By Janet Cherry
“Cherry … examines the ideological, moral, and strategic debates within the ANC and MK that led to its successes, failures, and remarkable restraint in comparison with those of other liberation armies…. Drawing on interviews with former MK members and testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Cherry analyzes the MK within the broader context of proxies in the war between communism and capitalism as it played out in Vietnam, Africa, and South America.”
Booklist
Umkhonto weSizwe, Spear of the Nation, was arguably the last of the great liberation armies of the twentieth century—but it never got to “march triumphant into Pretoria.” MK—as it was known—was the armed wing of the African National Congress, South Africa’s liberation movement, that challenged the South African apartheid government. A small group of revolutionaries committed to the seizure of power, MK discovered its principal members engaged in negotiated settlement with the enemy and was disbanded soon after.
The history of MK is one of paradox and contradiction, of successes and failures. In this short study, which draws widely on the personal experiences of—and commentary by—MK soldiers, Janet Cherry offers a new and nuanced account of the Spear of the Nation. She presents in broad outline the various stages of MK’s thirty-year history, considers the difficult strategic and moral problems the revolutionary army faced, and argues that its operations are likely to be remembered as a just war conducted with considerable restraint.
Janet Cherry is a human rights activist, researcher, and academic who teaches at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. She has written and published on the history of the liberation struggle for the South African Democratic Education Trust. More info →
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Paperback
978-0-8214-2026-3
Retail price: $16.95,
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Release date: August 2012
156 pages
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4½ × 7 in.
Rights: World except SADC
Electronic
978-0-8214-4443-6
Release date: August 2012
156 pages
Rights: World except SADC
New South African Keywords
Edited by Nick Shepherd and Steven L. Robins
New South African Keywords sets out to do two things. The first is to provide a guide to the key words and key concepts that have come to shape public and political thought and debate in South Africa since 1994. The second purpose is to provide a compendium of cutting-edge thinking on the new society. In this respect some of the most exciting thinkers and commentators on South Africa have tried to capture the complexity of current debates.
Steve Biko inspired a generation of black South Africans to claim their true identity and refuse to be a part of their own oppression. Through his example, he demonstrated fearlessness and self-esteem, and he led a black student movement countrywide that challenged and thwarted the culture of fear perpetuated by the apartheid regime. He paid the highest price with his life. The brutal circumstances of his death shocked the world and helped isolate his oppressors.This
Biography, Activists · African History · African Studies · South Africa
The Law and the Prophets
Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968–1977
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“No nation can win a battle without faith,” Steve Biko wrote, and as Daniel R. Magaziner demonstrates in The Law and the Prophets, the combination of ideological and theological exploration proved a potent force.The 1970s are a decade virtually lost to South African historiography. This span of years bridged the banning and exile of the country’s best-known antiapartheid leaders in the early 1960s and the furious protests that erupted after the Soweto uprisings of June 16, 1976.
Legal and Constitutional History · Religion | Religion, Politics & State · History · African History · 21st century · Law · Africa · Southern Africa · South Africa · African Studies
Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa
By Wayne Dooling
Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa examines the rural Cape Colony from the earliest days of Dutch colonial rule in the mid-seventeenth century to the outbreak of the South African War in 1899.For slaves and slave owners alike, incorporation into the British Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century brought fruits that were bittersweet.
African History · Slavery and Slave Trade · 17th century · 18th century · 19th century · South Africa · Khoisan · African Studies
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