South Africa Books

This book has good coverage of the New World areas. The photos are very good quality, varied and informative. I just wish they had used a Screwpull for a photo instead of those silly wing-type corkscrews. Some personel are covered, from various wineries, which is interesting (similar to the "Wine Spectator" or "Wines & Spirits" coverage). Most of the content focuses on grapes and land, with some coverage of equipment usage.

Levin and Weiner cover all the issues in this book, from food to soils to land use to participatory land reform. A critical and uncompromising look at the land reform process in South Africa. Up to date, precise, well written - without question it will become one of the key documents on the land reform process. Participatory research at its best. Bravo!

This book has been in my collection for many years, as I buy alot of books before I eventually get around to reading them. I'd read "My Traitor's Heart" by Rian Malan, and "Move Your Shadow" by Joseph Lelyveld. This one is also an excellent account of the brutality and injustice of Apartheid in South Africa. The latter was written much earlier than the other two and is told by a South African born lawyer. The stories of the many cases he took and causes he upheld is exciting, suspenseful but at the same time tragic. The book had me spellbound until the end where his very life is so threatened that he is forced to leave his country. This book portrays much of what blacks had to endure, pass laws, detention, prison, brutal torture without any recourse. In reading "No Neutral Ground", one can really appreciate the fact that most of the evils of this government has been crushed. I say "most" because life is still no bed of roses for the blacks of the land. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has the least bit of curiousity about what life was like there at that time. I just wish I had not waited so long to finally take this wonderful book out of my bookcase and read it! Thank you Joel, for all your compassion and dedication to helping to make life better for all humanity.

There are now a number of critical studies of the Nobel laureate's fiction, but none replaces Clingman's authoritative guide. The book proves particularly useful to American readers, as Clingman provides cogent discussions of the historical and political setting of Gordimer's apartheid-era writing.

People gravitate towards rhetoric, forming their opinions based on snippets of information rather than after having a more exhaustive study of the issues. Luckily, Dr. Heribert Adam and Dr. Kogila Moodley don't fall under this category and offer us a well research perspective on the issues. The first three chapters "The Opening of the Apartheid Mind" sets the stage for what will be a more rational and composed examination of the issues in South Africa of the recent past. To be brutally honest, rhetoric is sexy. Rhetoric moves us and unfortunately that limits the scope of our examination and removes agency from the Other - the stereotyped. Leaving one's examination of South Africa on the level of biographies written by self serving individuals leaves one with a one sided view of the issues.

In conjunction with the issues I laid out above, I just want to reflect, for a moment on Nelson Mandela's rhetoric that what occurred in South Africa was a miracle. The common belief is that there is an ontological predisposition to violence in Africa in general and South Africa in particular - that is a very dangerous oversimplification. In as much as there is a propensity to violence anywhere, why should we privilege Africa as the hotbed of violence. Can we see things another way and formulate policies accordingly.

There was an interesting note made in the introduction that: "Reluctant reconciliation is taking shape in South Africa. The ambivalent alliance between the two major contenders for power, the National Party (NP) and the African national Congress (ANC), results from a balance of forces where neither side can defeat the other. It is their mutual weakness, rather than their equal strength, that makes both longtime adversaries embrace negotiations for power-sharing. Like a forced marriage, the working arrangement lacked love but nonetheless is consummated because any alternative course would lead to a worse fate for both sides."

Already this sets the tone that the myth of the South African miracle is false and that the rhetoric surrounding the violence as set up by Mandela is false. A deeper examination of the issues leads us to believe that is will be the realistic self assessments as opposed to slogans and threats of violence that will lead South Africa to a stable transition and to effect a sustained stability - to whatever extent that can be achieved. People, unfortunately, en masse, do not like to hear this, it detracts from the rhetoric that fills the empty chambers of their hearts - therein lies the problem. In this context, it is very difficult to make a distinction between what we can be done and what ought to be done.

It is also interesting to note that whites will be in control for along time to come. The "emancipation" rhetoric want to see the toppling of tyrannical regime and see black freedom. Unfortunately, it is this very type to drum beating that results in violence: "Though strong in symbolic support, the ANC is weak in bureaucratic resources, military capacity, and economic leverage. Real power will therefore remain in the hands of the present establishment; even if Nelson Mandela becomes president of South Africa, the economy, the civil service, and the army will have to rely on white skills, capital, and goodwill for along time to come."

Having outline this, it is clear that a more reasoned and negotiated approach would be prudent. A statement like this one certainly does not bode well for the activists or the communist. Both of their projects will not be eliminated by this realization. However, realpolitik is for the engineers, rhetoric is the fodder for the activist.

The problem of the unassailability was already laid out early in the book, what is now important to do is to deconstruct the notion of Nelson Mandela as messiah and that his political apparatus is beyond criticism. One of the possible cautions for doing so can be construed as paternalistic. An argument could be made that it might be well enough that the ANC has achieved what it has. In this light, it will be making baby steps and will need time to iron out its kinks and be allowed to make mistakes. However, more sinister is the notion that because of his charisma, Mandela and the ANC are beyond any form of criticism - as if to imply "you are either part of the problem or part of the solution."

This merely confirms empirically that a less than critical approach can lead to a less than accurate prediction. Dr. Adam and Dr. Moodley bring to light several angles that ignored by the press and public who wish to see South Africa in terms of black and white rather than shades of gray.

Miguel Llora

Ten years ago, I wrote South Africa's War against Capitalism. Inspiration for the title came from the kind of arguments I heard during my several trips to South Africa, comments made by blacks and their supporters in the struggle against apartheid. The essence of their argument was that apartheid was a by-product of laissez-faire capitalism. For these people, including many academics and politicians, some variant of socialism would provide the cure. My research and counterarguments would have been far more productive and persuasive if I had had the benefit of the insightful analysis set forth in Anton D. Lowenberg and William H. Kaempfer's new book, The Origins and Demise of South African Apartheid: A Public Choice Analysis.

Lowenberg and Kaempfer provide powerful evidence for the Public Choice argument that South Africa's apartheid "was essentially a massive bureaucracy whose raison d'etre was the production of market regulations designed to effect wealth redistribution away from blacks and white mining and industrial capital owners in favor of white workers and agricultural capital owners. These regulations reflected the preferences of the median voter in an electorate dominated by white labor and rural constituencies." (p. 39)

Many people attribute the demise of South Africa's apartheid to international sanctions. Lowenberg and Kaempfer arrive at a different conclusion: "The white South African Government abdicated power because of a recognition that apartheid policies were becoming too costly to maintain. The main costs associated with apartheid were self-imposed as a consequence of years of misguided development strategies on the part of the National Party government and its predecessors. Although external events such as the oil price shocks of the 1970s and international reaction to apartheid after the Soweto riots of 1976 contributed to the slow growth of the South African economy, even more significant was the fact that the economy had undergone changes which had turned the apartheid system, once an asset for important groups of the white population, into a liability." (p. 218)

Lowenberg and Kaempfer devote several chapters to the sanctions issue. They show that despite claims that the goal of sanctions is to make targeted countries change objectionable domestic policies, sanctions more likely serve the interests of pressure groups within the sanctioning countries....

Therefore, the Lowenberg and Kaempfer hypothesis suggests, for example, that the United States might impose sanctions on the importation of South African wine, textiles, and coal and not to create domestic resistance, because abundant substitutes exist for those goods. Moreover, domestic producers might cynically support embargoes on wine, textiles, and coal imports as a means of gaining monopoly power. The United States embargoed South African agricultural products, but European nations, which were heavy consumers of produce from South Africa in the winter, chose not to embargo that category of goods.

Our Story Magic is a collection of fantastic fables and magical fairytales steeped in ancient South African tradition, spun by author Gcina Mhlophe and vividly illustrated by artists from KwaZulu-Natal. Due to its preponderance of text, Our Story Magic is ideal for children who are just about ready to graduate from picturebooks to chapter books, yet still appreciate the beautiful touch of color artwork spreading across the book pages. Each individual magical tale is brief, usually less than ten pages; ten stories in all fill this wonderful collection highly recommended for folklore and children's library shelves.

South African Apartheid remains alive and well, as this study of brutal resettlement programs illustrates. Nelson Mandela's failure to protect the human and civil rights defenseless Cape Town minorities is nothing short of criminal. Author's focus is primarily on "Cape Coloureds", people of mixed race. Written from the unique perspective of a British social geographer, now on the faculty of a major American university.

I just picked this book up today and was amazed at its sensitivity and beauty. Not everyone will enjoy it or understand this book but it has a feeling of Diane Arbus and the easiness of early Mary Ellen Mark with a kick of Ralph Eugene Meatyard. The compositions are beautiful and the inclusion of the animals are perfect.

The watercolor illustrations are the best part of this book--they really enhance the simple story of a boy and his mother and baby sister going to visit his grandmother.