Apartheid: An Illustrated History, by Michael Morris
Apartheid: An Illustrated History, by Michael Morris. ISBN 9781920289416 / ISBN 978-1-920289-41-6
Journalist Michael Morris in his book 'Apartheid: An Illustrated History' draws on the work of scholars and historians as well as contemporary reporting in an unsentimental and highly readable account, vividly complemented by photographs and cartoons.
(...) The one thing that constantly looms large in South Áfricas future is South Áfricas past. Hardly a day goes by without something being said, often casually, that reminds people of how it was, how normal, how abnormal. It s always an arguable condition. If South Africans can agree on the essential facts, that s often where the agreement ends. After all, who you were - or were thought to be by the texture of your hair or the colour of your skin - made a world of difference, and, in many ways, still does. The history of the past century, the fifty years that led up to apartheid, and the fifty years of its rise and fall, remains a zone of discomfort as much in public politics as in private memory and imagination. It is true for all human history that the past is obstinately present, an inescapable shadow of accumulated yesterdays nobody can quite shake off. But perhaps the special difficulty with apartheid lies in the dissonance of remembering. For many, their stories of apartheid are conceivably inexhaustible, while others will wonder what more can possibly be said. How much longer, they will ask, can we dwell on all that? Aren t the present and the future demanding enough? The exasperation embedded in this contradiction - the untiring accounting against the desire to put an end to it - arises possibly from a sense that there can be no such thing as enough; enough recalling, or atoning, or, indeed, of going back to make better sense of it. Even those who find themselves on the 'wrong' side in conversations about the past, appearing either bravely or hopelessly to be attempting a defence of sorts, or trying to get at this or that subtle point to show that 'it' wasn't all bad, or 'they' weren't strictly heartless, will feel this deprivation of attention. The same is true for the serious-minded few, conscious of the risks of allowing sentiment to run away with history, who show cool determination in testing orthodoxies that obscure often unexpected truths. Doubtless, the victims of apartheid continue to feel it all the more urgently, especially as memorable events recede and with them, possibly, the clarity of emotion, or the public acknowledgement of how it felt at the time. For all the millions of words of testimony and recollection, admission, apology, protest and revision, the intimate confessions and the banal records of an extraordinary South African ordinariness', the idea of completion, of calling it a day and putting a lid on the constant seep of stories, is somehow impermissible. But it may be that it is impermissible less because of a need to match some moral requirement of sustaining pity, shame or guilt than for the sobering fact that apartheid' itself is not wholly spent. (...)
This is an excerpt from the book: Apartheid. An Illustrated History, by Michael Morris.
Title: Apartheid. An Illustrated History
Author: Michael Morris
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
Johannesburg & Cape Town, South Africa 2011
ISBN 9781920289416 / ISBN 978-1-920289-41-6
Softcover, 21x25 cm, 192 pages, throughout b/w and colour illustrations
Morris, Michael im Namibiana-Buchangebot
Apartheid. An Illustrated History
This illustrated history displays how South Africa is still living an apartheid narrative, and even, in perverse ways, is recreating it.
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