South Africa - The People Book

Breathtaking photos create intimate portraits of the daily lives and family traditions of the people who have lived in this land for thousands of years. South Africa's turbulent history is described in a section on apartheid and its legacy.

Science Book & Fiction

"South Africa is a mix of peoples and cultures." This first sentence in South Africa: The Culture states the theme of the series. Photographs and explanations illustrate the traditional beliefs, art, food, music, and customs of the Bantuspeaking peoples of the country and how they contrast and mix with those of the Afrikaners and English who came to South Africa from the 1600s to the 1800s.

The pattern for these books is the same one found in all volumes of the Lands, Peoples, and Cultures series. Topics are presented in two or fourpage spreads made up of colored photos and informational paragraphs. Examples of the topics are "Art," which carries paragraphs titled "Rock Art," "Dolls," "Zulu Beadwork," and "Pottery and Weaving"; "Celebrations," which includes "Easter," "Diwali" (Hindu), "High Holidays" (Jewish), "New Year's Day," and "Heritage Day" (all ethnic groups). "Language and Literature" goes further, to explain how to make the clicking sounds found in the isiZulu and isiXhosa languages and has a chart showing common greeting words in 5 of the 11 official languages of South Africa. One paragraph each briefly explains Hinduism and Islam. The only mention of the Malays brought to South Africa to work on the farms is in the sentence, "Some Indians and Malays are Muslims." To understand the interplay of the ethnic groups, one must move to the companion volume, South Africa: The People. This book discusses the history of the Bantuspeaking people, the later European traders, and the arrival of the Afrikaners and the British colonialists. One section explains the wars with the Zulus and the Boer War, which ended with South Africa becoming a British colony. It was only after theindependence of South Africa in 1909 that apartheid was widely enforced. While other pages show Zulu life, cities and suburbs now, and changing life at school today, the strength of this series is in its detailed story of the years of apartheid and the struggles of Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Steven Biko, and others. From studying this struggle, children can gain an understanding of the need for perseverance in the fight for human rights. (a Bobbie Kalman Book; from the Lands, Peoples, and Culture Series.) Recommended, Grades 58. REVIEWER: Dr. George Hennings (emeritus, Kean University) ISBN: 0865052360