BOOK extract
Why building a nation will take more than believing in rainbows
Breaking a Rainbow, Building a Nation Rekgotsofetse ChikanePan Macmillan My generation has often been described as dormant and seemingly indifferent to the systemic economic oppression rampaging through the country. Yet, even though we were primed to be the generation that enjoyed the fruits of democracy without the scars of its past, here we are, angry that the fruit tastes bittersweet. I am part of a generation that never faced the abuses of the apartheid system in its rawest legalised and normalised forms. I think about one story my father told me when I was growing up about how his father was once pulled over and beaten by a group of white men for having the audacity to overtake them. Or how my family was arbitrarily dispossessed of their land in Bushbuckridge not once but twice, arbitrary acts that forced my grandfather eventually to move to Johannesburg to find work. He would ultimately leave his wife and children behind to join the apartheid government’s infamous migrant labo...
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