From The Thornveld Welcome – There is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,

Myth and Reality in South African History: A Conflicted Past.

History matters. Some wish to bury it; others to use it selectively for their own purposes. But in the case of any nation it must be confronted honestly. Just as the Freedom Charter proclaims that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, so does its history. And the country was liberated by its people, not one specific group. Myth and Reality in South Africa’s History is a collection of eighty newspaper opinion pieces and feature articles published over a span of thirty years. Their purpose was to examine significant past lives, movements and events, and interpret their contemporary significance for a general readership. Emphasis was placed on individuals and organisations that had tended to be neglected by post-liberation discourse, which was prone to exaggerate the role of certain movements.
Myth and Reality in South Africa’s History: A Conflicted Past
More Information about the Book

Subscribe to News Letter

    Recent Posts

    • One hundred days

      ONE hundred days! It feels like a hundred years; and one word sums up Trump.2: chaos. Is this personal, tactical or strategic? Those who know Donald Trump describe him as narcissistic, vindictive and attention seeking […]

      Sharp Thoughts

    • Guilty and Proud: An MK Soldier’s Memoir of Exile, Prison and Freedom

      Marion Sparg, Guilty and Proud: An MK Soldier’s Memoir of Exile, Prison and Freedom (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2024) EXTRAORDINARY and challenging circumstances raising matters of conscience can have unpredictable outcomes. Among the small group of […]

      Book Reviews

    • Available Light: Omar Badsha and the Struggle for Change in South Africa

      Daniel Magaziner, Available Light: Omar Badsha and the Struggle for Change in South Africa (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2025) Daniel Magaziner, Available Light: Omar Badsha and the Struggle for Change in South Africa (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2025) ARTIST, […]

      Book Reviews

    • Election 2024 South Africa: Countdown to Coalition

      Collette Schulz-Herzenberg and Roger Southall (eds), Election 2024 South Africa: Countdown to Coalition (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2024) IT was widely assumed from the start of the 2024 general and provincial election campaigns that the ANC would […]

      Book Reviews

    • Together Apart: The Story of Living in Apartheid

      Xolisa Guzula and Athambile Masola, Together Apart: The Story of Living in Apartheid (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2024) NO one under 35 can have a first-hand understanding of life in apartheid South Africa. To many of today’s […]

      Book Reviews

    • Nothing to fear but fear itself

      WHEN we discuss the strengths and virtues of liberal democracy, that political philosophy now under siege in the United States, it is the permissive freedoms that spring to mind such as rule of and equality […]

      Sharp Thoughts

    • The Super Cadres: ANC Misrule in the Age of Deployment

      Pieter du Toit, The Super Cadres: ANC Misrule in the Age of Deployment (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2024) STATE capture nearly bankrupted South Africa. Its mechanics and perpetrators were well documented by investigative journalists and then […]

      Book Reviews

    • The power of a picture

      IN the three-part drama Shooting the Past by the writer and director Stephen Poliakoff, the largely eccentric staff of a London photo archive of millions of items try to save their collection from destruction. The […]

      Sharp Thoughts

    • The Bams of Grasslands Farm: A Family History

      Seán Morrow, The Bams of Grasslands Farm: A Family History (Johannesburg: Staging Post, 2024) WHAT might the course of South African history have been had the Christian African middle class of the nineteenth century been […]

      Book Reviews

    • Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators who Want to Run the World

      Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators who Want to Run the World (London: Allen Lane, 2024) DICTATORS and dictatorship are hardly new: they provided much of the darkness of the twentieth century, often in extreme […]

      Book Reviews