Rekgotsofetse Chikane chatted to Polity SA about his new book Breaking a Rainbow, Building a Nation.

The book is a first-hand account of the university protests that gripped South Africa between 2015 and 2017, widely better known as the #FeesMustFall.

‘I actually wrote this book for five people, only,’ Chikane says. ‘That is my whole target market right now. The five people will know it when they read it, I won’t say their names.

‘It was to say, if we don’t write these stories ourselves, someone else will. Which is exactly what happened.

‘There was a professor at UCT who wrote about Fees Must Fall – he’s the same professor who compared Fees Must Fall to the Taliban, which was an interesting comparison, a little litmus test of where the country was at the time – and he got a collection of his friends and wrote the first Feel Must Fall book. It was a horrible depiction of the movement, completely misled, had no insight on what was happening inside the movement.

‘So this book is my attempt to say, I am challenging other people in the country who are student leaders, prominent student leaders, much better writers than I am, to go off and tell their stories or else someone else will do it on our behalf, which is not the greatest thing in the world.’

Watch the full interview:

Categories Non-fiction South Africa South African Current Affairs

Tags Breaking a Rainbow Building a Nation Pan Macmillan SA Polity SA Rekgotsofetse Chikane Videos