The History of South Africa, Third Edition

This book was a joy to read since it was written almost like a novel. I agree with other reviews about the last chapter. I think the author should have spent a bit more time on it.

Before giving my actual review, I want to give you some context from which this review came. I read this book while studying in South Africa and taking South African History. I'm an undergraduate student and I'm not getting a degree in History. I would say I'm what the author would look at as a basic twenty-something reader.

With that said, onto my review:

This is 3 1/2 stars. The book was overflowing with facts and all the key events that lead up to South Africa as it is today, spanning from the earliest inhabitants to the presidential term of Thabo Mbeki. The reason I didn't give this book four stars is not the information per se, but more so the way the information was presented. In short, good content, poor execution. Although the book is set up in a generally chronological order, the author constantly jumps around when discussing specific dates. The sheer amount of information that you are taking in makes it very difficult to keep track of all of the dates and span them out in a timeline in your head (at least it was for me). This structure proves to be confusing and makes recollecting certain events, groups, or short periods of history, difficult.

The very epitomy of a 2 1/2 star, mediocre book.

I was neither impressed nor appalled. It reviews South Africa from prehistoric times until after Aparthied. If you want to know some basics about South Africa, I'd read it. If you are looking for real in depth analysis, find something else. I would neither suggest nor disuade readers.

I read this book just before my month long tour of S. Africa. For what it is, which is a quick summary of the entire history of the region that is now called South Africa, this book excelled. Nearly everything I saw around me on my trip had meaning and history because I read this book. When people talked about Bantu people or Xhosa or Zulu, I knew what people they were talking about and a little about them because of this book. When I visited Robben Island or Soweto, it meant more to me. When I saw a huge pile of gold colored dirt in Johannesburg, I knew what it was. And a million more examples, all because of this book.

However, the reviewer "Book Nut" who gave it only two (2!) stars does have some valid points: there are some details that were not mentioned that were worth mentioning, and sometimes this can be construed as a lack of objectivity. One the other hand, how could it be done any other way? It was, after all, written by a human, not a robot, and there is, after all, a limit as to how many words you can fit into 384 pages. I'm also in partial agreement with Book Nut about the last chapter, which is about the post-apartheid gov't since 1994: it is not pessimistic nor is it racist to say that the gov't since 1994 has had some serious shortcomings, and in some areas has been truly awful. However, I'd take the operational shortcomings of the current government over the oppression of the previous one any day, even if the shortcomings were much worse than they are. Besides, you try forming a gov't from scratch! They have done very well with what they had to work with. ...I'd bet lots of money that Book Nut is a white South African who is old enough that he or she remembers how life was for him or her SELF under apartheid, and thus we should take what he or she says about this book with a grain of salt (we all need a bit more balance).

The history of South Africa is very exciting and emotional; even more so because it is so recent and "on-going." If you don't really know much of anything about South Africa, I highly suggest reading this book. I don't know of a better first book on the subject. For an excellent source of current information about South Africa, read The Mail & Guardian, a famous weekly newspaper (they also have a website) that engages in real investigative journalism.

In this excellent history of South Africa, Professor Leonard Thompson of Yale University, gives the reader a truly holistic history of South Africa. Instead of beginning the history of South Africa with the arrival of the European explorers, he begins with the information that archaeologist have gained on the earliest humans in the area. Then, he follows the evolution of the area, showing how history unfolded for all of its people, especially the black South Africans who always did make up a majority of the inhabitants of the region.

Overall, I found this to be a fascinating, and highly informative book. So many of the older books focus exclusively on the white South Africans, bringing in the rest only when they become "important" to the story of the whites. And, so many more recent publications present recent South African history in a triumphalist manner, as if utopia has finally been achieved.

Instead, this book eschews both of those fallacies, and looks at South African history with a clear-eyed and open-minded fashion, giving the reader a good idea of what has really happened. I must say that I think that this is the best South African history that I have read so far. So, if you want to really know about South Africa, I would recommend that you get this great book. I give it two thumbs up!