Afrikaners

The Afrikaners: Biography of A People, the first comprehensive history of the Afrikaner people based on-and critical of-the most recent scholarly work, draws on the author's own research and interviews conducted with leading political actors. Hermann Giliomee weaves together life stories and interpretation to create a highly readable narrative history of the Afrikaners. This revised and expanded edition also offers a fresh contextualisation of apartheid, its paradoxes and its complex effects, and of the increasingly fraught relationship between the ANC government and the powerless Afrikaner minority. Giliomee revises current orthodoxies on white supremacy in South Africa in important ways. The result is not only a magisterial history of the Afrikaner people, but also a fuller understanding of that history, which for good or ill resonates far beyond the borders of South Africa.

HERMANN GILIOMEE extraordinary Professor of History at the University of Stellenbosch, has written or edited thirteen books, including the Shaping of South African Society; From Apartheid to Nation-Building; The Elusive Search for Peace: South Africa, Israel and Northern Ireland; and The Awkward Embrace: One Party Domination and Democracy in Industrialising Countries. He has been a regular columnist in South African newspapers for the past twenty years, and is the leading authority on Afrikaner history.