Thoughts on the New South Africa

Compiled by noted South African intellectual and former revolutionary Neville Alexander shortly before his death, the essays gathered in this collection deal with the perceptions and beliefs that both drive and hinder post-apartheid South Africa and, in doing so, raise sometimes-uncomfortable questions about the “new” South Africa’s standing on a global level. The pieces address three of the principle issues that concerned Alexander, namely, the fundamental necessity for South Africans to move away from race consciousness and think along the lines of the far more real and relevant categories of class, gender, and language; the importance of children learning to read, write, and think in their own mother tongue while understanding the need for mastery in an international language; and the struggle for a socialist world of justice and equality for all. These perceptive treatises shed light on the current South Africa, a nation working to reshape and reinvent itself on the international stage after years of political, racial, and social inequality.