Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White

by Joseph Lelyveld

Drawing on his tours in South Africa as a correspondent for the "New York Times," the author details the absurdities, rationalizations, inequities, and cruelties of apartheid, showing what it means to suffer and survive under the restrictions of racial separation

Genres: History, Africa, Nonfiction, South Africa, Journalism, Politics, Race

390 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Joseph Lelyveld was executive editor of The New York Times from 1994 to 2001, and interim executive editor in 2003 after the resignation of Howell Raines. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, and a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.

Reviews

[Patrick Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inevitably now very dated as a study of South Africa, but a magnificent account of how it appeared to a liberal foreign journalist in the mid 1980s. Lelyveld doesn't shy away from the brutalities of apartheid, but where he really excels is in demonstrating its absurdities. He often achieves a bitter humor in detailing the tortured logic wherewith the government and individual white South Africans justified the racial status quo.

[Eren Buğlalılar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yayımlandığı yıl Pulitzer Ödülü'nü kazanmış bir gazetecilik çalışması. 1980'lerin ilk yarısında Güney Afrika'daki 'apartheid' rejimini anlatıyor.

Kitabın yer yer parlayan, notlar aldıran yerleri var elbette. Rejimin yöneticilerinin dünyaya nasıl baktıklarını yorum bile yapmadan, yalnızca onların sözlerini alıntılayarak gösteren yerler. ABD'li politikacıların çok değil, 10 yıl sonra kurulacak yeni rejimi haber veren, 'bu ülkeye bir çok-ırklı oligarşi lazım' dediklerini öğrenince sarsılıyorsunuz. Bizi işlerinden 100-150 kilometre uzakta yaşamaya zorlanan, bazen günde 6 saatini yollarda geçiren siyah işçilerin otobüsüne götürüyor kitap, 70 yıldır silahlı mücadele veren ama bir tür kitleselleşemeyen ANC'nin melankolisini anlattığı yerler etkileyici.

Bazı kitaplar iyi yaşlanır. Yazıldıktan on yıllar sonra da ilgiyle okunur. Bu kitap onlardan biri değil fakat. Bahsettiğim tüm kayda değer yerler, 400 sayfalık kitabın belki 80 sayfalık bölümüdür. Geriye kalan yerler 32 yıl içinde hızla yaşlanmış, Güney Afrika'yı yürekten bilmeyen okur için kitabı ilgi çekici olmaktan çıkaran ayrıntılarla dolmuş.

[Sunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

i liked this. another book about the south africa that i have read recently which was similar to rian malans my traitors heart but this time the journalist is american. the story right on the last 2 pages was very poignant i thought where an africaner takes his 2 young sons (15 and 13 ish i think) to see a group of blacks who were slaightered by other black - not to rub it in about how vicious blacks can be at the time but to make them realise the gravity of the situation. the book isa bit slow itn eht first third but really kicks in after that. especially at the point when it talks abotu the tortures taht were taking place - some in quite a bit of detail. teh book was deeply philosophical at times and offers soem really interesting insights into the black and at times white psyche ""afrikaners were not racist, tey were just revolted by the way some blacks spit and sneez in public. when black manners improved so would the willingness of whites to seek political acmodation". incredible.

[Jeff Mayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of apartheid in South Africa, as told by a white, American, New York Times journalist. This is harrowing stuff, worse than we imagined it way back when this was written, in 1985. I think it was timely then, but is still very much a must read for right now. I thought, at first, that maybe Lelyveld wasn't the right writer to do a book on South Africa. This Non-Fiction Pulitzer Prize winning story had to get out so the world knew what was happening. If a white American had to tell the world through the New York Times, so be it. I am going to do some research and read a Black South African authors version of the events. They were in situations and places Lelyveld could witness, but never live it.

[Rahadyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this about 21 years ago while studying for the Foreign Service Officers' exam. I found it useful for my purposes. Th is was also a time when there was a lot of focus on South Africa: the Sun City album by Artists United Against Apartheid; films like The Gods Must Be Crazy and Cry, The Beloved Country.

[Rhuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joseph Lelyveld’s masterful reportage was a fascinating capture of the apartheid regime in its time and place. Lelyveld, as a veteran New York Times journalist, had reported on American civil rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi and then in 1960s South Africa, from where he’d been “outkicked” until his return fourteen years later. In this book he analyzes in great and often unmatched depth the society, culture, politics and history of “pre-modern South Africa.” But it stands today not just as a 1980s flashback, to an era allegedly buried by Nelson Mandela’s release and the kum-ba-ya of Truth and Reconciliation; echoing an ominous portent of what may await Western liberal democracy after its alleged global triumph.

Lelyveld devotes a chapter to the influencing links between Americans and the development of South Africa, little dreaming of a reverse “engagement” backwashing the New World Order; where South Africa’s past might become our future. America’s emblematic oligarchs, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, and influenced US cohorts like Alex Karp, have brought their South African-born outlook to bear on the kind of “Western Civilization” they wish to create. For apartheid South Africa was more than revamped feudalism on a racial basis, though it was that: at bottom it was a system of power that marginalized the majority for the benefit of a self-entitled few. An elite “race” must own the land and its resources; marginalizing the disfranchised, dispossessed, and “unworthy” mass to well-policed security enclaves where they can do no harm in deed, word, or thought under threat of trauma. A reading of the public statements and “manifestos” of such American counterparts leave little doubt of the final solution of this bio-social engineering.

By way of comparison, note Lelyveld’s quoting of 1980’s South African statistics (p. 43) of income differentials of 15-to-1 between insiders and outsiders; that the top fifteen percent had reserved two-thirds of the land area for itself, plus all of the resources in all areas; that natives can be turned into illegals by mandating population caps in privileged zones; that these gaps were “widening all the time” in the name of “culture” and “civilization.”

To underscore what those cliches meant in practice, he quotes a period lifestyle magazine (p. 44): “Today’s executive supermen are more than just boy scouts with good teeth. They’re an alternate breed, a new genetic force, a threat to the norms of menopause.” And: “You’re the fast-moving product of a fast-moving, permissive era. You live in an achievement-oriented society where anything that stays static soon begins to seem stagnant. No wonder your steady old marriage seems a little out of synch.” No better description of our own “Epstein class” and tech-bro elite, whose surplus is derived from denying stability and security for those outside the security gates.

So, will the Beloved Country of 1984 actually become our dystopian future? One would like to think that American middle-class democracy will survive its current violation, as it has before. The technology of today, however, can realize what pass laws and “townships” only attempted. While we’re entertained/outraged by the antics of an unstable Clown-in-Chief, it’s better to peek behind the curtain and see the real wizards at work, crafting a fantasy world where the Wicked Witch is the real ruler of Oz. Lelyveld’s book might become a curio of a past age more than we knew, where objective reality could be freely recorded and read by all. Only The Shadow knows.

[Shalini · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was recommended by John Carlin as one of five books to understand apartheid South Africa. I read it after a recent visit, this book written in 1986 gave me deep insights into the incongruities I observed in racial relationships in the country. It is a masterpiece of journalism, a product of three years of lived experience and a reminder of what good journalism can do. Lelyveld breaks it down into twelve chapters, each exploring a concept or practice that oiled the apartheid machine. He reveals the ordeals suffered by Blacks under a meticulously planned state operated system, and the mindless justification those in power offered their own conscience. He also offers self reflections of the liberal who has only his observations to offer and no power to influence change. This book remains relevant today to understand the segregated communities in South Africa and the explanation one receives depending on the narrator. It is an appeal to understand our shared humanity across the racial and political divide.

[Terragyrl3 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pulitzer Winner for General Nonfiction, 1986. This is a good book but dated as you can imagine. The main reason I subtracted stars was that the characters were not compelling. I read ABOUT many people but I didn’t get to know them. What the book does right: the author does a great job of outlining the legal and physical logistics of subverting the black population. He outlines how black South Africans constantly lived on a razor’s edge where a simple thing like missing a bus could lead to the break up of a family. The book naturally raises questions about how US society accomplishes the same ends of de facto segregation and the diversion of human potential.

[Timmy Cham · Rating 5 out of 5]

A devastating, and devastatingly detailed, account
of how South African apartheid policy worked in
1985. Joseph Lelyveld canvasses the forces great
and small that originated and perpetuated this
policy. On one hand, Lelyveld recounts the
history, ideology and politics which incubated
the apartheid policy. At the same time, Lelyveld
gives detailed portraits of individual lives--and
how apartheid impacted their daily lives. An
impressive volume.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Knew very little about Apartheid South Africa going in. After finishing this book, I felt incredibly informed and was making connections from Apartheid South Africa to modern apartheid states today. Though written before the fall of the White South African government, and is thus dated, the book didn't feel dated and still a valuable read and intro into the politics of South Africa.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

An encompassing autopsy that needed an editor to cut down on long meandering paragraphs and chapters.

[Daniel Berry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank goodness we don't support fascist supremacist ethnostates anymore

[Remy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read a lot of books, mostly fiction, concerning apartheid and thought that I could not be amazed anymore. Boy, was I wrong. Among other things it shows the concept of apartheid through the eyes of Afrikaners, and it is still shocking. Some of them truly believed they were doing the black man a favor!
It is a tough read though, lots and lots of dates and events.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent first hand account from a white journalist of the apartheid era. Written during the later stages of apartheid, but before the end. Touches many of the characters that are now in power in SA.

[George King · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the ten best books I've read this year. It won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Non Fiction. The book gives a detailed account of how apartheid in South Africa has affected the whole country. I'm sorry it's taken me thnis long to read it.

[MaryJane Rx · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was in college in the 80s, I took a political science class on apartheid. This was our textbook. I've never forgotten it. Excellent!

[Dr. Robin Markowitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent look at life under Apartheid.

[Miranda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably would like this better as an older reader?

[Frances]

according to Rian Malan, one of most penetrating accounts of apartheid