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/ 9 September 2004
Patrick Bond has written an unashamedly biased, at times coolly angry, account of what he perceives is the right-ward shift of the post-apartheid South African state, particularly under Mbeki, writes Anthony Egan of <i>Talk Left, Walk Right</i>.
Beyond its chronic and potentially fatal medical and demographic dimensions, Aids is a social, cultural and political phenomenon. There are no easy solutions, no easy answers to the questions the pandemic poses. Anthony Egan looks at three books that attempt to address the issue.
Given the seemingly obvious connection between fiction, history and politics, it is surprising that relatively little of substance has been written on how history is articulated in "popular" (as opposed to "literary") South African fiction. Until now, writes Anthony Egan.
When we think of witchcraft violence — the persecution or killing of people who are allegedly witches — we might think only of the European Middle Ages or 17th-century Puritan America. Yet we live in a world and society where beliefs in witchcraft are still prevalent. Anthony Egan reviews a new book that sheds much light on the practice at home.
Do images of human suffering make a difference? Are we really shaken into compassion, outrage and protest by atrocity photographs; or are we just voyeurs enjoying a gruesome, quasi-pornographic thrill at "snuff" pictures? Susan Sontag, who is soon to visit South Africa, wonders in her new book whether images of suffering have a morally uplifting effect. Anthony Egan reviews.
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/ 20 February 2004
”I am told by my sources in the CIA that the real motto of the company is ”And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall piss you off!” For some reason or other, I found myself thinking about this while reading Denis Beckett’s latest book,” writes Anthony Egan of Redeeming Features.
History is nothing if not ironic, all notions of it repeating itself as farce after initial tragedy aside. A brilliant Afrikaner dissident journalist under apartheid (harassed, intimidated and on a number of hit lists), Max du Preez found himself "too hot" to handle – and "too white" – under the new dispensation, writes Anthony Egan.
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/ 19 December 2003
Here is a book to make your blood boil. It is an account of the cynical misuse of power, the destruction of sovereign states, the undermining of democracy, contempt for basic human rights, and the relegation of the vast majority of humanity to the status of ‘unpeople’, writes Anthony Egan of John Pilger’s latest work.
On December 11th, 1979, three white activists, Tim Jenkin, Stephen Lee and Alex Moumbaris, escaped from Pretoria Central Prison, all of them imprisoned for underground work on behalf of the ANC, Their story is one of commitment and self-sacrifice that deserves rereading, writes Anthony Egan.
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/ 7 November 2003
If we accept that at least part of the present tension in our society is one of "memory against forgetting", we must accept the challenge to wade through memories — including badly written memoirs and narratives that come across as superficial or just bland. Occasionally one comes across a book that breaks this mould, writes Anthony Egan.