Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the South Africa Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
His 1948 novel put apartheid in front of a worldwide readership in the year the policy was formally adopted, and has never gone out of print.
Alan Paton was a schoolteacher who in 1935 took over Diepkloof Reformatory, an institution for African boys near Johannesburg, and turned it into something closer to a school than a prison — taking down the fences, letting the boys out on parole, and getting results that embarrassed the penal establishment.
He wrote Cry, the Beloved Country while travelling in Europe and America in 1946, finishing it in a hotel room in San Francisco. It follows a Zulu priest who goes to Johannesburg to find his son, and it is about what the country does to families it has pulled apart. It was published in 1948, the year the National Party won power and began legislating apartheid, and it sold in the millions, was filmed twice and staged as a musical, and for a generation of readers outside South Africa it was the book that made the place real.
He founded the Liberal Party of South Africa in 1953 and led it for years. It stood for a non-racial franchise and was one of the very few multiracial political organisations in the country; when the government made multiracial parties illegal in 1968 the party dissolved itself rather than comply. Paton gave evidence in mitigation at the Rivonia Trial, where Mandela and his co-accused faced death sentences, and had his passport taken away for ten years for his trouble.
He wrote Cry, the Beloved Country while travelling in Europe and America in 1946, finishing it in a hotel room in San Francisco. It follows a Zulu priest who goes to Johannesburg to find his son, and it is about what the country does to families it has pulled apart. It was published in 1948, the year the National Party won power and began legislating apartheid, and it sold in the millions, was filmed twice and staged as a musical, and for a generation of readers outside South Africa it was the book that made the place real.
He founded the Liberal Party of South Africa in 1953 and led it for years. It stood for a non-racial franchise and was one of the very few multiracial political organisations in the country; when the government made multiracial parties illegal in 1968 the party dissolved itself rather than comply. Paton gave evidence in mitigation at the Rivonia Trial, where Mandela and his co-accused faced death sentences, and had his passport taken away for ten years for his trouble.
- Britannica — Alan Paton
- South African History Online — Alan Stewart Paton
- Wikipedia — Cry, the Beloved Country
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