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Tag: South africa

  • The Story of My Experiments with Truth

    Gandhi wrote his autobiography in Gujarati as weekly instalments in his journal Navajivan between 1925 and 1929, and his secretary Mahadev Desai translated it into English. It covers his life from childhood in Porbandar and Rajkot to about 1921, and Gandhi presents it not as a political history but as an account of his spiritual and moral experiments.

    He describes, with striking frankness, his child marriage, adolescent rebellions, guilt over his father's death, student years in London grappling with vegetarianism and English manners, and his faltering start as a lawyer. In South Africa, being thrown off a train becomes the turning point that leads to his community work, the Phoenix settlement, Tolstoy Farm and the first satyagraha campaigns against discriminatory laws.

    The final sections cover his return to India, the Champaran and Kheda struggles and the Ahmedabad mill strike. Throughout, Gandhi experiments with diet, celibacy, nursing, simple living and religious ideas, and he records failures as readily as successes. The book is essential for understanding the man behind the movement, including views that later readers find troubling.

    Book details

    AuthorMahatma Gandhi
    First published1927
    Original languageGujarati
    Translated byMahadev Desai
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)450
    SettingPorbandar, Rajkot, London, South Africa and India, 1869-1921

    Themes

    • Truth
    • Non-violence
    • Self-discipline
    • Spiritual experimentation
    • Racial injustice

    Who should read it

    Anyone who wants Gandhi's own account of how his ideas formed, in his own humble and searching voice.

    If you liked this, try

    • Gandhi Before India
    • Wings of Fire
    • Long Walk to Freedom

  • Gandhi Before India

    Gandhi Before India, published in 2013, covers the first forty-five years of Mohandas Gandhi's life, ending with his departure from South Africa in 1914. Guha argues that this period, often treated as a prelude, is where Gandhi's ideas about non-violence, religious harmony and political organising were actually formed.

    Using a wealth of new sources, including papers of Gandhi's associates and contemporary newspapers, Guha reconstructs his childhood in Kathiawar, his student years in London, and his work as a lawyer in Natal and the Transvaal. He gives prominent attention to the friends who shaped him, such as Hermann Kallenbach, Henry Polak and Millie Polak, and to the Indian traders, indentured labourers and Tamil hawkers who joined his campaigns.

    The biography is sympathetic but critical, discussing Gandhi's early attitudes towards Africans, his demands on his wife Kasturba and his sons, and his idiosyncrasies alongside his courage. Detailed yet readable, it was followed by Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, which takes the story to his death in 1948.

    Book details

    AuthorRamachandra Guha
    First published2013
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreBiography
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)670
    SettingPorbandar, Rajkot, London, Durban and Johannesburg, 1869-1914

    Themes

    • Formation of satyagraha
    • Racial discrimination
    • Friendship across cultures
    • Family sacrifice
    • Diaspora politics

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a deeply researched, balanced account of the young Gandhi and his South African years.

    If you liked this, try

    • The Story of My Experiments with Truth
    • India After Gandhi
    • Great Soul

  • Born a Crime

    Trevor Noah was born in Johannesburg in 1984 to a Black Xhosa mother and a white Swiss father at a time when their relationship was illegal under apartheid's Immorality Act. His very existence was evidence of a crime, so as a small child he was often kept indoors and could not be seen in public with his father.

    The memoir is organised as a series of linked essays rather than a strict chronology. Noah recounts life in Soweto with his grandmother, being too light-skinned for Black neighbourhoods and too dark for white ones, using language to slip between groups, running a pirated CD business as a teenager in Alexandra township, and brushes with the police. Each chapter is introduced by a short explanation of the history or politics behind it.

    At the centre stands his mother, Patricia, a devout, independent woman who refused to let the system define her son. The book is laugh-out-loud funny yet unflinching about poverty, racism and domestic violence. It won the 2017 Thurber Prize for American Humor and has a young readers' edition.

    Book details

    AuthorTrevor Noah
    First published2016
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)304
    SettingJohannesburg and Soweto, South Africa, 1980s-2000s
    AwardsThurber Prize for American Humor 2017

    Themes

    • Apartheid
    • Race and identity
    • Mothers and sons
    • Poverty
    • Language

    Who should read it

    Readers who want to understand apartheid's legacy through a personal story that is as funny as it is moving.

    If you liked this, try

    • Long Walk to Freedom
    • Educated
    • The Glass Castle

  • Long Walk to Freedom

    Nelson Mandela began writing his autobiography in secret on Robben Island, where the manuscript was smuggled out in parts, and completed it after his release with help from the editor Richard Stengel. It was published in 1994, the year he became South Africa's first democratically elected president.

    The book starts in the Transkei village of Qunu, where Mandela grew up as a member of the Thembu royal house, and follows him to Fort Hare University and Johannesburg, where he trained as a lawyer and opened the country's first Black law practice with Oliver Tambo. He describes joining the African National Congress, the Defiance Campaign, the Treason Trial, the turn to armed struggle and the Rivonia Trial that sent him to prison for life.

    Long chapters on prison life show the daily humiliations of Robben Island, the friendships among prisoners, and the slow negotiations with the apartheid government that led to his release in 1990. Measured and reflective rather than bitter, it is essential reading on one of the twentieth century's defining political struggles.

    Book details

    AuthorNelson Mandela
    First published1994
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreMemoir
    TypeNon-fiction
    Pages (approx.)656
    SettingSouth Africa, 1918-1994

    Themes

    • Apartheid
    • Resistance
    • Imprisonment
    • Reconciliation
    • Leadership

    Who should read it

    Anyone wanting a first-hand account of the struggle against apartheid and the character of the man who led it.

    If you liked this, try

    • Born a Crime
    • I Am Malala
    • The Autobiography of Malcolm X