1 Week in JNB, What to see/do? Safari?
Jun 8, 2012, 9:27 am
#31
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Posts: 14,352
Have you read How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein? US states, not African, by interesting nevertheless. I keep a copy in the bathroom, as the chapters are suitably short.
Oh boy, where shall I start?
- With Alan Paton, of course. Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic, and for good reason.
- Classics by other SA authors : The Conservationist (Nadine Gordimer); The Story of an African Farm (Olive Schreiner); Circles in a Forest, The Day the Swallows Spoke, Toorbos and Fiela's Child (Dalene Mathee. Afrikaans readers will no doubt prefer them in that language).
- Then you have Doris Lessing and Breyten Breytenbach. The best apartheid (prison) literature includes his The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist and A Season in Paradise. Other excellent books in this field are Bandiet: Seven Years in a South African Prison by Hugh Levin (a shocking and gripping story); Inside by Jeremy Cronin (if you are into poetry) and Longlive! by Menán du Plessis (fiction). Less well known, but remarkable and well worth reading is Brief Authority by Charles Hooper.
-J.M. Coetzee can be a bit too much on the intellectual side for my taste, but Boyhood is a short and very accessible autobiographical account of childhood in Apartheid SA.
-In the (military) history field the choice is endless. On the Zulus I recommend The Anatomy of the Zulu Army (Ian Knight); The Washing of the Spears (Morris) and Ropes of Sand (Laband). On the Boer War: The Boer War (Thomas Pakenham) and the best autobiography by far to come out of that conflict, Commando by Deneys Reitz. On the Border War: Eden's Exiles: One Soldier's Fight for Paradise, and The Buffalo Soldiers, both by Jan Breytenbach (amazingly, colonel Breytenbach is the brother of Breyten Breytenbach, the staunch Apartheid opponent); 19 with a Bullet - A South African Paratrooper in Angola (Granger Korff). General SA history: The Afrikaners by Hermann Gioliomee (if you want to understand South Africa, this is the one book you must read. Take it from me.); Rhodes, the Race for Africa by Anthony Thomas; The Scramble for Africa (Pakenham again)
-If you cast your net a bit wider in time, distance and scope, there is the biography Storyteller -The Many Lives of Laurens van der Post, by J.D.F Jones, not to mention all the books Van der Post himself wrote. He was a bit of a fraud, though. There are lots of books about travel in the (pre)colonial days, e.g. A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa (Selous) and Travels in Southern Africa (Delegorgue), as well as more recent ones by well-known authors such as Waugh (Remote People) and Greene (Journey Without Maps) and almost unknown ones, e.g. Henno Martin (The Sheltering Desert), a book I warmly recommend.
Should you be going to the Kruger NP, then African Eden - the Kruger National Park 1902-1946 (Stevenson-Hamilton) and The Kruger National Park: a Social and Political History (Jane Carruthers) are the titles I would suggest.
There, these books should keep you busy for a while! When you are done, I can think of quite a few more.
Johan
Oh boy, where shall I start?
- With Alan Paton, of course. Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic, and for good reason.
- Classics by other SA authors : The Conservationist (Nadine Gordimer); The Story of an African Farm (Olive Schreiner); Circles in a Forest, The Day the Swallows Spoke, Toorbos and Fiela's Child (Dalene Mathee. Afrikaans readers will no doubt prefer them in that language).
- Then you have Doris Lessing and Breyten Breytenbach. The best apartheid (prison) literature includes his The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist and A Season in Paradise. Other excellent books in this field are Bandiet: Seven Years in a South African Prison by Hugh Levin (a shocking and gripping story); Inside by Jeremy Cronin (if you are into poetry) and Longlive! by Menán du Plessis (fiction). Less well known, but remarkable and well worth reading is Brief Authority by Charles Hooper.
-J.M. Coetzee can be a bit too much on the intellectual side for my taste, but Boyhood is a short and very accessible autobiographical account of childhood in Apartheid SA.
-In the (military) history field the choice is endless. On the Zulus I recommend The Anatomy of the Zulu Army (Ian Knight); The Washing of the Spears (Morris) and Ropes of Sand (Laband). On the Boer War: The Boer War (Thomas Pakenham) and the best autobiography by far to come out of that conflict, Commando by Deneys Reitz. On the Border War: Eden's Exiles: One Soldier's Fight for Paradise, and The Buffalo Soldiers, both by Jan Breytenbach (amazingly, colonel Breytenbach is the brother of Breyten Breytenbach, the staunch Apartheid opponent); 19 with a Bullet - A South African Paratrooper in Angola (Granger Korff). General SA history: The Afrikaners by Hermann Gioliomee (if you want to understand South Africa, this is the one book you must read. Take it from me.); Rhodes, the Race for Africa by Anthony Thomas; The Scramble for Africa (Pakenham again)
-If you cast your net a bit wider in time, distance and scope, there is the biography Storyteller -The Many Lives of Laurens van der Post, by J.D.F Jones, not to mention all the books Van der Post himself wrote. He was a bit of a fraud, though. There are lots of books about travel in the (pre)colonial days, e.g. A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa (Selous) and Travels in Southern Africa (Delegorgue), as well as more recent ones by well-known authors such as Waugh (Remote People) and Greene (Journey Without Maps) and almost unknown ones, e.g. Henno Martin (The Sheltering Desert), a book I warmly recommend.
Should you be going to the Kruger NP, then African Eden - the Kruger National Park 1902-1946 (Stevenson-Hamilton) and The Kruger National Park: a Social and Political History (Jane Carruthers) are the titles I would suggest.
There, these books should keep you busy for a while! When you are done, I can think of quite a few more.
Johan
Jun 8, 2012, 11:09 am
#32
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If I was to rent a car and drive to the camps I mentioned do I need to rent a SUV or will a regular car be enough? And how is driving on the left?
If I was to rent a car and drive to the camps I mentioned do I need to rent a SUV or will a regular car be enough? And how is driving on the left?
Jun 8, 2012, 11:34 am
#33
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Any old car will do.
Kapama is a cinch, tar all the way.
To Shindzela, you drive up Argyle Road past HDS airport, over the Klaserie River and throught the control gate. You continue straight past Royal Legends (on your right) and Gomo Gomo (on your left), then turn right at the sign onto the cutline (boundary road between two farms). Argyle Road is tar, from the turn-off it is gravel. It is quite a long drive on the gravel, you go straigth for quite a distance, turn left, straight for a long distance again, turn right, drive past Ngala and turn right into Johnniesdale. In the rainy season (the austral summer), it could get tricky if you are driving a small car, a bit of clearance will make things easier.
Johan
Jun 10, 2012, 9:35 pm
#34
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Have you read How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein? US states, not African, by interesting nevertheless. I keep a copy in the bathroom, as the chapters are suitably short.
Oh boy, where shall I start?
- With Alan Paton, of course. Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic, and for good reason.
- Classics by other SA authors : The Conservationist (Nadine Gordimer); The Story of an African Farm (Olive Schreiner); Circles in a Forest, The Day the Swallows Spoke, Toorbos and Fiela's Child (Dalene Mathee. Afrikaans readers will no doubt prefer them in that language).
- Then you have Doris Lessing and Breyten Breytenbach. The best apartheid (prison) literature includes his The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist and A Season in Paradise. Other excellent books in this field are Bandiet: Seven Years in a South African Prison by Hugh Levin (a shocking and gripping story); Inside by Jeremy Cronin (if you are into poetry) and Longlive! by Menán du Plessis (fiction). Less well known, but remarkable and well worth reading is Brief Authority by Charles Hooper.
-J.M. Coetzee can be a bit too much on the intellectual side for my taste, but Boyhood is a short and very accessible autobiographical account of childhood in Apartheid SA.
-In the (military) history field the choice is endless. On the Zulus I recommend The Anatomy of the Zulu Army (Ian Knight); The Washing of the Spears (Morris) and Ropes of Sand (Laband). On the Boer War: The Boer War (Thomas Pakenham) and the best autobiography by far to come out of that conflict, Commando by Deneys Reitz. On the Border War: Eden's Exiles: One Soldier's Fight for Paradise, and The Buffalo Soldiers, both by Jan Breytenbach (amazingly, colonel Breytenbach is the brother of Breyten Breytenbach, the staunch Apartheid opponent); 19 with a Bullet - A South African Paratrooper in Angola (Granger Korff). General SA history: The Afrikaners by Hermann Gioliomee (if you want to understand South Africa, this is the one book you must read. Take it from me.); Rhodes, the Race for Africa by Anthony Thomas; The Scramble for Africa (Pakenham again)
-If you cast your net a bit wider in time, distance and scope, there is the biography Storyteller -The Many Lives of Laurens van der Post, by J.D.F Jones, not to mention all the books Van der Post himself wrote. He was a bit of a fraud, though. There are lots of books about travel in the (pre)colonial days, e.g. A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa (Selous) and Travels in Southern Africa (Delegorgue), as well as more recent ones by well-known authors such as Waugh (Remote People) and Greene (Journey Without Maps) and almost unknown ones, e.g. Henno Martin (The Sheltering Desert), a book I warmly recommend.
Should you be going to the Kruger NP, then African Eden - the Kruger National Park 1902-1946 (Stevenson-Hamilton) and The Kruger National Park: a Social and Political History (Jane Carruthers) are the titles I would suggest.
There, these books should keep you busy for a while! When you are done, I can think of quite a few more.
Johan
Oh boy, where shall I start?
- With Alan Paton, of course. Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic, and for good reason.
- Classics by other SA authors : The Conservationist (Nadine Gordimer); The Story of an African Farm (Olive Schreiner); Circles in a Forest, The Day the Swallows Spoke, Toorbos and Fiela's Child (Dalene Mathee. Afrikaans readers will no doubt prefer them in that language).
- Then you have Doris Lessing and Breyten Breytenbach. The best apartheid (prison) literature includes his The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist and A Season in Paradise. Other excellent books in this field are Bandiet: Seven Years in a South African Prison by Hugh Levin (a shocking and gripping story); Inside by Jeremy Cronin (if you are into poetry) and Longlive! by Menán du Plessis (fiction). Less well known, but remarkable and well worth reading is Brief Authority by Charles Hooper.
-J.M. Coetzee can be a bit too much on the intellectual side for my taste, but Boyhood is a short and very accessible autobiographical account of childhood in Apartheid SA.
-In the (military) history field the choice is endless. On the Zulus I recommend The Anatomy of the Zulu Army (Ian Knight); The Washing of the Spears (Morris) and Ropes of Sand (Laband). On the Boer War: The Boer War (Thomas Pakenham) and the best autobiography by far to come out of that conflict, Commando by Deneys Reitz. On the Border War: Eden's Exiles: One Soldier's Fight for Paradise, and The Buffalo Soldiers, both by Jan Breytenbach (amazingly, colonel Breytenbach is the brother of Breyten Breytenbach, the staunch Apartheid opponent); 19 with a Bullet - A South African Paratrooper in Angola (Granger Korff). General SA history: The Afrikaners by Hermann Gioliomee (if you want to understand South Africa, this is the one book you must read. Take it from me.); Rhodes, the Race for Africa by Anthony Thomas; The Scramble for Africa (Pakenham again)
-If you cast your net a bit wider in time, distance and scope, there is the biography Storyteller -The Many Lives of Laurens van der Post, by J.D.F Jones, not to mention all the books Van der Post himself wrote. He was a bit of a fraud, though. There are lots of books about travel in the (pre)colonial days, e.g. A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa (Selous) and Travels in Southern Africa (Delegorgue), as well as more recent ones by well-known authors such as Waugh (Remote People) and Greene (Journey Without Maps) and almost unknown ones, e.g. Henno Martin (The Sheltering Desert), a book I warmly recommend.
Should you be going to the Kruger NP, then African Eden - the Kruger National Park 1902-1946 (Stevenson-Hamilton) and The Kruger National Park: a Social and Political History (Jane Carruthers) are the titles I would suggest.
There, these books should keep you busy for a while! When you are done, I can think of quite a few more.
Johan
Jun 10, 2012, 9:44 pm
#35
Join Date: Aug 2010
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unfortunately everywhere does. And traveling is a mix of nature and beauty and the history of man which isn't always so pretty.
Can you provide more comments on the cradle of humankind. Worth visiting?
Jun 18, 2012, 9:32 am
#36
Join Date: May 2012
Posts: 39
Jun 18, 2012, 11:14 am
#38
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Posts: 14,352
Anybody flying into HDS and driving to a lodge from there need not really worry about safety. The airport is beyond the first control gate, so in a restricted area where there is not much crime by SA standards, and traffic is light.
Johan
Sep 13, 2012, 9:52 pm
#39
Join Date: Aug 2010
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Have you read How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein? US states, not African, by interesting nevertheless. I keep a copy in the bathroom, as the chapters are suitably short.
Oh boy, where shall I start?
- With Alan Paton, of course. Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic, and for good reason.
- Classics by other SA authors : The Conservationist (Nadine Gordimer); The Story of an African Farm (Olive Schreiner); Circles in a Forest, The Day the Swallows Spoke, Toorbos and Fiela's Child (Dalene Mathee. Afrikaans readers will no doubt prefer them in that language).
- Then you have Doris Lessing and Breyten Breytenbach. The best apartheid (prison) literature includes his The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist and A Season in Paradise. Other excellent books in this field are Bandiet: Seven Years in a South African Prison by Hugh Levin (a shocking and gripping story); Inside by Jeremy Cronin (if you are into poetry) and Longlive! by Menán du Plessis (fiction). Less well known, but remarkable and well worth reading is Brief Authority by Charles Hooper.
-J.M. Coetzee can be a bit too much on the intellectual side for my taste, but Boyhood is a short and very accessible autobiographical account of childhood in Apartheid SA.
-In the (military) history field the choice is endless. On the Zulus I recommend The Anatomy of the Zulu Army (Ian Knight); The Washing of the Spears (Morris) and Ropes of Sand (Laband). On the Boer War: The Boer War (Thomas Pakenham) and the best autobiography by far to come out of that conflict, Commando by Deneys Reitz. On the Border War: Eden's Exiles: One Soldier's Fight for Paradise, and The Buffalo Soldiers, both by Jan Breytenbach (amazingly, colonel Breytenbach is the brother of Breyten Breytenbach, the staunch Apartheid opponent); 19 with a Bullet - A South African Paratrooper in Angola (Granger Korff). General SA history: The Afrikaners by Hermann Gioliomee (if you want to understand South Africa, this is the one book you must read. Take it from me.); Rhodes, the Race for Africa by Anthony Thomas; The Scramble for Africa (Pakenham again)
-If you cast your net a bit wider in time, distance and scope, there is the biography Storyteller -The Many Lives of Laurens van der Post, by J.D.F Jones, not to mention all the books Van der Post himself wrote. He was a bit of a fraud, though. There are lots of books about travel in the (pre)colonial days, e.g. A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa (Selous) and Travels in Southern Africa (Delegorgue), as well as more recent ones by well-known authors such as Waugh (Remote People) and Greene (Journey Without Maps) and almost unknown ones, e.g. Henno Martin (The Sheltering Desert), a book I warmly recommend.
Should you be going to the Kruger NP, then African Eden - the Kruger National Park 1902-1946 (Stevenson-Hamilton) and The Kruger National Park: a Social and Political History (Jane Carruthers) are the titles I would suggest.
There, these books should keep you busy for a while! When you are done, I can think of quite a few more.
Johan
Oh boy, where shall I start?
- With Alan Paton, of course. Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic, and for good reason.
- Classics by other SA authors : The Conservationist (Nadine Gordimer); The Story of an African Farm (Olive Schreiner); Circles in a Forest, The Day the Swallows Spoke, Toorbos and Fiela's Child (Dalene Mathee. Afrikaans readers will no doubt prefer them in that language).
- Then you have Doris Lessing and Breyten Breytenbach. The best apartheid (prison) literature includes his The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist and A Season in Paradise. Other excellent books in this field are Bandiet: Seven Years in a South African Prison by Hugh Levin (a shocking and gripping story); Inside by Jeremy Cronin (if you are into poetry) and Longlive! by Menán du Plessis (fiction). Less well known, but remarkable and well worth reading is Brief Authority by Charles Hooper.
-J.M. Coetzee can be a bit too much on the intellectual side for my taste, but Boyhood is a short and very accessible autobiographical account of childhood in Apartheid SA.
-In the (military) history field the choice is endless. On the Zulus I recommend The Anatomy of the Zulu Army (Ian Knight); The Washing of the Spears (Morris) and Ropes of Sand (Laband). On the Boer War: The Boer War (Thomas Pakenham) and the best autobiography by far to come out of that conflict, Commando by Deneys Reitz. On the Border War: Eden's Exiles: One Soldier's Fight for Paradise, and The Buffalo Soldiers, both by Jan Breytenbach (amazingly, colonel Breytenbach is the brother of Breyten Breytenbach, the staunch Apartheid opponent); 19 with a Bullet - A South African Paratrooper in Angola (Granger Korff). General SA history: The Afrikaners by Hermann Gioliomee (if you want to understand South Africa, this is the one book you must read. Take it from me.); Rhodes, the Race for Africa by Anthony Thomas; The Scramble for Africa (Pakenham again)
-If you cast your net a bit wider in time, distance and scope, there is the biography Storyteller -The Many Lives of Laurens van der Post, by J.D.F Jones, not to mention all the books Van der Post himself wrote. He was a bit of a fraud, though. There are lots of books about travel in the (pre)colonial days, e.g. A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa (Selous) and Travels in Southern Africa (Delegorgue), as well as more recent ones by well-known authors such as Waugh (Remote People) and Greene (Journey Without Maps) and almost unknown ones, e.g. Henno Martin (The Sheltering Desert), a book I warmly recommend.
Should you be going to the Kruger NP, then African Eden - the Kruger National Park 1902-1946 (Stevenson-Hamilton) and The Kruger National Park: a Social and Political History (Jane Carruthers) are the titles I would suggest.
There, these books should keep you busy for a while! When you are done, I can think of quite a few more.
Johan
Everyone prepares differently for their experiences, but this helps set the stage for me even as there has been so much change in the near past.
Sep 14, 2012, 2:54 am
#40
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Posts: 14,352
Entirely my pleasure.
I've just read A Just Defiance by Peter Harris and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfullness by Alexandra Fuller. Both non-fiction, but very different books. The latter is mostly about Kenya and Rhodesia, not South Africa, but it is very funny.
Johan
I've just read A Just Defiance by Peter Harris and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfullness by Alexandra Fuller. Both non-fiction, but very different books. The latter is mostly about Kenya and Rhodesia, not South Africa, but it is very funny.
Johan
Sep 14, 2012, 7:00 am
#41
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Entirely my pleasure.
I've just read A Just Defiance by Peter Harris and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfullness by Alexandra Fuller. Both non-fiction, but very different books. The latter is mostly about Kenya and Rhodesia, not South Africa, but it is very funny.
Johan
I've just read A Just Defiance by Peter Harris and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfullness by Alexandra Fuller. Both non-fiction, but very different books. The latter is mostly about Kenya and Rhodesia, not South Africa, but it is very funny.
Johan
I'm still trying to finish another great book, My Traitor's Heart, which provides even further insight into race issues in South Africa and is a good follow up if you like Playing the Enemy.
Sep 14, 2012, 9:19 am
#42
Join Date: Aug 2012
Location: Dublin
Posts: 188
My Traitor's Heart is very good; raw and honest. If you like that book, you may enjoy Malan's new book, 'Resident Alien', which is a collection of some of his more recent writings.
Another fiction suggestion is Zakes Mda's 'Heart of Redness'. JM Coetzee's 'Disgrace' is very good, but maybe read it after you've got back; it's pretty grim.
Not South Africa-specific, but two other books I've really enjoyed: Ryszard Kapuscinski's 'The Shadow of the Sun', and John Reader's 'Africa: A Biography of the Continent'
Another fiction suggestion is Zakes Mda's 'Heart of Redness'. JM Coetzee's 'Disgrace' is very good, but maybe read it after you've got back; it's pretty grim.
Not South Africa-specific, but two other books I've really enjoyed: Ryszard Kapuscinski's 'The Shadow of the Sun', and John Reader's 'Africa: A Biography of the Continent'
Sep 14, 2012, 8:28 pm
#43
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Just when I thought the unread pile was getting a llittle smaller, thanks to all those who added their suggestions for great reads... always open to suggestions and great reads to expand the mind. I am more of a non fiction reader so those are really appreciated. I actually enjoyed Invictus but Ive yet to see a movie that was better than the book so "playing with the enemy" is definitely high on the list. Cant wait until late November and I get my feet on the ground!
Sep 23, 2012, 8:53 pm
#44
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Entirely my pleasure.
I've just read A Just Defiance by Peter Harris and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfullness by Alexandra Fuller. Both non-fiction, but very different books. The latter is mostly about Kenya and Rhodesia, not South Africa, but it is very funny.
Johan
I've just read A Just Defiance by Peter Harris and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfullness by Alexandra Fuller. Both non-fiction, but very different books. The latter is mostly about Kenya and Rhodesia, not South Africa, but it is very funny.
Johan
I know I am a broken record, but great suggestions and thank you. After the large history tomes I finished, it was a pleasure to read two alexandra fuller books, the one you suggested about her mother, and the other about her growing up,. Lots of overlap in subject matter, but funny and poignant.
A Traitor's Heart was real moving. Could not put it down and read it in two days and went on the internet to see if there was any more information on the alcocks or more writing by malan.. I see resident alien, and there were a couple of interviews from the last couple of years. Interesting that all of these books were actually at my local public library but A Just Defiance was not.. so I am considering purchasing it.
Reading Playing with the enemy now. So far what has been most interesting is all the pre-work that was done with Mandela to acclimate him to life outside of prison. It seems that even though these things were secret, there were a lot of people involved, as he went to houses of his prison guards etc... seems like there would be lots of people/places for information to leak out. How much of a surprise was it in SA when he was released?
As Ive read, one comment has been that all of these classics dont really reveal the current state of affairs after apartheid ended.
What would be good source for understanding current events and what the key issues and concerns are today in SA? Thanks
Sep 23, 2012, 9:33 pm
#45
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Reading Playing with the enemy now. So far what has been most interesting is all the pre-work that was done with Mandela to acclimate him to life outside of prison. It seems that even though these things were secret, there were a lot of people involved, as he went to houses of his prison guards etc... seems like there would be lots of people/places for information to leak out. How much of a surprise was it in SA when he was released?
And relevant to this thread, I get the impression that we all might not be going on safari in South Africa if Mandela hadn't been around to keep the transition peaceful.