Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. Some very light nice tanning. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The universal jubilation that greeted Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as president of South Africa in 1994 and the whole process by which the nightmare of apartheid was banished is one of the most thrilling hopeful stories in the modern era: peaceful rational change was possible and as with the fall of the Berlin Wall the weight of an oppressive history was suddenly lifted. R. W. Johnson’s major new book tells the story of South Africa from that magic period to the bitter disappointment of the present. As it turned out it was not so easy for South Africa to shake off its past. The profound damage of apartheid meant there was not an adequate educated black middle class to run the new state and apartheid had done great psychological harm too. No amount of goodwill could wish away this legacy. Just as damaging was the nature of the new leaders many of whom had lived in exile or in prison for much of their adult lives and who tried to impose decrepit Eastern Bloc political ideas on a world that had long since moved on. (MP)