The Autobiography Of An Unknown South African

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1971.

This book examines 21st-century South African autobiographical writing that addresses the nation's socio-political realities, both past and present. The texts in focus represent and depict a South Africa caught in the midst of contradictory and competing images of the 'Rainbow Nation'. Arguing that recent memoirs question and criticize the illusion of a united nation, the study shows how these texts reveal the flaws and shortcomings not only of the apartheid past but of contemporary South Africa. It encompasses a broad range of autobiographical works, largely published since 2009, that engage with South Africa's past, present and future. At its centre is the quest for space and belonging, and this book investigates who can comfortably 'belong' in South Africa in its post-apartheid, post-Truth and Reconciliation, post-Mbkei and post-Zuma state. Lena Englund is a university researcher in the Department of Finnish Language and Cultural Research, University of Eastern Finland. Her research interests include southern African literature and life writing.

This book compares African and Afrikaner nationalisms to demonstrate that the transition from apartheid to liberal democracy in South Africa was a neo-colonial settlement that left the economy and the military and security sectors under the control of the white minority, while increasing wide socioeconomic disparities between rich and poor.

A magisterial history of South Africa, from the earliest known human inhabitation of the region to the present. Lynn Berat updates this classic text with a new chapter chronicling the first presidential term of Mbeki and ending with the celebrations of the centenary of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress in January 2012. “A history that is both accurate and authentic, written in a delightful literary style.”—Archbishop Desmond Tutu “Should become the standard general text for South African history. . . . Recommended for college classes and anyone interested in obtaining a historical framework in which to place events occurring in South Africa today.”—Roger B. Beck, History: Reviews of New Books

This volume begins in the early centuries of the Common Era with the various groups of people who had settled in southern Africa. Stone Age foragers, farmers with iron technology, and pastoralists all interacted to create a complex society before Europeans arrived. In the seventeenth century, Dutch settlers developed a colonial society based on the menial labor of indigenous inhabitants of the Cape and slaves imported from the East Indies and other parts of Africa. British conquest in the early nineteenth century brought an end to slavery, as well as new forms of colonial domination, tension between the British and the original Dutch settlers, armed struggle between expanding European communities and Africans (including the highly militarized Zulu kingdom), and intensive missionary activity that transformed many African societies. The discovery of diamonds and gold in the late nineteenth century brought industrialization based on migrant labor, new clashes between British and Africaaners, the final conquest of African societies, and new European migrants. During the twentieth-century, despite further economic development, African communities were increasingly impoverished. New forms of racial domination lead to the implementation of apartheid in 1948 and heightened political organizing among both African and Africaaner nationalists. The intensification of resistance in the 1970s and '80s coupled with drastic changes in the international balance of power brought an end to the apartheid state in 1994 and an intensified struggle to overcome apartheid's economic and political legacy by building a new nonracial society. The book emphasizes social and cultural history, focusing on people's interactions and identities according to race, class, gender, religion and ethnicity. It also addresses changes in literature (both oral and written), music, and the arts and draws on the extensive biographical and autobiographical literature to provide a personal focus for the discussion of major themes. While this emphasis reflects dominant trends in historical scholarship for the past two decades, it also includes recent material on environmental history and relationships between African Americans and South Africans. Where relevant, it highlights comparisons between South African and U.S. history.

Accompanying CD-ROM contains the complete text of the printed volume.

Presents a comprehensive history of the country, from its earliest human settlements, to events prior to European colonisation, to the Dutch occupation and the years of apartheid, to its success in becoming an independent nation.