Research Catalog

Title

The seed is mine : the life of Kas Maine, a South African sharecropper, 1894-1985 / Charles Van Onselen.

Author

Van Onselen, Charles.

Publication

New York : Hill and Wang, 1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xvi, 649 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

"This book tells the life story of an astonishing, heroic figure - a farmer, healer, and tribal patriarch who, according to South Africa's official records, scarcely existed. After years of interviews with Kas Maine and his neighbors, employers, friends, and family, after years of research in the archives of modern South Africa, Charles van Onselen has re-created the man's entire, amazing life as he struggled to make ends meet in a world dedicated to enriching whites and impoverishing blacks, as he and his family fought to have a safe home when South Africa was tearing them apart." "The Maines were self-reliant, resourceful people. Yet, as this magisterial narrative shows, their greatest successes were followed, tragically, by the final victories of apartheid's murderous politics, which drove them into disarray and destitution. Nonetheless, during the decades when Kas negotiated the terms on which they were permitted to live and farm on land owned by whites, there was virtually no kind of physical labor on the Transvaal that he and his family did not master. There were animals (sometimes the flocks were large; sometimes pitiably small); there was work on the diamond diggings, basket-making, dung-collecting, labor at the salt pans; and, remorselessly, spring after spring, autumn after autumn, there was the backbreaking work of planting and harvesting crops only part of which they were allowed to keep." "The inner sanctuaries of family life and the secret anguish of rural men and women in a brutally modernizing world are difficult to know, but van Onselen has been able to recount all the extraordinary dramas of the Maines' private tensions and personal fortunes. Kas Maine looked inward to mobilize tribal customs in accordance with African "tradition" and outward to negotiate the family's demands in a changing white economy - and both processes are described here with force and clarity." "The Seed Is Mine is a stunning reversal of conventional expectations, and it sets right a historic wrong. This almost illiterate farmer scarcely appeared in the records of his country, yet like all other disenfranchised blacks, he did much to shape the destiny of South Africa, and his life is eminently significant - as a human drama, as a historical document. Kas Maine was a heroic figure, and Charles van Onselen reveals the heroic truth."--BOOK JACKET.

Alternative Title

Life of Kas Maine, a South African sharecropper, 1894-1985

Subjects

• Sharecroppers > South Africa > Biography
• Blacks > South Africa > Biography
• Maine, Kas, 1894-1985

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 545-562) and index.

ISBN

080909603X

LCCN

95079980

OCLC

ocm34334003

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries