Apartheid’s Landscape and Ideas: A Scorched Soul

Apartheid’s Landscape and Ideas: A Scorched Soul is an historical and artistic exploration of the culture of racism that gave rise to apartheid. This work represents twelve years of extensive archival research conducted throughout South Africa. A mosaic of intriguing first-hand historical accounts of the country, its people, significant events, and moral and political predicaments, these accounts have been culled from diaries and correspondence from early missionaries, soldiers, politicians, laborers, and ordinary settlers. These historical documents display the prejudices, fears and character of the sojourners in South Africa. The text presents a unique view of the seeds of the racism that would later constitute the lifeblood of apartheid. In addition to the fascinating historical accounts, Alan Schwerin has compiled a set of his own black and white photographs of the South African landscape – a landscape that can be viewed as the current physical manifestation of the painful past racist perceptions that were inflicted on the indigenous people of South Africa. These striking photographs are artistic counterpoints to the sentiments articulated by the documents. Alan Schwerin completed his doctorate at Rice University and is currently chair of the department of Political Science and Philosophy at Monmouth University (New Jersey). Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, he taught philosophy in the impoverished homeland known as the Transkei, before immigrating to the United States with his family in 1985. In 1978 he won both first and second prizes in South Africa’s national photographic competition for university students.