Voidly · Verboten · South Africa
Banned and restricted books in South Africa
86 titles have been banned or restricted in South Africa, recorded across 86 dated, source-cited events, most often for political content.
Titles
86
Ban events
86
Top reason
Political content
Decades active
7
Most-restricted titles
| Title | Author | Year | Events |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burger's Daughter | Nadine Gordimer | 1979 | 1 |
| Cry, the Beloved Country | Alan Paton | 1948 | 1 |
| July's People | Nadine Gordimer | 1981 | 1 |
| I Write What I Like | Steve Biko | 1978 | 1 |
| Looking on Darkness | André Brink | 1973 | 1 |
| A Dry White Season | André Brink | 1979 | 1 |
| The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist | Breyten Breytenbach | 1984 | 1 |
| Yakhal'inkomo | Mongane Wally Serote | 1972 | 1 |
| Beloved | Toni Morrison | 1987 | 1 |
| The Color Purple | Alice Walker | 1982 | 1 |
| Kaffir Boy | Mark Mathabane | 1986 | 1 |
| The Communist Manifesto | Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx | 1848 | 1 |
| The Wretched of the Earth | Frantz Fanon | 1961 | 1 |
| The Second Sex | Simone de Beauvoir | 1949 | 1 |
| Black Beauty | Anna Sewell | 1877 | 1 |
| Lolita | Vladimir Nabokov | 1955 | 1 |
| Lady Chatterley's Lover | D.H. Lawrence | 1928 | 1 |
| Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | 1818 | 1 |
| Why We Can't Wait | Martin Luther King Jr. | 1964 | 1 |
| The Satanic Bible | Anton LaVey | 1969 | 1 |
| The Lottery | Shirley Jackson | 1948 | 1 |
| The Struggle Is My Life | Nelson Mandela | 1978 | 1 |
| Blame Me on History | Bloke Modisane | 1963 | 1 |
| A World of Strangers | Nadine Gordimer | 1958 | 1 |
| When the Lion Feeds | Wilbur A. Smith | 1964 | 1 |
| Emergency | Richard Rive | 1990 | 1 |
| The Late Bourgeois World | Nadine Gordimer | 1966 | 1 |
| The Stone Country | Alex La Guma | 1967 | 1 |
| Poets to the People: South African Freedom Poems | Barry Feinberg | 1974 | 1 |
| The Soweto I Love | Sipho Sepamla | 1977 | 1 |
Stated reasons
- Political content
- 65
- Race / colonialism
- 14
- Sexual content
- 7
- Obscenity
- 5
- Violence
- 1
- Immorality
- 1
By decade
1810s1
1930s1
1940s1
1950s8
1960s31
1970s29
1980s14
Documented bans
A sample of 50 of 86 recorded events, most severe and most recent first. Each links to its source where available.
The Satanic Verses1988–2002
Beloved1987
Kaffir Boy1986
Nelson Mandela: The Man and the Movement1986
The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist1984
The Color Purple1984
July's People1981
Seeds of War1981
A Ride on the Whirlwind1981
The Children of Soweto1981
Cross of Gold1981
A Seed Must Seem to Die1981
Forced Landing: Africa South — Contemporary Writings1980–1980
Amandla1980
Burger's Daughter1979
A Dry White Season1979–1979
Africa My Beginning1979
Call Me Not a Man1979
Store Up the Anger1979
Muriel at Metropolitan1979
Sophie's Choice1979
I Write What I Like1978
The Struggle Is My Life1978
Pass Me a Meatball, Jones1978
The Dawn Comes Twice1978
The Soweto I Love1977
Jol'iinkomo1977
Magersfontein, O Magersfontein!1977
He's My Brother1977
Where White is the Colour, Where Black is the Number1977
Poets to the People: South African Freedom Poems1975
Skryt1975
Looking on Darkness1974
Tsetlo1974
Bandiet1974
The Park and Other Stories1974
Cry Rage!1973
Yakhal'inkomo1972
In the Fog of the Seasons' End1972
Voices in the Whirlwind and Other Essays1972
The Wanderers1971
The Discarded People1971
The Stone Country1970
The Satanic Bible1969
Elegy for a Revolutionary1969
Soul on Ice1968
House of Bondage1968
In Corner B and Other Stories1967
Black Power: The Politics of Liberation1967
The Late Bourgeois World1966
Source: Verboten, built on the banned-books.org Open Censorship Core (CC BY 4.0). Verboten compilation CC BY 4.0.