Introduction

The publication of this book coincides with an unprecedented challenge to apartheid. Both divestment and desertion by multi-national capital threatened the economy of the mid80s. By 1980 the violence more and more took on the character of a civil war, intensified by the blacks who fled to join the African National Congress (ANC) after the state mounted its counter-attack to the Soweto uprising of 1976. The ANC surprised many observers by increasing its pressure on the South African s.tate after the Nkomati Accord with Mozambique in 1983-so much so that the government made a brief conditional offer to release Nelson Mandela after twenty years in prison. It was, however, clear by December 1986 that the government was going to concede nothing, and, instead, increased repression and media censorship. Apartheid, "reformed" or otherwise, seemed here to stay.