The Seed Is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper, 1894-1985

Winner of the Sunday Times (South Africa) Alan Paton Award for Nonfiction
Winner of the Herskovitz Award from the African Studies Association.

'The seed is mine. The ploughshares are mine. The span of oxen is mine. Everything is mine. Only the land is their's.'--Kas Maine

A bold and innovative social history, The Seed Is Mine concerns the disenfranchised blacks who did so much to shape the destiny of South Africa. After years of interviews with Kas Maine and his neighbors, employers, friends, and family--a rare triumph of collaborative courage and dedication--Charles van Onselen has re-created the entire life of a man who struggled to maintain his family in a world dedicated to enriching whites and impoverishing blacks, while South Africa was tearing them apart.
Winner of The Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for Nonfiction
Winner of the Herskovitz Award from the African Studies Association

"The seed is mine. The ploughshares are mine. The span of oxen is mine. Everything is mine. Only the land is theirs."—Kas Maine

A bold and innovative social history, The Seed Is Mine concerns the disenfranchised blacks who did so much to shape the destiny of South Africa. After years of interviews with Kas Maine and his neighbors, employers, friends, and family—a rare triumph of collaborative courage and dedication—Charles van Onselen has recreated the entire life of a man who struggled to maintain his family in a world dedicated to enriching whites and impoverishing blacks, while South Africa was tearing them apart.
"If ever one wondered whether the life of a single man could illuminate a century, [this] brilliant biography . . . proves the point."—Carmel Schrire, The Boston Globe

"An epic . . . [that] tells of the loss of human potential generated by a politics that surrendered generosity and openness to self-interest and bigotry. It reveals the way an ordinary man can survive with dignity in such a world."—Vincent Crapanzano, The New York Times Book Review

"A magnificent book [with] implications beyond its modest claims . . . This remarkable story compels foreboding but also kindles hope, for it shows the extraordinary courage of 'ordinary' men under severe difficulties."—Eugene Genovese, Emory University

"[Van Onselen] teases out the subtleties of the paternalistic relationships between rural whites and blacks which gave rise to real friendships but also to much betrayal, anger, and humiliation . . . It is a monumental masterpiece of research, and a poetic evocation of the human spirit to survive . . . "—Linda Ensor, Business Day (South Africa)