Over Blood River: The Rise and Fall of the Afrikaners

Kajsa Norman’s Bridge Over Blood River: The Rise and Fall of the Afrikaners is a travel log focusing on South Africa’s Afrikaner strongholds, particularly Orania.  She is not interested in Afrikaners in cities, so much, as she is to those who have “adapted” to post-apartheid life by establishing all white communities far from established settlements.

She explores the ethos and myths of the Afrikaners, their complex relationship to multicultural South Africa, their abiding fears of physical violence and cultural assimilation to English speaking white South Africans.

The book delves into complex topics.  The Afrikaners were the masterminds of Apartheid, and now they find themselves a minority in a county they once ruled.  They are suffering a political and cultural crisis.  Norman’s account documents all sides of this – the good, the ugly and always the complex.