Volume 32, Number 12 · July 18, 1985
The Fire This Time
By Neal Ascherson
Waiting: The Whites of South Africa
by Vincent Crapanzano
Random House, 358 pp., $19.95
Freedom Rising
by James North
Macmillan, 336 pp., $19.95
The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist
by Breyten Breytenbach
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 396 pp., $18.95
Vincent Crapanzano went to South Africa 'to study the effect of domination on the dominating.' He settled in a small town in the Cape he calls 'Wyndal'—this 'beautiful little fools' paradise,' as one resident described it—and stalked its white population with the dedication of a professional anthropologist. He talked his way into the anxieties of Afrikaners and the self-doubts of the English, into the prejudices of farmers and the religious experiences of farmer's wives. He was out to examine how the two white communities felt about each other (Wyndal is a traditionally Afrikaner valley into which well-to-do English farmers and retired businessmen have recently migrated), how they felt about the black (African) and Coloured (mixed-race) peoples around them, and what they thought would happen to South Africa.
Review, 4389 words
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