The History and Consequences of Apartheid

The author experienced the negative effects of apartheid (the racism-defined system of government and law that governed life in in South Africa for almost 50 years) on levels ranging from the cultural to the individual. In virtually the same breath, he writes of how institutionalized laws, such as those against fraternization between whites and non-whites, made even casual conversation between individuals a potentially criminal act at the same time as entire micro-communities, or tribes, were set against each other in the same way as the broad-strokes communities of white, colored, and black. While many of the book’s comments on the history, origins, and outcomes of apartheid (that is: its big picture, macro-cosmic aspects) are contained in the prefaces to the various chapters, it is important to note that each of the incidents (or series of incidents) described in the chapters themselves (that is...