Shades of Difference
Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa
(Sprache: Englisch)
The inside story of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement is told through the experiences of one of its unsung heroes: freedom fighter Mac Maharaj.
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The inside story of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement is told through the experiences of one of its unsung heroes: freedom fighter Mac Maharaj.
Klappentext zu „Shades of Difference “
The inside story of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, told through the experiences of its unsung hero written by Padraig O'Malley, the subject of the new acclaimed documentary The Peacemaker.The struggle in South Africa to destroy apartheid was one of the great moral crusades of the last century, and Mac Maharaj played a pivotal role in the liberation movement for nearly four decades. A South African of Indian descent, Maharaj suffered brutal tortures and twelve years of imprisonment on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela. It was Maharaj who smuggled out the manuscript of Mandela's autobiography, and he later served in his government. Based on extensive interviews with Maharaj over the last eleven years and hitherto unavailable documents, Padraig O'Malley's vividly rendered tale will enthrall anyone interested in a true story of heroism and the story of a people's struggle for freedom.
Lese-Probe zu „Shades of Difference “
In the late 1980's, the apartheid regime in South Africa lurched uncertainly from one reform to the next, but I could not face the ultimate step: abolishing what it could not reform. Only dismantling the entire apartheid apparatus and enfranchising the black masses would suffice.States of emergency in 1986 and again in 1987 had failed to stop township violence. Moreover, the external climate was rapidly changing; Mikhail Gorbachev's doctrines of glasnost and perestroika opened up the Soviet Union to change, and as the cold war wound down, the utility of the South African government dried up. At one time it could portray itself as the principled ally of the West in the war against Soviet expansionism, which had funded so many anticolonial struggles and postcolonial states. As such, it could count on the covert support of the United States and a tacit tolerance for apartheid; during the cold war, the United States found constructive engagement with South Africa more expedient than outright condemnation of apartheid.
When the foundations on which these relationships rested began to crumble, changes in South Africa became necessary an inevitable outcome of the changing world order. The economy was veering toward bankruptcy, the bite of financial sanctions was viselike, and the prospects of things getting better were remote. South African President F.W. de Klerk bowed to reality. On 2 February 1990, he unbanned the ANC and other political organizations, and on 11 February, he released Nelson Mandela. Thereafter he entered into negotiations process with the ANC and all other political parties claiming to have a stake in a new dispensation. It was a process of uncertainty; no outcome was guaranteed and none ruled out. All parties committed themselves to non-violence, yet the process unfolded in a climate of endemic violence.
I went to South Africa in 1989 to record and study the impending transition from apartheid to a post apartheid era. I had
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no idea how it would unfold, how long it would take, or what the outcome would be. And, I would learn, neither did the men and women who became key players in that process.
I met Mac Maharaj by accident in the early 1990's. I was visiting Cyril Ramaphosa, secretary-general of the African National Congress (ANC) and the party's chief negotiator, at ANC headquarters, on Plein Street in Johannesburg. On the way to Cyril's office on the ninth floor, we passed an Indian man in his fifties, I would have presumed, silver haired, with a small white goatee. He was working the phone, punching at the keyboard impatiently with his fingers, and furiously smoking a cigarette. I remember, for some reason, that the desk had no papers on it, perhaps because the desks around him were piled high with haphazard stacks of paper. The man on the phone talked vigorously and quickly, with an air of urgency again in contrast to the rather languid pace of things around him. The calls were short, Each ended the same way: Thanks, pal. I would become used to that phrase.
That, said Cyril, is Mac. He is someone you should talk to. Come, I'll introduce you. We walked over to Mac, who gave me a quick once-over and nodded his head between puffs. We made an appointment to meet on 18 August 1993 as it turned out, three months before the establishment of the November 1993 interim constitution that would pave the way for the first democratic elections in South Africa's history.
I knew who Mac was. Indeed, it would have been hard not to. In July 1990, when talks between the ANC and the South African government were already under way, he had been arrested and jailed, allegedly for trying to overthrow the government by violence. For a couple of months it was a big story James Bond stuff, men in disguises using false passports, caches of arms being secretly transported into the count
I met Mac Maharaj by accident in the early 1990's. I was visiting Cyril Ramaphosa, secretary-general of the African National Congress (ANC) and the party's chief negotiator, at ANC headquarters, on Plein Street in Johannesburg. On the way to Cyril's office on the ninth floor, we passed an Indian man in his fifties, I would have presumed, silver haired, with a small white goatee. He was working the phone, punching at the keyboard impatiently with his fingers, and furiously smoking a cigarette. I remember, for some reason, that the desk had no papers on it, perhaps because the desks around him were piled high with haphazard stacks of paper. The man on the phone talked vigorously and quickly, with an air of urgency again in contrast to the rather languid pace of things around him. The calls were short, Each ended the same way: Thanks, pal. I would become used to that phrase.
That, said Cyril, is Mac. He is someone you should talk to. Come, I'll introduce you. We walked over to Mac, who gave me a quick once-over and nodded his head between puffs. We made an appointment to meet on 18 August 1993 as it turned out, three months before the establishment of the November 1993 interim constitution that would pave the way for the first democratic elections in South Africa's history.
I knew who Mac was. Indeed, it would have been hard not to. In July 1990, when talks between the ANC and the South African government were already under way, he had been arrested and jailed, allegedly for trying to overthrow the government by violence. For a couple of months it was a big story James Bond stuff, men in disguises using false passports, caches of arms being secretly transported into the count
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Autoren-Porträt von Padraig O'Malley
Padraig O'Malley is the Moakley Chair of Peace and Reconciliation at the McCormack Graduate School of Global and Policy Studies, University of Massachusetts. He has dedicated his career to studying and helping to resolve conflicts in Northern Ireland, South Africa, and beyond. He is the author of Shades of Difference and Biting at the Grave, one of the New York Times's ten best books of 1990. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Nelson Mandela (1918 2013) was born in Transkei, South Africa. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party's apartheid policies from 1948 until his arrest in 1962. In November 1962 he was sentenced to five years in prison and started serving his sentence at Robben Island Prison in 1963 before being brought back to Pretoria to stand in the Rivonia Trial. From 1964 to 1982, he was again incarcerated at Robben Island Prison and then later moved to Pollsmoor Prison, during which his reputation as a potent symbol of resistance to the anti-apartheid movement grew steadily. Released from prison in 1990, Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 and was inaugurated as the first democratically-elected president of South Africa in 1994. He is the author of the international bestseller Long Walk to Freedom.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Padraig O'Malley
- 2008, 672 Seiten, Maße: 14 x 21,3 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Penguin US
- ISBN-10: 0140232249
- ISBN-13: 9780140232240
- Erscheinungsdatum: 28.05.2008
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
"[Shades of Difference] is exactly what O'Malley set out to achieve: 'a portrait of Mac and of South Africa.' It is a striking success."-The New York Times Book Review
"[O'Malley] is knowledgeable and sure-footed as he recounts this story . . . making a complex narrative on the whole quite clear."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"A groundbreaking biography of a central figure in the fight to end South African apartheid."
-Publishers Weekly
"Brilliantly written."
-Library Journal (starred review)
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