Тела беженцев часто выбрасывает на берег его острова. Самюэль понимает, что правительству нет дела до этих несчастных людей, поэтому хоронит их сам. Но однажды он обнаруживает, что один незнакомец все ещё дышит.
Спасая незнакомца, он чувствует странную угрозу и погружается в воспоминания о прошлом: о жизни, борьбе за независимость и свободу своей страны, которую он проиграл. Его мучает чувство вины и стыда. В присутствии незнакомца Самюэль начинает размышлять, как и в юности: что значит владеть землей и принадлежать ей? Каково это – навсегда потерять свой дом?
Дэймон Гэлгут3.8 1986 год. Глава семьи Свартов обещает умирающей жене, что их служанка Саломея, «доставшаяся их семье вместе с фермой», получит в награду за долгую службу дом, в котором живет. После похорон этот разговор быстро забывается, врезавшись в память лишь случайному свидетелю — Амор, младшей дочери Свартов. Но что может сделать ребенок?
Проходят десятилетия, сменяются поколения, семья медленно разваливается, но выполнит ли хоть кто-нибудь данное когда-то обещание?
Joanne Joseph0.0 “Joanne Joseph has skilfully crafted fact into fiction. May Shanti’s story inspire others to tell herstory.” – Pregs Govender, activist and author of Love and Courage: A Story Insubordination
"Shanti is a heroine that the reader will not easily forget. The story that is told here is worth not only knowing but also remembering. " – Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, author, filmmaker and academic
Vividly set against the backdrop of 19th century India and the British-owned sugarcane plantations of Natal, written with great tenderness and lyricism, Children of Sugarcane paints an intimate and wrenching picture of indenture told from a woman’s perspective.
Shanti, a bright teenager stifled by life in rural India and facing an arranged marriage, dreams that South Africa is an opportunity to start afresh. The Colony of Natal is where Shanti believes she can escape the poverty, caste, and troubling fate of young girls in her village. Months later, after a harrowing sea voyage, she arrives in Natal only to discover the profound hardship and slave labour that await her.
Spanning four decades and two continents, Children of Sugarcane demonstrates the lifegiving power of love, heartache, and the indestructible bonds between family and friends. These bonds prompt heroism and sacrifice, the final act of which leads to Shanti's redemption.
Thenjiwe Mswane0.0 This epic tale is narrated through the eyes of three women.
Makhosi, who seems to be angry with the world and unable to find the language to make her mother, and sister understand her ‘anger’.
Duduzile, Makhosi’s mother. A working-class mother who feels herself lose touch with her daughter.
Nonhle, Makhosi’s younger sister, who watches her sister grow while the gap between her sister and mother widen and them continuously miss each other.
This story lets the reader into the very complicated generational conversations within black families on a varying a range of issues, womanhood, parenting, sexuality, sexual abuse and most importantly, mental health, addiction and loss.
Thula Simpson0.0 South Africa was born in war, has been cursed by crises and ruptures, and today stands on a precipice once again. This book explores the country's tumultuous journey from the Second Anglo-Boer War to 2021. Drawing on diaries, letters, oral testimony and diplomatic reports, Thula Simpson
follows the South African people through the battles, elections, repression, resistance, strikes, insurrections, massacres, crashes and epidemics that have shaped the nation.
Tracking South Africa's path from colony to Union and from apartheid to democracy, Simpson documents the influence of key figures including Jan Smuts, Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, P.W. Botha, Thabo Mbeki and Cyril Ramaphosa. He offers detailed accounts of watershed events like the 1922 Rand Revolt,
the Defiance Campaign, Sharpeville, the Soweto uprising and the Marikana massacre. He sheds light on the roles of Gandhi, Churchill, Castro and Thatcher, and explores the impact of the World Wars, the armed struggle and the Border War. Simpson's history charts the post-apartheid transition and the
phases of ANC rule, from Rainbow Nation to transformation; state capture to 'New Dawn'. Along the way, it reveals the divisions and solidarities of sport; the nation's economic travails; and painful pandemics, from the Spanish flu to AIDS and Covid-19.
Tembeka Ngcukaitobi0.0 In Land Matters, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi tackles the past, present, and future of the land question in South Africa.
Going back in history, he shows how Africans’ communal systems of landownership were used by colonial rulers to deny that Africans owned the land at all. He explores the effects of the Land Acts, Bantustans, and forced removals. And he evaluates the ANC’s policies on land throughout the struggle years, during the negotiations of the 1990s, and in government.
Land Matters unpacks the government’s achievements and failures in land redistribution, restitution, and tenure reform, and makes suggestions for what needs to be done in future. The book also explores the power of chiefs, the tension between communal landownership and the desire for private title, the failure of the willing-seller, willing-buyer approach, women and land reform, the role of banks, and the debates around amending the Constitution. Steering clear of the simplistic and polarising terms of the land debate, Ngcukaitobi argues for a return to the nuanced constitutional requirements of justice and equity in South Africa’s land policy.
Thoughtful and provocative, Land Matters sheds light on one of the most topical, complex and urgent issues in South Africa today.
Johnny Clegg0.0 ‘There are moments in life that are pure, and which seem to hang in the air, unhitched from the everyday world as we know it. Suspended for a few seconds, they float in their own space and time with their own hidden prospects. For want of a better term, we call these moments “magical” and when we remember them they are cloaked in a halo of special meaning.’
For 14-year-old Johnny Clegg, hearing Zulu street music as plucked on the strings of a guitar by Charlie Mzila one evening outside a corner café in Bellevue, Johannesburg, was one such ‘magical’ moment. The success story of Juluka and later Savuka, and the cross-cultural celebration of music, language, story, dance and song that stirred the hearts of millions across the world, is well documented. Their music was the soundtrack to many South Africans’ lives during the turbulent 70s and 80s as the country moved from legislated oppression to democratic freedom. It crossed borders, boundaries and generations, resonating around the world and back again. Less known is the story of how it all began and developed. Scatterling of Africa is that origin story, as Johnny Clegg wrote it and wanted it told. It is the story of how the son of an unconventional mother, grandson of Jewish immigrants, came to realise that identity can be a choice, and home is a place you leave and return to as surely as the seasons change.
