Fault Lines: Journeys into the New South Africa (Perpectives on Southern Africa) [Hardcover]

David Goodman (Author), Paul Weinberg (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0520217365 | ISBN-13: 978-0520217362 | Edition: 1

South Africa has experienced one of the world's most dramatic political transformations. David Goodman, a journalist and activist who has witnessed South Africa's struggles since the darkest days of apartheid, chronicles the historic transition from apartheid to democracy. This compelling story is told through the lives of four pairs of South Africans who have experienced apartheid from opposite sides of the racial and political divide. Taken together, these profiles provide the first in-depth look at the social dynamics of post-apartheid South Africa.
Part social history and part personal drama, Fault Lines is an account of what happens to real people when their country is reinvented around them. The struggle to reconcile past evils is captured in the stories of a former police assassin and his intended victim. The rise and fall of South African racism is portrayed through the lives of the late Prime Minister H.F. Verwoerd--the notorious "architect of apartheid"--and his grandson, now a member of the ruling African National Congress. The battle to break out of poverty is detailed in the story of two black women: one an impoverished domestic worker and new city councilor, the other a Mercedes-driving member of South Africa's new black elite. The struggle for the land is told through the eyes of two neighbors: a black farmer who was evicted from his lands in the 1980s and has returned to start over, and a conservative white farmer who participated in the eviction and now does business with the man whose life he nearly destroyed. These powerful stories are accompanied by the photography of award-winning South African documentary photographer Paul Weinberg.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In April 1994, South Africa held its first ever democratic elections, ushering Nelson Mandela into office as the nation's first black president. What has followed that election, as the country attempts to reinvent a society founded on racism and the indignities of apartheid, is the subject of Fault Lines. "How does a nation deal with the memory of its brutal past?" is perhaps the question that most guides David Goodman, a journalist and longtime observer of South African life. Like the Truth and Reconciliation hearings, the political instrument of South Africa's struggle to come to terms with apartheid-era crimes, the strength of Fault Lines rests on an unflinching yet compassionate quest for truth. Goodman brings all his investigative skills to the task of getting an answer from all sides. He juxtaposes profiles of a victim of police brutality and the former security officer who helped torture him, or a well-off Afrikaner farmer and his neighbor, a black South African forcibly removed from his land. While formal apartheid has ended, Goodman finds "an unfinished revolution," with many citizens still mired in terrible economic and social injustice. Fault Lines is fascinating, if disturbing, reading for anyone interested in understanding the history and present of what the author calls "the most exciting country in the world." --Maria Dolan

From Publishers Weekly

In this richly textured book, GoodmanAwho first went to South Africa as an activist in 1984 and returned for a year in 1996Aprofiles four pairs of people who dramatize the country's current conflicts and contradictions. The most gripping section concerns South Africa's deep rifts over land redistribution and amnesty: Frank Chikane, a former activist now in the government, must justify his government's rightward economic drift; his one-time torturer, a white ex-cop who became a killer during South Africa's Namibian war, is now a wreck. The story of Wilhelm Verwoerd, son of apartheid's architect, and his estranged son, a supporter of the African National Congress, dramatizes the schisms among Afrikaners. South Africa's enduring povertyAand potential opportunityAis shown in the juxtaposition of a black councilwoman near Cape Town and a brazen businesswoman who exploits white guilt and doesn't flinch at blaming fellow blacks. And on the platteland, where Afrikaner farmers still beat black workers, the return of land to displaced blacks proceeds slowly. Goodman contextualizes these tales with a savvy understanding of both South Africa's history and its slow, troubled transformation. While his book doesn't encompass all of the country's fault lines of region, ethnicity and class, Goodman eloquently conveys why he has been obsessed by South Africa and its trials. Ultimately, he finds South Africans' passion for their country inspirational, and so will most readers. Photos by Paul Weinberg. First serial to the New Yorker.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 410 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (March 16, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520217365
• ISBN-13: 978-0520217362
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,357,623 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent introduction to present-day South Africa, May 22, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (West Lafayette, Indiana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fault Lines: Journeys into the New South Africa (Perpectives on Southern Africa) (Hardcover)

I first heard about this book on a radio talk show and immediately ordered it through Amazon.com. Listening to the author talk about his views on South Africa was quite interesting because he loves the country and its people and is cautiously enthusiastic about its future, but reading his book reveals that the vast problems South Africa faces are incredibly complex and that it may well take several generations to create an egalitarian society. One really wonders if South Africa will stand the test of time and not become another Rwanda or Yugoslavia.

The author intelligently divided the book into four parts: an introduction in which he talks about his early trips in South Africa under apartheid and the current social situation of the country, four portrait sections in which he includes a pair of interviews with people on opposite sides of the current post-apartheid experience, and a sensible personal conclusion. The reader should expect moving as well as harrowing personal accounts of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. Many things throughout the book will bring hope to the reader; however, that hope will be checked by Goodman's well-informed statistics on criminality and unemployment in present-day South Africa. The book definitively deserves a wide readership.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Expands on what I saw in South Africa, October, 1998, April 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fault Lines: Journeys into the New South Africa (Perpectives on Southern Africa) (Hardcover)

Having visited South Africa in October, 1998, and seen the extensive squatters areas described by the author, I do not believe that readers of his book can adequately understand the extreme poverty he describes. It has to be seen and experienced to be appreciated. Mr. Goodman's portraits of the eight people in his book gives flesh and humanity to the otherwise dehumanizing nature of apartheid. I think his work is best appreciated if you have seen South Africa for yourself. For your readers who have not been to South Africa, they owe it to themselves to see it. I believe you can not remain unmoved by what you see and one must come away from that experience a better person.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Views from both sides, January 22, 2004

By 

Robert Orion (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fault Lines: Journeys into the New South Africa (Updated with a New Afterword) (Paperback)

Goodman has compiled a great book here with views on important events in South African history. These events are examined with narratives from both sides, white and black. The aftermath of each event is traced as well.