A memoir of a white official in South Africa’s largest black ‘city’ in the aftermath of the 1976 uprising, Grinker’s Inside Soweto is a revelation. A view from within the ‘system’, too radical for the conservatives and too conservative for the radicals, Inside Soweto came out in 1986, only to be rapidly sold out – and conveniently forgotten. This new, revised edition features an epilogue written by Grinker in 2014. It also contains rare photos from the author’s collection. ‘A very interesting commentary on the situation’ Bowen Northrup, editor, The Wall Street Journal
This is a title about Soweto from inside and out. It is an effort to mark a century since the first forced removals of black Africans from central Johannesburg to the banks of the Klipspruit River. It is also in recognition of the limited books available on a world-famous city. Soweto's huge growth came in the post-war decades. One famous resident Walter Sisulu believed that the country's modern history is impossible to separate from that of its most famous township. 'The history of South Africa cannot be understood outside the history of Soweto the development of the township, and the trials and tribulations of its people are a microcosm of the history of this country.' The township became a focus of world attention in 1976 during bloody repression of student protests, and again during the violence of the Eighties.
Tells the remarkable story of how jazz became a key part of South Africa's struggle in the 20th century, and provides a fascinating overview of the ongoing links between African and American styles of music. Ansell illustrates how jazz occupies a unique place in South African music.Through interviews with hundreds of musicians, she pieces together a vibrant narrative history, bringing to life the early politics of resistance, the atmosphere of illegal performance spaces, the global anti-apartheid influence of Hugh Masakela and Miriam Makeba, as well as the post-apartheid upheavals in the national broadcasting and recording industries.
Soweto, South Africa's most populous and politically important township, is in many ways the microcosm of the country's stratification of extremes. This study offers an in-depth look at the phenomenon of class and its ramifications from the point of view of urban South Africa, using an analysis of more than 2000 questionnaires and offering insights gleaned over a six-year period.
Soweto, a sprawling urban city, home to four million people, became an icon of the apartheid era, infamous around the world for its violence, filthy streets and rickety shacks. This is a description of life in Soweto, told from the resident's point of view.
"Janet Levine's autobiography Inside Apartheid is the memoir of the agony of conscience of a white liberal. Levine is an intelligent, experienced observer, and her views deserve to be taken seriously."New York Review of Books "This is a subjective but not self-indulgent account of [Levine's] struggle to live with moral seriousness in a country where some of the lines of battle are drawn through the middle of the human heart."New York Times Book Review
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than one million copies sold! A “brilliant” (Lupita Nyong’o, Time), “poignant” (Entertainment Weekly), “soul-nourishing” (USA Today) memoir about coming of age during the twilight of apartheid “Noah’s childhood stories are told with all the hilarity and intellect that characterizes his comedy, while illuminating a dark and brutal period in South Africa’s history that must never be forgotten.”—Esquire Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and an NAACP Image Award • Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Time, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Esquire, Newsday, and Booklist Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.
