25 de julio de 2016

15 tweets from “A Rainbow in the Night: The Tumultuous Birth of South Africa” (by Dominique Lapierre)

  1. Holland’s only objective was to gain a foothold on a piece of supposedly uninhabited southern Africa and supply its ships sailing to the Indies with fresh produce.
  2. The disappointed young Dutchman setting out to plant lettuce could never have imagined he was writing the first chapter in the history of a country: South Africa.
  3. The settlers of Dutch descent were known locally as Boers, or “farmers.”
  4. Holland had just opened to a handful of its children the doors of a continent on whose soil they would soon write the most grandiose and ferocious of colonial epics.
  5. Young Hendrik Bidault replied fiercely, “Be off with you! We are no longer Dutch but Afrikaners!” That day the white tribe severed its ties with its mother country.