Happy Sad Land

In 1977, at the age of 18, Mark McCrum went to Southern Africa to wash dishes and teach English at a new multi-racial school in the fledgling republic of Botswana. He found his hitch-hiking trips round neighbouring South Africa - then at the height of the apartheid regime - profoundly affecting and confusing. 15 years later he returns. The all-white Referendum has just taken place, transition to black Government is being negotiated, Boipatong is yet to happen. McCrum embarks on a journey that is to take him from Crossroads township to the splendours of Johannesburg's Northern Suburbs. On the way he meets people as diverse as a Cape Town down-and-out and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. He returns to a Botswana which has chnaged almost beyond recognition and where his ex-pupils have developed in a variety of surprising ways. South Africa is often considered a subject too complex for comprehension. In this personal account, McCrum provides a slice-of-life view of a country in the throes of an historic and irreversible transition.