Inside Apartheid's Prisons: Notes and letters of struggle

Suttner, Raymond

ISBN 10: 1876175257 / ISBN 13: 9781876175252

Published by University of Natal Press and Ocean Press, 2001

About this Item

Signed by author. Wraps are slightly shelf rubbed but remains neat. Binding is secure. Ink signature from author on the very first page. Rest of the pages are neat with no other markings, inscriptions or annotations. JHK. Our orders are shipped using tracked courier delivery services.

Seller Inventory # b27bu

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Inside Apartheid's Prisons: Notes and letters of struggle
• Publisher: University of Natal Press and Ocean Press
• Publication Date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1876175257
• ISBN 13: 9781876175252
• Binding: Softcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Weight: 9 ounces
• Signed: Signed by Author

About this title

Synopsis

After Raymond Suttner's arrest in 1975, he was subjected to torture, solitary confinement and long periods in jail. This book includes letters smuggled out of jail and provides insights into the psychological effects of confinement.

Reviews

In 1975, in apartheid-torn South Africa, Raymond Suttner, a young white "idealistic revolutionary" was arrested for his political activities, one of which was publishing an illegal antiapartheid pamphlet. These activities led to years of imprisonment and times of torture and intimidation. Some two decades later, as a member of the African National Congress's executive committee, Suttner decided to make his struggles, both personal and political, public. Inside Apartheid's Prison: Notes and Letters of Struggle is a kind of epistolary memoir, with Suttner's letters home a testimony to his ordeals and the strength with which he faced them.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

For his active resistance to apartheid terrorism, law professor Suttner spent years in prison, under house arrest, and on the run in the 1970s and 1980s. First arrested when he was 29, he was beaten, tortured with electric shock, and held in solitary confinement because of his work with the banned ANC. To the police, he was especially hated as a white traitor, a Jew, a Communist. There have been several accounts of political prisoners on Robben Island, including stirring books by Nelson Mandela and Ahmed Kathrada, but this is one of the few by a white activist. Neither self-righteous nor heroic, Suttner tells his story in a quiet narrative, interspersed with extracts from his censored prison letters home. There may be too many letters, but they bring you close to the politics ("I can't simply opt out. . . . This alternative is not open to black people") as well as the daily detail. Most moving is his love for the tiny parakeet he was finally allowed to keep as a pet, his "Jail Bird." Hazel Rochman
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