Fifteen years have passed since South Africans were being shot or
hacked or burned to death in political conflict; and the memory of
the trauma has faded. Some 20 500 people were nevertheless killed
between 1984 and 1994. The conventional wisdom is that they died at
the hands of a state-backed Third Force, but the more accurate
explanation is that they died as a result of the people’s war the
ANC unleashed. As the people's war accelerated from September 1984,
intimidation and political killings rapidly accelerated. At the
same time, a remarkably effective propaganda campaign put the blame
for violence on the National Party government and its alleged
Inkatha surrogate. Sympathy for the ANC soared, while its rivals
suffered crippling losses in credibility and support. By 1993 the
ANC was able to dominate the negotiating process, as well as to
control the (undefeated) South African police and army and bend
them to its will. By mid-1994 it had trounced its rivals and taken
over government. Since 1994, many books have been written on South
Africa's political transition, but none deals adequately with the
people's war. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission should have
covered this, but largely overlooked it. This title shows the
extraordinary success of people’s war in giving the ANC a virtual
monopoly on power. It also shows, in part at least, the great cost
at which this was achieved. Apart from the killings, the terror,
and the destruction that marked the period from 1984 to 1994, the
people’s war set in motion forces that cannot easily be reversed.
For violence cannot be turned off ‘like a tap’, as the ANC
suggested, and neither can anarchy easily be converted into order.
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Review This Product
a must read
Wed, 6 Nov 2013 | Review
by: wilhelm R.
As a historian of South Africa's political history I couldn't wait to read what the contents of this book had to offer.It enriched my knowledge and confirmed my perspective of this transitional period.The transition to a new dispensation was no miracle,but a birth in rivers of innocent blood.An emotional experience and hard reading but written by an expert in her field.Now I understand the present South Africa better also.Highly recommended if one wants some enlightenment.A Damascus experience....
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