Numbering The Dead. The Course And Pattern Of Political Violence In The Natal Midlands. 1987 - 1989.

 John Aitchison. The Natal Society Foundation,2015.Hardcover with dust jacket, thread-sewn.274 pages, illustrated with tables, graphs and maps. Dimensions: 18 cm wide × 24.5 cm deep × 2 cm. New Book.Numbering the Dead is a seminal account of the violent civil conflict that broke out around the city of Pietermaritzburg in 1987 andwhat ensued over the next three years. Aitchison and his colleagues, based at the Centre for Adult Education, documented anddissected the ebb and flow and the changing circumstances of this not-so-low intensity civil war in the region. They collected, computerised, and categorised literally thousands of instances of eyewitness or documentary evidence, and thenapplied an innovative synthesis of qualitative and quantitative approaches that uncovered the patterns and intimated the underlyingcauses. This book, mainly covering the period 1987 to 1989, presents a distillation of this monitoring work, conducted under unimaginablydifficult and stressful conditions.It was originally done with the simple aim of stopping the killing by telling people in the province, inSouth Africa and the world what was happening, as accurately and truthfully as possible.Professor John Aitchison was born in Durban and then studied at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg where he was active inthe National Union of South African Students and in the Liberal Party. In his Honours year in 1965 he was restricted without trialunder severe banning orders for five years and then again for another five years from 1971 to 1976. After teaching at the FederalTheological Seminary he joined the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg where for many years he headed the Centre for Adult