Bridge Over Blood River - The Rise and Fall Of The Afrikaners - Kajsa Norman

Bridge Over Blood River - The Rise and Fall of The Afrikaners - Kajsa Norman.

Oxford University Press, 2016 - History - 274 page

ISBN: 9781849046817

Condition: Near Fine. The original boards without a DJ as issued are a little shelf rubbed and edge worn but overall, near fine. This book was read and enjoyed but is still overall in a mint condition. The book binding is excellent. The book is protected with a Cellophane cover.

A subtle investigation of how fears of cultural dilution and violence have shaped Afrikaner identity historically and in the present day. Twenty years after the fall of apartheid the white Afrikaner minority fears cultural extinction. How far are they prepared to go to survive as a people? Bridge Over Blood River’s haunting and subversive evocation of South Africa’s racial politics provides some unsettling answers. Along the Orange River in South Africa, there lies the breakaway republic of Orania, where a thousand Afrikaners are working to construct a white-African utopia. Citing their desire to preserve their language and traditions, they have sequestered themselves in an isolated part of the arid Karoo region. Here, they can still dictate the rules and create a homeland with its own flag, currency and ideology.

Kajsa Norman traces the war for control of South Africa, its people, and its history, from the Battle of Blood River in 1838, through the brutality of apartheid, to Orania today. Weaving between the past and the present, Bridge Over Blood River highlights how years of fear, nationalism, and social engineering have left the modern Afrikaner struggling for identity and relevance.