‘The Dead Will Arise’: A Review of These Potatoes Look Like Humans: The Contested Future of Land, Home and Death in South Africa

Abstract

The book under review These Potatoes Look Like Humans: The Contested Future of Land, Home and Death in South Africa, by uMbuso weNkosi is grappling with the above-mentioned question in an indirect way. This is because while the author provides a graphic and honest description of the relationship between violence and agriculture in the context of white settler colonialism, he stops short of recommending a Fanonian solution to this problem of white settler colonialism in ‘South Africa’. Despite this ‘intellectual timidity’ of the ‘big’ author of this book under review, it is a well-written book. Readers who are interested in the debate about the land question in ‘South Africa’ will benefit from this book’s critique of the reduction of the land question to economics. The author competently extends the land question beyond the realm of political economy and embeds it within the domain of spirituality and belonging in terms of African culture and worldview/’world sense’.