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Gerhart, Gail M. and Clive L. Glaser. 2010. FROM PROTEST TO CHALLENGE, VOLUME 6: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF AFRICAN POLITICS IN SOUTH AFRICA, 1882-1990, CHALLENGE AND VICTORY 1980-1990. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 779 pp. $44.56 (cloth).
From Protest to Challenge, Volume 6: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1990 provides a rich picture of the politicohistoric narratives in South Africa leading to a coup de grâce in the Odyssean saga of the struggle for political and social justice that eventually happened in 1994. The book's contents offer a liberation of one's mind from the outcomes of the epic story of Shaka the Zulu, which was about the nineteenthcentury battle for hegemony with Britain in the area.1
The book is made up of two parts, with part one comprising five chapters (reform and repression in the era of P. W. Botha; internal opposition: the battle joined; internal opposition: moving toward deadlock; exile and underground politics, 1980-1988; breaking the deadlock, 1988-1990) and an epilogue. Part two (pp. 217-779) includes impressive primary documents, about which the authors note: "readers who appreciate the value of studying history through primary sources can now move from the appetizing but tiny sample of the documents reproduced here to the vast feast of archival material housed in South Africa, British and American libraries" (p. xxii); a significant list of acronyms; photos that speak volumes about the activities aimed at quashing apartheid; a bibliography; and an index.
Chapter one situates the discourse around the early 1980s, when the policy of apartheid as a modality for the governance of South Africa started to crumble. The leaders in Pretoria were at war with themselves on two fronts: an international battle for statehood in Namibia2 and an internal civil war of sorts. Botha, who succeeded John Vorster as prime minister in January 1980 (p. 4), was determined to establish his imprint on the politics of the republic against the backdrop of enormous external and internal pressures for extinguishing the discriminatory policy of "separate development" of the races.
Before 1980, there was a fundamental debate on the creation of a tripartite parliamentary system-one for whites, Indians, and coloreds, with the black majority populations marginalized in the scheme because they were to be relegated to their...