Images of South Africa

These are images of South Africa, from Cape Dutch wine estates, Karoo, Johannesburg, down to Durban's beachfront and beyond.
C. Struik Publishers
07-0209
0-86977-093-4
In stock
used
€19.95 *

Title: Images of South Africa
Genre: Coffee table book
Publisher: C. Struik Publishers
Cape Town, South Africa 1977
ISBN 0-86977-093-4 / ISBN 0-86977-093-4
Original softcover, 21x30 cm, 80 pages, 157 colour photos, Text: German/English

Condition::

Fair, some minor traces of usage.

About: Images of South Africa

South Africa is a land of fierce emotion, this country caught in the grip of two mighty oceans. Like a wedge itthrusts southward: broad, rugged, rich. South Africa is unique on the African continent for her people share a land as diverse as themselves. The Bushman and Khoikhoi were early inhabitants but theirs was an occupancy that left little mark upon the land. Indeed, the people who have shaped South Africa and in whose hands its destiny now lies are all relative newcomers, both black and white. Controversy blurs the arrival of the black man; suffice it that he was settled over much of the well-watered area north of the Fish River and had been so for at least 500 years when black and white interests clashed in the early 19th century.

The European stepped ashore and staked his claim just over three centuries ago. From the start he tilled the Cape wheat and winelands and the original settlement quickly grew and prospered. But it was inevitable that in time men would turn their eyes to the hinterland and during the 18th century some of the more hardy among them moved deeper and deeper into new territory, driving their cattle in search of pasture. And all the while others followed to these shores to find a new life in a new country. By the mid-19th century trekfarmers had won land in the interior, land they settled and farmed. Here, far from the sophistication of the towns, they established an agricultural tradition that to this day accounts for much that is South African.

Then, just over 100 years ago, diamonds and gold thrust South Africa into the industrial age: people left the farms to seek their fortunes in Kimberley and on the Witwatersrand. The mining camps became towns and the towns became cities. The promise of prosperity became a magnificent reality based on minerah wealth and the harvest of soil and sea. But it is not wealth and opportunity alone that bind South Africans to their country, it is the land itself. For some it is the aching spaces of the Karoo where the sky seems to engulf the arid earth that stretches from one finely-drawn horizon to the other. For some it is the 'Fairest Cape' with its vineyards and sweeping beaches, its mountains tinted improbable pinks and honeyed ochres by the sun.

Others prefer Johannesburg's frenetic pace, its obsession with the present, with commerce and industry, mining, money. Then there is the tropical east coast, hot and humid most of the year- Durban, the holiday-makers' paradise and country's major port. Inland lie the Drakensberg, mountains baked in winter snow. There is the Kalahari: that too has a aged beauty. And for many it is the veld that claims the heart, it seals the bond with Africa. At night the bush chitters with ckets and cicadas and the cackling hyaena. By day vultures cle in the bleached-blue sky. These are images of South Africa, a land of fierce emotions born different cultures, hopes and dreams.