Verdict: stick
The Mail & Guardian’s news editor finds that Anthea Jefferey’s People’s War reverse engineers wishful thinking into the history of the struggle against Apartheid.
(The last time we saw Forrest in the review pages, he was getting in a muddle over the identity of one Helen Moffett, co-author Bob Woolmer’s Art and Science of Cricket. He’s on more secure ground here.)
Anthea Jeffery’s latest book is a tract masquerading as history. And what makes it additionally depressing reading is its musty odour of déjà vu.
Far from shedding “new light” on South Africa’s pre-transition upheavals, it is a restatement of the ideological fixations of the South African Institute of Race Relations in the 1984-94 period and particularly its dizzy romance with Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi.
Jeffery and the institute’s John Kane-Berman — who writes the book’s preface — will no doubt go to their graves muttering imprecations against the United Democratic Front, an organisation (if one could call it that) that has been dead for almost 20 years.
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November 30th, 2009 @10:14 #
I could almost forgive Mr Forrest the cricket muddle for this articulate and spot-on review.
November 30th, 2009 @10:24 #
Completely forgiven. This is an intelligent and informed stick.