South africa

Saturday

Justin Cartwright

When the best defence is no defence

This remarkable book is the account by their lawyer of the trial, imprisonment and sentencing to death in the late Eighties of a group of young men who came to be known as the Delmas Four. It is also a wonderfully vivid and at times alarming account of the inner workings both of ANC ‘operations units’ and of the police, who used torture, murder and intimidation without compunction in the fight to save South Africa from what they saw as a communist threat. As South Africans in general drew closer to some sort of détente between the ANC and the nationalist government, neither the ANC on the one hand nor

Monday

Daniel Korski

A flooded world

It looks like the opening of a Hollywood disaster film. The South African government has declared parts of the country disaster areas, after 40 people died in floods in a month. At the same time, the UN is to launch an appeal for emergency flood aid for Sri Lanka, where at least 32 people have died and more than 300,000 have been displaced. Meanwhile flood waters in Australia have left a trail of destruction, at least 18 dead and a billion dollar bill for reconstruction. And in Brazil, survivors of the floods that have killed more than 600 people are frustrated by the lack of government help. Are these floods

Saturday

Andro Linklater

Tried and tested

In June 1964, when Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment for acts of sabotage against the apartheid government of South Africa, he was, as photographs reveal, a burly, blackhaired man, with a handsome, pugnacious grin. By the time he was released in 1990, his hair was grey and his features gaunt. But his first speech as a free man described the same ideal of a democratic, multiracial South Africa that he had presented in his final address before being sentenced — ‘an ideal I hope to live for, but if needs be, an ideal for which I am prepared to die’. That imprisonment should neither have broken nor embittered

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Survive the World Cup in Style…

Because everything is a market opportunity, here’s a perfect gift for any friend going to the World Cup this summer. Adding team colours is a particularly nice touch. Apparently this is a genuine product and at least 35 vests were sold the first day they became available. So rush now before they sell-out… Disclaimer: I actually think the World Cup will probably go off pretty well and that fears of crime, while understandable, are likely to be exagerrated somewhat.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Mousavi and the South African Example

Democracy in America goes back to pre-election profiles of Mir Hossein Mousavi and finds a “cautious, pragmatic, vague and increasingly shrewd politician.” This seems a fair verdict and, as we know, Mousavi can hardly be the perfect poster-boy for liberals since, if he were, he wouldn’t have been permitted to stand in the first place. But that was then and this is now. The movement is bigger than Mousavi now and it’s hard to see how much of it he and his advisers really control anyway. What can be said is that reform is a process, not an event. Furthermore, I would hazard that the regime faces a pretty bleak