On Pietermaritzburg station in 1893 a young Indian lawyer, newly arrived in South Africa, was ejected from a train to Pretoria for insisting on his right to travel first class. It was to the cold night hours spent in the waiting room that Gandhi himself traced the genesis of his great resolve - to fight injustice by non-violent means. Crucial as this episode was, it was but one of the manifold influences which shaped the Gandhi-to-be during his sojourn in South Africa. This title arose from a conference held a century later, in 1993, at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, to reaffirm the South African Gandhi. It traces some of the influences, which effected his transformation from an unsuccessful and insecure young man to a mature political and spiritual leader ready to carve his niche in history after his return to India in 1914. The Mahatma's moral vision, of a way to resolve conflict and right injustice without resorting to violence, remains relevant to post-apartheid South Africa and to the world. It also remains a difficult vision to grasp; but a better understanding of his vital formative years will perhaps help to make it more accessible.

Gandhi and South Africa: Perspectives and Prospects

Univ of Natal Pr

Basali!: Stories by and About Women in Lesotho

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

A compelling and unique autobiography by an African woman with little formal education, less privilege and almost no experience of books or writing. Hers is a voice almost never heard in literature or history, a voice from within the struggle of 'ordinary' African women to negotiate a world which incorporates ancient pastoral ways and the congestion, brutality, and racist violence of city life.

Singing Away the Hunger

Politics & Social Sciences

Nthunya, Mpho Matsepo

Women's Studies

In 1934, American writer Rebecca Hourwich Reyher recorded the remarkable life story of Christina Sibiya, the first of sixty-five wives of the uncrowned king of the Zulus. What Reyher faithfully recorded - and then crafted into a moving narrative - is the riveting story of a South African woman who entered life among the Zulu royal family, and then, after enduring abuse, found the courage to leave. In 1915, fifteen year-old Christina Sibiya leaves teaching at a mission school to become the first wife of Solomon ka Dinizulu. While at the royal household, Sibiya successfully adjusts to the expectations of her new position: finding her place among the other wives, and negotiating Zulu and Christian traditions. After a series of hardships, climaxing in a beating by Solomon, Sibiya at the age of nearly twenty eight, escapes to Durban. Although pursued by Solomon's representative, Sibiya successfully resists Solomon's authority by testifying first in a European magistrate's court, and then at the royal headquarters that her marriage was invalid.

Zulu Woman: The Life of Christina Sibiya

Biographies & Memoirs

Reyher, Rebecca Hourwich

Community & Culture

Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa

The first study of post-apartheid South Africa to examine the complex reasons for the failure of the new South African government to tackle development.

Elite Transition : From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa

Bond, Patrick

Changing Men in Southern Africa

Social Sciences

Children of AIDS: Africa's orphan crisis

The AIDS epidemic has been catastrophic south of the Sahara. "Children of AIDS" explores how families, charities and government are responding to the next wave of the crisis - millions of orphans. This collection of true stories reveals the experiences of orphans, street children, grandparents, aunts, foster parents, charity and social workers, and foreign donors across South Africa, Zambia and Uganda.

Children of AIDS: Africa's Orphan Crisis

Guest, Emma

"Lesego Rampolokeng is well known in South Africa and internationally for his confrontational performance poetry. This is his first prose work, a stream of consciousness passage through a confused and violent Soweto 1970's childhood."

Whiteheart: Prologue to Hysteria

Rampolokeng, Lesego

Disabling Globalization is a richly detailed comparative study which offers fresh critical understandings of globalization and unique insights into post-apartheid South Africa. Based on research between 1994 and 2001, the book traces contrasting political dynamics in two former white towns and adjacent black townships in KwaZulu-Natal, and their connections with Taiwan and Mainland China. The book focuses on histories and memories of racialized dispossession, struggles in industrial workplaces, the tensions of an actively developmental local government, and the fragility of the neoliberal project in post-apartheid South Africa. Engaging with wide-ranging debates, Gillian Hart draws on East Asian connections to suggest the value of rethinking the land question in South Africa in terms of a social wage. She provides a clear sense of how and why popular and academic discourses of globalization are so deeply disabling.

Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Hart, Gillian Patricia

An Ordinary Country: Issues in the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa disputes the notion of a "miracle" transition in this country. It argues that the new South Africa had to happen in the way it did because of the specific history of the country and the players involved. While it identifies some of the turning points at which critical choices were made by local and international forces, it shows why, in retrospect, the known decisions were made rather than other possible ones. Alexander explores a range of issues in post-apartheid South Africa including national identity and the rainbow nation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the role and status of language, showing the volatility, the tentativeness, and the fluidity of the situation that is evolving. In looking ahead at probable developments, An Ordinary Country predicts that South Africa will develop, or stagnate, as a "normal" bourgeois democratic social formation for the next generation, at least until the inevitable alternatives to the prevailing system of political economy regain their credibility.

An Ordinary Country: Issues in the Transition from Apartheid to Democracy in South Africa

Alexander, Neville

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Univ of Natal Pr publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Univ of Natal Pr