Publisher's Synopsis
The New African was first published in 1962 and survived in Cape Town and in London for 53 issues. The radical monthly introduced to South Africa new writers such as Bessie Head, Lewis Nkosi, Ngugi, Can Themba, Dennis Brutus, Andre Brink, and Masizi Kunene alongside established writers including Nadine Gordimer, Dan Jacobson, and Alan Paton. It was "a magazine aimed at opening up debate and spreading the word about the new Africa" in the heady years of African independence. The New African was founded to tell people about this new Africa, a newly born concept to analyze, report on, and rejoice in. It also looked ahead to the ultimate collapse of white racial supremacy and the dawn of nonracial democracies. The journal soon attracted the attention of the South African state and its Special Branch, which raided the offices and confiscated all contents. The editors were forced to flee. Printing restarted in London, and copies were smuggled back to South Africa. The second half of the book includes Cape Escape, a thrilling account of how James Currey enabled Randolph Vigne, the clandestine editor of the New African, to escape to Canada by leaping from a Norwegian freighter in Cape Town docks.
