Thirteen Formative Years |
 APARTHEID – The origins of my interest in politics: Perhaps the biggest single influence on how I eventually became a political science professor was buying and reading this book. Jan Burger’s The Gulf Between was a best-seller in South Africa in 1960. I bought it and devoured it in December that year, and put it down thinking, “How ridiculous. Here’s a book about South African politics with the obvious title, The Gulf Between, and yet it’s only about the gulf between English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans. The real gulf in South African politics – between blacks and whites – is, to all intents and purposes, ignored.” That summer, my analytical and critical thinking about politics – and about South African politics in particular – took a great leap forward. |