Bridging the Divide by Angela Read Lloyd

In January 1901, at the height of the 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer War, a Boer woman from the farm Lokshoek in the Orange Free State, Lily Visser, married Herbert Read in Cape Town. It was an unusual event. Neither of their families was able to attend the wedding. Lily’s sister and her three daughters were detained in a grim concentration camp in Port Elizabeth, where the youngest of her daughters died. One of her brothers was in a prisoner-of-war camp in Cape Town. Her youngest brother was interred in Bloemfontein, while another brother, who had treated Winston Churchill for his wounds when he was captured by the Boers in Natal, was about to be charged with treason by the British in Johannesburg. The Visser family farm had been all but destroyed by British troops in the implementation of their scorched earth policy. Herbert Read was an Uitlander Engelsman working for one of the most imperialistic of all the Witwatersrand mining companies – Ecksteins, better known as the Corner House. But Herbert Read and Lily were in love, and their love bridged a great divide. They built a lovely house on what was at the time the outskirts of Johannesburg, and named it after Lily’s Free State home – Lokshoek. This title, however, is not just the story of the Vissers and the Reads – it is an account of the social transformation of two white middle-class families over more than a hundred years through three wars, the Great Depression, the intense political conflict within the white minority, and the apartheid years. This illustrated history highlights, uniquely and with great insight, the stories, divisions, loyalties and changes within South Africa’s once-dominant white society. Lokshoek in Johannesburg is no more – today an office block in Parktown stands where it once stood. But Lokshoek at Jagersfontein remains as it has been for generations. The current owner, Gert Peet Visser, who farms there with two of his sons, has been involved in discussions with the ANC about the future of the area. The social transformation of white South Africans has clearly not ended.

First published in hardback by Jonathan Ball 2002. Sold out. Now out in print-on demand paperback, and eBook.

ISBN: 978-0-620-42433-2
Publisher: Read Press
Reviews:

“Angela Read Lloyd’s skilfully crafted memoir deserves a wide readership. Her use …of contemporary letters and photographs gives this book a quality of immediacy. It is a beguiling picture of white South African lives as they were lived in what now seems another world.” Cape Times.

“Lloyd succeeds splendidly… [One of] the more entrancing local social histories to have emerged in recent years.” Business Day