Shades

About the book

St Matthias Mission 1902: 'There are men who know that when you are finished with this war of yours and have raised your flag to the glory of your Empire - the one that we, as black men, are supposed to revere for having bestowed on us education, faith, prosperity and all the other high-sounding gifts - that you will sell us out - perhaps against the advance of metaphorical cattle - and say it is expedient. You will sacrifice our rights in order to secure your peace with the Boers and shrug us off. It is for this expedience that men like Tom and Reuben and Sonwabo Pumami are dead. There will be thousands like them in the time to come. ' Against a backdrop of drought, the rinderpest pandemic, the South African War, the burgeoning gold-mining industry and the...