The mind of South Africa: The story of the rise and fall of apartheid - Softcover

Allister Sparks was born and educated in South Africa. He was editor of the Rand Daily Mail from 1977 to 1981, South Africa correspondent for The Economist for twenty-three years, and is now correspondent for the Washington Post, the Observer and Holland's leading newspaper, the NRC Handelsblad. He was named International Editor of the Year in 1979 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting of racial unrest in South Africa in 1985.

Former editor of the Johannesburg Rand Daily Mail , and now a correspondent for U.S. and U.K. newspapers, Sparks here writes one of the most sensitive and best balanced histories of relationships among South Africa's Dutch, English, Indian and indigenous peoples. In this hopeful assessment of the transition period, he points out that "no ideology on earth, no politician, no guns, no army, no regional superpower strategy" can stem the "blackening" of South Africa, as the country at last begins to move out of its "capsule of illusion." Although industrialization and urbanization render apartheid ideology unworkable, only political action can shift South Africa to a pan-tribal, nonracial, mixed economy and society, stresses Sparks. There will be no revolutionary transfer of power; instead, there will be an incremental process, with whites yielding ground reluctantly, inch by inch, trench by trench.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.