No Country for the Poor

Azad Essa

Aug 2015 · Sold by Harper Collins

About this ebook

For millions of South Africans, Nelson Mandela's passing signalled the end of an era. Returning home to cover the story, journalist Azad Essa finds his countrymen looking a little lost, insecure of the future, even as they celebrate the life of a great man. Essa travelled around his native South Africa to track the mood of the nation. He notes the deification of this global icon despite the muck and grime of the great swathes of poverty that remain in South Africa two decades after the fall of Apartheid. The celebrations reminded him of contradictions he had seen elsewhere: India.

About the author

Azad Essa is a journalist with the Al Jazeera Network. He completed a multinational MA programme in sociology in 2005, studying in Germany, India and South Africa, and spent several years in academia before launching his journalism career. He has reported on the scars of the conflict in Kashmir, human displacement in the drought-ravaged Horn of Africa, and on the peculiarities of life in post Apartheid SA. He calls Durban home. This is his first book.