This book is about fragments; it deals with subaltern struggles of the young against the apartheid state, from the declaration of a state of emergency in 1985 to the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) signaling the beginning of a ‘new dawn’. Through combing the varied and not so complimentary lives of 14 young men in Zwelethemba, a township in Worcester, a peripheral area of the Western Cape, the author sets out to right the wrongs of a violent past shaped by structural violence in which dogged agency from below became a central feature in the denouement inaugurating the end of the apartheid state. Why subaltern actors who allegedly ‘worked … on the periphery of the ANC’ (p. 17), the dominant and officially recognized liberation movement, in the heroic struggle against apartheid were sidelined and then subsequently denied their rightful place as makers of history constitutes the driving force in this clenched-fist ethnography from below. War in Worcester is also a story of how 14 young men, Male Activists of Zwelethemba (MAZE), were excluded from claiming benefits based on the TRC protocol.

The book consists of five chapters and two interludes – reflections on political consciousness and structural violence – four of which appeared in previous publications. Chapter One examines the terrain of struggle: the tremendous odds the young had to overcome in confronting the vicious killing machine of the apartheid state; the complex networks they developed to evade the state security apparatus; and their resilience and personal sacrifice in the face of torture, betrayal, and death. The interlude following Chapter One is a restatement of youth agency from below, underlining their singular and voluntarist march to political consciousness independent of external forces. Chapter Two deals specifically with suffering, with pain; what the author dubs the ‘bearable and unbearable’ in their undeclared resolve to make the ‘country ungovernable’ (p. 61). Quoting extensively from their TRC testimony, the author documents their individual suffering by invoking their individual/collective pain resulting from torture – from touch to smell to hearing! Chapter Three is an elaboration on the theme of pain, but with emphasis on how young activists were able to cope with the personal betrayal from their friends, family members, and comrades in struggle. The graphic testimony presented in this chapter is brought to a close in the second interlude, bemoaning the demise of three young men, fallen heroes in the fight against apartheid.

It is in the last two chapters that the author forcefully presents the case for what variously appears as ‘youth’, the ‘young’, and ‘children’ as makers of history who should be acknowledged and given their due reward. Chapter Four wrestles with the vexed question of ‘history's rejects’, a project, the author argues, that ‘leaves out of account the experiences of children and youth in conflicts … and fails to acknowledge their courage and effort’ (p. 137). Invoking the Xhosa notion of imfobe, freely translated as ‘morality, virtue, goodness and grace’ (p. 38), the author presents detailed evidence to back up her claims about morality, and I would add courage, as the principal driver of revolt from below. However, refusal to accept that a comrade was not a spy or understanding that making mistakes constitutes an integral aspect of the struggle do not in themselves provide a basis for making moral claims in one's pursuit of a noble enterprise. These complex actions were context-specific and contradictory – they underline the multiple, but blocked, pathways that were not available to most activists on the run. When the author then finally delivers the masterstroke in the last chapter, which deals with how the TRC neutralized the young by obscuring their collective role ‘in securing democracy’ (p. 162), one is tempted to ask: are we not trying to understand history from below by utilizing the archive from above? This question is central to understanding the findings of the TRC and the author quotes extensively from the report to demonstrate how the very definitions of the commission –civilian vs soldiers, victims vs perpetrators – ‘exclude and occlude’ (p. 162) the young.

Perhaps the major shortcoming of this powerful narrative of anger from below is the failure to problematise youth. The claim that the core of the study relies on the evidence from the 14 men is undermined by the author's constant reference to children and the young in a study supposedly dealing with youth. Part of the problem no doubt has to do with the author's biological construction of youthhood. Yet, the structural violence spawned by the apartheid state compelled youngsters to become social adults and to act out those roles in their everyday lives. In this context, who is a child and who are the young are political questions.