The apartheid state employed many weapons against its opponents, imprisonment, banning, detention, assassination and banishment. In a practice reminiscent of Tsarist and Soviet were banished to remote and often areas, far from their homes, communities and followers. Here their existence became a slow torture of the soul', a kind of social death.
This is the first study of an important but hitherto neglected group of opponents of apartheid, set in a global, historical and comparative perspective. It looks at the reasons why people were banished, their lives in banishment and the efforts of a remarkable group of activists, led by Helen Joseph, to assist them. Indeed, this book originated in a promise made by the author to Helen Joseph, who had undertaken an epic journey in 1962 to visit all those banished across the length and breadth of South Africa. The work is illustrated with stunning photographs by Ernest Cole, Peter Magubane and others.
Saleem Badat is Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University. He is the author of Black Student Politics, Higher Education and Apartheid and Black Man, You Are on Your Own, co-author of National Policy and a Regional Response in South African Higher Education, and co-editor of Apartheid Education and Popular Struggle in South Africa.
"For the long years of meticulous research and finally the superb telling of the story of banishment under apartheid, we owe a great debt to the author" George Bizos, from his Foreword