Good reading at first, drags a little towards the end ( )

Self indulgent, preachy and not so very interesting 13 years later. ( )

Not only does Andrew Feinstein give a detailed insider's look of all the turmoil, triumph, and eventual disappointment of post-apartheid politics...he has also written what amounts to a representative example of how all governments work. In this respect his book is an unparalleled look at the machinations of power. It's more than a book about South Africa. His book made me understand once and for all that every government is comprised of flawed humans, who make decisions, not always consciously, in a manner that furthers their own personal interests. I am reminded of the way th US blundered into a civil war and eventually toward emancipation, a process driven by people on both sides of the war who were more interested in retaining political and economic power than in ending the moral horror of slavery--Lincoln did not emancipate the slaves until very late in the war, and even then the terms of emancipation were grudging. Even so, emancipation happened. And even so, in the case of South Africa, apartheid was abolished, and however flawed the outcome has been, the change was accomplished without the need for a bloody civil war.

I don't think it was Feinstein's intention to write a representative case study concerning the abuse of power, though. He meant for this book to be a muckraking exposé'; a call to action and for political reform. If you read the book with this sole intent in mind, it might leave you as frustrated with humanity and with government as the author himself seems to be. But i believe the book to be much more valuable as a study of power and its uses and abuses, a story that has implications far beyond the specific players and their actions at a given time in history. Within this larger historical framework the book is transformative and even hopeful. ( )

A personal memoir of an ANC MP's time in the SA Parliament. Focuses on the arms deal scandal that the author was heavily involved in investigating, but also has a bit about AIDS and the policy of the Mbeki government with regards to the epidemic. ( )

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