The one thing that looms largest in South Africa's future is South Africa's past - most especially the nearly five decades of division and conflict at the heart of one of the twentieth century's most infamous social experiments. Apartheid, an illustrated history is a portrait of the defining experience of modern South Africa's transition from colonial state to democracy. What began in May 1948 as a vague, grimly ambitious project to interrupt history and engineer white supremacy at the expense of the country's black majority spawned forty-six years of repressive authoritarianism and bitter resistance which claimed the lives of thousands and pushed the country to the brink of civil conflict. A provocative postscript examines apartheid's stubborn afterlife in the years since 1994, suggesting that the optimism and democratic vitality of the constitutional state hinge on South Africans avoiding simplistic views of the past that might lend themselves to demagoguery. For all its catastrophic and lingering effects, the book concludes, apartheid was disarmed, ultimately, by the society's much longer history of inseparability. Journalist Michael Morris draws on the work of scholars and historians as well as contemporary reporting in an unsentimental and highly readable account, vividly complemented by photographs and cartoons.
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The one thing that looms largest in South Africa's future is South Africa's past - most especially the nearly five decades of division and conflict at the heart of one of the twentieth century's most infamous social experiments.
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781920289416
Publisert
2011-03-01
Utgiver
Vendor
Sunbird Publishers Ltd
Vekt
500 gr
Høyde
250 mm
Bredde
210 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
192

Forfatter

Biographical note

Michael Morris began his career in journalism in 1979. He spent three years in London in the 1980s as a foreign correspondent for the Argus group of newspapers, returning to a posting in Parliament that spanned the last days of PW Botha and the first year of Nelson Mandela's post-1994 government. He is an assistant editor on the Cape Argus. Morris is the author of a history of South Africa, Every Step of the Way, commissioned by the South African History Project to commemorate the 10th anniversary of democracy in 2004, as well as Paging Through History - 150 years with the Cape Argus 1857-2007.