South From the Limpopo: Travels Through South Africa by Dervla Murphy

Dervla Murphy's has been recording her travel experiences -- treks through (among other places) India, Ireland, Transylvania, and several countries in Africa -- for well over thirty years. In Sour from the Limpopo, she continues her writings on the African continent, bringing her unique insights to the still-troubled country of South Africa. This three-part journey of more than 6000 miles (before during, and after the elections of 1994) took Murphy through all nine provinces of the new South Africa. She stayed in remote impoverished ex-homeland villages, the luxurious homes of rich whites and the simple homes of poor whites. In the vast black township of Khayelitsha she made good friends, as she did among the rural Boers of the platteland. Editorial Reviews Amazon Review Dervla Murphy is a fine and accomplished Irish writer who has penned 16 books, and has both a detail-catching eye and great personal ambition. Between 1993 and 1995, when she was in her early 60s, she rode her bike 6,000 miles across South Africa--alone--when the Republic was engulfed by racial strife. The question is, Why? As Murphy herself admits, it wasn't for pleasure. Was it then to personally document a country that she herself likens to a mental asylum, where disease and danger followed her like a stalker? Was it to show that she cared or illustrate that she could make such a trek despite her age and the tumultuous social environment? Whatever her motivation, there are numerous problems to conquer: She gets tick fever, her bike is stolen, she is continually warned that her path is not safe--yet on she bikes through gales and parched desert, into impoverished villages and the occasional wealthy town. Struggles abound, and Murphy documents them all, like a martyrish Little Caboose, with nearly every page darkened by some hardship or sketch of sadness. She uncovers some of the complexity of post-apartheid society--where fears rage like an airborne epidemic--and she skillfully records scenery. But this dense and detailed book is like the subject of apartheid, ultimately depressing. When Murphy confesses that she has come to love the place, it's hard to believe her, or to understand why. --Melissa Rossi From Publishers Weekly In her latest travelogue, Murphy (Muddling Through in Madagascar) documents her 6000-mile trek through South Africa's nine provinces between 1993 and 1995. The post-apartheid South Africa she sees is characterized by violence, racial tension and economic uncertaintyAcircumstances, indicates Murphy, not unlike those occurring in her own Northern Ireland. Forsaking such comforts as automobiles and hotels, the 60-something Murphy opts instead to travel by bicycle, stopping off at municipal watering holes, campgrounds and, when the invitations arise, private homes. Such intrepid wanderlust gives her the opportunity to speak with a cross-section of South Africans, from unemployed black miners to wealthy white Afrikaners. However, Murphy speaks only English among South Africa's 11 official languages. This fact obviously limits whom she speaks to and, similarly, what people are able to communicate to her. She makes up for this shortcoming by listening closely to what she can understand and by making the most of her visual observations. Early in the book, she shows self-awareness by acknowledging the wisdom of a black man who tells her, ...you should know as a white you're intruding here.... It's not a zoo for tourists to see how 'natives' live. Fortunately, Murphy's curiosity allows her to insightfully, if occasionally intemperately, relate her many experiences, from witnessing the frenzied crowds celebrating Nelson Mandela's 1994 presidential inauguration to observing a summer's day mob attack on a young girl to eating Christmas Day dinner at a prison. Rights: John Murray Publishers. (July) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews Veteran travel writer Murphy (Cameroon with Egbert, 1991, etc.) explores a South Africa in the throes of the transition to majority rule. Initially, Murphy may seem a Victorian clich, the intrepid, eccentric older lady wandering across exotic realms on her trusty bicycle, getting by on pluck and luck. This is deceiving, though, as she's a keen observer and meticulous reporter. On this three- part, 6,000-mile journey crisscrossing South Africa (just before, during, and after that country's first free and open elections, in 1994), Murphy tries to make sense of the racially based confusion and contradictions that abound. She does this by talking to people: disgruntled and cheerless Afrikaners whose ``evolution in isolation'' amid strict segregation have left them little prepared for black rule; ``coloureds'' of mixed descent, who see a future as uncertain as their former status under apartheid; impoverished blacks in neglected ``townships'' guardedly optimistic in their rage and hope that the future will be better; and so many others. Yet all are, willing or not, pieces of the same puzzle; their future is a common one, no matter how they see it unfolding. The election itself brings euphoria to blacks, and a calm acceptance permeates the nation, marred by sporadic white violence against blacks and among a bewildering array of black factions. In the months following the elections, Murphy finds ``everything changed and nothing changed. Most blacks remain poor and hungry, though now at least equal before the law. Grand tourist schemes and arms sales seem to preoccupy the new government at the expense of the immediate alleviation of the worst poverty. And many blacks have come to the disheartening realization that the struggle for the franchise may have been more empowering than the franchise itself. Though she does indeed at times overplay the unflappable old lady role, she is no mere tourist, and this is a revealing and troubling book. (20 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ®1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.