Ciskei Commission. The Quail Report Feb 8 80

Thirty years later, the seller, who was the secretary of this commission, recalls: 

• "The National Party Government of the time had already persuaded the Transkei and Bophuthatwana "to accept independence" (which was recognised by no other country), and the Ciskei was next in line. It "appointed" two South Africans as well as two eminent black Africans from elsewhere on the continent and three eminent Afro-Americans to be members of its "Ciskei Independence Commission". The two South Africans (certainly eminent but also members of the Broederbond) accepted but none of the others did. Problem! As the organisers of the (then recent) Ciskei Development Conference (see Lot 290), I and my company (Conference Associates) were asked by the Chief Minister's Office of the Ciskei Government to try to find five other "eminent" members who would augment and balance the inputs of the two original South African members. This we managed, the new members being George Quail, an eminent South African arbitrator, as chairman, as well as former UK ambassador to South Africa Sir Arthur Snelling, two American professors, Robert I Rotberg, an MIT political scientist, and Peter Kilby, a development economist from Wesleyan University, and finally a Ciskei academic, Coax Lalende.
• "At their first meeting, the commissioners agreed that they would serve only if the commission's name were changed to "Ciskei Commission" as the word "Independence" begged the question, and, secondly, if the funding for the Commission were, directly or indirectly, not sourced from the South African Government or able to be withdrawn before the commission had completed its work. These conditions were accepted, and three million South African rands was deposited in a Commission trust account administered by the chairman and Conference Associates, which provided the Commission's secretariat: the money came from the Ciskei's dog-tax, which was an internal Ciskei revenue source.
• "Jumping ahead, the commission, which travelled thousand of kilometres, including an open-ended final session at Wesleyan University in the U S (because of the academic duties of the two American members), interviewed more than two hundred witnesses, and commissioned opinion surveys from Professor Jeff Opland and a team from Rhodes University, managed to agree a unanimous report (this publication), whose main finding was that the Ciskei and Ciskeians, both within the Ciskei and in the rest of South Africa, would be in a better position if they continued to be part of South Africa than than if they chose 'independence'.
• "Remarkably (see the back cover image), the Minister of Cooperation and Development in the South African Government, Dr P G J Koornhof, told the House of Assembly: 'On the whole I find it a very good and valuable report. It is a report which is achieving considerable international recognition . . . This side of the House does not agree with many of the things in it, but in general I can indeed say that the Quail report is a very good report.'"

Patterned white card covers, printed in grey and brown, drawn on to 319 pp of b/w-illustrated thread-sewn text and appendixes, including maps.

[The opinion surveys were published separately.]

CONDITION. Apart from some light rubbing of the front cover, this is a very good copy from the archives of the secretariat and publishers, complete, unmarked and undiscoloured.