Short description
The companion to Allister Sparks's award-winning "The Mind of South Africa", this book is an account of the negotiating process that led to majority rule. It retells the story of the behind-the-scenes collaborations that started with a meeting between Kobie Coetsee and Nelson Mandela in 1985.
Long description
The companion to Allister Sparks's award-winning "The Mind of South Africa", this book is an account of the negotiating process that led to majority rule. It retells the story of the behind-the-scenes collaborations that started with a meeting between Kobie Coetsee, then Minister of Justice, and Nelson Mandela in 1985. By 1986, negotiations involved senior government officials, intelligence agents and the African National Congress. For the next four years, they assembled in places such as a gamepark lodge, the Palace Hotel in Lucerne, Switzerland, a fishing hideaway and even in a hospital room. All the while, De Klerk's campaign assured white constituents nothing would change. Sparks shows how the key players, who began with little reason to trust one another, developed friendships which would later play a crucial role in South Africa's struggle to end apartheid. Allister Sparks's "The Mind of South Africa" won South Africa's 1990 Sanlam Literary Award. Former correspondent for "The Washington Post", "The Observer" and Holland's leading newspaper, "NRC Handelsblad", Sparks was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1985.