Long description
South Africans Telling Their Stories is a project of the South African Post Office (SAPO), in collaboration with the South African Democracy Trust (SADET). SAPO and SADET have joined hands ‘to share ideas on innovative ways to record and preserve the country’s history, especially the history of the liberation struggle’. The Road To Democracy: South Africans Telling Their Stories Volume 1, 1950-1975 is the first in a series of volumes of edited interviews carried out by SADET and its associated research teams. The result is a collection of mini-autographies that covers a range of themes, including life in apartheid South Africa; the various campaigns and political events of the 1950s and 1960s; the development of individual political counciousness; involvement in underground political and military activities including the ANC’s Wankie and Spolilo Campaigns; experiences of military training and life in exile; the sacrifices that individuals made in the struggle for our liberation; and many, many others.guidance for this series of publications is taken from the following words of President Thabo Mbeki: ‘A significant number of books have been written about the history of our struggle. Most of them have not been written by those who made this history. Outstanding among those written by patriots who helped to change our country for the better is the autobiography of Nelson Mandela, “Long Walk to Freedom”. But clearly there are not enough of these. The SADET series will help to address this deficiency. It will therefore be an important addition to the sources of knowledge that will help to form the consciousness of many generations to come.’ ‘...the Trust ... is determined that the makers of history should tell their own stories as well as the story of the struggles they waged. In this sense, it wants the makers of history to be the authors who record that history.’