Abstract
In 1960 British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan made his wind of change speech, and he was right. The wind of change did sweep across Africa during the next decade, but it stopped short at South Africa. A few weeks later the Sharpville massacre indicated the kind of resistance white South Africa was going to put up against any wind of change, however small. In 1976 black students and school children in Soweto staged an uprising which spread through all South Africa’s townships and was only put down by a show of military force. In 1985 and 1986 the government declared a state of emergency and plunged the country into a situation very close to civil war. Highly significant changes have taken place in the consciousness of the people involved in this fight, and it is in this area of self-definition and strategy-making that South African literature is both a chronicler of chance and an active protagonist.
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© 1991 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Petersen, K.H. (1991). South Africa. In: King, B. (eds) The Commonwealth Novel Since 1960. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-64112-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-64112-3_9
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-64114-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-64112-3
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