How the townships of the Eastern Cape defied the apartheid war machine
By Rory Riordan
The apartheid security juggernaut met its Battle of Stalingrad in the townships of Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage in 1985 and 1986. This is the blazing story of how the people’s resistance – in the church, in the civic structures, underground – fought that war.
Up until these insurrections, the brutal force of the apartheid state successfully crushed all attempts at revolt. Yet in the townships of Port Elizabeth, where they threw everything they had at the uprisings, the people stood and fought, and fought and stood.
Once unimaginable change
Riordan, a human rights activist during the years of high apartheid, draws a line connecting the story of Thozamile Botha, the Zwide and KwaZakhele Residents’ Associations and the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Association (PEBCO) of 1979, the subsequent demise of PEBCO, and the February 1990 unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and the movement at large.
What had happened in the intervening ten years to effect this once unimaginable change. Apartheid’s Stalingrad tells us what had happened.
“Powerfully argued, and a compelling read, this work is a major contribution to our understanding of the end of white minority rule in South Africa.”
– Peter Vale
About the author
Rory Riordan was born in Port Elizabeth and matriculated at St Patrick’s Marist Brothers College in Walmer, before reading philosophy at Rhodes University. He founded the Human Rights Trust in 1986, and its magazine Monitor. He worked extensively in the war-torn townships of Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage in the late 1980s.
Riordan joined the ANC in 1991 and became organising secretary of Port Elizabeth’s ‘One City’ process. He left Council in 2000 and returned at Mayor Danny Jordaan’s request in 2015. During the 2020 lockdown, Riordan studied the archives of the Human Rights Trust and Monitor, and from this Apartheid’s Stalingrad emerged.
A former columnist for the Eastern Province Herald, Riordan now lives with his wife, Melissa, in Schoenmakerskop, Gqeberha. Apartheid’s Stalingrad includes 18 new unpublished portraits by David Goldblatt.
- PUBLISHER | Jacana Media |
- ISBN | 9781431432806 |
- Recommended Retail Price | R420.00 |
- Classification | History, Political Analysis |
