Church Clothes: Or, Land, Mission, and the End of Apartheid in South Africa

"Church Clothes" provides a close look at the last days of official apartheid in South Africa and its transition to democracy and equal rights among the races. The narrative ends with the election of Nelson Mandela to the presidency of South Africa. But unlike other histories of this monumental period, Thomas Wilkinson's "Church Clothes" sets the historical events into a complex and fascinating sociological model derived from Christian missionary work and the relations of colonizing communities to land, especially the land-relations that were current in Europe at the time of the original Dutch migrants to South Africa. This model leads him to a much deeper understanding of the apartheid period and racism, itself, than is usually found.