Volume 37, Number 10 · June 14, 1990
South Africa: The Fire This Time?
By Leonard Thompson
The Mind of South Africa
by Allister Sparks
Knopf, 424 pp., $24.95
In South Africa today, President F.W. de Klerk has disavowed apartheid and claims to be seeking a democratic solution; and Nelson Mandela, the effective leader of the African National Congress, has now agreed to negotiate with him. Allister Sparks's The Mind of South Africa is a splendid guide to the new situation in which both leaders find themselves. As a South African journalist and a former editor of Johannesburg's morning newspaper, the Rand Daily Mail, which ceased publication in 1985, Sparks writes with close knowledge of the workings of apartheid. The first part of The Mind of South Africa deals with South African history down to 1948; the rest, more than half of the book, describes the apartheid era, about which he draws on his own experience. South Africa, he believes, is in transition to a better future, and later in this article, I shall discuss his conclusion in the light of my visit, during the last two weeks of March, to the southern Transvaal, Kwazulu, and Natal.
Review, 6184 words
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