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Bring me my machine gun the battle for the soul of South Africa from Mandela to Zuma

Award-winning journalist Alec Russell was in South Africa to witness the fall of apartheid and the remarkable reconciliation of Nelson Mandela's rule; and returned in 2007-2008 to see Mandela's successor, Thabo Mbeki, fritter away the country's reputation. South Africa is now perched on a precipice, as it prepares to elect Jacob Zuma as president--signaling a potential slide back to the bad old days of post-colonial African leadership, and disaster for a country that was once the beacon of the continent. Drawing on his long relationships with all the key senior figures including Mandela, Mbeki.

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  • "Award-winning journalist Alec Russell was in South Africa to witness the fall of apartheid and the remarkable reconciliation of Nelson Mandela's rule; and returned in 2007-2008 to see Mandela's successor, Thabo Mbeki, fritter away the country's reputation. South Africa is now perched on a precipice, as it prepares to elect Jacob Zuma as president--signaling a potential slide back to the bad old days of post-colonial African leadership, and disaster for a country that was once the beacon of the continent. Drawing on his long relationships with all the key senior figures including Mandela, Mbeki."@en
  • "The end of Thabo Mbeki's presidency and the settling in of Jacob Zuma provide an opportunity to assess the 15 years since the fall of apartheid. Russell's and Feinstein's assessments are both excellent and disquieting. A former South Africa correspondent for the Financial Times, Russell offers balanced portraits of the three postapartheid presidents, the policy successes and failures of the successive governments, and the emergence of a black elite. Thanks to the visionary leadership of the African National Congress (ANC) under Nelson Mandela, the country wildly outperformed most expectations. As depicted by Russell, the mediocre and paranoid leadership of Mbeki has slowly eaten away at the early optimism, and the country he describes is one of rising crime, corruption, and bitter race relations. Russell leavens his pessimism with inspiring tales of individual courage and virtue, but his is certainly a bleak account. Feinstein was one of the idealistic young white South African intellectuals who chose to support the ANC in the twilight years of the apartheid regime, and he was a parliamentary backbencher for that party from 1997 to 2001, when he resigned to protest a particularly corrupt arms deal. He has now written a fascinating memoir of his life in the ANC and of the scandal he helped uncover. His account is an absorbing insider's description of the internal culture of the ANC, from the chaotic (but still democratic) early years to its second decade of rule, when it had become a more centralized and expedient dominant party. Compared to Russell, Feinstein is mild in his criticism of Mbeki, but he is withering about the culture of corruption and spinelessness he sees in the ANC. Despite his damning portrait of the party's approach to governance, Feinstein appears sincere in his ultimate faith in its future and that of South Africa. On the other hand, like an increasing number of his white compatriots, he no longer lives there."

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  • "Electronic books"@en

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  • "Bring me my machine gun : the battle for the soul of South Africa from Mandela to Zuma"
  • "Bring me my machine gun the battle for the soul of South Africa from Mandela to Zuma"
  • "Bring me my machine gun the battle for the soul of South Africa from Mandela to Zuma"@en
  • "Bring me my machine gun : the battle for the soul of south africa from mandela to zuma"@en
  • "Bring Me My Machine Gun the Battle for the Soul of South Africa, from Mandela to Zuma"@en

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