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A review by tjwallace04
The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa's Racial Reckoning by Eve Fairbanks
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
"The Inheritors" is a fascinating look at the history and culture of South Africa, from the 1970s through the present, with a particular focus on the post-apartheid period. The narrative is founded on the stories told by three South Africans about their lives, so it has the feeling of an oral history, buttressed with brief interludes of historical information and rounded out with the observations of the author. Dipuo is an anti-apartheid activist who grew up in a township and was known as "Stalin" for her toughness. Her daughter Malaika inherits the fruits of her mother's labor, growing up in the post-apartheid era and going to formerly white schools, but struggling to find her way in the messy, fraught, still-racist post-apartheid spaces. Christo is an Afrikaner who grew up wanting to be a soldier and was one of the last youth drafted before apartheid ended, but his military experience was not what he expected and he doesn't know who he is when it is over.
The main thing I can say about this book is that my mind boggled about how complicated the cultural situation in South Africa is. And how hopeless it all felt. Just layers upon layers of rage, guilt, fear, envy, self-recrimination, and doubt. Fairbanks posits that the Afrikaner minority feels a lot of guilt and shame for the fact that they were not more severely "punished" for apartheid. Some black South Africans feel guilt and shame for the many issues that the country has experienced under ANC rule. And so it goes on, a vortex of negative feelings and an apparent inability to bridge gaps in understanding. I finished the book feeling depressed, both for South Africa and for racial reconciliation in the United States too. Racism is so insidious, and its evils are so far-reaching. It hurts everyone, and it feels irreparable.
Also, I felt vaguely uncomfortable throughout the book knowing that Fairbanks is a white American woman. On the one hand, her outside perspective was probably necessary, and she did live in South Africa for many years, so she had built knowledge and relationships. On the other hand, she draws a lot of conclusions and attributes a lot of feelings to her interview subjects that I felt uncertain about. She does not have a light hand in the narrative and expresses a lot of thoughts and opinions. It would be interesting to see if I could find a similar book written by a South African and compare.
The main thing I can say about this book is that my mind boggled about how complicated the cultural situation in South Africa is. And how hopeless it all felt. Just layers upon layers of rage, guilt, fear, envy, self-recrimination, and doubt. Fairbanks posits that the Afrikaner minority feels a lot of guilt and shame for the fact that they were not more severely "punished" for apartheid. Some black South Africans feel guilt and shame for the many issues that the country has experienced under ANC rule. And so it goes on, a vortex of negative feelings and an apparent inability to bridge gaps in understanding. I finished the book feeling depressed, both for South Africa and for racial reconciliation in the United States too. Racism is so insidious, and its evils are so far-reaching. It hurts everyone, and it feels irreparable.
Also, I felt vaguely uncomfortable throughout the book knowing that Fairbanks is a white American woman. On the one hand, her outside perspective was probably necessary, and she did live in South Africa for many years, so she had built knowledge and relationships. On the other hand, she draws a lot of conclusions and attributes a lot of feelings to her interview subjects that I felt uncertain about. She does not have a light hand in the narrative and expresses a lot of thoughts and opinions. It would be interesting to see if I could find a similar book written by a South African and compare.