The Drama of the Peace Process in South Africa. I Look Back 30 Years

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Notes

1 Sylvia Neame, The Congress Movement. The Unfolding of the Congress Alliance 1912–1961, 3 vols. (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2015). For a view of these volumes see Randolph Vigne, ‘The Congress Movement: The Unfolding of the Congress Alliance, 1912–1961’, South African Historical Journal, 68, 2 (2016), 242–248.

2 Neame, Congress Movement, I, xli.

3 She tells us nothing of her experiences at that university, where Francis Meli completed his doctorate on the Comintern, a copy of which was held in the African Studies Library at the University of Cape Town until it was destroyed in the fire in April 2021.

4 Not only is her book published by Best Red, but its publication was subsidised by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

5 On that relationship see, inter alia, Chris Saunders, ‘The Ending of the Cold War and Southern Africa’, in Artemy M. Kalinovsky and Sergey Radchenko, eds, The End of the Cold War and the Third World. New Perspectives on Regional Conflict (London: Routledge, 2011); Chris Saunders, ‘“1989” and Southern Africa’, in Ulf Engel, Frank Hadler and Matthias Middell, eds, 1989 in a Global Perspective (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitatsverlag, 2015), 349–361; Chris Saunders, ‘External Influences on Southern African Transformations: “1989” in Perspective’, in Matthias Middell, ed., Africa’s Global 1989, Comparativ, 29, 5 (2019), 62–73; Irina Filatova, ‘Gorbachev’s “Perestroika” and the South African Negotiated Settlement’, in A. S. Balezin, S. V. Mazov and I. I. Filatova, eds, Peace and Peacemaking in Africa: A Collection of Articles for the 90th Birthday of Academician Apollo Borisovitsch Davidson (Moscow: Izdat ‘Ves' Mir’, 2019), 248–277.

6 The 13^th is entitled Editorial Notes, written probably by her SACP colleague Brian Bunting. Her published articles are buried in her list of Source Materials under her pseudonyms, Brenda Stalker and Theresa (Zania).

7 Andre Odendaal, Dear Comrade President (Cape Town: Penguin–Random House, 2022).

8 One that appeared too late for her to critique is Mac Maharaj and Z. Pallo Jordan, Breakthrough: The Struggles and Secret Talks that Brought Apartheid South Africa to the Negotiating Table (Cape Town: Penguin Books, 2021). For a critical review of Willie Esterhuyse, Endgame: Secret Talks and the End of Apartheid (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2012), see John Matisonn and Chris Saunders, ‘Endgame’, Politikon South African Journal of Political Studies 41, 2 (2014), 331–333.

9 See e.g. Arnold Selby, ‘Are Negotiations Possible’, Sechaba, September 1989, 22–23.

10 In her diary for 23 November 1988, she records how isolated she felt in East Germany and how delighted she was to be told by Brian Bunting that ‘everyone’ in London was ‘discussing the ideas of Sylvia’ (366).

11 ‘Mzala’, ‘Omelettes Cannot Be Made without Breaking Eggs’, Sechaba, June 1989, 11–18; Tsepo Nare, ‘People’s War for People’s Power’, Sechaba, June 1989, 18–21.