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Repression and Resistance

Insider Accounts of Apartheid

Robin Cohen editor Abebe Zegeye editor Yvonne G Muthien editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:1st Feb '24

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Repression and Resistance cover

Originally published in 1990, this book provides a unique view of South Africa and when it was published, it represented a coming of age of a new and vigorous strand of scholarship. The contributors are black social scientists, doctors or trade unionists, some working inside black universities which subsequently turned against the apartheid planners who created them. This book reflects the conviction that the black people of South Africa are not only passive victims of white repression, but actors with the capacity for both overt and covert resistance. Whether writing about the health service, shopfloor struggles, or the evasion of pass controls, the contributors combine scholarly analysis with an insider’s knowledge of the difference between apartheid theory and the social reality of South Africa during the 1990s.

Reviews of the original edition of Repression and Resistance:

‘The blend of statistical information, background history and social analysis makes for a critical, revealing survey of how apartheid works – and what happens when it fails ... Recommended for any college-level reader on South African affairs’. Bookwatch, the innovative US television programme, broadcast on 10 Dec. 1991 and syndicated via the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers

‘All the various contributions in Repression and Resistance serve to illustrate how diverse popular struggles — by women, pupils, unions, migrants, and even African traders - have contributed to the emergence of the tripartite alliance between the African National Congress (A.N.C.), the South African Communist Party, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions’. – Roger SouthallJournal of Modern African Studies, 30 (3) 2008.

Despite strongly disagreeing with the ‘editorial pronouncement’ that those who had experienced the sharp end of apartheid are likely to have a greater insight into its workings, the reviewer writes that ‘this collection is well worth acquiring by anyone interested in the New as well as the Old South Africa’. – A. W. Stadler Canadian Journal of African Studies, 27 (1) 1993.

ISBN: 9781032709789

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 752g

318 pages