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History forgets the small and powerless. It is to South African historian and journalist Charles Van Onselen's credit that he has remembered one of them in a sprawling biography: an illiterate black South African tenant farmer who lived out his days under apartheid. The existence of Kas Maine (1894-1985) had hitherto been formally acknowledged only in official state records, and then only once, for having been arrested in 1931 for not having a license for his pet dog. From that sketchy base Van Onselen creates a powerful life study of a man who lived as best as he could under the most trying circumstances. But he does much more than that: he reinforces Maine's story with a long and fluent account of South African history in the last century.
From Publishers Weekly
A historian in South Africa, van Onselen has organized a prodigious amount of research-not only from the well-remembering Kas Maine, farmer, healer and patriarch, but also from other family members and those in his community-to tell "the story of a family who have no documentary existence." Yet the Maines, sharecroppers in Transvaal Province, lived through South African history while the "emerging South African state" clamped down on sharecroppers to provide white landlords a labor force under apartheid capitalism. The most interesting portions of the narrative recount how, especially before apartheid was enacted in 1948, racial lines were somewhat fluid, as Africans such as Maine could play banker to poor Afrikaners, and Kas, in a wise presage of South Africa's future, concluded that individual behavior meant more than skin color. General readers may find this lengthy book too detailed; for those studying South African history, it is a vital contribution. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Relié .
