num_pages: 344
description: When apartheid ended in 1994 a radiant optimism suggested a bright future for the new unified South Africa. But today even in the midst of a vibrant economy the cumulative effect of the countrys corrosive pastthree hundred years of colonialism the Anglo-Boer War the displacement dispossession and disenfranchisement of millions of people and the ravages of racism and capitalist exploitationcontinues to eat away at what Desmond Tutu admiringly called the Rainbow Nation.Using the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as starting point acclaimed writer Antjie Krogs essays explore texts from every corner of South Africa in an attempt to remap the borders of her countrys communities. In these pages texts from black women Afrikaner men and comic strips are discussed alongside ideas from African philosophers an archbishop and a Nobel Prize winner. Through this extraordinary marriage of academic observation and poetic intervention Krog endeavors to move South Africa beyond the present moment and toward a vocabulary of grace and care.
language: English
title: Conditional Tense: Memory and Vocabulary after the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
publisher: Seagull Books