Word: swansons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...UNDERSCORE the urgency of the currer situation, much of Freedom Rising presents the bleak side of South Africa. It is the story of the hundreds in South Africa who are going to jail, and of the sophisticated police state that puts them there. Swanson's personal abhorrence of apartheid permeates every page of the book; in fact, the tone is often unnecessarily moralistic since his facts speak clearly enough in opposition to the current regime...
FROM THE BOOK'S many anecdotes--some rouching, other terrifying--Swanson constructs a fairly grim mosaic of South African reality. He provides ample illustration of the humiliating laws of separation, or "petty apartheid," but is concerned foremost with stressing the broader significance of apartheid; how the minority white regime has used a theory of racial separation to maintain class domination, transforming the color line into a poverty line as well. And despite superficial reforms aimed at placating international opinion, the captains of apartheid are standing firm behind these policies...
...exposing both the structural significance of apartheid and the increasing polarization of South African politics, Swanson is able to challenge many of the assumptions of current U.S. policy toward that country. The economic significance of apartheid, white resistance to substantive reform and rising nonwhite militancy do not bode well for the prospects of a gradual erosion of apartheid. As a result, U.S. policies designed to nudge South Africa toward democratic rule through gentle persuasion are destined to fail, no matter how earnestly pursued...
Weighing U.S. links to South Africa, Swanson instead concludes that the withdrawal of Western capital provides the best means of undermining apartheid. He argues convincingly that time has disproved arguments that foreign investment can play a positive role in South Africa; far from improving the position of South African Blacks, it has provided the white regime with much-needed technology and a much-craved international respectability...
...anger, Freedom Rising is also infused with a deep love for the South African land and people, and ultimately with great hope. And the harsh bite of Swanson's all too evident distaste for apartheid is countered by a poignant vision of what could be. In one highly moving passage, Swanson recounts his visit with Nokukanya Luthuli, widow of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Chief Luthuli, who was banned for speaking out against apartheid. Luthuli, together with the other 25,000 Black residents of the region, had just staved off a government attempt to force them into a bantustan. Swanson found...