Short stories from the struggle are now available to you
JOBURG – A collaboration turns out an anthology of South African literature focused on the tumultuous history of the country's past.
A number of companies and authors have come together to tell their stories.
Equal Education is an organisation which was launched in Cape Town in 2008, and advocates for quality and equality in the South African education system and engages in evidence-based activism to improve schools in the country.
Together with authors including Don Mattera, Mongane Serote, Zubeida Jaffer, RRR Dhlomo, Liz Abrahams as well as Zakes Mda and independent publisher, Bridge Books, a work of literary genius was launched at 85 Commissioner Street in Johannesburg, called Amagama Enkululeko: Words for freedom: Writing life under apartheid.
The book, a collection of stories from South Africa, is framed as a lens through which readers can engage in South African history from the ground up, specifically, the life experiences of black South Africans during apartheid and the struggle against it.
Speaking at the launch of the book at Bridge Books, Mda read his foreword for hoards of excited intellectuals. “Why do you keep harping on about the past? The past is gone, done and buried. Why can’t you just forget it and move on? You said you forgave the past, so why can’t you forget it as well?
“These are questions we often hear whenever a project that explores the past, such as this one, is initiated. Some of us tend to think that forgiving and forgetting are either the same thing or should, of necessity, go together.”
This book flows out of Equal Educations’ youth groups and camps, where high school members, or equalisers, meet for political education and mobilise campaigns.
Reading is a key part of these spaces and has helped to link the equalisers’ own activism to the activism of past generations.
Following the launch, Mda addressed a crowd of pupils, explaining to them the motivation behind publishing the book with such deep-seated and mostly hurtful ties to the history of the country.
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