January Sun
One Day, Three Lives, A South African Town
by RICHARD STENGEL
Richard Stengel journeyed to South Africa in the late 1980s to chronicle life under apartheid. He ended up spending months in a small rural town where the white authorities were attempting to forcibly remove a black township. He tells this moving story through the lives of three families—one white, one black, one Indian—over the course of a single day for each of them. The private lives of each family reveal what it was like to live in a society where everyone is judged by the color of his or her skin. Stengel reveals the hopes and dreams of each of these families, and their resilient optimism about the future.
About the Book:
A stunning portrait of a town in the apartheid South Africa of 20 years ago, and with a new introduction telling what has happened in South Africa and that town in the intervening years, a chronicle that earned the author an invitation from the imprisoned Nelson Mandela to collaborate with him on his autobiography.
Richard Stengel journeyed to South Africa in the late 1980s to chronicle life under apartheid. He ended up spending months in a small rural town where the white authorities were attempting to forcibly remove a black township. He tells this moving story through the lives of three families—one white, one black, one Indian—over the course of a single day for each of them. The private lives of each family reveal what it was like to live in a society where everyone is judged by the color of his or her skin.
Stengel reveals the hopes and dreams of each of these families, and their resilient optimism about the future. In a new introduction, Stengel describes how some of those hopes even came to pass with the eventual release of Nelson Mandela and the election of the country’s first truly democratic government.
Praise for January Sun:
“TIME contributing editor Stengel offers a cross-section of South African society by tracing a typical day in the lives of three people: a white Afrikaner, a black activist and an Indian shopkeeper. Ronald de la Rey, a veterinarian and cattle eugenicist who applies racialist theories to humans, seems the embodiment of a system that rationalizes its evil. Marshall Cornelius, aka "Life," drives a cab and campaigns for reforms in the segregated squatters' camp, or "township,' where he lives, adjacent to de la Rey's town, some 30 miles west of Pretoria. (In an afterword, we learn that Cornelius was fatally stabbed last May.) In Indian merchant Jaiprakash Bhula, the reader sees how South Africa's significant Asian minority suffers discrimination and economic and political restrictions. In his flat, careful recording of what he sees and hears, Stengel presents a powerful picture of South Africa as a prison camp, run by and for the benefit of the whites. ” —Publishers Weekly
“The idea of portraying individuals' entire existence by tracing their activities through a single day is not original but can be effective if done right, which it is here. Stengel spotlights three South Africans: an Indian merchant, an Afrikaner veterinarian, and a black political activist, all of whom live and work with their families in the same small Transvaal town. Each remains within his own community, keenly aware of the distant proximity of other differing racial groups. Apartheid dominates daily existence, and Stengel shows how the struggle to come to terms with Pretoria's race laws is impossible in this seemingly indestructible, yet vulnerable country. An intriguing perspective that is recommended for African studies collections.” —Library Journal