Author Description

The South African township of Lady Selborne was a comparatively small place, situated in an area on the slopes of the gentle Magaliesberg mountains to the west of the city center of Pretoria. The township was approximately two square kilometers in extent. This was a scenic and fertile area with pleasant weather throughout the year. From anywhere in the township, people had a view of the city center with the imposing Union Buildings (the seat of government) on the horizon. By 1942, the multiracial Lady Selborne was home to about 22,000 (mostly 'non-white') people, the majority of whom were Northern Sotho. It also included Nguni, Shangaan, Indian, and Chinese people. Sadly, Lady Selborne was to become the largest dispossession project in Pretoria, due to the Group Areas Act, an act of parliament that assigned racial groups to different residential and business sections in a system of urban apartheid. In this book, author John Seakalala Mojapelo examines the history of Lady Selborne, dedicating the book "to the 3.5 million victims of the heartless social engineering policy enforced through the pernicious Group Areas Act by the former white minority government in Pretoria, and particularly those in Lady Selborne."