ Books & Publishing ‘Msimang pours herself into these pages with a voice that is molten steel; her radiant warmth and humour sit alongside her fearlessness in naming and refusing injustice. Msimang is a masterful memoirist, a gifted writer, and she comes bearing a message that is as urgent and timely as it is eternal.’ Sarah Krasnostein ‘It is rare to hear from such a voice as Sisonke’s—powerful, accomplished, unabashed and brave. This is a gripping and important memoir that is also self-aware and funny, revealing the depths of a country we’ve mostly only seen through a colonial perspective.’ Alice Pung ‘It is not possible to do this book justice in so few words...Always Another Country is eloquent and powerful. Msimang’s explication of what it means to be from – but not of – a place is profoundly moving. Msimang deserves to be widely read and fans of Roxane Gay and Maxine Beneba Clarke, in particular, will not be disappointed.’ Readings ‘[An] eloquent memoir of home, belonging and race politics.’ Big Issue ‘Msimang’s graceful memoir is one of those rare books that managed to make me less cynical about the state of literature...It’s a coming-of-age story for those children for whom home is marked by more than a single physical location.’ New York Times

Download or read book Social Media and Everyday Life in South Africa written by Tanja E Bosch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-22 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how social media is used in South Africa, through a range of case studies exploring various social networking sites and applications. This volume explores how, over the past decade, social media platforms have deeply penetrated the fabric of everyday life. The author considers South Africans’ use of wearable tech and use of online health and sports tracking systems via mobile phones within the broader context of the digital data economy. The author also focuses on the dating app Tinder, to show how people negotiate and redefine intimacy through the practice of online dating via strategic performances in pursuit of love, sex and intimacy. The book concludes with the use of Facebook and Twitter for social activism (e.g. Fees Must Fall), as well as networked community building as in the case of the #imstaying movement. This book will be of interest to social media academics and students, as well as anyone interested in social media, politics and cultural life in South Africa.

Download or read book This Is My Life written by Pamela Tumeka Koyana-Letlaka and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2014-11-26 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is not about the political history of Apartheid South Africa; it is about an extraordinary South African woman?s life. It depicts where she was born, and chronicles her courageous journey into exile to Lesotho, Zambia, Zaire, and Britain, culminating with a diplomatic assignment in the United States of America. This is where the politics of the day intersects with personal lives, making us all more deeply appreciative of how profoundly the ?personal is political?.

Download or read book A Life for Freedom written by Denis Goldberg and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2016-03-18 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From June 1963 to October 1964, ten antiapartheid activists were tried at South Africa's Pretoria Supreme Court. Standing among the accused with Nelson Mandela, Ahmed Kathrada, and Walter Sisulu was Denis Goldberg. Charged under the Sabotage and Suppression of Communism Acts for "campaigning to overthrow the government by violent revolution," Goldberg was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. The only white man convicted during the infamous Rivonia trial, he played a historic role in the struggle for justice in South Africa. In this remarkable autobiography, Goldberg discusses growing up acutely aware of the injustice permeating his homeland. He joined the South African Communist Party and helped found the Congress of Democrats. It was his role as an officer in the armed underground wing of the African National Congress (ANC), however, that led to his life sentence -- the outcome of which was a staggering twenty-two years behind bars. While he was incarcerated, the racist dogma of apartheid imposed complete separation from his black comrades and colleagues, a segregation that denied him both the companionship and the counsel of his fellow accused. Recounted with humor and humility, Goldberg's story not only provides a sweeping overview of life in South Africa both during and after apartheid, but also illuminates the experiences of the activists and oppressors whose fates were bound together.

Download or read book My Life in Search of Africa written by John Henrik Clarke and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author, one of the foremost scholars on Africa, fought to legitimise African history for more than 60 years. This book finally uncovers the tumultuous life of this great figure. Through a series of autobiographical essays, Clarke looks back on his lifelong struggle to restore African history to its proper place in the context of world history.