Revisiting South Africa
This book recounts the British-Zimbabwean author's travels to Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria in South Africa, midway through the last decade, a time of student unrest and imminent political upheaval.
You will be interested in this book if:
You enjoy narrative, non-fiction writingYou have an interest in personal narrativesYou enjoy contemporary descriptions of places including the people, history and cultures thereofYou enjoy anecdotal reporting which ties into a bigger narrative storyYou enjoy an infusion of humourous anecdote and conversation
The story begins in the mother city, Cape Town, after Leo returns from abroad to attend his brother's wedding. He spends some time in a Cape Town backpackers and meets some intriguing inhabitants, Okkert and Carllo. Carllo is in communion with The Essence, a mystical life-force, and offers to divine his future.
He revisits his old university in Pretoria and visits some of the landmarks which he neglected to do as a student. The confrontation between the past and present is everywhere: the student protests under the banner #RhodesMustFall; the newly erected palisade fence around the statue of the Boer leader, Paul Kruger, recently desecrated; and the transformation of Church Square.
Underlying his travels around South Africa, now in its 3rd decade of democracy, are questions of identity, affiliation and belonging.
The last two chapters are given over to his varied adventures at Ardmore Guest Farm at the foothills of the Central Drakensberg. A motley assortment of characters grace the pages of this one-of-a-kind establishment.
Despite many of the events recorded here harking back to the last decade, the author gives an honest assessment of the current state of affairs in South Africa in the Afterword, and his take on the politics, dynamics and choices the nation faces today, thirty years after Independence.
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