soweto : spiritual capital of south africa
After getting a letter from Priest Msimangu, Stephen Kumalo starts his journey from his village town to Johannesburg in search for his missing son Absalom and during this mission, he discovers his sister Gertrude who has become prostitute, brother John – a carpenter and learn about his son Absalom murdering white fighter of racial justice Arther Jarvis who happens to be son of his neighbour. Novelist Alan Paton created these characters from social milieu of pre Apartheid regime in his novel ‘Cry the Beloved Country’. This book was prescribed as a syllabus for English subject for my intermediate science. It was beyond my reach to read this book in English – so I managed to buy Marathi translation of this book and answered my examination paper in English. Little did I know then that after so many years, like Kumalo, I would also visit the very same place and rediscover the essence of South Africa and its struggle to come out of clutches of Afrikaans speaking white rulers. In the process,...