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Dear Comrade President: Oliver Tambo and the Foundations of South Africa’s Constitution

In his annual presidential address on 8 January 1986, ANC president Oliver Tambo called on South Africans to make apartheid ungovernable through armed action and militant struggle. But unknown to the world, on that very day, the quiet-spoken mathematics teacher and aspirant priest turned reluctant revolutionary had also set up a secret think tank in Lusaka, which he named the Constitution Committee, giving it an ‘ad hoc unique exercise’ that had ‘no precedent in the history of the movement’.

Knowing that all wars end at a negotiating table, and judging the balance of forces to be moving in favour of the liberation movement, Tambo wanted the

ANC to hold the initiative after the fall of apartheid. Assisted by Pallo Jordan, he instructed his new think tank to formulate the principles and draft the outlines of a constitution that could unite South Africa when the time came to talk in the fledgling days of freedom and democracy. The seven-member team, including Albie Sachs, Kader Asmal and Zola Skweyiya, started deliberating and reporting to Tambo. In correspondence, they typically addressed him as ‘Dear Comrade President’.

Drawing on the personal archives of participants, Dear Comrade President explains how the purposeful first steps were taken in the making of South Africa’s Constitution. Why and how did this process happen? What were the first written words? When and where were they put on paper? By whom? What values did they espouse? And how did the committee’s work fit into the broader struggle? This book answers these questions in new, paradigm-shifting ways.

Odendaal, Andre

Gandhi and Mandela: Born in the R.S.A

An original, well researched and illustrated book, which sheds new light on the influence which Mahatma Gandhi may have had on Nelson Mandela – entitled Gandhi and Mandela: Born in the R.S.A.
Based on some thirty years of research, Haswell puts forward three propositions:

Firstly, that both Gandhi and Mandela, suit-wearing attorneys, were transformed and reborn as political leaders, by life changing experiences in the city of Pietermaritzburg – hence the title Born in the R.S.A.;
Secondly, that as a youthful leader Mandela certainly adopted the nonviolent campaign strategies developed by Gandhi; and,
Thirdly, that in the treason trials which Mandela had to endure, his courtroom demeanour, legal tactics, and even phrases such as “ if needs be I am prepared to die”, so closely resemble those used by Gandhi, in South African courts, some fifty years earlier, that the author contends that Mandela can be considered to be a legal disciple of Gandhi.

Haswell, Robert

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