INLS 110-982: LIBRARY WORK IN RURAL SOUTH AFRICA Summer Session 2004

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About South Africa

Useful Web Sites

South Africa Online. http://www.southafrica.co.za/
A general news site. Copyright, 1996-2004. Updated daily. Accessed 4/13/2004.

South Africa's Official Travel and Tourism site. http://www.southafrica.net/
Nicely designed -- lots of pretty pictures. Available in French, German and English. Intended for the tourist. Accessed 4/13/2004.

U.S. State Department. Background Notes on South Africa. http://www.state.gov/www/background_notes/southafrica_0004_bgn.html.
A "Just the facts, ma'am" site. Includes history, government and economy. Last updated Jan. 20, 2001. And updated site (June 2003) is available at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2898.htm. Accessed 4/13/2004

U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. South Africa.. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sf.html
Similar to the U.S. State Dept. site. This site is mostly statistical and comparative. From The World Factbook; last updated Dec. 18, 2003. Accessed 4/13/2004.

Institute of Development Studies, Sussez (England). Eldis; the Gateway to Development Information.
Another country profile but put together by a (perhaps) more neutral source than the two U.S. government sites. It has links to key organizations concerned with South Africa as well as a long database of articles from the British Library about various issues within the country (e.g. AIDS, rural poverty, education, water and agriculture, and the like). The information about the country is organized in different ways for maximum flexibility. Use Country Profiles option and select Africa and then South Africa. Accessed 4/13/2004.

Sunday Times . South Africa. http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/.
Appears to be a weekly newspaper but with daily news items as well. Broad coverage. Other newspapers may be found on The Eldis online site listed above. Accessed 4/13/2004.

South Africa and the IMF [International Monetary Fund]. Items about exchange rates and other economic news. Last entry December 1, 2003. Accessed 4/13/2004. World Press Review Online: Africa. Accessed 4/13/2004.

Books

Angeloo, Maya. My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me. New York: C. Potter, 1994. Picture book about an 8-year-old South African girl and her pet chicken. It's filled with cultural facts about tribal beliefs and customs. Useful for the elementary school library.

Brink, Andre Philippus. Devil's Valley; A Novel. London: Secker & Warburg, 1998. Other novels include A Dry white Season (1980), Imaginings of Sand (1999), Rights of Desire (2001). Winner of a number of awards including the Herzog Prize for Africaans Literature and the National Book Journalist of the Year award, both in 2000.

Carter, Jason. Power Lines; Two Years on South AFrica's Borders. Washington DC: National Geographic, 1992. Written by Jimmy Carter's grandson after spending two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural South Africa.

Coetzee, J.M. Giving Offense; Essays on Censorship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. South African novelist and author of some 27 books including From the Heart of the Country (1977), The Life and Times of Michael K (1983) (winner of the Booker prize), Disgrace (1999) and the memoir Boyhood (1997). Winner of the Novel Prize in 2003.

Devine, Elizabeth and Nancy L. Briganti. the Traveler's Guide to African Customs and Manners. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.

Duke, Lynn. Mandela, Mobuto, and Me; A Newswoman's African Journey. Doubleday, 2003. A former Washington Post bureau chief in Johnannesburg tells of her four years in South Africa, a memoir of equal parts of lament and celebration. Duke, as a black American woman, describes her own attempt to come to terms with her relationship to Africa.

Encounters; An Anthology of South African Short Stories.. Compiled by David Medalie. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand Univ. Press, 1998. Includes two stories by Nadine Gordimer. Other authors: HIE Dhlomo, Can themba, Alec La Guma, Ahmed Essop, Mbulelo Mzamane, Njabulo Ndebele, Miriam Tlali, Chris van Wyk, Mandla Langa, and others.

Fugard, Athol. "Master Harold" -- and the Boys.. NY: Knopf, 1982. One of a number of plays on racial issues by South African dramatist Fugard.

Gordimer, Nadine. Crimes of Conscience; Selected Short Stories. Oxford: Heinemann, 1991. Gordimer is the author of more than thirty novels and short stories focusing on issues of race in South AFrica and written over a three decade period beginning in the early 1970s. The Pickup (2001) is another collection of recent short stories. July's People (1981) is another of her frequently cited novels.

Greenstein, Ran, ed. Comparative Perspectives on South Africa. Longon: Macmillan, 1997. A series of scholarly essays examining the links and disjunctions between South Africa and those evident elsewhere. Examples include a comparison between industrial education in the US and South Africa; the folklore of mines and mining in S.A. and in Appalachian America, segregation and apartheid in SA and in the American South.

The Heinemann Book of South African Short Stories. Edited by Denis Hirson. Ibandan, Nigeria: Heinemann and UNESCO, 1994. Some of the same authors listed above in Encounters but others as well.

Illustrated History of South Africa; The Real Story. 3rd ed. Reader's Digest Association, 1994. Provides good background for the transformations that have taken place in the last decade.

Isadora, Rachel. At the Crossroads. Greenwillow Books, 1991. Picture book. SA children gather to welcome home their fathers from the mines.

Krige, E. Jensen and J.D. Krige. The Realm of a Rain-Queen; A Study of the Pattern of Lovedu Society. Cape Town, Juta, 1943. Contains the romantic but true story of a matriarchal leader of a tribal group in the northern part of the Limpopo Province. The book is scholarly in tone.

Lor, Peter Johan. "A Distant Mirror; The Story of Libraries in South Africa," Daedalus (Fall 1996). Peter Lor is the national librarian of South Africa.

Magubane, Peter. African Renaissance. London: New Holland, 2000. Photos and text on recent South African history and social life.

Magubane, Peter. Vanishing Cultures of South Africa; Changing Customs in a Changing World. New York, Rizzoli, 1998. Photo-journalism at its best. Wonderful pictures and history written by a variety of consultants with ethnological description of the Xhosa, the Zulu, the Ndebele, the Venda, the Tsonga, the Basotho, the Tswana, the Pedi , the Ntwana, and the San.

Malan, Rian. My Traitor's Heart; A South African Exile Returns to Face his Country, his Tribe, and his Conscience. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990. A white South AGrican attempting to come to terms with his heritage and his future.

Mandela, Nelson. The Long Walk to Freedom; the Autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Boston: Little/Brown, 1994. Great introduction to the history, culture and people of South Africa. A recent book, Nelson Mandela's Favorite African folktales (NY: Norton, 2002) shows way Mandela is seen as the "father of the South African nation." This collection of 32 stories from African oral traditions would be a good addition to a school or public library.

McCall Smith, Alexander. The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency. Edinburgh: Polygon, 1998. The first of four stories about Precious Ramotswe, the founder and manager of a detective agency in Botswana. A wonderful background about the country mores and African ways as well. Other titles include Tears of the Giraffe (2003), Morality for Beautiful Girls (2001). Morality for Beautiful Girls (2001), The Kalahari Typing School for Men (2003) and The Full Cupboard of Life (2004).

Michener, James. The Covenant. Random House, 1980. Reissued as paperback by Fawcett, 1987. This 1200 page book contains all the history of South Africa told through linked characters stories. From the Huguenots, the Boers, the Missionaries, the Voortrekkers, the English, the Venloo command, to the apartheid era and the diamond mines. A fun way to get a lot of history.

Murphy, Dervla. South from the Limpopo; Travels through South Africa. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1999.

Mutwa, Vusamazulu Credo, comp. Indaba My Children. New York: Grove Press, 1999 (originally published in Joahannesburg, 1964). Folk tales, history, legends, customs and beliefs.

Naidoo, Beverley. Chain of Fire. [alternative title: Journey to Jo'burg] NY: Harper/Collins, 1989. An illustrated children's book about a group of villagers forced to leave their homes and resettle in barren country.

One Never Knows; an Anthology of Black South African Women Writers in Exile. compiled by Lindewe Mabuza. Braamfontein, SA: Skotaville Pubs, 1989.

Paton, Alan. Cry, the Beloved Country! NY: Scribner, 1995. Originally published in 1948, this classic novel is about apartheid and race relations in South Africa. Other important titles by this South African writer include Too Late the Phalarope (1953), Tales from a Troubled Land (1961), and Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful (1981).

The Reader's Companion to South Africa. Alan Ryan, ed. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1999. Travel writing by visitors to South Africa. Earliest piece is from 1850 and latest from 1997. Includes Mark Twain on Durban, Johannesburg and Kimberly; Alan Moorehead on the Kruger National Park and Swaziland; Ilka Chase on Johannesburg; nineteen essays in all. Interesting to see the differences in perspective of the writers over time.

Rissik, Dee. Culture Shock! South Africa. Portland, OR: Graphics Arts Center, 1994, rev. 2001. A guide to customs and etiquette with information on history, food, role of women, land and ownership, the arts, the economy and industry.

Roberts, Martin. A History of South Africa. London: Longman, 1990. An easy-to-read, well illustrated textbook covering historical highlights from the mid-1600's and the Dutch settlements to happenings on the eve of Mandala's release and election in 1990. Four themes: economic development, influence of the outside world, segregation and apartheid, racial conflict.

Scheub, Harold. The Tongue is Fire; South Africa Storytellers and Apartheid. Madison: Univ. of Wisc. Press, 1996. The author collected stories told in the villages on tape and transcribed them. Selected reading gives the flavor of the oral traditions.

Sisulu, Elinor Batezat. The Day Gogo went to Vote: South Africa. Little, Brown, 1996. Picture book. First vote for black South Africans.

Slovo, Gillian. Every Secret Thing; My family, My Country. Boston: Little, Brown, 1997. A memoir by the daughter of two of apartheid's most notorious foes. She writes of her childhood with her two sisters brought up in privilege but the child of revolutionaries.

Slovo, Gillian. The Red Dust; A novel. London: Virago, 2000. Set in post-apartheid South Africa, an elderly couple attempts to find the body of their murdered son, an event that sets off a chain of reactions. Part courtroom drama, part novel of ideas and part literary work about small town South African life.

Smith, Alexander McCall. (see McCall Smith, Alexander)

Soyinka, Wole. The Burden of Memory. 1997. Soyinka won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987. Several other titles are also available.

Sparks, Allister. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Latest history by opinionated, insightful and highly readable historian. Also see his The Mind of South Africa (1990) and Tomorrow is Another country: The Inside Story of South Africa's Road to Change (1995).

Van der Post, Laurens. The Lost World of the Kalahari. New York: Morrow, 1958. A poetic interpretation of San culture. Van der Post has written many books, some set in South Africa. Another one is The Heart of the Hunter (1961).

Journal Articles

Haricombe, Lorraine J, F.W. Lancaster and Marianna Tax Choldin, "Out in the Colde: Academic Boycotts and the Isolation of South Africa," Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian 14(1) (1995) 67.

Kagan, Al, "The Transformation of South African Librarianship: Survey Results and Analysis of Current Opinions," Progressive Librarian 22 (Summer 2003) 1-37.

Lor, Peter, "Libraries in the African Renaissance: African Experience and Prospects for Survival in the Information Age," International Information and Library Review 32 (2000) 213-236.

Omotoso, K., "The Role of the Librarian in the New South Africa," The Cape Librarian; Official Monthly Journal of the Cape Provincial Library Service 38(5) (1994) 14.

Witbooi, S., "Libraianship in a Transitional South Africa," The Cape Librarian 38(2) (1994) 13.