THE AFRIKANERS. Biography of a People. By Hermann Giliomee

Tafelberg, 2003 (first edition, first printing). Firm softcover, 697 pages. Good condition: tightly bound, neat copy.

This work is a biography of the Afrikaner people by historian and journalist Hermann Giliomee, one of the earliest and staunchest Afrikaner opponents of apartheid. Weaving together life stories and historical interpretation, he creates a narrative history of the Afrikaners from their beginnings with the colonisation of the Cape of Good Hope by the Dutch East India Company to the dismantling of apartheid and beyond. While documenting - and revising - the history of the Afrikaners' pursuit of racial domination (as well as British contributions to that enterprise), Giliomee supplies Afrikaners' own, often divided, perspectives on their history, perspectives not always or entirely skewed by their struggle for privilege at Africans' expense. The result is not only a magisterial history of the Afrikaners but a fuller understanding of their history, which, for good or ill, resonates far beyond the borders of South Africa.