South Africa Books

I first saw this book serialized in the UK's `News of the World,' and it did put shivers up my spine, not least because I was at the anti apartheid protest in Glasgow when he tried to bomb it, but also for how he's subsequently been portrayed in the media.
On reading the book however, I'm now left slightly unnerved, simply because I feel like I've got to know, and understand, someone who was potentially my murderer.
Beyond that though, what really struck me was Athol's obvious intellect, as for as evil as he is - and he is evil, his capacity for introspection and logic is second only to his capacity for violence.
This book will be offensive to many. While hated by others. And there's no doubt an argument against giving such a man a public voice. But, like the way his life has unfolded, there's no denying that the book's as gripping as it is insightful, and for that I'd recommend it to anyone who likes `reading on the edge.'

The Dilemmas Of Africanization: Choices And Dangers For Sub-Saharan Africa describes the inevitable consequences of new and emerging African governments implementing a policy of replacing certain existing classes of non-black business owners and plantation-scale farmers with their own (often untrained and inexperienced) citizens. While the white owners of these farms and commercial enterprises departed the country, no native citizenry accepted the opportunity to continue their operations which resulted in the ravaging of the mercantile section of the economy while plantations ceased to be productive. Adding to the severe economic situation was the permanent deprivation of intellectual capital necessary to adequately conduct development -- and a sharp decrease of available capital for investment. Even in the face of decades of national examples of this deeply flawed social and national policy, Zimbabwe continues to confiscate white farms even with a ruined economy running rampant and South Africa after the removal of apartheid is experiencing incidences of white commercial farmer assassination and general white flight which does not bode well for its economic and political future. Very highly recommended reading for students of African national cultures, politics, economics, and international relations, Dalton Cato's The Dilemmas Of Africanization is a revealing, documented expose based upon years of his personal research and experience while traveling and working in African, assisting people to deal with post-independent governmental experiments, polices and politics.

As the twentieth century is about to begin, family patriarch Sir Gilliard Asleigh, makes it abundantly clear that he loathes his four surviving grandchildren. In the mind of their martinet grandfather, they cannot live up to the legendary ghost of their now deceased oldest brother, who allegedly died while attempting to rescue General Gordon at Khartoum.

Nothing any of the four siblings do ever satisfies the senior citizen. The eldest living member of the foursome, Vere, duplicates his older brother by his valor on the battlefield. However, he mistakenly survives the mission in the Suden, refuses to rejoin a regiment, and turns to art leaves him (as usual) disappointing Gilliard. Valentine is in utter disgrace because he has been unfairly accused of rape. Margaret simply runs away with her Italian lover. Finally, imperfect Charlotte abused over a deformed leg) marries a commoner. Failure is all the patriarch sees for posterity.

A DISTANT HERO is a dynamic turn of the century family drama filled with superb characterizations that bring alive the strict social class system of England. The sequel to A QUESTION OF HONOUR is a top rate that will bring plenty of new fans beating to the drum of Emma Drummond.

Harriet Klausner

We brought this book with us to South Africa, and it was extremely helpful. Lots of photos, driving directions (which may be dated, due to ongoing construction and the transient nature of certain dirt roads), intelligent evaluations of the myriad dive sites, and detailed descriptions of local marine life.

Fortunately, we purchased it before we arrived there, as there was nothing similar available on the local bookshelves.

This book covers as diverse subjects as sports (rugby's political importance in South-Africa), pop culture (`Captain America as a great flag-wrapped phallus'), advertising (creating identifications and associations in the consumer), linguistics and postmodern theories (`The Rhetoric of the Passive in English'), comments on censorship (`The Taint of the Pornographic'), personal remembrances (Coetzee's US years as a student) and reviews of other writer's work (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Rousseau, Musil, Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, A. Fugard, N. Gordimer, S. Beckett, B. Breytenbach, A. La Guma and others).

It shows were J.M. Coetzee stood as a writer and as an individual at the end of the 1980s, just before the publication of one of his masterpieces `Age of Iron'.

Contrary to another writer who dissects during 43 pages his dominant feeling of nothingness (in a period of war!!!), the morass of linguistics (as an important philosopher remarked: linguistics equals the cleaning of one's spectacles) didn't turn J.M. Coetzee from `the great world and its concerns'. He took to heart G. Lukácz's position on realism: `one's first duty as a writer is to express social and historical processes; drawing the procedures of representation into question is time-wasting.'
An author should express `the truth as he sees it'. He `must take freedom from the public conformity of political interpretations, morals and tastes.' Therefore, he must be against censorship and its alleged function of protecting the State, a community, a society.
While others continued to be stuck in the morass, J. M. Coetzee tackled essential human problems as individual, political and social violence, sexuality, racism, dictatorship, justice, political monopolies, colonialism, human destiny (child, youth, aging and death) and the function of writing itself, head-on.

I have only a few comments on this thought-provoking book.
The world doesn't behave as mathematics predict it. As J. von Neumann said: `mathematical formulation necessarily represents only a theory of some phase (aspects) of reality, and not reality itself.'
Philosophically speaking, truth is correspondence with the facts (A. Tarski), with what happened, happens and will happen. Dreams, thoughts, wishes ... are also facts. There is no endless series of supplements that defers the truth.

This book is a must read for all Coetzee fans and lovers of world literature.

N.B. Some texts on censorship have been reprinted in Coetzee's `Giving Offense'.

This book is absolutely beautiful and is packed with amazing pictures. The accompanying CD is a well balanced review of the traditional music of South Africa and covers a wide range of singing and instrumental traditions. The book and CD combine to really connect the reader with these ancient traditions of music. The only thing that would have been nice to have included is some more detailed descriptions of how the instruments are actually made. Otherwise I was completely satisfied and am happy to have this book in my collection! I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in ancient world music traditions. However, it doesn't have enough information to help those who really want to learn the music to get started from this book (it's a great supplement though). For that you may have to go to South Africa!

Ms. Pegram is an outstanding lady. I know her personally because I was in one of her classes. She read us a couple of her poems and those were fantastic. To read an entire book of her poems was a treat. I highly recommend this book. You will be as moved as I was to read this book. As I said these are great poems by a very classy lady.

Excellent review of the Post-Apartheid School challenges. The strength of the book is that it point forward to solutions to these challenges. I recommend it to all interested in education of disadvantaged youth not only in South Africa, but also beyond

When apartheid was dismantled in 1994, South Africa faced the daunting challenge of establishing a working democracy in a country long divided along rigid racial lines. Perhaps no segment of society was more deeply affected by the metamorphosis than public education.

"Elusive Equity" examines the government's attempts to provide equal opportunity to learn for all children. Through in-depth interviews, unpublished documents, and observations at dozens of schools, Edward B. Fiske and Helen F. Ladd present a balanced analysis of the process.

The authors manage to immerse the reader in a way that is both informative and moving by making use of the same reportorial and research skills that they employed so effectively in "When Schools Compete," still the definitive study of school choice in New Zealand. The result is a book that is indispensable for anyone interested in the education of disadvantaged students anywhere. Despite the obvious historical differences between South Africa and the U.S., Fiske and Ladd draw valuable lessons that are instructive for inner-city schools here.

Walt Gardner taught for twenty-eight years in the Los Angeles Unified School District and was a lecturer at the UCLA Graduate School of Education.

This eminent work develops a new way of looking at the state, this revolutionary idea, takes into account aspects of Marxism and nationalism and applies it to South Africa. A brilliant hypothesis tries to explain the history or labour in the South African Gold Fields in the first half of the 20th century, while at the same time using theory, philosophy and economic theory to view this process.

This work remains the standard in its field as a point of departure for theories about the emergence of Modern South Africa. A Highly recommended work for any specialist, historian, social theorist or anyone interested in South Africa from a more detailed standpoint.

Seth J. Frantzman