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This book pulls back the curtain on the 'political miracle' of the new South Africa.
From the 1960s, Maritz Spaarwater was an intelligence agent for the South African government, first for Military Intelligence and later for National Intelligence. In the late 1980s, he was among the first to start official discussions overseas with the exiled leadership of the ANC, and he became involved in the negotiations that led to the 1994 election. This is his story. A Spook’s Progress plays out in a range of locations, from army bases in Namibia to the NIS offices in Pretoria, from the dusty streets of Freetown to the luxury of Geneva. Threaded through the narrative are encounters with people such as Sam Nujoma, Kenneth Kaunda, Niel Barnard, Roelf Meyer, Chris Hani, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. An honest depiction of day-to-day life as a spy, the book delves into the relationship between intelligence agents and their political masters and reveals their behind-the-scenes role in facilitating the transition. At times serious, at times ironic and satirical, A Spook’s Progress is a fascinating and frank account of an intelligence agent’s life and work, and his shift from making war to making peace.
Second volume of Deutscher prize-winning trilogy on the future of IR, tracing the defining characteristics of 'foreign encounters' over time.
The memoir of a former South African intelligence agent, from his time in military intelligence and his later work in the National Intelligence Service, of which he became a member in the early 1980s. Covers his role in the negotiations for a peaceful political settlement in the country.
Abraham and Constand Viljoen were identical twins who took starkly different paths in life. One was a deeply religious man, who opposed apartheid; the other was a man of war, who became head of the SADF. But together they would play a crucial role in preventing South Africa from descending into civil war. In the early 1990s, Constand came out of retirement to head the Afrikaner Volksfront, which opposed the negotiations with the ANC and made plans for military action. Realising that war would destroy their country, Abraham approached his estranged brother and urged him to consider the alternative: talks with the ANC. What followed was a series of secret meetings and negotiations that ultimately prevented civil war. Brothers in War and Peace documents the crucial yet largely unheralded role the Viljoen brothers played in ensuring peace in South Africa. Based on interviews with the brothers and other key political figures, the book gives new insights into a time when the country’s future was on a knife-edge.
South Africa continues to be an object of fascination for people everywhere interested in social justice issues, postcolonial studies and critical race theory as manifested by the enormous worldwide attention given to the #RhodesMustFall movement. In this book, Teresa Barnes examines universities’ complex positioning in the apartheid era and argues that tracing the institutional legacies left by pro-apartheid intellectuals are crucial to understanding the fight to transform South African higher education. A work of interpretive social history, this book investigates three historical dynamics in the relationship between the apartheid system and South African higher education. First, it explores how the legitimacy of apartheid was historically reproduced in public higher education. Second, it looks at ways that academics maneuvered through and influenced national and international discourses of political freedom and legitimacy. Third, it explores how and where stubborn tendrils of apartheid-era knowledge production practices survived into and have been combatted during the democratic era in South African universities.
This book is the first full history of South African intelligence and provides a detailed examination of the various stages in the evolution of South Africa’s intelligence organizations and structures. Covering the apartheid period of 1948-90, the transition from apartheid to democracy of 1990-94, and the post-apartheid period of new intelligence dispensation from 1994-2005, this book examines not only the apartheid government’s intelligence dispensation and operations, but also those of the African National Congress, and its partner, the South African Communist Party (ANC/SACP) – as well as those of other liberation movements and the ‘independent homelands’ under the apartheid sys...
'External Mission helped me understand better how the phenomenon of Jacob Zuma, and his main legacy – state capture – became possible.' – MAX DU PREEZ After the ANC was banned by the apartheid government in 1960, many of its leaders and members were forced to leave the country. During the next three decades, it had to operate in exile and underground. Yet the real history of this period remains shrouded in mystery. Some events, such as the Rhodesian campaign of 1967–1968 and the Kabwe conference of 1985, are well known, but lesser known are the intense factional struggles within the organisation, recurring pro-democracy protests and the creation of a security apparatus that inspired ...
Mathews Phosa has been an eyewitness to the dramatic shifts of political power in South Africa. He was involved in the Black Consciousness Movement, the UDF and the ANC, before fleeing into exile in 1985 and becoming an uMkhonto weSizwe commander in Mozambique. A lawyer by training, he was one of the first ANC members to return to South Africa to prepare the way for negotiations. He was premier of Mpumalanga during the presidency of Nelson Mandela, with whom he had a strong relationship. Under Thabo Mbeki, whom he had known in exile, Phosa was pushed to the sidelines, with false accusations that he was involved in a ‘plot’ to overthrow the president. Phosa had served under Jacob Zuma as ...
Finalist for the Alan Paton Award In his latest book, renowned historian Hermann Giliomee challenges the conventional wisdom on the downfall of white rule and the end of apartheid. Instead of impersonal forces, or the resourcefulness of an indomitable resistance movement, he emphasizes the role of Nationalist leaders and of their outspoken critic Frederick van Zyl Slabbert. What motivated each of the last Afrikaner leaders, from Verwoerd to de Klerk? How did each try to reconcile economic growth, white privilege, and security with the demands of an increasingly assertive black leadership and unexpected population figures? In exploring each leader’s background, reasoning, and personal foibl...