Volume 1. WILD HONEY OF AFRICA. 333 pages: illustrations, portraits. Small quarto. Paperback.
Volume 2. THE NOOSE TIGHTENS. 300 pages: illustrations, portraits. Small quarto. Paperback.
Volume 3. TOTAL ONSLAUGHT TO NORMALISATION. 396 pages: illustrations, portraits. Small quarto. Paperback.
Published in 3 volumes. The authors give an insider's view of South Africa’s Foreign Service between the years 1967 and 1994, which remains largely unknown; mostly because the official history of the Department of Foreign Affairs only covered political issues and events up to 1966. Some of the varied stories of these apartheid-era diplomats are serious and factual, others are personal recollections and anecdotes.
Some the accounts are very revealing about the relationship between the diplomats, under Minister Pik Botha, and the 'security establishment'. During May 1986, for example, the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group was seen to be making very good progress in mediating between the ANC and the SA Government. On the night before the final meeting of the EPG and SA Government the SADF bombed targets in the capitals of three neighbouring countries, all members of the Commonwealth, thus deliberately sabotaging the negotiations. A number of the accounts in these volumes attest to the difficult relationship between the PW Botha's State Security Council and South African diplomats. When FW de Klerk became President and scrapped the SSC senior diplomats realised change was in the air.
These volumes also bring home the strains on the diplomats and families of diplomats who led a peripatetic lifestyle and who were asked to defend apartheid. After 1994 some of the political strain disappeared, but the lifestyle challenges did not.
An intriguing and seldom seen set of volumes expose a hidden side of South African history.
- Binding Condition: Excellent
- Overall Condition: Excellent
- Size: 24 x 19 cm
