The Seed Is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper, 1894-1985 - Softcover

Van Onselen, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809015943 ISBN 13: 9780809015948

Publisher: Hill and Wang, 1997

Synopsis

Winner of the Sunday Times (South Africa) Alan Paton Award for Nonfiction
Winner of the Herskovitz Award from the African Studies Association.

'The seed is mine. The ploughshares are mine. The span of oxen is mine. Everything is mine. Only the land is their's.'--Kas Maine

A bold and innovative social history, The Seed Is Mine concerns the disenfranchised blacks who did so much to shape the destiny of South Africa. After years of interviews with Kas Maine and his neighbors, employers, friends, and family--a rare triumph of collaborative courage and dedication--Charles van Onselen has re-created the entire life of a man who struggled to maintain his family in a world dedicated to enriching whites and impoverishing blacks, while South Africa was tearing them apart.
Winner of The Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for Nonfiction
Winner of the Herskovitz Award from the African Studies Association

"The seed is mine. The ploughshares are mine. The span of oxen is mine. Everything is mine. Only the land is theirs."—Kas Maine

A bold and innovative social history, The Seed Is Mine concerns the disenfranchised blacks who did so much to shape the destiny of South Africa. After years of interviews with Kas Maine and his neighbors, employers, friends, and family—a rare triumph of collaborative courage and dedication—Charles van Onselen has recreated the entire life of a man who struggled to maintain his family in a world dedicated to enriching whites and impoverishing blacks, while South Africa was tearing them apart.
"If ever one wondered whether the life of a single man could illuminate a century, [this] brilliant biography . . . proves the point."—Carmel Schrire, The Boston Globe

"An epic . . . [that] tells of the loss of human potential generated by a politics that surrendered generosity and openness to self-interest and bigotry. It reveals the way an ordinary man can survive with dignity in such a world."—Vincent Crapanzano, The New York Times Book Review

"A magnificent book [with] implications beyond its modest claims . . . This remarkable story compels foreboding but also kindles hope, for it shows the extraordinary courage of 'ordinary' men under severe difficulties."—Eugene Genovese, Emory University

"[Van Onselen] teases out the subtleties of the paternalistic relationships between rural whites and blacks which gave rise to real friendships but also to much betrayal, anger, and humiliation . . . It is a monumental masterpiece of research, and a poetic evocation of the human spirit to survive . . . "—Linda Ensor, Business Day (South Africa)

About this title

Review

History forgets the small and powerless. It is to South African historian and journalist Charles Van Onselen's credit that he has remembered one of them in a sprawling biography: an illiterate black South African tenant farmer who lived out his days under apartheid. The existence of Kas Maine (1894-1985) had hitherto been formally acknowledged only in official state records, and then only once, for having been arrested in 1931 for not having a license for his pet dog. From that sketchy base Van Onselen creates a powerful life study of a man who lived as best as he could under the most trying circumstances. But he does much more than that: he reinforces Maine's story with a long and fluent account of South African history in the last century.

About the Author

Charles van Onselen is research professor in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria. He is the recipient of The Sunday Times/Alan Paton Award and the Herkovitz Award.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0809015943
• ISBN 13: 9780809015948
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 672