Abstract
This chapter begins with a discussion of works which depict the unrest prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s, specifically with regard to the student protests of the period. The events of 1976, in particular, were crucial in the intellectual and ideological development of young people, especially black adolescents. During the period from 1976 to 1990 writers sought to depict these events through narrative, interpreting and describing events through their predominantly white characters. Works by black writers written in the 2000s present a more direct experience of events through their black characters’ experiences. The representation of memory is a major feature of all these books, which depict how the violence of the 1970s and 1980s is reconstructed and remembered in young adult narratives. More recent novels depict this violence and the events of those decades as part of a collective and institutional memory, thus demonstrating how history is shaped according to current ideological assumptions.
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Notes
- 1.
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- 3.
‘Play-White’ is a term that was used to refer to coloured people who could be accepted as White based on their appearance. During apartheid siblings were occasionally classified differently, which meant that, under the Group Areas Act of 1950, they could not live in the same community (Gilliomee and Mbenga 2007, p. 318).
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The term ‘San’ is controversial and there is no unanimously accepted term for referring to descendants of the first inhabitants of Southern Africa. I use ‘San’ as the most neutral term (Hitchcock et al., n.d.).
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The book does include a glossary of English words, together with notes and activities to be used by teachers in the classroom.
- 6.
‘Hippo’ is a colloquial term for an armoured police vehicle.
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Inggs, J. (2016). Turmoil and Unrest. In: Transition and Transgression. SpringerBriefs in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25534-7_2
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