African National Congress

In this story Alan, a white South African member of the banned, anti-apartheid African National Congress , falls under suspicion of treason to the cause. Two women are closely involved in his fate: Rebecca, a...

Her mother, Ruth First , journalist and anti-apartheid activist, was the daughter of two life-long communists, who were also Jewish peasant immigrants to South Africa from the Baltic states. She was born into...

GS 's father, Joe Slovo , was leader of the South African Communist Party , white South Africa's bogeyman. Born Jewish and Lithuanian, he had arrived at ten in South Africa (where his father...

DL 's father, Norman Levy , was the twin youngest child of Lithuanian immigrants. He was a teacher and an anti-apartheid campaigner: a Communist , a member of organizations like the banned African National Congress

Slovo is skilled at confronting her readers with the impact of historical convulsions which we experience as horrifyingly incomprehensible before she offers defining labels. When the Emergency is declared in 1960 and the police permitted...

GS 's parents were both charged after the arrest of 156 men and women of various races on 5 December 1956 led to historic treason trials which lasted for four years. One group was released...

BH found that Cape Coloured people were far more politically aware than those in Durban, conscious of and increasingly resistant to being subject as a group to discriminatory laws. They also had an internal class...

The pace accelerates in the next generation as Malan of the National Party , architect of apartheid, forms the government in 1948. Rosa meets an activist medical student, Jacob Swiece, and gradually falls in love...

The book continues to follow events in South Africa through Moses, who engages in sabotage (destructive of property but not of lives) as a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (or MK), the military wing of...