BEHIND AND BEYOND THE EISELEN LINE

148pp., oblong 8vo., paperback, b/w & colour illus., map, St. George’s Cathedral Crypt Memory and Witness Centre, Cape Town, 2012

From the back of the book:

Behind and Beyond the Eiselen Line is an African tale of Cape Town, telling the “lost” story of 57 women and men from a piece of land on the edge of Crossroads in Nyanga, who came to St George’s Cathedral in March 1982 to fast and seek refuge from an apartheid government determined to deny Africans the right to belong and the right to citizenship in the Western Cape. Their story — and what happened before and after the fast — stands as a sober reminder and metaphor for the deep social and political fault lines and inequalities of the past that continue to haunt Cape Town, the Western Cape, and South Africa today. Above all, this account honours the African women and men who fought long and hard for a sense of belonging in Cape Town, and those who bore witness and stood alongside them in the struggle for justice and equality during apartheid.