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Overview
In this timely and highly readable book, Ryland Fisher, former editor of the Cape Times, interviews some South Africans of different hues on the idea of race, what it has meant to them and how they envision a future South Africa, steeped as the country and its people are in a highly charged and often unacknowledged world of racial sensitivity. As Fisher says, "I too am obsessed with race, but only because race has always been obsessed with me."
Amongst the interviewees are Naledi Pandor, Minister of Education; Wilmot James, executive director of the African Genome Education Institute; Rhoda Kadalie, journalist and human rights activist; Melanie Verwoerd, former South African ambassador to Ireland; Phatekile Holomisa, president of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa); and Carel Boshoff, the founder of Orania, an Afrikaner homeland established in 1991 in the Northern Cape.
At a time when issues of race are making a slow and often bitter comeback into the public arena, Ryland Fisher's Race is a thoughtful intervention, and one that will open up the racial debate anew.
About the Author:
Ryland Fisher is a former editor of the Cape Times. He is the CEO of Sekunjalo Media Holdings, and lives in Cape Town with his wife and children
Synopsis
This landmark study on race in South Africa pulls from extensive interviews with a wide range of subjects, from government officials such as South African education minister Naledi Pandor and the former South African ambassador Melanie Verwoerd to activists such as Rhoda Kadelie and Carel Boshoff. Addressing the subject head-on, this book reopens the debate at a time when issues of racial turmoil are making a slow, painful comeback. Put together, these original pieces explore the idea of race and its implications for the future of a nation living with highly charged racial passions.