From the Archives: Memoirs of Speaking Against Apartheid.
White South African writer Rian Malan. Malan is an Afrikaner, descendent of a family that settled in South Africa over three hundred years ago, and Malan's great-uncle was the chief architect of the Apartheid system. Malan only realized the horror of Apartheid after he became a crime reporter for a Johannesburg paper. What he learned led him to leave South Africa, and spend the next eight years in exile. Malan's written a book about his return to his homeland, called "My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience." (REBROADCAST FROM 1/30/90).
South African labor leader Emma Mashinini. Mashinini was Secretary of the Commercial, Catering, and Allied Workers Union of South Africa, one of South Africa's biggest trade unions, and was arrested and detained for six months. Mashinini's autobiography, is "Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life." (by Routledge). (REBROADCAST FROM 7/23/91).
From 1953 until 1989 Helen Suzman served as an Opposition Member of the South African Parliament. Suzman was a pioneering political leader in the fight against apartheid and anti-semitism. For thirteen years she was the sole representative in the Parliament to reject race discrimination. In her book, "In No Certain Terms: A South African Memoir" (Knopf), she explains how she used her status to gain access to places out of bounds to the general public--prisons, black townships and "resettlement areas"--and how she came to know Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners. (REBROADCAST FROM 11/09/93).
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