Botha's Hill Botha's Hill Botha's Hill is a small town outside Hillcrest in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It is the gateway to the Valley of a Thousand Hills. Kearsney College moved to Botha's Hill in 1939. Alan Paton, a famous author who wrote novels such as Cry, the Beloved Country and Too Late the Phalarope moved here and resided here until his death on the 12th of April, 1988. He was aged 85. The village is 37km north-west of Durban, on the old main road to Pietermaritzburg before the N3 highway was built. It was named after a settler, Philip Rudolph Botha, grandfather
Cry, the Beloved Country affected by "native crime" while blacks suffer from social instability and moral issues due to the breakdown of the tribal system. It shows many of the problems with South Africa such as the degrading of the land reserved for the natives, which is sometimes considered to be the main theme, the disintegration of the tribal community, native crime, and the flight to urban areas. Another prevalent theme in "Cry, the Beloved Country" is the detrimental effects of fear on the characters and society of South Africa as indicated in the following quotation from the narrator in Chapter 12: Paton makes