The Bam family came from Goqwana, near Tsolo, in the Transkei region of South Africa’s Eastern Cape, and this book focuses on six brothers and sisters, their ancestors and particularly on brother and sister Fikile and Brigalia Bam who became significant public figures.

Biographies are about people. They are not overarching studies of political, economic or social movements over time. At their best they remind us of the humanity and individuality of those whose individual experiences might otherwise disappear in collective categories. In this book, personal stories of the struggle for education; marriage and the pressures of separation, migration and war; women in a patriarchal and racist society; social class in African societies; missionaries, churches and religion; land and authority in a ‘native reserve’ that became a homeland; liberation politics and more all play their part, as do humour, eccentricities, courage and failure.

This book is, in short, the story of a family that survived and even benefited from colonial conquest; that managed to keep its integrity and self-assurance under the degradation of apartheid and that went on to confront the difficulties and opportunities of the post-1994 dispensation. It is a book about a changing South Africa, mirrored in and made vivid by the lives of the Bam family.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Seán Morrow studied at Trinity College, Dublin, and the University of Sussex and has taught at schools and universities in Ireland, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho and South Africa. He has written on aspects of the educational, religious, cultural and liberation history of central and South Africa. He is an independent historian and professional editor.

Seán has written, with Brown Maaba and Loyiso Pulumani, Education in Exile: SOMAFCO, the African National Congress School in Tanzania, 1978 to 1992, Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2007; The Fires Beneath: The Life of Monica Wilson, South African Anthropologist, Cape Town: Penguin, 2016, and many journal articles.

The Bams of Grasslands Farm: A Family History is published by Staging Post and distributed by J DoubleD Publicity