The Wauchopes book that captures anti-apartheid activism launched in Pretoria

The history of anti-apartheid activism and the life of activists in exile has been captured and documented in a book titled The Wauchopes. The book’s author and descendant of Reverend Isaac Wauchope, who died when the SS Mendi sank in the English channel in 1917, illustrates a family dedicated to the struggle to achieve the emancipation from the shackles of apartheid.

The book was launched in Pretoria on Sunday afternoon.

Book author Natasha “Nat” Sifuba nee Kalaote comes from a family of activists. Her book documents the sacrifices made by her family to achieve a free South Africa.

She says that she wrote the book following the death of her mother Joyce Kalaote nee Wauchope to preserve the family’s anti-apartheid activism.

“The democracy that today we are enjoying, if you don’t know how it came about, you are likely to take it for granted. Yet people who were involved paid the ultimate price. Others are even buried outside the borders of South Africa.”

The book premise on the sinking of the SS Mendi, the Sharpeville Massacre, the 1976 student uprising and the black on black violence between the UDF and Azapo in the 80’s among others.

Readers are very pleased with it.

“What loomed large in the context of what F.W. De Klerk about how many people died as a result of apartheid, he was discounting the people that died as result of black on black violence.”

Sifuba hopes the book will serve as a compass to influence the direction the current youth will take to personal affirmation.

It is available at bookstores nationwide and online.

In the video below, the SABC is in conversation with author Natasha Sifuba on her book, The Wauchopes: