Book reviews
Send books for review, and book reviews to:
Mr Charl Blignaut / Dr Suryakanthie Chetty
Book Review Editors (New Contree)
IT6-72
North-West University (Potchefstroom Campus) / University of South Africa
Email: 20312814@nwu.ac.za / chetts@unisa.ac.za
he class of ’79
(Auckland Park, Jacana Publishers, 2014, 159 pp. ISBN: 978-1-43141086-6)
Janice Warman
PT Delport
Department of Philosophy, Practical and Systematic
University of South Africa
heologySpaghetti.studios@gmail.com
When Lesego Rampolokeng took the stage at the University currently known
as Rhodes in 2012 to perform his public lecture, writing the ungovernable,1
he had the following to say about the current historical disposition of the
country: “my generation break-beaten into line / obscenity-heritage /
pornography pageantry … superstars, asteroids/arse-steriods & haemorrhoids
/ all things I try to avoid / now) time’s stuck a ist so far up my rectum /
it’s waving Amandla out of my mouth / (what a boneless slogan to chew)”.
Rampolokeng is here throwing a looming shadow over the bright colours
of the South African rainbow and the heroes and icons it produces. He is
questioning the history and the narrative that has continually been re-told as
the story of the glorious end of apartheid, complete with heroes, waving ists,
and limp Amandla slogans.
his speciic trend in South African historical writing has seen a resurgence
in recent times with the publication of several books dealing with the so-called
1
L Rampolokeng, “Writing the ungovernable”, New Coin Poetry, 49(1), 2013.
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New Contree, No. 73, Special issue, November 2015
“non-racial” struggle against the National Party government’s institutionalised
and legally codiied racial laws: apartheid.2 Janice Warman’s latest book, he
class of ’79, falls squarely into this current trend of historical writing. Warman
presents the narratives of three individuals that were involved in the ANC
and/or later the UDF opposition to the government’s policy of apartheid.
hese individuals – Marion Sparg, Guy Berger, Zubeida Jafer – were also all
part of Rhodes’ Department of Journalism graduating class of 1979.
he book proceeds by collecting interviews and anecdotes related to the
individuals that it claims to study. If the book is evaluated and analysed merely
on what it sets out to achieve on this level then it can be deemed a successful
book. It collects oral and anecdotal evidence on the three protagonists’ antiapartheid activities and relates them back to the eponymous Rhodes University
journalism class of ‘79. he book is divided into three main chapters dealing
with each igure: Sparg, Berger, and Jafer. he preface is divided into two
sections entitled respectively he Beginning, and Johannesburg while the book
ends with a section entitled Sussex.
he section entitled he Beginning gives us a glimpse into the method
employed by Warman when she narrates her time in Rhodes, as part of the class
of 1979. Warman refers sympathetically to the work of the ‘new journalists’
Joan Didion, hom Wolfe and Truman Capote. Apart from this briefest of
allusions to a literary tradition, there is no clear methodology that explains the
author’s choice of material and process of compiling information. he reason
for choosing these three speciic individuals are explained anecdotally in the
opening pages as having to do with Warman’s own experiences at university
and her loose ailiation with the subjects of the book. his anecdotal form
of explanation is a feature of the whole text and thus instead of argued and
researched historical critique, the author employs a range of literary techniques
and tropes to carry her text: confessional writing, new journalism, personal
narrative, interviews, proile and feature writing.
In the absence of such a methodological clariication, it can only be assumed
that the choices made by the author are of a personal and haphazard nature.
Although this method can be efective, it does present a serious problem
when historical, intellectual, and anti-colonial trajectories are combined
2
M Burton, he Black Sash (Auckland Park, Jacana, 2015); D Cornell and K van Marle, Albie Sachs and
transformation in South Africa: From revolutionary activist to constitutional court judge (Abingdon, Birkbeck Law
Press, 2014); B Keniston, Choosing to be free: he life story of Rick Turner (Auckland Park, Jacana Media, 2014);
G Moss, he new radicals: A generational memoir of the 1970s (Auckland Park, Jacana Media, 2014).
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Book reviews
and commented upon in such a haphazard way without any argument or
citations. here is a telling paragraph in this regard, dealing with the Pan
Africanist Congress and the Black Consciousness Movement, on pg 50.
Warman attempts to make a comment on the BCM’s organisational strategy
and tactics and states that, “[d]espite its leader Steve Biko’s own support for
non-violent action, inluenced by Mahatma Gandhi, it [BCM] leaned towards
more militant and radical solutions”. A claim like this would need to, in any
situation, be justiied and argued against the already existing body of literature
on Biko and the BCM and the inluence of thinkers like Frantz Fanon, Anton
Muziwakhe Lembede, and Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe. Gandhi’s involvement
in the anti-colonial struggle in South Africa, the Bambatha revolt being a case
in point, is dubious to say the least and invoking him in the same paragraph
as the Africanist movement, and the same sentence, as BCM and Biko has
to be treated with suspicion. Warman then follows that speciic passage with
a lengthy discussion on Guy Berger’s anti-establishment politics and his
inluences. here is a conceptual, political, and historical problem in using
Biko and BCM as a foil to ultimately discuss white anti-apartheid activists;
white liberals in Biko’s words.
he book’s inability to function as an accurate historical text does, however,
not take away from its role in re-telling and creating memory. Any text – be
it a work of visual art, writing, ilm, photo – tells not only the story of its
chosen subject but it also tells the story of the one choosing the subject. he
role of the author of a work can most easily be discerned by considering the
choices made in the text. As mentioned earlier, the lack of methodological
relection makes the choices made by the author all the more important.
Choice does not only play a structural role in the narrative but also, in the
case of Warman’s text, functions as a literary trope. he role of choice and the
decision to act in a certain way – or to not act in a certain way – is a recurring
theme throughout the book and in the interviews with the three protagonists.
Warman seems fascinated by the choices made by Sparg, Berger, and Jafer
that is seemingly against the established dogmas and truths of their respective
communities and families. Warman does, however, fail to contextualise and
properly historicise these choices within a broader political and social history.
How is it, for example, that certain people were able to choose to partake in
an anti-apartheid struggle and some were forced into it by the colour of their
skin, forced into revolt by birth?
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New Contree, No. 73, Special issue, November 2015
he fault lines inherent in the post-apartheid rainbow myth are beginning to
show clearly and decisively after 21 years. hese are not the same sentiments
shared by Warman when she asks each of her interviewees “was the struggle
and the sacriice worth it?” What is emerging on the campuses, streets, and
public discourse in South Africa is a fundamental question of the stakes of
liberation and freedom and the legitimacy of the dogmatic history of the antiapartheid struggle for “non-racialism”. In this regard, several questions we can
take from Rampolokeng need to be posed to any contemporary historical
texts: is it a work in “obscenity-heritage” and “superstars” that once again
waves the boneless slogan of Amandla or is it a contribution to a much needed
deepening of the historical archive? Warman’s text, unfortunately, seems to
answer in the airmative to the irst set of questions.
A history of Zimbabwe
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014, 277 pp. ISBN: 978-1107-68479-9)
Alois Mlambo
David Moore
Development Studies
University of Johannesburg
dbmoore@uj.ac.za
Alois Mlambo’s many works (single, co-authored, and edited books ranging
from studies of industrialisation, white immigration, to structural adjustment,
and the wide-ranging Becoming Zimbabwe edited with Brian Raftopoulos;
and scores of articles ranging from the history of Zimbabwe’s civil aviation to
the Cold Storage Commission to sanctions against Rhodesia, student politics
in the 1970s, and university policies and practices after 1980) have positioned
him extremely well to write this accessible tour de force of what has added up
to create today’s well-known supericially but poorly understood Zimbabwe.
his important book is the result of decades of intense research and writing –
scores of theses have been scoured, thousands of pages of primary documents
from archives to government bureaus have been scrutinised, and every
secondary source imaginable has been interrogated – to make a clearly written
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