Journey to Jo’Burg

Author: Beverley Naidoo

Reading age: from c 9 years

Published on 10 April 2025 by HarperCollins Publishers (HarperCollins) in the United Kingdom as part of 'the HarperCollins Children’s Classics' series.

This is the story of love, commitment and the flowering of the human spirit against the background of South Africa’s apartheid.

Frightened that their baby sister Dineo will die, thirteen-year-old Naledi and her younger brother Tiro run away from their grandmother to Johannesburg to find their mother, who works there as a maid. Their journey illustrates at every turn the grim realities of apartheid – the pass laws, bantustans, racism, the breakdown of family life.

The opulence of the white “Madam’s” house contrasts starkly with the reality that Naledi and Tiro face – that their baby sister is suffering from starvation, not an incurable disease.