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The Covenant
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The novel begins with the land and its earliest inhabitants before following African communities moving south and Dutch settlers establishing themselves at the Cape. The fictional Van Doorn family becomes rooted in farming and Calvinist belief, while British arrivals and African kingdoms introduce rival claims to territory, labour and political authority.
Across the Great Trek, frontier wars, the rise of the Zulu kingdom, diamond discoveries and the Boer conflict, family loyalties become inseparable from racial power. The narrative reaches the twentieth century and the institutionalisation of apartheid, examining how religious conviction, nationalism and accumulated violence are used to justify an unequal state.
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