Book Discussion - Jacob Dlamini's Askari
Wednesday, 29 October, 2014 - 18:00
WiSER invites you to a discussion of
Jacob Dlamini's book
Askari : A story of collaboration and betrayal in the anti-apartheid struggle
Published by Jacana
Wednesday, 29th October 2014 at 6pm
WiSER Seminar Room, 6th Floor, Richard Ward Building, East Campus, Wits University
Ebrahim Ebrahim is Parliamentary Councillor to the President and former Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation
Khosi Xaba is a Writing and Documentation Fellow at GALA (Gay and Lesbian Archives), and the author of numerous works of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.
This book tells the story of Glory Sedibe, an ANC member-turned-security policeman. It seeks to understand why Sedibe made the choices he did – collaborating with his captors, turning against the ANC, and then hunting down his comrades. It looks beyond the black-and-white that still dominates South Africa's political canvas to examine the grey zones in which South Africans – combatants and non-combatants – lived. As the book demonstrates, Sedibe's acts of betrayal form but one layer in a sedimentation of betrayals in which Sedibe himself was betrayed by the Swazi police and may also have been sold out by his own comrades in the ANC.
Jacob Dlamini is at present a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and a Research Associate at the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP), University of the Witwatersrand.
His book Native Nostalgia (Jacana, 2009), about growing up in the township of Katlehong on the Witwatersrand, has won great acclaim.
RSVP: Najibha.Deshmukh@wits.ac.za
WISER would like to acknowledge and thank PARI for funding Jacob's visit to Johannesburg