Rooibos tea and dust

Description:

I'm the author so assess what I say with care. I wrote this book as a record of travels in South Africa 20 years after apartheid ended. My personal history is that I'm what they called white in the old days and of both Afrikaans and English ancestry. I objected to apartheid and left at the first opportunity which meant effectively nearly 2 decades of exile. My travels were about reconciling with family members who were on the opposite side in the anti-apartheid struggle. I sought answers to questions such as how people cope with the total loss of power and a significant loss of privilege - most struggles like the SA one end with the former elite being thrown out - think Indonesia, Algeria, Congo. Here the whites and the Afrikaners in particular have had to struggle in a totally new environment. The issues for them include job losses, poverty for many, kids with less opportunity because of affirmative action and having to share what was once theirs alone (beaches and parks are now more crowded than when they had 'whites only' signs around them). I attempt to explain from a very personal perspective the 300 years of history that created the madness of apartheid. I hope that I succeeded in giving readers a picture of places they may not visit even on a trip to SA - the Karoo, Kalahari, the white squatter camps and Sophiatown, the suburb of Johannesburg that was subject of the first book making the world aware of apartheid.

subjects: South Africa,  apartheid,  Afrikaners,  post-apartheid,  white poverty,  Cape Town,  Social conditions,  Travel,  Description and travel,  History

People: James Saville

Places: South Africa,  Cape Town,  Johannesburg,  Sandton,  Sophiatown

Times: Modern South Africa