Soweto, My Love

Traces the emergence of the South African resistance movement as seen through the eyes of the author, a legislator working to end the apartheid system and a colleague of Nelson Mandela

After going through the "tougher than Spartan" circumcision ritual, Ramusi, the orphan son of an illiterate tribesman, worked his way up from herdboy and house servant to a graduate in anthropology from Northwestern University in Illinois and a career as an activist lawyer in South Africa. Along with this dramatic account of his richly varied experiences, he describes the aches, agonies, pains and cries, as well as the hope and courage, of his compatriots who are humiliated and terrorized by apartheida system that he, his family and associates have been opposing for most of their lives. One of his sons was murdered by the South African police, and Ramusi himself had to spend eight years in exile in America. In the end, he has become convinced that if change cannot be attained peacefully, it must be achieved by violence, since South Africa's rulers, "relying on their weapons and on their Bibles to protect them," silence the press, increase their repression and continue their reign of terror.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The complexities and ambiguities of life for blacks in South Africa over the past seven decades are illustrated in this autobiography of antiapartheid activist Ramusi. Ramusi managed to receive a formal education in South Africa, although he met with much opposition from the white majority and from his own Batlokwa tribe. His subsequent activities as an antiapartheid lawyer and follower of Nelson Mandela eventually resulted in an eight-year government exile, with Ramusi returning to South Africa only at the time of his wife's death in 1984. A useful addition to the varied biographical works from South Africa and recommended for those with a particular interest in this subject.
- Maidel Cason, Univ. of Delaware, Newark
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.