JOURNEY TO JO’BURG
“Has no equal. Evocative and haunting.” (School Library Journal starred review) The bestselling classic set in South Africa during the apartheid era, in which two siblings must face the dangers of their divided country.
Mma lives and works in Johannesburg, far from the village thirteen-year-old Naledi and her younger brother, Tiro, call home. When their baby sister suddenly becomes very sick, Naledi and Tiro know that they need to bring their mother back in order to save their sister’s life. Bravely, secretly, they set off on the long journey to the big city to find Mma.
It isn’t until they finally reach Jo’burg that they see up close what life is like for black citizens across South Africa—and begin to really question the unfair and dangerous laws of apartheid.
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Keywords/Themes
Apartheid, family, injustice, racism, poverty, courage, inequality, separation, resilience, hope.
Book Review & Recommended Use in Classroom
Short chapters pace the story well, can be easily divided for in-lesson reading, and are accompanied by illustrations that can be used to design additional tasks. The way the story is told allows young readers to access the difficult topic. Journey to Jo’burg has been a standard reading in our school’s Class 7 since before I started teaching there and still is, I think, a very good choice. It provides a foundation to contextualize colonialism and Apartheid, to teach aspects of South African history (Rainbow Nation, Nelson Mandela), and matches the English level of a Class 7 or 8.
(Alexandra, April 2025)
Sensitive Content
This book portrays the realities of Apartheid-era racism and institutionalized discrimination. It includes depictions of verbal abuse, police violence (such as beatings and use of tear gas), the death of a child, forced family separation, and emotional distress.
As this book is not an example of own-voice literature, its representations should be read with an awareness that authors writing outside their own identities or lived experiences may face limitations in portraying these perspectives.
About the Author
Beverley Naidoo was born in 1943 in Johannesburg, South Africa, into a white liberal family opposed to apartheid, though she only began to fully grasp the injustices of the system as a teenager. Her political awakening deepened during her time at the University of Witwatersrand, where she became active in anti-apartheid circles and was arrested for her involvement with the banned African National Congress. After serving a brief period in solitary confinement, she left South Africa in 1965 and settled in the UK. There, she built a life as a writer and educator, raising her children and exploring themes of racism, resistance, and exile in her fiction. Her experiences of state oppression and displacement deeply informed her novels, particularly Journey to Jo'burg (1985), which was banned in South Africa until the end of apartheid. Naidoo’s storytelling is rooted in her personal history of activism, migration, and a lifelong commitment to social justice.
