He Was South Africa’s MLK, 100 Years Before MLK

Nearly two centuries after the death of King Shaka Zulu, TV shows, theme parks and airports still bear his name. Hamilton explores how Shaka’s image has changed to suit various purposes. During Shaka’s lifetime, he was portrayed as a “benign patron,” and the European image of Shaka as a despot and madman only started to take shape after his death. More recently, apartheid-era historians blamed him for the mass killings and forced migrations of the 19th century, while Zulu nationalists made him the centerpiece of their ideology, despite the fact that subsequent Zulu kings did far more to resist European invasion.

Willan has spent a lifetime researching the remarkable life of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje. Born on an isolated mission station, Plaatje’s prodigious talents enabled him to speak at least six languages — including Dutch, English and German — and make the first translations of Shakespeare into his own language of Setswana. He would go on to become a newspaper editor, novelist and politician, helping to found the African National Congress (ANC). While traveling the world in his attempts to end racism in South Africa, Plaatje befriended suffragettes in the U.K. as well as W.E.B. du Bois when he visited New York.

Odendaal’s book on the origins of the ANC traces the party back to a unique Black intellectual class that developed in the Eastern Cape, one of South Africa’s provinces. At the center of this development was the minister Tiyo Soga, who was educated in the 1850s at the University of Glasgow. Soga, who married a Scottish woman, returned to South Africa, where he emerged as the first person to preach what would become “Black consciousness.” He argued that Africans had a proud common identity — a concept that would inspire the creation of a new non-tribalist political party.

Many might have heard of the Zulu War and the famous Battle of Isandlwana. Few will know, however, that a far longer set of wars, known as the Cape Frontier Wars, took place between the Xhosa people and colonists — first the Dutch, and later the British. This 100-year conflict tends to receive less attention because it consisted of numerous deadly skirmishes instead of dramatic set-piece battles. During this period, the border shifted back and forth while defeated chiefs were imprisoned on Robben Island (as would later happen to Nelson Mandela, also Xhosa). Laband’s book traces these wars and peace settlements as well the colonial treachery that fueled them.

Ngcukaitobi is one of South Africa’s most iconic contemporary intellectuals. When he is not in his lawyer’s robes working in the Constitutional Court, or on television explaining legal nuances, he is in the South African Archives researching and writing histories. “The Land is Ours” traces the story of early Black lawyers who attempted to defend the limited rights Black people had in South Africa. These lawyers played an important role in establishing a tradition in South Africa of defending individual rights and freedoms. Their stories, which are quite often tragic, offer fascinating insights into a tradition that Ngcukaitobi now champions.

If you’re looking for an uplifting read, you won’t find it here. But if you’re compelled by stories of social injustice, wars, violence and corruption, then this is your book. There is one bright star in South Africa’s blanket of night: Mandela. But Simpson, a historian of the ANC, uncovers that the history of South Africa during apartheid and after apartheid is — in many ways — depressingly similar. At the same time, the book provides fascinating vignettes of some remarkable men and women.

In a series of snippets — starting with Jan. 1 and ending with Dec. 31 — Dicey revivifies a year when Black South Africans heeded iconic ANC leader Oliver Tambo’s call to “make the country ungovernable.” Drawing on the experiences of ordinary people across the land, “1986” is an important account of a truly dystopian era. We’ve read loads of books about apartheid, but none bring across the horror as effectively as this one.

Who better to inspect the battered psyche of modern South Africa than a professor of psychology? In this slim but thought-provoking volume, Long puts the nation of South Africa on the psychoanalyst’s couch. He explains why so-called “senseless” violence is a logical response to having no home, job or running water. And he examines the emotions that have caused white people to withdraw from society in the new South Africa. The book ends with a potential solution — while making clear that “there are virtually no guarantees when it comes to outcomes in psychotherapy, whether an individual or a nation is lying on the couch.”

Mandela, like Shaka, has meant different things to different people at different times. The smiling white-haired grandpa, who is every white person’s favorite Black leader, is often accused of being a “sell-out” by his Black compatriots. “Spear” pieces together a period in the 1960s when Mandela was at the forefront of the ANC’s attempt to use violence to overthrow the apartheid regime. “He was never a white-person’s lackey at any point of his life,” says Landau. “He was closer in spirit to Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh than he was to a liberal peacemaker. He was a serious revolutionary.”

on The Carlos Watson Show!

Most folks still see the Kruger National Park as an idyllic island cut off from the rest of the country by elephant-proof fences. In this pioneering 1995 work, Carruthers explored how the park’s origins are entwined with the growth of Afrikaner nationalism at the start of the 20th century. To make way for the animals, Africans were forcibly removed from the land. Fences were erected and people were fined and imprisoned for “trespassing” on the land they had always lived on and for hunting the animals they’d always eaten. During apartheid, the fences became more impenetrable and the punishments harsher.

Dlamini’s 2020 book builds on the work of Carruthers to further fill in the blanks about the Kruger’s place in South Africa by challenging the “paradigm in which Africans in the park have been viewed as either laborers or poachers.” Relying on oral histories, photographs, tourist brochures and archival research, Dlamini takes on these stereotypes and resurrects the forgotten histories of Black middle-class tourists who vacationed in the park during apartheid. He hopes to foster a “critical love” of the park among all South Africans.

One of South Africa’s greatest poets and essayists, Watson thought of himself as a city poet. His love, and at times, his misgivings about Cape Town drove him to ask its writers to pen their thoughts on their relationship with one of the world’s most iconic cities. Some of the stories they tell are of love, while others get gritty with the city’s crime. Among the contributors is Booker Prize winner Damon Galgut, who explores the dichotomy between Cape Town’s spectacular beauty and its crushing poverty.

Matthew Blackman and Nick Dall are the authors of two books on South African history: “Rogues’ Gallery,” which traces South African corruption to 1700, and “Spoilt Ballots, ” which explains why a Black man on the Cape had more political rights in 1854 than at any point until 1994.

Has South Africa failed its post-apartheid promise, in your view? Why or why not?

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