South Africa Books

Professor Ranger's latest work was one I could not put down. He tells a story which binds you to the place and the people who live there. The individuals and peoples -- of several tribes, African and European -- which populate his book have a vital attachment to their granite hills, and it's fascinating to see that attachment bring them together and divide them. Ranger shows us how complex the reality of inter-ethnic relations are; we see different attitudes toward nature and history be shared or not shared across ethnic and racial boundaries. Cecil Rhodes lives on through this book, and surprisingly, as much more complex than simply a greedy imperialist; after reading this book I can understand better why there's a huge Zimbabwean defense of keeping his body at World's End in the Matopos. This book is a detailed living escape from political history and a thought-provoking study of history and philosophy of nature.

As the co-editor my review would be biased, so I am including the words of someone else who has read our book and whose 'review' appears on the back of it:

The San - also known as the 'Bushmen' - live in the imagination of the world. They were the first artists, the first storytellers, the first custodians of the natural world. Theirs was a life of harmony with animals and seasons, with the continuity of ideas passed on from generation to generation. In the popular imagination this world of the San has all but died away, traces of it surfacing as the subject of films and books, documentaries and adverts, university theses.

This book gives a unique insight into other, often neglected, aspects of the story of the San, one which hints at the scope of their exploitation and marginalisation by others. It is, at last, a story told by the San themselves. Here for the first time, the ||Anikhwe, the Bugakhwe, the Hai||om, the Ju|'hoansi, the #Khomani, the Naro, the !Xõó and the !Xun come together between the covers of a book to tell their own stories in their own words. These stories are heartbreaking, full of longing and loss. But they are also full of humour and of endurance. Through them runs a rich seam of pride in the wisdom of San life, a desire to recover old values and reinvest them in the youth, and to reclaim a place in the world that has, for too long, been determined for them by others.

It is a book of great poignancy - tender and triumphant - and its message should be read everywhere.

Pippa Skotnes

This digest puts together factual accounts, interviews, poems, letters/e mails and essays describing the situation in Zimbabwe under the bloody tyranny of Robert Mugabe and his Afro-Fascist ZANU PF. Since then the iron grip of Mugabe and ZANU PF has tightened and terror and massive famine (deliberately created by the Mugabe regime) has grown far worse.
It describes the situation as it was in 2001 under the terror of ZANU PF, and it's local variety of Brown Shirts who call themselves the 'War Veterans'.
In This Land Is My Land Larry Farren outlines the historical background from various very different perspectives, while other articles explore the experiences of a handful of different Zimbabweans from different walks of life.
These include the terror experienced by the Black masses targeted for daring to support the democratic opposition, White farmers and their families in lands seized in a Stalinist-like land grab by the ruling party, and Black farm workers, often attacked and murdered during these criminal land grabs.
In the essay entitled 'Patriotism' by Althea Farren, the writer describes how for years minority groups had to listen to sneering "-isms", "colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, racism etc (Not of course communism or socialism)".
Amazing what crimes are justified in the name of opposing the cardboard bogeys of "imperialism" and "colonialism".
"Anti-imperialism" is the new Nazism/Stalinism of the 21st century, being used to oppose democracy and self-determination and to support murder, repression and terror wherever it may occur.
Beware when you hear creepy university professors banging on about 'imperialism' or 'colonialism' on university campuses- there intentions are evil!

Other articles are the words of a young Black opposition activist maimed by Mugabe's 'War Veterans', the voices of terrified children of farm workers, and a letter by a Zimbabwean pleading for Nelson Mandela to intervene against the oppression and politicide of Zimbabwe's people.
Mandela ignored this letter, and prefers to dedicate himself to Marxist causes like supporting the Iraqi Baathists (i.e opposing the liberation of Iraq by the USA) and supporting Palestinian terrorist groups.

South Africa's government has to this days ignored the pleas of the people of Zimbabwe to try to stop Mugabe's terror, and instead labelled it's own policy of quiet approval as 'silent diplomacy'.
Note the words of South Africa's Stalinist Cabinet Minister and Hamas supporter Ronnie Kasrils that "Zimbabwe and South Africa share a common world view and will march forward together shoulder to shoulder".
Interesting to note that after the murder of a 72 year old woman, Gloria Olds, and her three dogs, on her farm by War Veterans, the preacher at the funeral called on G-D's vengeance on those responsible, withing a month two brutal ZANU PF Cabinet Ministers had died in car accidents and the ruthless leader of the War Veterans Chenjerai Hitler Hunzvi had died of AIDS.
A poem (based on fact) by Glyn Hunter describes a typical siege of a farmstead by evil and bloodthirsty ZANU PF mobs:
"Dear Lord
My son, daughter in law and their three young children are being terrorised by a violent mob and are barricaded in their farmhouse.
Throughout the night these evil men have chanted and beaten their drums. They have hurled rocks upon the roof and lit fires around the house
so that the air is filled with acrid smoke. They want to drive this young family out and while they wait they drink, and dance and defecate.

The police came briefly but left, saying they could do nothing,
While the hail of stones continues,
the children cower in their parent's arms,
and I, their grandfather, who would gladly give my life for theirs, am powerless.

In desperation, Dear Lord, I pray for their safety".
In their conclusion the authors demonstrate that the problems of the present are still with us- anguish, pain, loss and desperation. The people of Zimbabwe cry out for the world's help.

The story of the former SADF's long, drawn out struggle against Cuba, and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union. In spite of the vast military resources Cuba accessed via the Soviet Union, South Africa was able to contain and largely neutralize the threat, forcing their enemies to the bargaining table. Mr. Heitman details how South Africa faced no other option but to confront the communist onslaught at their doorstep--a confrontation in which they would eventually prevail.

A limited reprint of this excellent and critical analysis of British military operations during the Boer War of 1899-1902. Written to instruct German officers, it not only provides a detailed account of field operations, but also points out where the British made errors, and suggests what the British should have done. Volume 1 presents an over view of the theater of war, details the Boer & British forces, tactics, armament and organization, the the campaign in Natal Colony, including Elandslaagte, siege of Ladysmith, Colenso, Modder River, & Magersfontien. Then operations in the western theater incl. the advance on the Modder River, Relief of Kimberely, Paardeberg, from the assumption of command by Lord Roberts to the Surrender of the Boer Leader Cronje, October 1899 to February 1900. Vol. 1 is 6 x 9, has 280 pages of text, 9 large maps in two cover pockets and 2 illus. Volume 2 begins in March 1900 through September 1900. It covers operations in Natal after Colenso up to the relief of Ladysmith, incl thew passage of the Tugela, Spion Kop & more. also operations in the summer of 1900 in the SE Free State., incl the advance on Pretoria. It concludes with a tactical retrospective of the course of the war from the German view point. Vol. 2 is 6 x 9, has 374 pp, 8 maps in two cover pockets and 5 illus. Only 600 sets have been printed of this scarce Official History. VICTORIAN REPRINT SERIES # 5. new hard bound , no dj as issued,

Joseph Miller's Way of Death is an exhaustingly long volume for a non-academic reader, but a rich and rewarding one, if you like your history deeply rooted in archival sources. The title (and headings such as "Floating Tombs" and "Merchants of Death") make the book sound like popularization, though they actually are more a reflection of Miller's penchant for metaphor, which gives the book an almost Tolstoyan quality. Indeed, the division of the book into discrete sections that view the Angolan slaving economy as it affected those involved (native African individuals and polities, mixed-race "Luso-African" traders, Brazilian ship and plantation owners, Lisbon-based merchants, Portuguese governors) lets you see his subject with a depth and complexity reminiscent of good fiction. But it doesn't make Way of Death easy to read-the section most like a narrative account, which ties together a number of the previous threads, doesn't come till well after the 500th page. Miller feels no need to summarize political history, so I recommend as background an earlier short work such as David Birmingham's Trade and Conflict in Angola (though its economic history needs correction in the light of Miller's research).

Trained as an Africanist, Miller is particularly sensitive to the Central African sense of wealth as people rather than as goods or specie, and the different political economies leading from one kind of wealth to the other-a linkage that passes from the traditional elders and lineage systems, in which control of land and women's fertility was power, to the monarchs and warlords who used material goods to acquire dependents, to the merchant princes who stockpiled goods and slaves rather than dependents, to Luso-African traders who provided the link between textiles, muskets, and rum from Europe, Asia, and Brazil and the slaves given up by Africans. The boundaries were not stable, and the "slaving frontier" moved east from Luanda and the coast in jumps, partly in response to periodic war and drought. After three and a half centuries, this "catchment zone" for captives spread across a vast expanse of Central Africa from the Congo to the upper Zambezi and the edges of the Kalahari.

From the perspective of Atlantic economies, the financial basis of 18th-century Luso-Brazilian slaving was very rickety. Exchange of precious metals for slaves was rare. Those most immediately concerned on the African end took European goods to sell on credit and only saw reimbursement after the surviving slaves were sold-at more or less fixed prices-in Brazil. The chronic undercapitalization of Angolan slaving and the dependence of both the Angolan and Brazilian side on credit extended by Portuguese and (indirectly) British merchants is a major theme of the book. The appalling death rate among captives between point of capture and delivery in Brazil made slaves a highly perishable commodity and considerable financial risk. Those seeking to wrest a profit engaged in "tight-packing" on slave ships, which meant cheating on official capacity and reducing space for water and food in order to fit more slaves on board-which raised the death rate on ships even higher. Miller's title is no hyperbole-between the long trip from the hinterland, the dreadful conditions in Luanda barracoons, and the middle passage, a minority of those who began the "way of death" reached Brazil.

A must-read for anyone seriously interested in Central Africa or the Atlantic slave trade.

"An invaluable book that everyone interested in education system of South Africa must read. Jordan highlights the fact that resistance against the notorious Bantu Education system did not begin during the 1976 Soweto Uprisings. In fact,the Uprising carried on a legacy that began in the early 1950s when a group of 8 teachers resigned from teaching under Bantu Education system. Jordan, was one of those teachers. A historical gem for all the new generation of educators in South Africa and beyond."
Dr. Velile Mqota, New Jersey City University

Dr. Schutte presents Race and Ethnic Relations in an open and fresh manner. He learned at a young age what it was to be a racist, growing up white in South Africa. Not only did he realize his mistake in taking for granted another human being early on but he took it further by learning to correct it, to understand it further, for one way to beat any demon is to learn and understand how it works.

You'll see race relations through the eyes and drawing of young children and in the thoughts and words of those who are racist.

This is a wonderful learning tool, to understand racism and Apartheid. I'd would strongly recommend this book to students, professors and anyone interested in learning how racists think and act. Apply what can be taught to promote racial harmony, no matter where you live, your age or color.

This novel is one of the best I have read in a long time. It tells the tale of a journalist visiting South Africa to find some of the bravest people she has ever met. A moving read

I'm surprised more people haven't reviewed this invaluable book. In Kruger National Park, you can drive quite a bit on your own; in fact, choosing where to go on the vast network of roads can be somewhat daunting.

Enter Nigel Dennis (the author), with practical advice on which areas are consistently productive, including what kind of game frequent the area and when that area is at its best. According to the bio, Nigel Dennis is a wildlife photographer who's worked in the park for years, so it's his job to know where to see the wildlife. In fact, when we got to Kruger we were surprised to see his photos being used in the National Park's game hides as aids to identifying different species. Clearly he's been successful in finding even the most obscure wildlife, and he's done a great job conveying his experience to those of us who don't get to live there.