What to read (and listen to) about South Africa 

SOUTH AFRICA has three capital cities; 11 official spoken languages, five of which figure in the national anthem; and 60m people who agree about little save for the brilliance of the national rugby team. It is a state with many nations. Choosing books about this bewilderingly diverse country is a fiendishly difficult job. White-run governments deliberately undereducated and silenced blacks, shrinking the pool of potential scribes. In a land of storytellers, most people have not been able to tell their own stories to a broad reading audience. The easy way out would be to pick books that tell a simple version of the country’s narrative, the Hollywood tale of redemption in which Nelson Mandela transcends the evil of apartheid, forgives whites for their sins and ushers in the rainbow nation. But South Africa is more complicated than that. And the shine has long disappeared from the rainbow. These books—and one audio series—should help readers appreciate this country of many stories.

It is impossible to understand modern South Africa without appreciating the role of colonialism, mining and war in its formation. In the late 19th century the southern tip of Africa was a patchwork of British colonies, African kingdoms and republics run by Afrikaners (whites mostly of Dutch descent). British politicians thought it a backwater. Everything changed with the discovery of diamonds in 1867 and, two decades later, gold around what would become Johannesburg. These riches contributed to the outbreak of war in 1899 between Afrikaners and the British. But in the wake of the “Anglo-Boer” or “South African” war, which ended in 1902, the two white tribes put aside some differences. In 1910 they established the union of South Africa—a state in which blacks were systematically discriminated against and denied civil rights. Martin Meredith’s book is a sweeping account of these pivotal decades.