With or without the ANC

Heribert Adam

• The Unbreakable Thread: Non-Racialism in South Africa by Julie Frederikse
  Indiana, 304 pp, $39.95, November 1990, ISBN 0 253 32473 4
• A Democratic South Africa? Constitutional Engineering in a Divided Society by David Horowitz
  University of California Press, 293 pp, $24.95, March 1991, ISBN 0 520 07342 8
• Koexistenz im Krieg: Staatszerfall und Entstehung einer Nation im Libanon by Theodor Hanf
  Nomos Verlag, 806 pp, September 1990, ISBN 3 7890 1972 0

South Africa still holds a morbid fascination for outside observers, despite the competition from more old-fashioned Arab autocracies. An astonishingly smooth experiment in social engineering intrigues neo-conservatives. Left-leaning scepties hold their breath lest Mandela and the ANC allow themselves to be co-opted by the white establishment. A stream of earnest political tourists land at Jan Smuts to make the traditional tour from Cape Town to Durban, to arrange appointments with willing but isolated academic pundits and newspaper editors. Now they can even visit the disorganised ANC headquarters legally or absorb atmosphere on an afternoon bus-tour through Khayelitsha or Alexandra.