Reviews for Satyagraha, M. K. Gandhi in South Africa, 1893-1914

The average rating for Satyagraha, M. K. Gandhi in South Africa, 1893-1914 based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-12 00:00:00 Holger Viehmann The SACP is the only Communist Party whose logo I am proud to wear. South Africa under Apartheid was an increasingly nasty police state, something like a combination of Nazism and Southern Jim Crow. The whites who actively opposed Apartheid were mostly Jewish and this excellent book is the riveting and sad story of the Jewish Communists who worked with the black activists of the ANC, led by Mandela and Walter Sisulu. Black activists and white leftists struggled, went to trial and finally to prison together, sacrificing their white (and professional) privilege to fight Apartheid. After fifty years of peaceful agitation, a curdling racist police state had led the SACP and the ANC to launch mild acts of sabotage which lands their principled, if amateurish, leaders in solitary detention and trial. The Treason Trial of the early 60s is SA’s Passion Play, with Mandela its noble central figure. Some escape, some turn against their comrades, all of their families are impacted under the strain.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-08-05 00:00:00 Robert Ross Excellent account of events surrounding the trial that sentenced Mandela to, eventually, 27 years in prison. The book focuses on specifically three white, communist, families, some of which managed to flee in time before their compatriots were tried in the Rivonia trials, some of which were in the dock with Mandela. Besides how impressively those chased, fled or convicted stuck to their ideals and were willing to fight and die for them, the book also shows the disturbing extent to which South Africa descended into a horrid police state, starting shortly after the Second World War and only ending in the late 80s, when de Klerk sought an end to minority rule.