Unfinished Business: South Africa, Apartheid and Truth

Many people, both in South Africa and abroad, hoped that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in 1996 would uncover the hidden history of South Africa’s apartheid past. It is a widely propagated myth that it did so. In fact, most of the thirty-three-year mandate of the Commission was ignored. Behind a facade of time constraints and managerial short comings, some intended investigations never proceeded, others were bungled. Most importantly, no serious examination was made of the system that gave rise to some of the most horrific, racist social engineering of modern times. Unfinished Business pulls back the curtain on the ‘political miracle’ of the new South Africa to reveal some of the real stories in its past: how the Afrikaner Broederbond operated, the murderous activities of the South African security forces in Transkei, the citation of De Klerk as a defendant in a civil action for murder at exactly the moment he was traveling to Oslo to collect a Nobel peace prize, and many others. Seeking to probe where the Commission failed or feared to tread, this books asks how long South Africa’s miracle might be expected to last.