Pieter Wolvaardt, Tom Wheeler, and Werner Scholtz (compilers), From Verwoerd to Mandela: South African Diplomats Remember. Volume 1: The Wild Honey of Africa. Sine locum: Crink, with support from the Brenthurst Foundation, 2010.
Large format paperback (24.5 x 19 cm), card wraps, 333 pages, plates in the pagination.
Corners of wraps very slightly curled, previous owner's name on the title-page. Very good condition.
The inside story of South Africa's foreign service between the years 1967 and 1994 remains largely unknown, mostly because the official history of the Department of Foreign Affairs only covered political issues and events up to 1966.
From Verwoerd to Mandela (volumes 13) tells the varied stories of many apartheid-era diplomats. Some of them are serious and factual, while others are infused with personal recollections and anecdotes which give the book a human face. They also lift the lid for the first time on the unconventional diplomacy that South Africa was obliged to employ from the 1960s to the 1990s to keep the conversation going. The stories contained in these volumes should lay to rest the notion that South African diplomats of that era had little experience in the conduct of international relations in the conventional sense. They also illustrate the ingenuity and determination it took to represent South Africa in spite of the best efforts of critics abroad and at home to undermine their work.
Besides being a fascinating read, the trilogy constitutes a vast first-hand resource for researchers who seek to study South Africa's international relations before and until shortly after the dramatic political changes of 1994.
Few outsiders knew how much contact and positive cooperation was established in Africa long before the demise of apartheid. In volume 1 the Department's engagement with a wide number of these countries is dealt with, from Angola, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Equatorial Guinea, Somalia, Zambia and the TBBC countries, to the long road to independence for Namibia. The latter is vividly described by various officials involved, and these insiders probably provide the fullest possible account of that process published to date.
