UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Afrikaner Revolutionary

Book Jacket: "Bram Fisher" by S. Clingman

Stephen Clingman

Winner of South Africa’s premier prize for nonfiction, the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award

The extraordinary story of a pioneering anti-apartheid leader

In May 1966, Bram Fischer was sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa for his political activities against the policies of apartheid. Before his sentencing he had spent nine months underground, in disguise, evading a nationwide manhunt. He was South Africa's most wanted man, his cause recognized and celebrated around the world.

What had brought him to these circumstances? And what led to his untimely death after nine years in prison? This meticulous and finely crafted biography follows a fascinating journey of conscience and personal transformation.

Fischer was born into one of the most prominent Afrikaner nationalist families, yet came to understand that to be a South African in the fullest sense he had to identify with all of South Africa's people. A Rhodes Scholar and distinguished lawyer, endowed with gifts of intelligence, charisma, and integrity, he abandoned the temptations of power and prestige to ensure human rights and justice for all. Drawn to communism in order to solve problems of race, he offered revised versions and visions of both.

Covering more than one hundred years of South African history, the book ranges from the stories of Fischer and his wife, Molly, to the courtroom drama of South Africa's great political trials, to the political intrigue of the 1960s and beyond. It is a remarkable story, remarkably told. Weaving the personal and the public, Stephen Clingman's biography is an account of tragedy and transcendence, showing how the miracle of South Africa's transition to democracy was deeply connected to the legacy of Bram Fischer.

"This is not only the story of an extraordinary personality but also an extraordinary family, and the time and place of one of the twentieth century's most devastating experiments in the denial of common humanity. How Bram Fischer resolved—in sacrifice of material success, easy honors, personal freedom, and finally his life—the contradictions of his situation as a white and Afrikaner is told with honesty, deep intelligence, and admirable skill worthy of the subject. The apartheid government would not give Fischer's ashes to his children. He has no monument in stone; but this book is testimony that his life continues in his great contributions to the free South Africa now realized."

Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

"A fascinating and original story of the life and times of a great South African. . . . It is an outstanding contribution to our understanding of modern South African history."

Thomas G. Karis, coeditor of From Protest to Challenge:
A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882–1990

Born in South Africa, Stephen Clingman is professor and chair of the English department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Biography / South African History / Black Studies
512 pp., 26 illustrations
LC 97-39287
$24.95s paper, ISBN 1-55849-260-7
1998

For sale in the United States and Canada only

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