People's War: New Light on the Struggle for South Africa

by Anthea Jeffery

More than 25 years have passed since South Africans were being shot or hacked or burned to death in political violence, and the memory of the trauma has faded. Nevertheless, some 20 500 people were killed between 1984 and 1994. Conventional wisdom has it that most died as a result of the ANC's people's war. Many books have been written on South Africa's political transition, but none has dealt adequately with the people's war. This book does. It shows the extraordinary success of the people's war in giving the ANC a virtual monopoly on power, as well as the great cost at which this was done. The high price of it is still being paid. Apart from the terror and killings it sparked at the time, the people's war set in motion forces that cannot easily be tamed. Violence, once unleashed, is not easy to stamp out. 'Ungovernability', once generated, is not readily reversed. For this new edition, Anthea Jeffery has revised and abridged her seminal work. She has also included a brief overview of the ANC's National Democratic Revolution for which the people's war was intended to prepare the way. Since 1994, the NDR has been implemented in many different spheres. It is now being speeded up in its second and more radical phase.

Genres: South Africa

386 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2009

Reviews

[Coenraad Groenewald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought the book two years ago while on vacation in South Africa, and never got around to starting it. Since I was old enough to remember the period from the late 1970's it is especially interesting to read more about the planning and strategy that caused the events that made the newspapers and affected daily life at the time.
Anthea makes a good point in showing that for a large part of the ANC leadership communism was not only a convenient bed partner, but the real solution.
By 1994 some of the questions like the treatment of refugees in the ANC training camps and the ANC involvement in the violence was even in my mind a nagging worry. But these questions were often asked by media with a strong right-wing bias. And the hope that the romanticised ANC was the true ANC also won me over.
My biggest sadness about the period is not the fact that the ANC outmanouverded the Government by simply refusing to accept any agreement as being bounding on them, but in the ruthless way they destroyed all opposition especially among black political parties (i.e. IFP) before the elections. And this lack of opposition still prevents SA from achieving what it is capable of.

[Christie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chilling, expertly researched and exposing a frightening path to communism in South Africa. Everything makes sense now. Every person who thinks of the ANC as a liberating, caring entity should read this. We have been kept blind to the truth.

[Sheridan Santhia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Propaganda is such a powerful tool

If only the average voter had access to the views portrayed in this book. Absolutely essential reading for every South African.