by Luso on May 16th, 2012
In February this year, German-based publishing company Brandes & Apsel released Orange-Senqu: Artery of Life: Water and Peace in Southern Africa by award-winning journalist Thomas Kruchem.
Orange-Senqu: Artery of Life attempts to provide a simultaneously historical, contemporary and personal account of the Orange-Senqu River basin, a large water catchment area which serves communities in four southern African countries.
Covering a wide range of issues regarding development and access to water, the book offers a chance for the outsider to see the area with new eyes. Kruchem achieves this by combining personal anecdote with historical detail and, while some of the details may seem unnecessary, he displays a passion for his subject which carries with it a respect for the region and its people. The book is accompanied by a multi-media “Orange-Senqu River Awareness Kit” DVD.
San of the Kalahari; mountain farmers in Lesotho; township activists near Johannesburg; diamond miners at the mouth; scientists and eco-philosophers – these are just a sampling of the scores of people interviewed by Thomas Kruchem to tell the rich and multi-faceted story of this great African river.
It is a story steeped in cultural history, economic opportunity and overwhelming environmental challenge. And the whole thing is told against the backdrop of a global problem – the escalating shortage of potable water.
Water shortage is one of humanity’s greatest challenges. It comes into sharp focus through the real-world issues faced along the river named Orange in South Africa and Senqu in Lesotho. In addressing these issues this compelling and beautifully illustrated book is part travelogue, part in-depth analysis and part a compendium of touching stories. The attached “Orange-Senqu River Awareness Kit” on DVD provides comprehensive multimedia material on water issues in Southern Africa.
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by Luso on May 10th, 2012
Verdict: carrot
The word “stark” in German means “strong”. Peter Stark can be likened to any great legend of the bush, such as Sir Percy Fitzpatrick. He was a tough young man growing up in a tough country – South West Africa – and Stark’s autobiography tells us what life was like for him in the 1930s and 1940s. At an early age he gained skills as a horseman and hunter.
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by Sophy on Mar 14th, 2012
Verdict: carrots
From barbarians to savages, vermin, gooks, dogs, baboons, cockroaches, rats … The list of invectives denying fellow human beings the respect they deserve by degrading them to species below the human race is almost endless. Dehumanisation lowers the threshold and allows the elimination of others, considered sub-human, through an act of civilisation, so to say, a service to humanity, to protect it (meaning: us, i.e. those claiming to hold the power of definition) from the onslaught of the beasts.
Those who doubt whether this is an adequate assessment or rather an exaggeration are advised to read any of the three recently published books under review. David Livingstone Smith, a scholar in philosophy and psychology at the University of New England, provides a breathtaking panorama, with an impressive range and depth, of the history of dehumanisation. He challenges those among us, who believe they are immune to such manipulations: “Dehumanization is not the exclusive preserve of Nazis, communists, terrorists, Jews, Palestinians, or any other monster of the moment. We are all potential dehumanizers, just as we are all potential objects of dehumanization. The problem of dehumanisation is everyone’s problem” (p. 25; original emphasis).
Review of Anatomy of a South African Genocide and Germany’s Genocide of the Herero
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by wombatsamwilson on Mar 5th, 2012
Verdict: carrot, with strong ethical reservations
At the heart of this crime novel set in Namibia is an historical event, the 1989 murder of advocate and Swapo activist Anton Lubowski, an assassination that continues to cast a long shadow.
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by Carolyn on Feb 24th, 2012
Met boeke kan jy op wonderlike reise gaan…sonder om jou rusbank te verlaat! Phyllis Green van SARIE het ‘n paar besonderse reisboeke aanbeveel:
As ek ‘n tassie kan pak en êrens heen kan gaan, is ek op my gelukkigste. Dis die begin van die jaar. Dit was Kersfees. En dit was vakansie. Ek is seker daarvan jul beursies is tans net so plat soos myne. Dit beteken ek gaan maar eers my lus vir reis op ‘n meer bekostigbare manier moet bevredig. Ek reis hierdie week in die suide van Afrika, eers na ‘n paar van ons buurlande en dan sommer lekker in die binneland van ons pragtige land. Dit is ‘n heerlike ontdekkingstog wat my ‘n paar keer verras het. Hoop julle is gereed om saam te reis.
Otter Hiking Trail, J.J.E. Liebenberg
Die subtitel van hierdie boek is A Photographic Souvenir en dis presies wat die boek doen, jou op ‘n foto-reis neem op hierdie gewilde staproete. Die landskap op die staproete verander heeltyd en dit word ook in die foto’s weerspieël. Daar is watervalle, woude, berghange, die see, diere en plante. Nie alleen kan jy sien hoe dit daar lyk nie, maar gee die skrywer ook kort en bondige inligting oor die staproete, die geriewe, wat jy kan verwag op elke deel van die roete en dan word die plantegroei en dierelewe ook beskryf. Dis ‘n baie nuttige boek vir enigeen wat die roete wil gaan stap, en selfs al stap jy nie, is dit opwindend om deur iemand anders se oë in die gebied te reis.
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by Sophy on Feb 14th, 2012
By Julia Beffon for The Times:
Political assassinations, whether real or imagined, are often the basis for good fiction. Last year Stephen King returned to the bestsellers’ list with 11.23.63, his account of a time traveller given the opportunity to prevent the killing of John F Kennedy.
Among the most famous in the genre is Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal, in which a fictional assassin, hired by the very real Organisation de l’Armée Secrète, tries to kill French leader Charles de Gaulle, who the OAS blamed for France granting independence to Algeria.
The OAS did mount a real (and equally narrowly unsuccessful) attempt on De Gaulle’s life in 1962, when Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry opened fire on the president in Paris.
Bernhard Jaumann’s The Hour of the Jackal borrows more than just part of the title from Forsyth’s 1971 blockbuster.
This time, the assassination – of lawyer and senior Swapo official Anton Lubowski – was real. The killing, in September 1989, was ordered by the Civil Cooperation Bureau, a dirty-tricks department set up by the South African government.
Like the OAS in France and Algeria, many rightwingers in the apartheid government were willing to go to violent ends to show their disapproval of independence for South West Africa (now Namibia).
Although the CCB’s involvement is known, who pulled the trigger is still a mystery.
Jaumann, a German with several well-received crime novels to his name, sets the scene for The Hour of the Jackal 20 years after Lubowski’s murder, when a shadowy killer has decided to eliminate all members of the CCB in order to either get at the truth or avenge the assassination.
The action opens with the killer spying on CJ “Slang” van Zyl, now (in the novel at least) a well-fed family man living in Windhoek. A burst of gunfire later and Van Zyl’s family are left crying and answering police questions, just like the relatives of those he murdered in the 1980s.
One by one, “Chappies” Maree, Ferdi Barnard, Staal Burger and Donald Acheson are hunted down.
Trying to prevent the murders, once the link has been established, is Windhoek detective Clemencia Garises.
She’s hamstrung by a lack of facilities, police incompetence and political intrigue.
Once the CCB had murdered Lubowski – one of the few white senior officials in Swapo – they tried to blacken his name by suggesting that he was actually a double agent also working for South Africa.
These rumours and the fact that the murderer was never caught or brought to trial make the Lubowski case one that, Jaumann suggests, still makes the Namibian leadership uncomfortable.
The author’s intention, as he explains in a postscript, is to try to get to the bottom of the real-life mystery. By using the names of the real CCB operatives, Jaumann hopes to draw them out and uncover the truth.
They’re known to be litigious; his reply is “go ahead”. If they sue him for The Hour of the Jackal, he will have the chance to face them in court and ask them questions they’ve been avoiding for 23 years.
It’s a challenging (and 20 years ago potentially deadly) game that Jaumann is playing, but the downside to The Hour of the Jackal is that the excellent plot is not backed up by brilliant writing.
It doesn’t seem the translation by John Brownjohn is to blame – the language flows smoothly, even if the character development doesn’t.
Garises’ detective methods seem to owe more to Alex McCall Smith’s No 1 Ladies Detective Agency than a police manual; while the young German journalist who is Garises fan/love interest seems to serve no purpose other than to provide our heroine with a car and Jaumann’s European readers with a point of reference.
The Lubowski murder (and more laid at the door of the CCB) is part of the uncomfortable past of Southern Africa. The Hour of the Jackal is an invigorating attempt to weave it into an above-average thriller.
- The Hour of the Jackal is published by Wild Dog Press
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by wombatsamwilson on Feb 10th, 2012
Verdict: carrot
This is a must-read for people interested in recent history as it played out in Namibia.
From Heinrich Göring, first Imperial Commissioner of German South West Africa, to his son Hermann, Nazi criminal, this book spans a dark period in German history.
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- The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism by David Olusoga, Casper Erichsen
EAN: 9780571231416
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by Sophy on Feb 1st, 2012
Verdict: carrot
Books like this general history that bring together the work of various writers are not as common as they used to be. Historians these days prefer to make an impact with more specialised publications such as recent offerings on the Namibian war of 1904 to 1908. But this is a good, clearly written example of an old tradition.
It kicks off with an archaeological survey and chapters on pre-colonial times. In her account of political and economic power relations, Wallace makes the point that in an arid country in which wealth was accumulated in cattle, its forcible transfer was all too easy. While the colonial period lasted little more than a century, it was remarkably varied: German colony; South African military occupation; League of Nations mandate; and effective incorporation into South Africa. Only in 1994 was Walvis Bay finally returned.
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by Chiara on Sep 15th, 2011
Verdict: carrot
This is a carefully written history of our neighbouring country.
The early history, the work of Kinahan, is based on archaeological and paleontological research and on broader studies of migrations in Southern Africa, helping us to understand the survival of groups and societies in this inhospitable terrain.
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by Chiara on Sep 1st, 2011
Verdict: carrots
By the time the German emperor Wilhelm II ascended the throne in the summer of 1888, it was clear that Germany had arrived late to the Great Game of European Imperialism. England, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and Belgium had long laid claim to hefty chunks of Asia, South America, the Mideast, and parts of Africa, but Germany’s holdings were mostly limited to small commercial colonies in Africa and Asia founded by private German traders. Kaiser Wilhelm, alternatively insecure and belligerent, pushed to expand these holdings and acquire others, desperate to be on par with his colonial peers. Moreover, Germany aspired to export the Fatherland beyond cramped central Europe. Every year large numbers of its booming population were emigrating to the Americas, where they became lost to Germany forever. Some lightly colonized lands in southwest Africa, in particular, were seen as insular locations perfect for nurturing a kind of New Germany, one that preserved the volkisch ethos that was rapidly disappearing in a modernizing, industrial Europe. Germany could then also rely upon these colonies for raw materials, export markets, and military manpower in times of war.
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- The Kaiser’s Holocaust: Germany’s Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism by David Olusoga and Casper Erichsen
EAN: 9780571231416
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