The Peasants' Revolt

First published in 1964, banned in 1973 by the apartheid government in South Africa, and last published in 1984, Gowan Mbeki's The Peasants' Revolt is a classic of anti-apartheid, Marxist historiography. Written by one of the most significant leaders of the South African liberation movement, the book recounts the story of the Pondoland revolt in the Transkei region in the 1950s and 1960s. Beneath the details of that uprising, Mbeki examines the structure of rural South Africa: the emergence of capitalist relations amidst the entrenchment of the authority by apartheid state-backed chiefs; the creation of Bantustans (tribal reserves) to control labour; and the role of the anti-apartheid movement. The book deserves to be read by all those engaged in the struggle to build socialism in our world.

This book speaks not only to South Africans but to all who struggle for liberation from imperialism, settler-colonialism and racial capitalism - from Brazil to India, from Palestine to the Philippines. It insists that no enduring revolution is possible without the mobilisation of the rural poor and landless workers, and that no nation can be free while the majority remain dispossessed of land and denied the right to shape their own destiny. - Solly Mapaila, General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, Foreword.