South Africa Books

This is a different kind of book for the average one's out their. But I needed it for my English class. And it arrived on time.

African turmoil is reflected in these stories by Nadine Gordimer. The storytelling is crisp and detached. We are lucky to have so acute an observer of the passing scene. Universality is achieved through the careful attention paid to minute particulars. Reports of artistry and fidelity make points in understated fashion.

A man is rewarded with a house for giving information. When the debriefing is over hardly anyone comes to see him. He was an ordinary colonial child. It was his fate to be detained for five weeks in a dirty cell for merely taking a picture. Later he joins the counter-revolutionary forces. Horror comes slowly. Debriefing doesn't describe methods and experience. His parents may have spoiled him when they let him use a parachute.

A little boy dies on the barbed wire near his house playing a character from Sleeping Beauty. In another story the character doesn't know what day it is because the areas for services, churches and schools, have closed. With a mother gone and having undergone other losses, villagers and members of the family are going away from the land, carrying belongings. On the way through Kruger Park the grandfather, old and slow, is lost. The family does not hope to go back to Mozambique when the war is over. The people in the new village, it is fortunate, speak their language.

A twice-married man goes to a resort. The place seems to glisten with women. He flings stones into the sea and finds a ring. After advertising it in a local paper, he ends up marrying the woman who comes to claim it. The moon in the southern hemisphere seems the wrong way around. A couple rents a room to a young man because their son is to be away for eighteen months. The lodger works in a restaurant. Vera, the daughter, tells her parents that Rad, the lodger, wants to make a meal for them. Vera and Rad become involved with each other. She carries a black box for him on an airplane trip and the plane explodes.

A woman leaves a conference with four members of a youth delegation. She feeds them at her house. It seems their education was interrupted by two years detention. Those two years will never be regained, she surmises. Goats live on a shipwreck island and cause erosion. Through exogamous marriage the islanders change. They are moved. Afterwards the island is used as a weather station. A tour of duty on the island lasts a year. The personnel are subject to problems with insects and mice. Then there are cats on the island. The birds and turtles are disturbed. Young men from the university travel there. They are under orders to shoot the cats.

An Afrikaner farmer shoots a black man. He carries the man in his bakkie to the police station and confesses to the shooting. He had ridden with Lucas, the victim, in a vehicle in which there was a loaded weapon. Driving over a pothole, the weapon had discharged. The ending of this story is a surprise. Teresa took a leave of absence from her job and slept away from home, away from her Swedish husband, in order to find out the circumstances of the jailing of her mother, brother and sister. The husband had suspected an affair. Houseguests at a lodge troop out to witness lions eating a zebra. In the night they see the cubs in the body of the zebra. In daylight scarabs are seen devouring the stomach leavings.

A man, for reason of the indemnity process, is supposed to be free. He walks and takes buses. His friends help. The movement wants him to leave the country but he enjoys being home again. He notes a fellow bus passenger as being out of place. She is someone who would treat her servants well, but place her children in segregated schools. He is now living without consequences, being underground. He finds out the woman's husband is away in Japan and that they are drawn to each other as a couple. There is an interval of closeness in the absence of an exchange of personal identifying information. After several more moves the police find him and he is brought to take a seat in an ongoing trial.

Jump starts off with a complicated short story and follows up with a series of diverse pieces which make you question our society's values. Although she never outright accuses us of anything, she forces us to consider our cultural practices and beliefs in an attempt to make us sensitive to the world around us.

Nadine Gordimer's writing in Jump was amazing. As an English Major, I can honestly say that this book was one of the few that actually had me anxious to turn the page. The way that Gordimer leaves the endings wide open for interpretation has the reader questioning the intent of the author as well as the characters.

N. Gordimer writes with a very gripping style. I found myself engrosed in many of her stories. Some critical and polemic issues are treated with an approach that will leave a reader with many a deep thought.

Not in the same league as Paterson's "Man Eaters of Tsavo" or Corbetts "Man Eaters of Kumaon". Needs more narration on actual Man Eating incidents in the Kruger National Park. Some of the Kruger incidents are old and I have read them in other books.

This is an intriguing book because it's many-layered. On the one hand, it's certainly about man-eating lions. On the other, it's about waves of refugees willing to risk those lions on foot, unarmed and in the middle of the African night, to escape war and poverty. And the question of what you do, officially, in a famous wildlife preserve when your most charismatic tourist attractions are regularly killing and eating desperate political and economic refugees. Answer: You cover it up. You make sure your own tourists are safe (?) and you cover up the rest. There are no clear villains in this book- not the lions, who are just doing what lions do; not the refugees, looking for a viable life; not even the Kruger officials, who have no taste for the wholesale slaughter of animals in their charge. There is one hero, who does what he can in a refreshingly non-official, commonsensical way to help the refugees better their chances of staying alive.

I enjoyed Frump's style and narrative persona; he is no hero himself, out of his element and as scared of lions as anyone else. He's tantalized by the idea of crossing Kruger on foot and at night himself, but honestly relieved when he can find no one willing to guide him. He doesn't offer any easy answers and few judgements.

It's also humbling to realize how utterly helpless human beings still are when separated from our technology and set afoot in the dark among predators we must have known intimately for hundreds of thousands of years.

I found this book to be a disappointment. I hunt in Africa (not South Africa) and am fortunate enough to return on return on a yearly basis. I do not consider myself an expert on Africa by any means, and indeed, I wonder if anyone can really become an expert on so vast a place as Sub-Saharan Africa, an area only slightly smaller than the 48 contiguous United States. This book has a disorganized feel as though it was rushed into print on short notice. It is hard to understand the point the author is trying to make. Africa has components that can be very dangerous at times, although no more dangerous than many other parts of the world including the US. The reality is that everyone tends to manage the dangers they are familiar with as best they can. This is no less true for Africa than for the US and the other Western nations. Many thousands die on the US highways every year, but people by the millions don't think twice about risking death by using them to get where they need to go. The same is true for Africa. If the indigenous Africans need to risk predation or similar dangers to get to where they need to go, they take the risk. Most people around the world manage risk quite well in their daily lives. A few behave recklessly, and they are the ones that tend to get into trouble. As the author finally points out at the end of the book, there are ways to cross Kruger National park without being killed by lions, but there is always a risk of death, just as there is always a risk of death in highly developed industrial societies. (Currently, the real risk of death in Africa is from AIDS.) Finally, his discussions about firearms show a real lack of knowledge. Someone knowledgeable about firearms, and organization of the written word, should have gone over this book before publication.

Mozambican refugees are being eaten alive en masse as they attempt to walk across South Africa's Kruger National Park - home to the notorious man eating lions that are a well-kept secret outside the area. Journalist Robert Frump journeyed to the region in 2002 in search of their story and found a complex social and political mileau instead of the simple tale he had anticipated. THE MAN-EATERS OF EDEN thus becomes as much a story of politics and regional issues as it is a natural history of the park's two thousand lions and the plight of reguees who are their prey.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I found this to be a most intriguing read. At the very start of the book Frump gets your heart racing with the frightening tale of a corpse-spotting in Kruger. Even more gruesome lion-kill accounts create the intermittent suspense that boils up at just the right times throughout this book. That suspense is held together tightly with an honest and well-researched history of the state of game in African park and the plight of the African people who, victims of endless war, must unfairly confront Kruger's lions--the perfect killing machines. What's more, Frump helps the reader grapple with the natural guilt that comes from enjoying the suspense in this tragedy by tackling the sad moral quandry: lion or man. And perhaps best of all, it's a superbly crafted tale that is told in Frump's crips writing style.

Three Stars for an extremely laudable premise, especially considering Africa's renewed efforts at "getting it right". Well written, easy to read piece of work.

However, the writer could have done better by focusing on one sub region at a time. Her extended situation in South Africa allows her a relatively in-depth perception regarding progress and developments within the immediate region.

Her attempt to harness East Africa, West Africa as well as North Africa in this one book drastically watered down what would otherwise have been an extremely great piece of work.

She committed the one grave error most foreign journalists make in reporting on Africa- attempting to lump the entire continent up into one short story. This is regardless of the fact that given the diversity of its societies and economies - a country like Nigeria on its own presents a formidable challenge to analyze in a few paragraphs.

In addition, instead of focusing entirely on supposedly positive news alone, readers will be better served if the writer had given a factual country-by-country report.

If aggregate positive development within the entire continent of Africa can truly be outlined in less than 150 pages, I would not think it worth reporting.

I however think it fair to mention the fact that I lived in West Africa for over 30 years, extensively traveled the continent, still maintain strong ties and am an avid Africa watcher, which somewhat gives me an indepth perception.

This book would probably be a good enough read for the casually interested person.

I had very high hopes for "New News Out of Africa," but I was ultimately disappointed.

For someone who knows nothing about contemporary Africa, the book does provide a good introduction to some of the main issues that Africa faces (the legacy of apartheid, AIDS, corruption, NEPAD, the African Union) and elucidates some bright spots on a troubled continent. However, there are several problems with this book, in my opinion.

1) THE FOCUS ON SOUTH AFRICA
Hunter-Gault focuses disproportionately on South Africa (well over 1/3 of the book). This makes sense since she lives in Johannesburg, but South Africa is hardly representative of Africa as a whole. South Africa has the highest GDP per capita in Africa (higher than even Croatia, Chile, Russia, or Turkey). It has extremely low public debt. And it has a world-class infrastructure. When talking about Africa's future, you cannot compare South Africa to [...] Congo-Kinshasa.

2) NARROW COVERAGE OF AFRICA
The author's overemphasis on South Africa and the book's short length mean that the rest of Africa gets less attention than it merits. The book is 142 pages (before endnotes) and is printed in large font. It is true that chapter 2 (out of 3) jumps all over Africa, giving little snapshots of the situation in many countries (and it is the best chapter). But the author could have written a book twice as long and gone into greater depth. Moreover, if she had divided the book up into a region-by-region analysis, she might have been able to highlight the real disparities across Africa in terms of development and hope for the future.

3) THE "I" FACTOR
Readers of "New News Out of Africa" should know that the book is not just about Africa and its recent history. The book is also substantively about Hunter-Gault and her personal relationship to Africa. It is about her experiences in Africa, what Africa has meant to her as an African-American, and which famous people she has interviewed in Africa. This isn't a criticism per se, but prospective buyers should know what to expect. Rather than such a deeply personal aspect, I was hoping for a more dispassionate analysis.

4) SOURCES
I am one of those people who wants to know where facts come from. And Hunter-Gault cites some amazing facts. So, as I read "New News Out of Africa," I was constantly flipping back to the endnotes, but I was very disappointed to see that most of them come from interviews with Hunter-Gault and from websites.
Many academic scholars (especially historians, but not sociologists) are wary of interviews since they are highly subjective and often not verifiable.
And who verifies the websites used? How do we know that the information provided there is accurate? I generally trust websites like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, but what about other sites?
Some of the information seems to be taken uncritically from these sites. As an example, from one website: She quotes a poem by the "Congoloese poet and politician" Patrice Lumumba. I've heard Lumumba called many things before (postal worker, beer salesman, politician, rebel), but never a poet.
In the endnotes/bibliography, I was surprised not to see page after page of scholarly analyses, monographs, and academic papers. There are some, but far fewer than warranted.

"New News Out of Africa" does provide a very good introduction to important issues; however, the best passages -- those that are the most useful -- are buried among others and are best excerpted. But herein lies the paradox or the problem. The person new to African studies wouldn't know which passages are better than others, and the Africa expert, who does know, doesn't need an introduction.

Charlayne Hunter-Gault provides a snapshot of life in Africa, from the perspective of someone who has lived and breathed news coverage on the continent for decades. Yes, the book is heavy on South Africa, but as the powerhouse of Africa and the launching point for most of her work, it makes the book more personal and anecdotal - a plus from my perspective.

She is a journalist questioning her industry's poor coverage of the continent -- that is the heart of the book. It is not meant to be an academic book or the definitive word on Africa. New News presents a moment in time. She addresses the sad fact that most Westerners have a severely skewed perspective of the continent, largely due to doomsday media coverage.

New News was a modest attempt to give some balance to what Hunter-Gault calls the four D's of the African Apocalypse. Yes, I would like to read more, but was grateful for the 100-some pages of honest, first-hand analysis.

Veteran journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault hits the nail on journalism's head with her latest book, New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance. Hunter-Gault, who up until recently was the Johannesburg Bureau Chief for CNN, gives her take on media coverage of Africa. Half of the book is dedicated to her work experience in both pre- and post-apartheid South Africa, while the rest of the book examines what she calls the renaissance occurring in postcolonial Africa with the help of enterprising African journalists. If one only depended on Western media for news about the continent, they would conclude that the only things happening in Africa are war, famine and AIDS. This
Afro-pessimism is further compounded by patronizing celebrities and Live 8 concerts that claim to be "saving" Africa. While she agrees that atrocities, such as the HIV pandemic and the Darfur genocide should be covered, Hunter-Gault feels that this should be balanced out with the new news about the politicians and activists making a positive impact on the atrocities. "Recalling the old/bad news and putting it in context must also be a part of our new news mission if there is to be any hope of the past instructing the future," she says. Hunter-Gault cites the rise in democratic elections, and, thus, more democratic leaders around the continent as part of the new news. The reporter also recognizes being an African American and a woman has also helped her to "come in right" or fairly report news about Africa. A must read for all journalism students and those who care about Africa's future.

NEW NEWS shows us that there is, in fact, good news coming out of Africa.

This new book by Charlayne Hunter-Gault provides a lively overview of the political, economic and social progress occurring in many African countries in recent years.

Hunter-Gault, who has lived in South Africa for the past decade, personalizes the narrative with her own firsthand stories as a black female American journalist covering African events for CNN, NPR and the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour. She frequently contrasts her African experiences with her life in the pre-Civil Rights American South. (As a young woman in 1961, Hunter-Gault famously integrated the University of Georgia amid racial taunts, personal threats, and student riots.) Hunter-Gault's personal anecdotes are perhaps the most compelling part of NEW NEWS.

For those seeking to understand where Africa has been in recent years, and where one hopes it will continue to go, NEW NEWS is an excellent start.

"The Other Side of Silence" is one of the bleakest novels you'll ever read. It is essentially the story of one woman's unending suffering and misery. With each new stop in her life comes a new abuse. An orphan, she shuffles from one person to the next and almost always encounters someone who wants to exploit her. Everything is taken away from this woman, Hanna, including, at one point, her last name. When she finally, briefly finds love, that too is cruelly stripped from her.

I'll admit, despite some obvious flaws, I found Hanna's story engrossing and compelling. I really felt for this woman and became involved in her tragic life. My complaint, though, is that Brink's characters are too black and white -- either "evil" or "good." Catholics take a particular beating here (they are either rapists, sadists or hypocrites) and men do, too. It seems in this world that you are either malevolent or an angel. There are also too many cliche scenarios (mixed in with the more original and unique turns in the story they feel quite clunky).

All of this refers to the first half of the book. Part two of the novel takes an entirely different direction. Hanna, with a young orphan (Hanna all over again) and a ragtag army, sets out on some lofty revenge. I found this section of the book highly misguided and almost ruinous. It severely damages the book. Brink seems unsure himself about Hanna's rampage. He questions exactly why they're doing it and if it's a good decision, and he starts to write the officers they kill as nothing more than foolish kids, which makes Hanna seem just as cruel as the people we're supposed to be happy to see die.

The whole thing feels absurd anyway. One attack by Hanna's army on a fort is laughable. As the men of the army ambush officers in the desert, the women start to knock off men one by one at the fort, right out of "Ten Little Indians," and as men keep getting killed after going off with the women and the women keep firing shots into the air toward the desert as signs, you have to wonder exactly how long it will take the German officers to figure out that this party that has just arrived -- and brought with it sickness and death -- is not friendly. The whole episode is like a bad sitcom.

The first part of the book centers on Hanna's time in an orphanage and her stay in Frauenstein, a massive edifice in the African desert. I found her history -- violent and depressing as it was -- fascinating; Hanna becomes very real to you. You do want her to take the young orphan, Katja, and get away from Frauenstein, and briefly the book keeps pace by introducing a rather scary missionary when they leave, but as soon as this army forms and Hanna incessantly tries to justify what she's doing, the book falls flat on its face. And the ending is utterly contradictory and wholly unsatisfying.

I give the book four stars because for me it is really two books: Hanna's history, and the tepid revenge conclusion that has no real need to be here. Without the latter -- and with a real finish, in which Hanna saves Katja -- it would have been nearly perfect. But even as it currently is -- mightily flawed -- it is still worth reading.

As a student of South Africa, I found The Other Side of Silence a fascinating addition to my understanding of the country's early colonization. The language is spare, important when mutilation is central to the storyline. I read it twice, the second revealed nuances missed during the first. On my recommendation, my book club will read this ...

Mr Brink tells the haunting story of Hanna X which takes place at the beginning of the 20th century in the German colony of what was then called Deutsch-Südwestafrika (German South-West Africa), now Namibia. It was then the custom that the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft sent hundreds of women and girls to Africa "to assuage the need of men desperate for matrimony, procreation or an uncomplicated" love-making.
Hanna X, resident of a forlorn place called Frauenstein in the middle of nowhere in the desert, contemplates her face in the mirror. Tufts of blond hair hacked off with a kitchen knife, part of her right ear is missing leaving a dark hole, she has only part of the left eyebrow left, her face is criss-crossed with scars and most frightening of all, she has no tongue, only a small black stub, far back. The sound she utters is Ahhhhh... How did Hanna X undergo such hideous mutilations and who inflicted them to her?
And so the narrator traces back the harrowing tale of this poor orphan back to her childhood in Bremen. She grew up in an institution called the Little Children of Jesus where her books were confiscated by Frau Agathe, where she was "touched" by Pastor Ulrich and beaten regularly. Hanna found refuge with her teacher, Fräulein Braunschweig, who let her read stories like "Die Leiden des Jungen Werther" or that of Jeanne D'Arc.
Her years in service were also marked by desolation. With the Klatts for instance. Frau Hildegard was a mean-spirited woman and Herr Dieter had to be "serviced" for a few Pfennig. So Hanna decided to apply with the Kolonialgesellschaft and was granted passage to Africa by Frau Sprandel who dismissed her with the premonitory warning not to "expect too much of her palm trees". It is on board the Hans Woermann that Hanna experienced love and tenderness for the first and only time in her life with a girl called Lotte. It was after their arrival in Africa, during the train journey which was to take them to Windhoek, that Hanna was confronted with Hauptmann Heinrich Böhlke and the outcome of this encounter was what Hanna now sees in the mirror in Frauenstein: a monstrously disfigured creature...
Such humiliation and dismemberment was inflicted to her not because of anything she had done but simply because she was a woman. From then on, it is hatred that drives everything she does "as inexorable as the desert sun". This hatred is a form of liberation for Hanna as she begins her long journey with Katja towards the confrontation with the man or men who turned her into something "like out of hell". As the two women set off in the desert towards Windhoek, it is to keep an appointment with destiny...
"The Other Side of Silence" is probably the best novel ever written about the horrors of colonialism in Africa. Some passages in the book remind the reader of what happened during the Holocaust. Mr Brink has rightly been compared to the greatest writers of our times like Solzhenitsyn, Garcia Marques or Peter Carey.

No, I'm not a raging feminist who critiques all books on this subject but this does reasonably explain this one's faults. It's always a risk writing from a character's perspective who is of the opposite sex. Even an accomplished writer like André Brink can't make it float.

Now that I've stated this, I admit that it would be hard to give examples without giving away the whole story line. For those who read the book, what happens to Gisela bothers me. These are not the actions a mother would take. Also, what was Hanna looking for in Africa? What did she really want? She never ponders marriage, children, pursuits of women in her age. At least say why or why not and what alternatives were offered to her in those days (not many, I expect).

The only sympathetic male character was introduced in the last few pages. Otherwise, they're all evil.

It's true that the book gets so gory that you stop caring. It numbs you after intially being so shockingly horrible. With the holes in the plot, it starts to ring very untrue and unbeliveable. That was pretty compicated surgery, preformed on a train?? What happens with her little band bother me (only Katja and Hanna left?). How were they able to eat in the desert? The first fort takeover was almost silly. You'd think the German soldiers were the dumbist on the planet. I could go on and on...

He's still a great writer but "A Dry White Season" was much better. My South African cousin gave it to me, saying that it could describe the situation in her country better than she could. I couldn't bring myself to watch the film. The injustice that Brink pulled off there was so real. He lost that with this book.

Am I a hypocryte if I go out and buy the sequel? He says he'll write about Katja's child. I think it's a testiment to his writing. Too bad his talent is wasted on a feeble plot.

And she says it in a big way.
This novel takes place in the early years of the 20th Century, among the German-occupied colonies of South-West Africa. From her earliest years as an orphan, Hanna X, the main character in Brink's novel, suffers incredible amounts of abuse. First off, there is the unreasonable strictness of Frau Agathe to deal with. Beatings are a regular thing at the orphanage "because it is a Christian place where evil will not be tolerated." Then there is the lecherous priest, Pastor Ulrich, who violates her physically and spiritually. Then, a series of transitional periods where the young Hanna is shipped from one place to another, and these experiences always result in trauma, disappointment, disillusionment. Her life becomes characterized by alienation, loneliness, pain, loss, and denigration.
Throughout all of this, Hanna hangs on to a fleeting childhood memory, something she refers to as "The Time Before"... in which she remembers meeting an Irish girl named Susan at the beach of the Weser in Bremen. Susan gave Hanna a shell, and told her to listen to its inner sounds. Hanna keeps this shell, and for her it comes to represent the "silence which she carries deep within her, from the lost time before she ever arrived at the orphanage..."
When Hanna hears that hundreds of women are regularly being shipped from Hamburg to the remote African colonies to serve as wives for the men stationed there... she signs up. What could be worse than what she is presently experiencing?
She arrives at Swakopmund, and ends up at an extremely remote secular nunnery known as Frauenstein.
Here (and on the way here) she will learn that there are places worse than the orphanage. Much worse.

What follows is a very dark story. Do not be mistaken, this is a story difficult to read for its brutal depictions of torture and violence, but written in a style and with an imagery that is evocative, unmistakingly vivid, even beautiful.
However, this is in no way a beautiful story where all is resolved at the end. Where justice has its day, where all is made right. One ought to be prepared for this fact.

It shows the most absolutely horrid aspects of human nature, and always face-up, in the full light of the hot sun. Not only are the perpetrators of crimes against Hanna (the heroine) shown in all of their shameless ghastliness, but she herself becomes nearly as brutal in the latter half of the book. There comes a time when Hanna says "No more" and understandably, we want her to succeed in her plans for vengeance against the greatest of crimes that have been commited against her. She assembles a ragtag band of vigilantes, those who have suffered injustices of their own, and together they set out on a quest to reclaim dignity, with Hanna as their (mute) leader.

This is a difficult book, but only because of its subject matter. The way it is written makes me want to read more by this wonderful author.

Nelson Mandela is certainly one of the great icons of the 20th century, belonging in the same league as Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi. The collection of photographs and other memorabilia about his imprisonment on Robbeneiland is very interesting. The accompanying texts are informative, but are bit too 'official' and hence lack the critical distance that is a requirement for a truely enjoyable reading experience.
Paul Schuurman.

I had the impression that the book was new. The dust-cover was marked and four pages had not been cut at the top right hand conner. i needed the book for research and very quickly. If not I would have returned the book.

This is a very fascinating read and a fitting tribute to Mr. Nelson Mandela, one of the giants of the 20th century. After reading this book, you will get a better sense of Mandela's humanity and humility; qualities that have made him the most respected statesman of our time. Highly recommended!

I have been for many years a very interested reader of non-violent leaders, mainly MLK and Gandhi. The Mandela that shines through in this book recalls the spirits of those other great leaders.

Mandela's negotiation skills shine through along with his humanity. We are confronted with many of his letters, some of which demonstrated frustration at censorship, some of which showed his tremendous skills negotiating with a government that held him prisoner. It is outstanding to see a man take power from a prison cell, and negotiate in a position of strenght with a government that holds total control over his life.

The main aim of the book is not the one I am reflecting. The book is in fact a reflection of Mandela's life in prison and all the records that have been gathered of his time there (and the interesting stories of each record). This is not a history book or even a biographical book -- if you are looking for those, look elsewhere. This is a record (with a lot of pictures) of a time in his life and his new project, in the form of the Center for Memory, as an attempt to avoid the mistakes of the past by remembering them.

This is a very interesting book. I have not read his biography, so I cannot compare, though I am impelled to read it now. Mandela is an outstanding man, a towering figure of the 20th century that helped usher in the 21st. One finishes this book with faith restored.

The book documents Nelson Mandela's long and unjust incarceration. It depicts a media visit to Robben Island. There are pictures of prisoners tending the garden while incarcerated.

This volume has many memoirs, oral accounts, artifacts used by Nelson Mandela, structures named after him and the official record of the Presidential tenure. A copy of the prison release is contained in the book. It was signed by President FW De Klerk and countersigned by HJ Coetsee. The daily visits are diarized
in a lengthy prison log.

This work documents a wealth of historical facts for future
generations of South Africans and historians everywhere.
It is an important testimony to the years of involuntary
bondage within the context of the old apartheid system.

The current and future generations will have a deep appreciation
of the power of forgiveness and reconciliation bestowed freely
by Nelson Mandela after years of an unjust detention.
The book attests to the wisdom of documenting the travesties
of justice and then putting the past behind so that the
society at-large can move forward to rebuild .

this piece of history will change the way you look at africa and Shaka for ever. this is the only un byast sorce for my report on the great shaka zulu and this book was fantastic. you have to buy it. it was writtian by a european man who got lived with and got this information from the actual zulu tribe...

enjoy this master piece

For every European and American interested in Black Africa and the Bantu, Ritters "Shaka" is a "must read", full of high adventure, full of an unknown world. His affection for the Zulus is contagious, and his joy in narrating his story rubbs off on his readers.
It would be eminently unfair to expect of Ritter a strictly "historical" account of Shaka and his time: the only written records to survive are those of white traders and seamen. Oral traditions were bound to be contradictory (Zulu, by the way, held in olden times the largest vocabulary of any unwritten language!), and tales certainly grew taller in re-telling. To boot, Ritter had no access yet to records like the James Stuart Archive. But Ritter eminently succeeds in waking ones interest in this "black Napoleon" and his time, and especially in everything connected with this proud warrior tribe, their way of life, social conditions and their development.
It cannot be gainsaid that the Zulu under Shaka, like the Mongols under Jingis Khan or the French under Napoleon - though on a much smaller scale - left a trail of blood and tears; but up to the present day Shaka is spoken of with awe and venerated by his own people like Napoleon and J.K. are by theirs....

While Ritter's "masterpiece" is a rollicking good read, it should never have been regarded as a historical document. The content falls short of respectability in many instances, most notably with regard to its inaccuracy. Ritter includes in his book a young woman named Pampata, who he says was the great love of Shaka's life. In fact the name Pampata appears not once in the James Stuart Archives - a comprehensive record of Zulu oral accounts. Ritter ends his book with Pampata committing suicide over Shaka's corpse. Once again, there is no mention of this on record. In other instances Ritter fares just as badly. He describes the "honourable" execution of Mudli kaNkwelo after Shaka took power in 1816. One snag: Zulu oral accounts are unanimous that Mudli was killed before Shaka arrived to assume the crown. Ritter also bandies exaggerated figures around. His estimation of the dead after the battle of Gqokli has been exposed as ludicrous by modern historians. He has used so much of Alfred Bryant's work (particularly from Olden Times in Zululand and Natal)that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two books. Sadly, too many mythical - and misleading - pictures of Shaka have been formed by this book. It deserves a place in any library - but only on the fiction shelf.

...Do not be swayed by the opinions of some people who dismiss this story as a work of fiction... Ask any griot in Natal Zululand, and they will tell you that the source of this story to the author is well authenticated. Seganada Cube (who was killed in the 1906 Bambatha rebellion) was an 'udibi' or a little boy assigned to take care of an assigned warrior's needs, and it is safe to say that he saw and heard the great emperor himself speak. So to say this is a work of fiction is absurd. And people who suggest that are victims of propaganda. The only thing thats fiction is the mini series "Shaka Zulu", which got only one thing right - the names of the people.

True, if you're looking for historical accuracy, look elsewhere; but Ritter himself claimed he was in a way more concerned with the myth of Shaka as it was told among the Zulu than he was with perfect accuracy; and man, it's a great, great read, and a must for anyone to whom the myth of a man is the matter of interest.

I got this book as a present before i went to south africa. I was excited because I have heard that these books are really good. But after reading through the book, I quickly realizied that it did not give me enough information. I am in South Africa, I see how beautiful it is. I don't need to see pictures, I need maps, (there were only maps for Capetown)information about what i am seeing, costs of addmission, times, ect. There were none, and it became really annoying and unpleasant at many times. These books are good for people who just want to see how other countries/cities look like, but not travel to them. If you want a good travel book, look for the Lonely planet series.

Before I went to Cape Town, a thoughtful friend gave me this book, and I couldn't thank her enough. And although my comments below apply to the South Africa volume, they could well be applied to the entire series, which is excellent.

The layout of the book is immediately arresting. Rather than imposing blocks of sheer text, the editors use tons of photographs, maps and other graphics. Just randomly flipping through this book is entertaining, which is not always the case with these types of publications. The typefaces are clear and well-chosen, and the enticing pages include many illustrations, the most unusual of which are cutaway diagrams of major buildings. These drawings are quite beautiful, and an unexpected delight in a book like this.

Other sections deal with history, art and business. And still more sections cover "nuts and bolts" items like hotels and restaurants, and vital information such as availability of banks and ATMs, doctors and hospitals, and other trip considerations that one might overlook in the rush to depart. The book is a nice size to tuck into a bag, and will give hours of pleasure even after the trip is over.

I've used guides by Fodor, Michelin and others, and although those are quite good, these Eyewitness publications really raise the bar.

I bought South Africa (Eyewitness Travel Guides) and have found it very helpful. We already had an itinerary planned and this guide showed us where we would be visiting, the weather, and gave useful background on each area. This guidebook gives pictorial views of historical sites, attractions etc. This was enlightening information, some of the places we will be going are far larger in area than we would have imagined. Also the attraction maps will help us keep oriented so time is not wasted being lost. With this guide and a good detail map of South Africa we gained insight about the length of travel needed each day. The biggest plusses were the pictures and drawings, they really are worth a thousand words as used in this guide. There is plenty of "survival" information; important phone numbers, medical suggestions, lodging recommendations etc. Lots of fun to read just for enjoyment!

Excellent travel guide!
It's very up-to-date and has a lot of detailed information.
I especially loved the street-by-street and pictorial maps -extremely helpful!!!
The only downside is that it doesn't really list any low-budget accomodation, the ones recommended are more on the high end...

I first discovered these books (a series Eyewitness Travel) by accident in a Stockholm bookstore. I had just come from Gothenborg by train and was a bit dazed. The book I bought by accident was in swedish but it still useful because of all the photos, cut away views, museum pictures, and maps and historical details. When I got home I bought a pile on Amazon.com of different places that I was going or had visited - but in english.

On a cold day back here in the USA (or Canada) or elsewhere, have a glass of wine and sit in a nice chair or in the garden on a warm day and read this book. For a moment you will be back in South Africa. You are back in a small restaurant overlooking a busy street in Cape Town.

The photos and desicriptions and cutaway drawings are excellent. Plus they throw in some history and details on the art and many other things of interest. A solid 400 page effort - lots of stuff to see and absorb. What is attractive about this book is that South Africa is not a well traveled country so we are not so familiar with the coutry. But the book brings it all to life with just magnificent photos and maps.

Judging from the two customer reviews, you either love it or hate it. I have a tweener view of Lambourne's tome. Having a keen interest in the Pre-Raphaelites, I wanted to learn more about Victorian art. I admit I chose this book because of it's size. However, I was pleasantly surprise by its content. I enjoyed his organization, for instead of going from artist to artist, he covered their subject matter and their important artists. It was a good review of the British art world of the Victorian era and some European/American artists who were influenced by the British. Lambourne was both academic and insightful. He seem knowledgeable of aspects of the artists' lives that are not usually in an academic work. The reproductions were great but I was disappointed that some were so small. However, I can understand the design trade off vs. cost of the book. So if you're looking for an extensive survey of Victoria period art at an affordable price, this is your book.

I'M AN ARTIST, AND I IDENTIFIED MYSELF A LOT WITH VICTORIAN PAINTING, I GUESS PART OF MY SOUL STILL LIVED IN THAT PERIOD. TO ME, THIS IS MY "BOOK OF LIFE", IT'S VERY COMPLETE, EXCELLENT INTRODUCTION, MARVELOUS COLOUR ILLUSTRATIONS, AND MOST OF ALL, YOU GET TO KNOW OTHER VICTORIAN ARTISTS WORK. **TRUST ME YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED**

Trust me - if you know anything about Victorian Painting you WILL be disappointed. Nice reproductions, though predictable choices for the most part. Platitudinous text.

Although it has been much maligned by critics and art historians, the Victorian period was actually a rich and dynamic era in the arts. Modern art historians have been brought up with the notion that the concept of a narrative in a painting - essentially a painting that tells a story - is either mere illustration or "kitsch." Once this view of painting became the conventional wisdom early in the last century, Victorian Art, so much of which was narrative, was relegated to the basements of museums and even became an object of ridicule. In art history classes around the world, paintings of the Victorian era, whether by Leighton in England or Bouguereau in France, were used as a foil for the Impressionists and early Modern movements. The Victorian era was a sentimental time and there is a fine line between a romantic sentimentality and being overly sweet or saccharine and there were many times when Victorian painters vaulted over that line. However, like any other art form, you only become an effective and intelligent critic of a genre or period when you know it well. And, if your art history courses have taught you to dismiss it out of hand, you will simply be pathologically unable to make intelligent distinctions or draw proper conclusions.
Lionel Lambourne's book is a comprehensive survey of Victorian Art. It is a massive volume that is beautifully illustrated with exceptionally good plates. All too many art books suffer from poor color, clearly drawn from poor transparencies or scans, but this book doesn't stint on the number or quality of the illustrations, so it will be popular with those who simply want to enjoy the images as well as those who have the time to read the text. The author, who is the head of the paintings department at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, clearly knows his subject well and he has broken the long Victorian era down into logical chapters, beginning with a survey of the "Victorian Art Establishment" and then diving the Victorian period by subject and movement rather than simple chronology. He covers all the major movements such as "The Frailer Sex and the Fallen Woman," "The Pre-Raphaelites," "Aesthetes and Symbolists," and "Childhood and Sentiment."
The book is not devoted solely to the artists who lived in Great Britain but also includes painters from the British colonies and former colonies in order to show the connections between their art and that of England. Without descending into the jargon that is too frequently relied upon by art historians, Lambourne is scholarly, providing insight into the influences and motivations of the Victorian artists and then explaining why Whsitler and the Aesthetes rebelled against the prevailing style. Victorian painting has remained popular with artists and a segment of the public precisely because of some of the qualities that repell many art historians - the high level of craftsmanship, sentimentality, the narrative drive so common to the era and the moral element that is part of many paintings from the epoch - but in recent years, more and more exhibitions have been mounted and new books seem to come out each fortnight. Now that Victorian Art has regained some of its lost luster and popularity, it deserves to have an elegant book like Lionel Lambourne's "Victorian Painting" that gives readers an overview of a rich artistic epoch.

Two of the best books about general Victorian paintings are Lionel Lambourne's and Christopher Woods'. Although both book discuss the same broad subject of Victorian art, they do not seem to overlap each other but instead seem to reinforce each other, filling in gaps where one left off. Don't be afraid to own both books. Both books are packed with beautiful images and interesting notes about so many Victorian painters. Lambourne's book is almost twice as heavy as Wood's but the image resolution is smaller but he seems to give a better account of the events surrounding the paintings. The topics of both books are very well ordered (historical events, animals, nudes, outdoor etc)

In an environment over-saturated with the mediocrity of Modern Art, Victorian art is ever increasing in importance, and no serious lover of paintings should ever be without both books.

Alan Paton descibes realistic events of South Africans involved in 20th century conflicts. It's a great book. There are two main charcaters, Mr. Robert Mansfield and M.K. Bodasingh. It is often hard to determine which character is expressing his thoughts and for some to follow the story line, but definitely worth reading.

I finished reading Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful quite a while ago, but I'd read it again it I hadn't borrowed it from the library. While you can't always tell which character is speaking, I find that that is good because it shows the complexity of views in South Africa in the 1950s. When you start reading a new section, you don't think, "Oh, that's just what Hugh Mainwaring thinks." You realise that the statements were actually what real people, not just characters, thought. Especially in this day and age, I think that this book helps a little to get in to the mind of terrorists today, even though the issues at stake are markedly different. I would recommend this to everyone, especially those who enjoy history.

"Ah But Your Land is Beautiful" is far and away one of the best books written about the old South Africa, and in many ways still applies very much so to today's "Rainbow Nation." Taking the reader into all of the minds in South Africa at the dawn of apartheid, this gripping multi-viewpoint docu-fiction is an amazing experience for those with everything from a little to an extensive background in South African history. It is a must for anyone who was captivated by "Cry, the Beloved Country," and in my opinion is his best work.

It's been almost 30 years since I read Cry, the Beloved Country and I'd forgotten how strangely Paton structures his books. This novel gives us some excellent insights on how sick a society South Africa was in the 1950's. However it's an extremely difficult read; shifting between past and present tense, dialogs were the author doesn't explain which characters are speaking, a great many references that are unclear to readers who know little about South Africa. Another reviewer called the novel "docu-fiction". That's exactly what it is. It has no protagonists. We learn very little about who these characters are and have trouble caring about them, aside from the grief inflicted on them by hateful Afrikaners. This was Paton's last novel. He was pushing 80 when he wrote it. He still had plenty to say. His ideosyncratic story telling detracts from the message.

Sparks has written a trio of books about South Africa with this book being the third. I've also read the first one, The Mind of South Africa, but not the second, Tomorrow Is Another Country. On balance, I found The Mind of South Africa stronger than this book. In part, this is simply because the evolution of a system like apartheid is such fascinating reading. This is also partly because the nature of this book-- a "where are we now?" book-- is time limited. It was published in 2003, and it left me to wonder what Sparks would have made of the last four years.

I think that he would have been kind. One of the things that strikes me about Sparks through both of these books is his strong humanism. He does not want to believe in villains. I get the feeling that he is probably the kind of guy who irritates everyone at a party by defending whoever is under discussion. He wanted to believe that Mugabe would do the right thing in The Mind of South Africa. Even in this book, although he owns his mistakes about his hope for Mugabe his tone is more one of sadness than condemnation. Sparks seems to see the whole sad mess in South Africa as not having any heroes or any villains-- just victims and participants. I like that approach. It is the kind of view that I naturally tend to agree and sympathize with.

But actually, I think that the point of the book is that he does not see the situation in 2002-3 South Africa as a sad mess. He sees it as an imperfect triumph, and I'm not sure that he isn't right. The more that I learn about the country and the more that I hear about the history, the more amazed I am that things didn't collapse into fire and destruction. There are problems, huge ones, but they were largely there to begin with. He has the same worries about Mbeki that I think many observers have-- his strange stance on AIDS, his silence on Zimbabwe. Sparks doesn't gloss anything over, but he largely repeats a message of hope. I think that this is a message worth repeating.

A good book, and interesting.

Step into any bookstore in South Africa and you'll see that the country is awash in social science literature (most of which is ephemeral and undigestible) while sorely lacking in modern histories that put post-apartheid events and developments in a framework for intelligent general readers. This book is a notable and admirable exception. Written by a leading South African journalist and non-academic historian, it's a readable, comprehensive overview of modern South Africa, with chapters on economics, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the ANC's performance in office, HIV/AIDS, race relations, and more. The judgments are balanced and Sparks weaves together anecdotes and analysis in the best journalistic fashion. The book ably reflect his decades of reporting on South Africa.

The only real deficiencies are the lack of "inside" information on the ANC and Spark's failure to convincingly explain the paradoxes swirling around President Thabo Mbeki, a university-trained economist who is undeniably brilliant but whose crackpot medical theories have hamstrung effots to fight HIV/AIDS and have made South Africa the laughingstock of the scientific world. These gaps are at the center of the book (hence my rating of four stars) but probably aren't Sparks' fault: although the ANC now presides over a democratic state, it spent decades in underground resistance to apartheid, and remains highly secretive and quick to punish members who speak out against the party line. I'm not sure whether anyone outside of the party's inner circle truly knows what makes Mbeki & company tick.

In contrast, the chapters on the media sparkle with first-hand accounts of mismanagement and internecine rivalry. If only Sparks' had been able to write comparably illuminating chapters on the ANC!

I'm an American living in Johannesburg.

Sparks has written a winner with Beyond the Miracle. With the exception of one or two niggling errors, it is thoroughly researched, littered with pertinent observations and unfailingly readable. Perhaps most importantly it offers a commendably balanced view of the successes and failures of post-apartheid South Africa. As a white South African I was simultaneously surprised and encouraged by much of the book's content. Although, due to the wide variety of topics looked at, it isn't particularly comprehensive, I would still recommend it as essential reading for anyone with an interest in South Africa.

In this fascinating book, author and journalist Allister Sparks takes us inside South Africa, ten years after the miraculous end of Apartheid. Though many inside the African National Congress (ANC) expected that this would be the beginning of their "Happily Ever After," South Africa continues to face many challenges, many of which they did not expect. But, this is not a doom-and-gloom, pseudo-exposé of South Africa, instead it is a hopeful look at a country in transition - facing daunting problems, but moving towards a brighter tomorrow.

Now, what can I say about this book? First of all, I was quite saddened that the author brought along a bag full of biases to his analysis. He has an orthodox Leftist viewpoint which he spills out all over the book. For example, in his view all of South Africa's problems are either holdovers from the Apartheid era, or are caused by outside factors over which the ANC has no control.

But, if you bear in mind that the author is a journalist, rather than an objective sociologist, you can let yourself ignore his analysis, and get down to the real strength of the book - the author's penetrating report on the state of South Africa today. The author does an excellent job of looking at the political and social changes that are redefining South Africa, and explaining them in a clear and easy to read manner.

It is hard to find resources that discuss modern, post-Apartheid South Africa, but this is one that is really great! So, if you want to know what South Africa is like today, ten years after Apartheid, then this is a great book to start with.