An award-winning historian and journalist tells the very human
story of apartheid's afterlife, tracing the fates of South African
insurgents, collaborators, and the security police through the tale
of the clandestine photo album used to target apartheid's enemies.
From the 1960s until the early 1990s, the South African security
police and counterinsurgency units collected over 7,000 photographs
of apartheid's enemies. The political rogue's gallery was known as
the "terrorist album," copies of which were distributed covertly to
police stations throughout the country. Many who appeared in the
album were targeted for surveillance. Sometimes the security police
tried to turn them; sometimes the goal was elimination. All of the
albums were ordered destroyed when apartheid's violent collapse
began. But three copies survived the memory purge. With full access
to one of these surviving albums, award-winning South African
historian and journalist Jacob Dlamini investigates the story
behind these images: their origins, how they were used, and the
lives they changed. Extensive interviews with former targets and
their family members testify to the brutal and often careless work
of the police. Although the police certainly hunted down resisters,
the terrorist album also contains mug shots of bystanders and even
regime supporters. Their inclusion is a stark reminder that
apartheid's guardians were not the efficient, if morally
compromised, law enforcers of legend but rather blundering agents
of racial panic. With particular attentiveness to the afterlife of
apartheid, Dlamini uncovers the stories of former insurgents
disenchanted with today's South Africa, former collaborators
seeking forgiveness, and former security police reinventing
themselves as South Africa's newest export: "security consultants"
serving as mercenaries for Western nations and multinational
corporations. The Terrorist Album is a brilliant evocation of
apartheid's tragic caprice, ultimate failure, and grim legacy.
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