Rooikraal Revisited

About the Book

Rooikraal Revisited: Farming During Apartheid is an autobiographical and nostalgic study of a life left behind.

Dylan Weston lived on a dairy farm, Rooikraal, during the Apartheid regime and this collection documents the people, places, interests, and recollections of life in rural South Africa.

The bitterness of Apartheid, its inhumanity, is shown—but the good will of the common folk who shared their lives on these "islands of civilization" known as farms is also appreciated and enjoyed.

Some of the stories tell of the political impact on the lives of common people, while others tell of human suffering and superstition. Several of the stories describe adventures with animals—farm animals generally, but also the great serpent the Rinkhals.

The stories are all true and the experiences real.
This is a period of South African life under white domination which has been swept away, and yet on seeing the destruction not of a political system but a thriving community—Rooikraal—great nostalgia fills the author.

The people she knew and loved are gone. There are few traces of their lives and of their sense of community left on Rooikraal. The lesson of life, which she learns, is that one can never return to the land of yore; it lives only in the heart and memory—where in the retelling it seems to gain a sense of reality.

About the Author

Humphrey Muller, once a professor of English in South Africa during the Apartheid years, moved to Scotland to devote more time to creative writing. He has since written a number of novels (A Twist in Time, the Cage and the Cross, Wheel of Fortune, Continental Drift), and with his wife Carolyn has co-authored two novels (Rapture at Sea and Spirit of Ecstasy by 'Carolyn Charles').