Currently reading:
- Freedom Rising: Life Under Apartheid Through the Eyes of an American on a Four-Year Clandestine Journey Through Southern Africa, James North
- Living Under Apartheid, David M. Smith ed.
- The Portable MFA in Creative Writing, The New York Writers Workshop
I doubt I will be reviewing these books. I’m researching the Black Sash movement in South Africa, Apartheid in general and Eulalie Stott in particular. Any reading suggestions are appreciated, particularly internet links to primary sources.
You may find this article from 1959 on the Black Sash interesting. Click “ok” through the error messages then click on “article” to see it.
Living conditions and housing for Black South Africans remains problematic. Today the Black Sash has switched its focus from protesting human rights violations and the pass laws to bettering peoples’ living conditions. Eulalie Stott is still alive and still involved.
There are uncomfortable parallels between the post-Apartheid situation in South Africa and the First Nations situation in Canada. Canada has outlawed the residential schools and South Africa has done away with pass laws to prevent people of colour from settling and moving freely. Both societies still have far to go.
Our laws have become more liberal but Canadians and South Africans are still in conflict over land ownership and the rights of indiginous peoples, displaced by white settlement .
Happy reading?