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[1] From: J. Brookes Spector, USIA <JBSpector@aol.com> Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 At the risk of offering too many comments, the latest suggestion regarding books which predicted a bloodbath leads me to recommend reading several novels in tandem which describe/ed the same event. Specifically, Schoeman's _Promised Land_ and Gordimer's _July's People_. Both are short, presumably realistic treatments of a future which hasn't happened but which seemed entirely too plausible to writers and nonwriters alike in the post 1976 period. [2] Date: Fri, 07 Nov 1997 From: Barbara Oomen, University of Leiden <jfvvibo@ruljur.LeidenUniv.NL> In a similar vein as Mandela's autobiography are Allistair Sparks, _Tomorrow Will Be Another Country_ (or his general work on South African history, _The Mind of South Africa_). Also The Readers Digest, _Illustrated History of South Africa_ (Cape Town: The Readers Digest Association Limited, 1994. This book incorporates some post-1994 developments, and it is easy to use various chapters. I teach a course on South African Law and Administration at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. For the introductory class on South Africa in general I have also perscribed the 12-page overview of South African history by J.D. Omer-Cooper in _Africa South of the Sahara_ ( London: Europa publication limited, 1996), pp. 858-870. Another good general introductory text to the problems faced by South African administration is the introduction in: Munslow, B. & Fitzgerald, P., _Managing Sustainable Development in South Africa_ (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1995). I hope this is of help! [3] From: Mel Page, East Tennessee State University <pagem@access.etsu.edu> Date: Sun, 9 Nov 1997 If fiction can help students, especially those less familiar with the complexities of issues in South Africa, understand some of the problems in that country, I would (as I have before) recommend _The Umbrella Tree_ by Rose Zwi (although I have been told it is now out of print in the U.S.). It does not deal with the most recent developments, having been written in 1990 and reflecting developments from a decade previous. Nonetheless, it does very nicely, almost quitely, introduce some of the dynamics which have helped to shape the 1990s in South Africa.
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