Related Collections from the Archive
Cutting Through The Mountain is a collection of interviews with South Africans - most of them prominent and all of them Jewish - who fought against institutionalised racism in South Africa. Denis Goldberg, Helen Suzman, Ronnie Kasrils, Gill Marcus, Johnny Clegg and Albie Sachs - to name but some of them - recall formative experiences, trials and triumphs. They discuss their personal identities, what being Jewish has meant to them, and how it was impacted on their unfolding lives.
The Interviews are honest and compelling. They reveal the inner worlds of people whose development was shaped by opposition politics, underground activity, jail, exile, grass roots activism or cross-cultural innovation. Funny, insightful and incisive, flamboyant, occasionally bitter or angry, these slices of life bear testimony to the personalities of some remarkable people. In a few cases - like those of the late Isie Maisels, Rowely Arenstein and Barney Simon, they are also a last testament.
Although Cutting Through The Mountain is primairly a collection of portraits it is also a 'history-in-the-round' of the last sixty years, as seen from a particular perspective. The individual interviews cross-reference, complement and fill one another out, sometimes validating others' recollection of events, sometimescontradicting them. Multiple perspectives on the same events creates a three dimensional history far more immediate and alive than any monologue could be.