Endgame: Secret talks and the end of Apartheid - Esterhuyse

2012 brand new paperback with 365 pages. R28 postage in SA.

In May 1989, National Intelligence contacted me. Their request took me by complete surprise: “Get in touch with Thabo Mbeki. Ask him to travel to London where you and he will meet in private. No one else must know.” I started trembling violently. I realised at once that this was the real deal. Should I get involved in something that could compromise me so deeply that everything morally important to me might go to ruin?

Endgame is the full story of the secret meetings between ANC leaders and a select few Afrikaners in the turbulent 1980s, told for the first time by someone who was there himself: Stellenbosch professor Willie Esterhuyse. Endgame recounts how these talks, held behind closed doors in England, not only kicked-started negotiations in South Africa, but also led to an unlikely yet lasting friendship between an Afrikaner insider and a young activist and eventual president.

Esterhuyse’s first-hand account, filled with anecdotes, offers a fresh look at many South African leaders. It contains fascinating information on i.a. secret discussions in prison, what went on in PW Botha’s situation room, and how the NIS tried to save South Africa from widespread violence by covertly intervening in the high-stakes chess game played by the “enemies”.