A timely and monumental recollection, this consideration captures the crossing of the sea undertaken by immigrants from India in the late 1800s. Illustrating their travels from their home country to colonial South Africa, this narrative demonstrates the multiple beginnings that made up the indentured experience for these wandering exiles. The overview explores the terrain of the everyday by focusing on religious and cultural expressions, leisure activities, power relations on the plantations, the weapons of resistance, and forms of collaboration that were developed in conflicts with the colonial overlords. Fascinating accounts brimming with desire and tender mercies—as much as with oppression and exploitation—show that the indentured were as much agents as they were victims and silent witnesses, painting a clear portrait of both cooperation and discord between Indians and Africans. Revising the contours of South African Indian historiography, this investigation expertly weaves its themes into the mainstream of Southern African studies, highlighting an often overlooked minority community.

Inside Indian Indenture: A South African Story, 1860–1914

History

Desai, Ashwin

Vahed, Goolam

Africa

HSRC Press

The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire (South Asia in Motion)

In the pantheon of freedom fighters, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has pride of place. His fame and influence extend far beyond India and are nowhere more significant than in South Africa. "India gave us a Mohandas, we gave them a Mahatma," goes a popular South African refrain. Contemporary South African leaders, including Mandela, have consistently lauded him as being part of the epic battle to defeat the racist white regime. The South African Gandhi focuses on Gandhi's first leadership experiences and the complicated man they reveal―a man who actually supported the British Empire. Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed unveil a man who, throughout his stay on African soil, stayed true to Empire while showing a disdain for Africans. For Gandhi, whites and Indians were bonded by an Aryan bloodline that had no place for the African. Gandhi's racism was matched by his class prejudice towards the Indian indentured. He persistently claimed that they were ignorant and needed his leadership, and he wrote their resistances and compromises in surviving a brutal labor regime out of history. The South African Gandhi writes the indentured and working class back into history. The authors show that Gandhi never missed an opportunity to show his loyalty to Empire, with a particular penchant for war as a means to do so. He served as an Empire stretcher-bearer in the Boer War while the British occupied South Africa, he demanded guns in the aftermath of the Bhambatha Rebellion, and he toured the villages of India during the First World War as recruiter for the Imperial army. This meticulously researched book punctures the dominant narrative of Gandhi and uncovers an ambiguous figure whose time on African soil was marked by a desire to seek the integration of Indians, minus many basic rights, into the white body politic while simultaneously excluding Africans from his moral compass and political ideals.

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Stanford University Press

When Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa in 1994, freedom-loving people around the world hailed a victory over racial domination, injustice and inequality. The end of apartheid did not change the basic conditions of life for the majority of oppressed South Africans, however. Material inequality has deepened and new forms of resistance have emerged in commnities that have discovered a common oppression and solidarty and forged new and dynamic political identities. Desai's book follows the growth of the most unexpected of these community movements, describing from the inside the process through which the downtrodden regain their dignity and defend the most basic conditions of life. His book begins with one specific community, with local government enforcing cut-offs of water and electricity, and evicting families from their houses whose breadwinners have lost their jobs. As the Chatsworth community begins to organize and discover leaders among its ranks, so their example spreads to other communities in Durban and the KwaZulu-Natal region, and their struggles build links with those in other parts of the new South Africa. We Are the Poors was a major event in the life of the South African Left when the first edition was published there in 2000. This new edition follows the ongoing course of events to the present.

We Are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Business & Money

Economics

Monthly Review+press

Reading Revolution: Shakespeare on Robben Island

"Somehow, Shakespeare always seems to have something to say to us." —Nelson Mandela The prison authorities on apartheid South Africa's Robben Island strictly censored the reading materials inmates received from the outside world. Yet, the prisoners cleverly managed to smuggle political literature disguised as religious texts, into their communal cells. The works of Shakespeare resonated deepest amongst the inmates for their anti-colonial and anti-apartheid inspirations, as much as for the power and beauty of their words. Through the memories and biographical accounts written by former political inmates including Nelson Mandela, Reading Revolution evocatively depicts the power of these great works. We see how words can inspire the human spirit, light up the intellect, and free the reader to travel the world. The book, with nearly fifty pages of four-color illustrations, ignites once more, a reading revolution, to stir up the imagination in a South Africa whose democratic transition seeks to consolidate power from above, while being increasingly contested by insurgent protest from below.

Arts & Literature

Haymarket Books

The prison authorities on South Africa's Robben Island displayed a remarkable obsession with censoring the news that prisoners could receive from the outside world. Yet, as the pages of this book reveal, political prisoners managed to escape these constraints through literature, travelling to the sites of contemporary revolutionary struggles and to the frontlines of the French and Bolshevik revolutions. Tolstoy jostled with Trotsky, while Shakespeare 'winged' his way over the walls of the single and communal cells. As the prisoners brought their experiences to bear on the text, the works of Shakespeare were mined for their anti-colonial and anti-apartheid inspirations, as much as for the power and beauty of their words. The texts also left their mark on the consciousness and memories of liberation fighters, with many prisoners still reciting lines from Shakespeare's plays and sonnets some three decades after their release. Through the memories and biographical accounts written by former political inmates, the book evocatively brings to life the voices of prisoners who furtively copied books at night before they were snatched back by the prison guards. Reading Revolution is about how words can inspire the human spirit, light up the intellect, and free the reader to travel the world. But, this is not a book simply about the past. By opening the all-too-quickly-forgotten pages of history, the book seeks to ignite once more, a reading revolution, to stir up the imagination in a South Africa whose democratic transition seeks to consolidate power from above, while being increasingly contested by insurgent protest from below.

Community & Culture

Unisa Press

The South African past is rich with stories of courage, initiative and endeavour which have never become history because they are the stories of those excluded from power. This book seeks to transform some of these stories into history: in this case into the history of cricket in Natal, hitherto dominated by the official and the privileged.

Blacks in Whites: A Century of Cricket Struggles in KwaZulu-Natal

Padayachee, Vishnu

Reddy, Krish

University Of KwaZulu-Natal Press

In this searing and revealing account of cricket in post-apartheid South Africa, Ashwin Desai deftly tells a story of promise and despair, the story of a new pitch; a quick start full of hope, followed by a steady erosion of the commitments needed to fulfil the promise of a level-playing field. Economic and political compromises contributed to holding back the pulling aside of the covers of race and class privilege. Alongside this, the hurried hollowing out of the ‘politics of cricket’, aided by black administrators assuming the accoutrements of office, saw very little internal challenge to the lack of transformation. In a book where the love of cricket shines through, Ashwin Desai makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the farce that was post-apartheid cricket administration and the characters that played such a role in the charade.

Reverse Sweep: A Story of South African Cricket since Apartheid

Sports & Outdoors

Other Team Sports

Jacana Media

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Books by Desai, Ashwin