Author Archives: Sarietha

In the two decades before the uprising of 1976, Afrikaans had become identified among blacks in Soweto as the language of the oppressor – the medium used, for example, when white policemen arrested pass offenders or when white civil servants issued permits or ordered blacks out of … Continue reading →

What Paul Kruger learned about toll roads the hard way BACK in 1886, the discovery of huge reefs of gold on the Witwatersrand caught state president SJP (Paul) Kruger by surprise. The fiercely nationalist but extremely poorly educated Boers of … Continue reading →

African National Congress 1987. ‘Paris–Dakar meeting’, unpublished manuscript, Mayibuye Centre, University of the Western Cape. Bogdanor, V. 1997. ‘Forms of Autonomy and the Protection of Minorities’, Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Spring 1997. Boshoff, A. … Continue reading →

The tantalising question is what Slabbert would have done if he had stayed on in Parliament and had been leader of the Democratic Party when De Klerk made his offer. Some of his close friends in the party told me … Continue reading →

Soon after a new constitution was accepted in 1996, it became clear that there was no clarity about what the different parties meant by negotiations or agreement. The NP and several other parties thought that the settlement was a mutually … Continue reading →

When negotiations started in 1990, the Democratic Party (DP), which succeeded the Progressive Federal Party as the main liberal party, thought its hour had come. Many in the DP hoped, like its leader, Zach de Beer, that with apartheid removed, … Continue reading →

Slabbert’s move away from his position in South Africa’s Options had much to do with his outrage at the government’s suppression of the popular revolt and his despair about the country’s future. But it was influenced equally by the friendship … Continue reading →