GROEP SONDER GRENSE:

viii, 90 pages: genealalogical tables. Quarto. Pictorial paper wraps.

Published during the height of opposition to apartheid and two years before the second State of Emergency, this is one of the most important books to challenge apartheid. Dr Heese drew on the substantial body of genealogical literature that had grown up around the well kept archives of the N.G. Church (of which his father, J.A. Heese, was Archivist). Heese did not reveal anything new, but what he did was to set out plainly (names and dates) when inter-marriages had taken place between black and white at the Cape. The reaction to his book was emotional in some quarters and legal threats and worse were aimed at him. Of particular note was that one of the ancestors of Ds. Andries Treurnicht (leader of the Conservative Party which opposed any liberalisation of government policies) was named in the book as having married "Victoria van die Kaap". Jan Hoon, Conservative MP for Kuruman and one of the most implacable opponents of liberalism in South Africa, publicly announced his intention to sue Heese. Heese invited Hoon to meet him in the Cape Archives and look at the records with him. The case never came to court! This book shook the foundation of one of the basic tenets upon which apartheid was founded. This slim paperback is scarce in this condition. One of the most important publications in South Africa since 1948.