Seven books and an audio series that explain the rainbow nation and why it lost its lustre
has three capital cities; 11 official spoken languages, five of which figure in the national anthem; and 60m people who agree about little save for the brilliance of the national rugby team. It is a state with many nations. Choosing books about this bewilderingly diverse country is a fiendishly difficult job. White-run governments deliberately undereducated and silenced blacks, shrinking the pool of potential scribes.
It is impossible to understand modern South Africa without appreciating the role of colonialism, mining and war in its formation. In the late 19th century the southern tip of Africa was a patchwork of British colonies, African kingdoms and republics run by Afrikaners . British politicians thought it a backwater. Everything changed with the discovery of diamonds in 1867 and, two decades later, gold around what would become Johannesburg.
, “The Promise” is the best state-of-the-nation novel since “Cry, the Beloved Country”. Damon Galgut begins the story in 1986, when the dying matriarch of a white family asks her husband to ensure that their maid is given deeds to a small plot on their farm. As the story—and the eponymous promise—unspools, the reader comes to understand the deeper meaning of the title: the sense of a country whose vast potential is being squandered.
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