South Africa Books

I found this book to have wonderful recipes. I have tried out almost half of them.

"Choice," a leading book review digest, listed "Women and Revolution in Africa, Asia, and the New World" as an Outstanding Academic Book in Political Science for the years 1992-1997. It contains much needed information about women's participation in sixteen revolutionary upheavals -- three in Africa, four in Asia, three in the Middle East, four in Latin America, as well as Afganistan and Yugoslavia. Each chapter covers the status of women before the revolution, their contributions during the revolution, and their postrevolutionary status. "Revolutions" vary from outright war to liberation movements, they rise from different beliefs, and participants set different goals, but one outcome remains the same: in each case, the interests of women are subordinated, a strong commitment to a women's agenda does not emerge. The double message -- that women participate in major ways in reform movements, even violent ones, and that women do not profit correspondingly -- needs to be clear to all those who believe that equal rights have long since been won. Sixteen examples from around the world present a strong message.

I gave this book 5 stars because I really dig this chick's name!

Through painstaking research and numerous interviews, author Hannah Britton brings to light the important influences that have shaped the feminist movement in South Africa - a movement that in turn, plays an important role in this evolving democracy.

The women in South Africa have worked both individually and collectively to attain national office in large numbers, and have used the legislative process to improve the quality of life for themselves and their children. I was surprised to learn just how successful this movement has been. (By 1999, South African women held slightly less than one-third of all nationally elected positions).

Britton is quick to note that electoral success is not always sustainable and does not necessarily translate into long-term gender equality. Indeed, while their accomplishments have been significant, so are the challenges that face the next generation of parliamentarians.

As an expert in her field, Britton's writing style is clear and concise - which makes for an interesting book for the academic and non-academic alike. Britton not only brings to the forefront an often-overlooked frontier in the history of South African democratization but gives this history a human voice by including incredible personal anecdotes from these remarkable feminist pioneers.

Collaboratively compiled and edited by M. J. Daymond, Dorothy Driver, Sheila Meintjes, Leloba Molema, Chiedza Musengezi, Margie Orford, and Nobantu Rasbotsa, Women Writing Africa: The Sou-thern Region is an extensive, 554-page work detailing (from a distinctly women's perspective) the history, culture, social issues, and modern-day living conditions in the southern region of Africa. Countless personal testimonies form the core of this aptly presented and profoundly insightful collection. Women Writing Africa is enthusiastically recommended for African Studies and Women's Studies reference collections and reading lists.

Peter Goldblatt's The Woody Iridaceae is the first thorough botanical investigation of this specialized group of genera. Though comprising just 13 species, one of which is newly described here, the group displays a surprising diversity of vegetative and floral form, the latter an adaptation to pollination by a variety of organisms, including insects and birds. To assess the evolutionary history and relationships of the species to each other and to other Iridaceae, the author has applied the rigorous methodology of cladistic analysis to a large array of data gathered from field, laboratory, and herbarium investigations.

In addition to detailed descriptions of the morphological, chemical, and cytological features of plants, this monograph provides information on the history of knowledge, including cultivation, of these southern African plants; distribution maps; the etymology of the names; complete synonymy; and notes on relationships and features that warrant further investigation.

Each species is illustrated with a full-page watercolor, drawn from a living plant, by noted botanical artist Fay Anderson.
Original line drawings by Margo Branch show other details of the plants. A glossary of special terminology and an index complete the work.

It is beautifully illustrated with watercolors of each of the species, as well as line drawings detailing morphological attributes....valuable, readable and beautiful book, and worthy of acquisition by those interested in unique plant forms.

This book is the best that I have read on the origins of apartheid in South Africa. It is a carefully-written and quite lucid explanation of the politics and unionism of black and white workers during World War II. Alexander illustrates how the degree and kinds of racial unity among South African workers during this period have been drasticaly underestimated by historians, but his analysis of the complex phenomena of working-class racism is full and nuanced. He has done an amazing amount of research into the political economy of the South African state at a number of different levels, and smoothly integrated this with a subtle and interesting social history of workers. This book serves as an excellent example of this kind of analysis for US historians of labor.

Nat Nakasa wrote once: 'I may shut up for some time because of fear. Yet even this will not make me feel ashamed. For I know that as long as the ideas remain unchanged within me, there will always be the posibility that, one day, I shall burst out and say everything that I wish to say - in a loud and thunderous voice.'

In The World of Nat Nakasa that loud and thunderous voice speaks with the clarity and insight that have caused this book to be read and reread for almost a decade.

Writing that is at once deft, humorous and compassionate speaks with concern and great understanding of the bleak and shut-in times of the early sixties.

In this new and expanded edition editor Essop Patel includes work by Nakasa which has come to light since the first edition was published.
--- from book's back cover

I was in 6th grade when Nelson Mandella was freed from prison, and I remember watching it on TV and understanding that this was a really good thing, because people in South Africa were really rascist and black people couldn't vote or do much of anything. It's sad to admit, but my knowledge of apartheid and of South Africa's history hasn't really grown much since then... I had always been under the impression that Apartheid was equatable with early 20th century Jim Crow laws.

This book is a fascinating story of life in a police state, where even white people have no real human rights, where everything that you do or say can and will be used against you, and where even the idealists lose hope. In the midst of all this are Rusty and Hilda Bernstein, a politically connected couple (she was the first female and the first Communist member of the City Council) with an otherwise fairly normal middle class life (he is an architect, she is a housewife with 4 children). This book charts their experiences in the infamous Rivonia Trial, where Rusty was tried with Mandela and others captured in a raid on an anti-appartheid action group.

Much of it really just takes your breath away. People may be held for 90 days without being charged (sound familiar?) and they are. Lawyers are too afraid to take on political prisoners, and for good reason (as we see with one in particular). The police conduct midnight raids, so if you sleep through the night you're one of the lucky ones. Through it all, the kids have to be sent off to school, the laundry must be done (in what may be the most gripping scene in the book), and friends and family must be protected.

Even though you more or less know what will happen at the end of the book if you know anything about the Rivonia Trial, or even just read the author's biography blurb on the jacket, this book will still have you sitting on the edge of your seat. I read the whole thing in one sitting because I just couldn't put it down. I wholeheartedly recomend this book to absolutely everyone.

Year of Fire, Year of Ash will stand for many years as a leading study of the brave uprising in 1976-77 by ten., of thousands of South Africa's young people - now known to the world as the Soweto Revolt.
This book - by an author who is both scholar and active socialist revolutionary - is important not just because of its careful documentation or lucid style, but for the depth and perceptiveness of its political
insights. Its central question is: To what extent can the Black Consciousness Movement provide a viable ideological platform for future revolutionary struggle? It is a question that no one concerned for the
future of South Africa can ignore.

Baruch Hirson's book goes far beyond a history of the Revolt itself - inspiring and exciting as his account of the uprising is. Part One outlines the whole history of education for Blacks in South Africa,
stressing the long record of student resistance and analysing carefully the emergence of the Black Consciousness Movement after 1969. Part Two turns to the history of the Revolt itself, including its
antecedents in 1973-75. In the course of so doing, it explodes several of the myths already current concerning the Revolt. It shows how it was the black working class, rather than the students, who set the pace
of renewed resistance in the 1970s. The book also demonstrates how the key Black Consciousness structures - SASO and BPC - had very little organisationally to do with the Revolt, while the African National
Congress's underground cells played quite a significant role after the uprising began. Perhaps the most significant section of the book is Part Three in which the author, from a socialist perspective, analyses
Black Consciousness as an ideology, and sets its ideas in the context of South African history since the Second World War.