War of Words: Memoir of a South African Journalist, by Benjamin Pogrund

War of Words tells the story of lives turned upside down, a nation torn apart, and unforeseen heroism during the madness of the apartheid era in South Africa, one of the most harrowing and significant periods in modern history.

When Benjamin Pogrund, one of South Africa's most distinguished journalists, began his career as a young reporter in the 1950s, the Rand Daily Mail was beginning to emerge as the country's leading newspaper. As the "African affairs reporter," and eventually deputy editor, it was Pogrund who brought the words of black leaders like Robert Sobukwe and Nelson Mandela to the pages of the Rand Daily Mail. For the next thirty years, a liberation struggle confronted the apartheid regime, which responded with increasing viciousness, and the Rand Daily Mail found itself in a war of words with the Afrikaner Nationalist government.

War of Words is the amazing story of those years, when beat reporters simply doing their job experienced the vengeance of the militarized apparatus of minority state rule. (Pogrund himself stood trial for a series of articles he wrote on prison abuse.) A riveting memoir, War of Words also provides a complex commentary on the nature of—and need for-journalism in a world where press freedoms cannot be taken for granted, even as it is a hopeful reminder that those who struggle for justice are seldom without allies.

Condition: very good (cover is lightly worn)