Overview

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.

Themes and Perspectives

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.