Mapped
Cry, the Beloved Country
Alan Paton
A Zulu country pastor leaves the green hills above Ixopo in Natal for the vast city on the gold Reef, hunting for a son swallowed by its townships and shanties. The map holds the Johannesburg of the 1940s: black freehold at Sophiatown, the crowding of Alexandra, the shack settlement thrown up overnight at Orlando, the mines that pulled every man there, and the court where the story turns. The rural home that opens and closes the book lies far south in Natal, held on the map as a separate anchor.
6 places →
Mine Boy
Peter Abrahams
Xuma comes from the north to work in the gold mines of Johannesburg and lodges in the crowded slum of Malay Camp, where he slowly wakes to the injustice of the colour bar that rules every hour of his life. Abrahams maps the real segregated city: the multiracial shebeen world of Malay Camp and Vrededorp, the deep gold mines and their white dumps south of town, the white city centre where black men are only ever labour, and the streets where the police raid and the new consciousness stirs.
5 places →