Alan Paton wrote Cry, The Beloved Country

Alan Paton

It is the birthday of South African writer Alan Paton (1903), whose best known novel, Cry, The Beloved Country (1948), brought international attention to the problems in South African society that led to apartheid. Published just before that system of racial segregation was established in the country, the book sought to raise awareness of the breakdown of the tribal system, destruction of native lands, native crime, and other conditions that resulted in national legislation relegating South African black natives to the status of non-citizens.

The book was a bestseller, with some 15 million copies in print. Paton had been working as principal of a reform school for African boys when he was writing the novel. The book's success gave him the financial freedom to leave his job and devote full time to writing.

Cry, The Beloved Country was adapted for film twice, first in 1951 (starring Canada Lee) and then in 1995 (starring James Earl Jones). Composer Kurt Weill and playwright Maxwell Anderson collaborated on the Broadway production Lost in the Stars, based on Paton's book. 

Paton became an anti-apartheid activist and helped found the Liberal Party of South Africa to try to stop apartheid. He served as the party's president until 1968, when the organization was dissolved by law. In 1960, Paton traveled to New York to receive the Freedom Award. When he returned, authorities confiscated his passport and didn't return it for 10 years.

Paton also wrote Too Late the Phalarope (1953), a novel about  an Afrikaner policeman' crisis of conscience; Hofmeyr (1964), a profile of a prominent South African statesman; Towards  the Mountain (1980), the first volume of his autobiography; Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful (1981), a fictional story based on his political activist years; and Journey Continued (1988), the second volume of his autobiography, which was published after his death.

Gordimer wrote of South African apartheid

Nadine Gordimer

It is the birthday of South African writer and activist Nadine Gordimer (1923), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991 for her writing on racial and moral issues, especially apartheid in South Africa. Several of Gordimer's books have been banned at various times in her home country. Among them are A World of Strangers (1958), The Late Bourgeois World (1976), Burger's Daughter (1979), and July's People (1981).

Gordimer's first published novel, The Lying Days (1953), tells the story of a young white woman who gradually becomes aware of South African racial divides as she grows up in a small town. Occasion for Loving (1963) had a white woman married to an ethnomusicologist but falling in love with a black artist during a time when mixed relationships were illegal in South Africa.

 In A World of Strangers, a young English publisher whose parents are politically liberal remains apolitical as he moves between friends in the wealthy white suburbs and seething black townships. The Late Bourgeois World deals with a white woman's life on the edge of political action when her ex-husband kills himself after betraying fellow resistance workers under police pressure.

Burger's Daughter tells the story of a white South African woman dealing with the legacy of her father, who was an anti-apartheid activist with the South African Communist Party. July's People follows the life of July, a black servant to a liberal white South African family, during a fictional civil war in which black South Africans violently fight apartheid.

Gordimer's A Guest of Honor (1970) won the British James Tait Black Memorial Award and the Booker Prize. It deals with a black African who becomes president of his country through revolution and must now attend to affairs of state while those who helped him into power still seek revolution.

Gordimer has written 15 novels, a play, numerous short stories, and articles for various magazines.