The book is set in the time of the Apartheid in South Africa and goes through the different things which are different today for black people. This is the story of love, commitment and the flowering of the human spirit against the background of South Africa’s apartheid. Now Beverley Naido herself was born and raised in South Africa (in 1943), and yes, the author has readily admitted never having been taught to question Apartheid (and the general racial intolerance towards Black South Africans) either in school or at home.

Their little sister is desperately ill and the two children decide to walk to the city to bring their mother home.So the pair bravely decide to walk to their mother who works as a housekeeper and nanny in the big city, Johannesburg.

In the process, Naledi learns about Apartheid from first hand experiences and stories from her friends. The tale centers around siblings Naledi and Tiro's journey into Johannesburg to get their mother when their little sister falls ill. Their journey illustrates at every turn the grim realities of apartheid – the pass laws, bantustans, racism, the breakdown of family life. My father is from South Africa originally and I still have family there, so I was interested in seeing how whites were portrayed in this book. The story seemed somewhat unbelievable, as if the author wanted to show us about South Africa and this was simply the method she chose to use.I have often wondered how, as a child, I never really saw or understood how shocking apartheid and racism were. Grace helps them find their mother’s workplace and offers them a place to spend the night in Soweto.

I have loved reading this book and it has opened my eyes to how a powerful text can underpin half a term’s worth of cross curricular lessons. When I saw my husband watching a video with Trevor Noah, I casually dropped a ”he grew up in Soweto”, but this was too much of an insider knowledge (?

So yes, first and foremost Naidoo's story for Journey to Jo'burg (young middle grade and in my opinion textually suitable for readers from about the age of eight to ten or eleven) presents a basic but also intensely realistic introduction to South Africa and its horrid, inhumane and racist police of Apartheid, of segregation, showing clearly, simply and without graphic violence (although the latter is often alluded to and briefly pointed out) the horror, the all encompassing injustice of the latter and South Africa’s emerging fight for racial equality (and that not all Black South Africans are following the dictatorial rules of the Afrikaners' elitist government). To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Published during the height of Apartheid in the mid-1980s, this book was banned in South Africa until 1990. When they come to another village, they walk quickly so as to not attract the attention of the police because policemen in this area are often corrupt. The author wanted to teach young children about the unacceptable policy of Apartheit that separated Africans from Caucasians purely by colour. As a student, she began to question the apartheid regime and was later arrested for her actions as part of the resistance movement in South Africa. In Beverley Naidoo's 1986 (and thus of course before the official end of Apartheid) South-African themed middle grade novel Journey to Jo'burg, when their baby sister Dineo becomes very ill with a dangerous fever (and might perhaps even be dying), thirteen-year old Naledi and her younger brother Tiro decide that they must go and get their mother, but unfortunately Mma is being forced by financial necessity to live and work in the big city, in far-away Johannesburg.It isn't until they reach the city that they come to understand the dangers of their country, and the painful struggle for freedom and dignity that is taking place all around them. Set in historical South Africa during the time of apartheid, Naledi and her brother Tiro worry about their sick younger sister.