BOYNTON, GRAHAM - LAST DAYS IN CLOUD CUCKOOLAND - (PERFECT IN SOUTH AFRICA

Book in great condition   ****   Last Days in Cloud Cuckooland is Boynton's account of the final gasps of white culture on the continent, from the flight of the Belgian refugees from the Congo in 1960 through the first years of Nelson Mandela's presidency in South Africa. In a series of graphic accounts of the human dramas marking this disorderly retreat, he illuminates the complexity and ambiguity of the role of the whites in Africa. They "were never a unified gang of coldhearted supremacists," he writes, "any more than the blacks in Africa have been a saintly group of idealists and altruists." It is an evocative story, and as it unfolds the author is drawn toward a controversial conclusion. If the white colonials did a rather poor job of making Africa work, he argues, then their African successors have done considerably worse. "It was in Africa that my identity was forged," Boynton writes. "Somewhere amid the rapid dismemberment of colonial rule, the wars, and the triumph of black nationalism, I became a white African, and will remain so for the rest of my life, wherever I live." But he will probably not live in Africa, which has been changed forever. *N.B.*  If you buy more than one book from me on the same day you only pay R 6 extra postage for each of the additional books - See what else I have to offer, it might just be worth your while.