Choice, Not Fate, The Life and Times of Trevor Manuel - Pippa Green

Trevor Manuel was a member of Nelson Mandela's original Cabinet and became South Africa's first black Minister of Finance in 1996, at a time when the economy threatened to spiral into a debt trap. Under his stewardship for more than 12 years, South Africa entered its longest economic growth period. By 2007, Manuel was the world's longest-serving Minister of Finance and the most respected African finance minister. Born into a working-class family on the Cape Flats, Manuel's story reflects the fate that befell thousands of people classified as coloured under Apartheid. Despite the constant moving under the cruel Group Areas Act, clashes with gangsters who roamed the Flats and a truncated education, Manuel stared down fate to become one of the most prominent leaders in the resistance movement of the 1980s. This book tells the story of Manuel's origins, his family, his personal struggles and his reflections. It describes how a man is both shaped by his country's history and how his choices changed the course of the new South Africa. Choice, Not Fate, The Life and Times of Trevor Manuel - Pippa Green. Penguin Books 2008. ISBN 9780143025337