South Africa Books

This book is a fast and easy read but I think it gives a nice perspective into how the KhoiKhoi people reacted when they first saw the white Europeans on their beaches, coming out of eggs.

In this novella a white woman is captured but ends up with a KhoiKhoi leader while they are on a trek through the country.

It is a nice story about the two different cultures. Sometimes sad, sometimes funny but a nice read.

The first life of Adamastor is a fable mostly set in the late 15th century about the first meeting between the native people of Southern Africa and the explorers from Europe. It is a tale clothed in the myth of Adamastor, which first appeared in European literature in the 16th century. It is a tale about the main character T'Kamais (bigbird "that never came to rest"), and his relationship with s lost Portuguese woman.

What makes this tale different from many other accounts is that the tale is told from the viewpoint of the African Khoikhoin, and not the Portuguese. This makes an interesting contrast to "Verkenning" of Karel Schoeman (see my review). Verkenning describes (in historical detail) the exploration of Southern Africa from a Dutch explorer's point of view (set a couple of centuries after Adamastor).

This book is written with Brink's subtle sense of humour never far from the surface. However, the story has a very sad undertone - the misunderstanding between different peoples with different cultures and their different belief systems and mythologies.

Easy to read and enjoyable, Adamastor is highly recommended.

When I first saw the cover of the book in my Literature class,I thought it would be some serious,weirdo novel....and I was right..it is serious but not weird!It was simply amazing.I don;t think I'ver read a book that touched me so much!It was something that provided me a lot of insight about the country of South Arica and it's problems.It made me fall in love with the country!

In my honors english class, I had to read this book and do a book talk on it. At first, I thought it would be very fun to read because it was easy for me to understand, but as I kept reading it, the book was boring. Now, I have to do an essay on the author's purpose and I've been going through some comments on what other people said about the book, and I saw something touching. Not knowingly, this book touched my heart all of a sudden...

This book was written with hopes that those who have yet to come might grasp all aspects of the conflict known as WWII beyond those we might have seen courtesy of Frank Capra and news reels. If anyone has ever assumed the allies were without internal strife, that I am sad to say is a great wrong, for in fact the allies were split, not just in country, but by color, and race. This book tells the tail of the men of the 442nd Go for Broke, as well as the OSS Pacific theater translators who risked their lives and shed their blood for a country who, at the time housed their families in interment camps and took away their civil liberties. We were fighting the good fight, this is true and please do not think I hate my country, I would still fight for her and all her residence, but in that era it was not always so and this is obvious here. The turmoil one faces from both fronts in a war is relevent here as well as the feeling that most veterans felt when they knew friends for so long who the next morning would be killed. This story is also one of redemption, of how the Nisei not only proved themselves, but became one of the greatest units in the ETO around Italy. They shared the grief of their comrads in arms, the lack of supplies which hit all units of the campaign against Mt. Cassino and the light hearted moments on the Champaign campaign, an assignment that was not as horrible as those days in the Italian winter. To anyone who thinks America was a dog nation then, that is false. We learned from our faults, and today we honor these brave men, and always should.

I found the book to be an excellent coverage of the Japanese American military effort during the Second World War. The book does more then relates the stories of the Japanese-American combat units but also go into other fields that these folks went into which proves to highly useful and valuable in the war effort. Serving as translators, working in military intelligence service and working on propagranda were all important duties served by the Japanese-American soldiers who often had to fight this war on two fronts....the enemies and their own side. I found the book to be well written, well researched and quite informative.

Mr. van Jaarsveld has done all succulent lovers a great service by doing the botanical study and work necessary to present this modern taxonomic understanding of Gasterias.

This is a beautiful book, almost a coffee table type, yet it is also a scholarly work which involved enormous amounts of botanical field work. It's one deficiency in my opinion is a lack of adequate illustrative photographs. The color plates are impressive and of art quality but do not show the amount of variation within the genus nor what some species really look like. Otherwise a commendable effort.

Dr. Crocker's lucid account of his eight-plus years as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs offers valuable insight into the complex world of foreign policymaking and diplomacy. His central achievement--and the focus of this book--is the Namibia-Angola peace process, an arduous series of events involving pariah states (Cuba and apartheid-era South Africa), guerrilla movements, ideologues and political opportunism. Crocker swam among these sharks for nearly a decade in order to produce the December 1988 agreements signed by Angola, Cuba and South Africa that resulted in the creation of an independent Namibia and the withdrawal of foreign forces from Namibia and Angola.

Crocker's memoir is a rich history of a transformative era in southern Africa, but it also contains two valuable lessons for today's policymakers. First, a well-designed long-run strategy can work if pursued consistently and vigorously. Crocker outlined the bargain behind the 1988 agreements as early as 1981: Cuban troops exit Angola, South Africans end support for Angolan rebels, independent Namibia created. Although this strategy took nearly a decade to come to fruition, its logic and the diplomacy behind it never wavered. With today's policymakers treating six months as long-term, this persistence was amazing. The second lesson that Crocker brings out is the particular importance of regional dynamics in Africa. Perhaps more than any area outside of the Balkans, African conflicts readily spill over borders and inflame neighboring countries. One need look no further than today's Congo to see that this is still the case. Crocker demonstrated that it is possible to get all the relevant players involved without losing control of the process, if the strategy is sound and well-implemented. This regional dynamic can also work in a positive direction, as the increased stability in Angola, Namibia and Mozambique provided South Africa with a less-threatening external environment in which to dismantle apartheid.

Crocker makes all of these points in his compelling and readable book. Highly recommended.

In the Reagan years there were only two things about South Africa that radicals, liberals and conservatives would all agree upon without immediately hurling insults and solid objects at each other. First - Apartheid is a disgusting ideology, second - Undersecretary of state for Africa, Chester Crocker, is doing the wrong thing. The remarkable fact remains that this man stayed in office for eight years, he was with Reagan from start to finish. What exactly did he do to enrage the american public from left to right and get away with it for eight years? How come Reagan didn't part with him though Crocker was far from a die-hard Reaganaut? Part of the answer is to be found in this book. As undersecretary of state for Africa Chester Arthur Crocker was Reagans man in Africa from 1981-1989. Focusing on his late succes in negotiating a peace settlement in Namibia Dr. Crocker stubbornly refuses to reflect upon the failure of his brainchild, the concept of Constructive Engagement - a complex programme for US actions towards the Southern African region as a whole, aimed at speeding up the process of abolishing apartheid in South Africa. This makes the book most interesting for the things not included, that again means that you have to have an idea about what Crocker has excluded before the book becomes interesting, and this little chain of deductions leads us forward to the conclusion: This book is a must and not at all dull reading for students of US-African relations in the 80's. For everyone else it'll be a complete waste of time and money.

On the whole, an engrossing book about rainforests all over the world. In fact, more about Indonesia perhaps than South America. Full of an amazing assortment of facts and figures and statistics on all sorts of things. Rather mind-boggling research must have gone into the writing of this book. Lots of good history of the exploration and exploitation of rainforests. Always, always economics and money are the cause of actions. Rarely just plain common good. Natives always at short end of stick. But she makes a compelling case for preserving what we have just because we don't know exactly all, or even what, there is. We are destroying something we really don't understand. That is dangerous, always. For instance, there is a tree whose sap can fuel a diesel truck!

I read this book over two years ago while exploring the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador as part of a college class. It was revealing and disturbing. I was left feeling overwhelmed by what humans have done and are doing to the rainforests of the world, for the sake of money and power. There is so much that could apparently be done, and yet it seems that world is spiraling downward towards an earth where there are few, if any, rainforests left. The fight against rainforest destruction appears unwinnable because the people fighting to prevent destruction tend to be money and power-less, while those who want to destruct are moving forward without any barriers to their work. Those who would wish to continue destroying rainforests need to remember that ultimately, they are fighing against their own existence. Yet this fact seems to slip by everyone because we have always figured that we have one more generation before WE feel the effects. When are we going to realize that those who are affected by destruction NOW are just as important as those of us who benefit financially from rainforest destruction without feeling its harmful effects?

It will certainly be interesting to see what happens in the next decades.

I raced through this book! It captures distant vivid memories of heroic campaigns in that mysterious but not forgotten outpost of empire - British East Africa. It is the Africa of the hot stealthy battle, when not dodging maneaters of Tsavo, or tzetse, of dusty campaign medals won and cherished in the downtown Sikh coffee shop. The book uncovers sometimes fogotten heroism and sacrifice by Indians in battle. The mudmaps make you feel you are on the ground in Kenya with Roger Moore. The research and Bibliography are superb - well done S D Pradhan! (I was incidentally also searching for but did not find any further snippets of information on Charles Groves Anderson of the King's African Rifles who fought on the some of these battlefields and won the Military Cross at an engagement at Mzima Springs. He rose to Lieutenant Colonel fighting alongside other Empire troops including brave Indian troops in the jungles of Malaya, and winning the Victoria Cross for Australia at the battle of Muar in the Malayan campaign during the Second World War).

I raced through this book! It captures distant vivid memories of heroic campaigns in that mysterious but not forgotten outpost of empire - British East Africa. It is the Africa of the hot stealthy battle, when not dodging maneaters of Tsavo, or tzetse, of dusty campaign medals won and cherished in the downtown Sikh coffee shop. The book uncovers sometimes fogotten heroism and sacrifice by Indians in battle. The mudmaps make you feel you are on the ground in Kenya with Roger Moore. The research and Bibliography are superb - well done S D Pradhan! (I was incidentally also searching for but did not find any further snippets of information on Charles Groves Anderson of the Kenya African Rifles who fought on the some of these battlefields and won the Military Cross at an engagement at Mzima Springs. He rose to Lieutenant Colonel fighting alongside other Empire troops including brave Indian troops in the jungles of Malaya, and winning the Victoria Cross for Australia at the battle of Muar in the Malayan campaign during the Second World War).

I spent a year in South Africa in 98/99. The SA guide wasnt available before I left and I really wish it was. I saw it through others who came over after I arrived and it had current info and stuff you wouldnt find inthe other guides. Lonley Planet is good to have but I've found that a good chunk of the info is out of date. I'm going back to the area in June and the first book I got was the most recent edition of Lets Go South Africa. If your headin to southern africa get the Lonely Planet BUT dont forget to leave without your copy of Lets Go SA, its a tool you cant do without.

I visited South Africa in May of 2000. I had the Let's Go 2000 South Africa book with me and it was like my bible. It explained customs and suggested the best places to visit. I also visited Namibia and Botswana and this book was a tremendous help. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone visiting South Africa...you'll love it. You'll need it!

I ACTUALLY HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK YET, BUT I DO INTEND TO PURCHASE IT. I JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT I SAW SINDIWE ON THE BOOK CHANNEL FOR THE HARLEM BOOK FAIR I BELIEVE, IT WAS ON VERY LATE SO I APOLOGIZE FOR NOT KNOWING THE FACTS..I WAS CONCENTRATING ON REMEMBERING THE TITLE OF HER BOOK. AND I MUST SAY SHE WAS THE CUTEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN, VERY CHARISMATIC AND FULL OF BEAUTIFUL GLORIOUS LIGHT. HER FIESTYNESS AND HUGE LOVING EYES INSPIRED ME SOMEHOW WITHIN. HER PERSONALITY ALONE ENCOURAGED ME TO BUY THIS BOOK. I WILL WRITE A REVIEW ONCE I READ IT THOUGH :) THANK-YOU ;)

This book provides different accounts on the difficulty of being a woman during Apartheid. Many of the stories are of African women who served as servants (very low paying and often demeaning work) to the white families living in a South African society under Apartheid. A few chapters describe the difficulty of being a white woman as well, being treated as second class citizens from their husbands and men. Racial predjudice is the underlying theme and the struggle just to survive day to day life is described in great detail. Children are also represented in this book, the African children's lives were often no better then their parents. This book is easy to read and is a great way to learn more about society during Apartheid.

Anthony Marx's comparative study on the construction of race in the United States, Brazil and South Africa is promising if one wants a general historical overview about how race was constructed in each setting. Marx emphasizes how each state, in its own process of state building, constructed racial/racist ideologies to unify the white power structure at the expense of Blacks. He explores the institutions of colonialism, slavery and apartheid to make his case. He also explores how the ideology of black nationalism emerged as unifying response among Blacks to resist white domination. The book is a good read, however his historical account is completely male biased. Marx fails to consider the role gender played in the construction of these racial ideologies. His account is state-centered, which effectively excludes other important social and political factors in the formation of race identity. This becomes painfully clear in the chapter on Black racial identity, mobilization and reform in the U.S. Also, Marx relies too heavily on secondary sources, which dampens the reliability of his analysis.

In looking at race it's necessary to get perspective. Travel opens up new vistas. We perceive ourselves one way, others around the world see things differently. What countries come to mind when you think about racism? South Africa definitely; but now that the country has majority rule, it's immediately less racist. Austria, Japan and Yugoslavia also come to mind, but they're not multiracial societies. That Anthony Marx has chosen to compare racial policy in Brazil, South Africa and the US, seems to confirm the widely held world view that the US is one of the most racist nations in the world. Is this true? What do these three nations have in common in their history of segregation?

Marx states that the US and South Africa practiced policies of segregation principally for the purpose of "state and nation building". He argues that in both cases the ruling white elite were faced with crises; problems of prosperity and national order. In South Africa, following the Boer War of 1899-1902 there was no chance of unity among Afrikaners and British settlers. In the US, the experience of Radical Reconstruction following the Civil War, was, for some, akin to rubbing salt into fresh wounds. Marx states that in order to achieve accomodation among whites, blacks were made scapegoats. It's not surprising then to learn that the 1870's were when the first Jim Crow laws were passed in the US and the early 1900's saw the first South African Apartheid acts.

Where does Brazil fit in? Marx says that racism is as prevalent there as it is here but it's characteristics are different. There is a pervasive preferrence for 'whiteness', seen in attempts to 'Europeanize' the country through encouragement of immigration from the continent. Brazil however did not institutionalize racism as South Africa and the US did; interracial marriages were never illegal in Brazil. Also, because of multiple color categories of Brazilian citizens there was no possibility of the emergence of rigid, 'caste-like', color classifications that developed here. South Africa had 'coloreds' but they were caught in political 'no-mans-land' in the battle between the bantu majority and white minority.

It's an interesting and thoroughly reasoned proposition that Marx developes and expounds on in his book. The comparisons between the US and South Africa are nothing new, but the addition of Brazil as a counterpoint to the others is rather unique.