Rainbow Nation Revisited: South Africa's Decade of Democracy Book

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's Civilizations includes an anecdote about a priest who refers to "that dreamer of freedom--Steve Biro". Though the Freudian attempt to draw a line under South Africa's past has its virtues, Biko's death in political prison was a landmark event in the struggle against apartheid, and in journalist Donald Woods' own story. Dressed as a priest, ironically, he was smuggled, with his family, from his country of birth in 1977 after printing a newspaper editorial accusing the Minister of Police of accountability for Biko's death. He spent the next 13 years tirelessly campaigning world-wide for an end to apartheid, his cause helped by Richard Attenborough's 1987 film of his story, Cry, Freedom. This, then, is an account of his post-apartheid return, and the successes and challenges he sees for the Rainbow Nation.Only, it isn't. Woods' account is better described as a personal travelogue of the 1990s, which, while he visited South Africa 27 times, also took in much of North America, and Britain, where he now resides. To the strains of Chopin, a suitably Romantic leitmotif, he muses constantly on the undisputed natural beauty of the country, as he drives across it with wife Wendy, and feasts off its produce. Continually recognised from the film, wearying for both Woods and the reader, he visits the Security Police offices (they no longer have his file), and Biko's grave (overgrown), and various friends and acquaintances; at the first democratic elections in 1994, he is waved to the front of the registration queue, ditto the voting queue, given free taxi rides, yet embarrassingly fails to see the irony. His considerations of sport, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Winnie Mandela are cursory, and while one can't take away the considerable cohesive strides the country has made, crime is rampant, AIDS is at epidemic proportions, and a minority of Afrikaners are still hell-bent on turning the country into a monochromatic Rambo Nation. Woods' tireless efforts entitle him to no small pleasure at a present, and future, he despaired of seeing, but this unconvincing montage does a brave, dignified figure too little credit, as man or journalist. --David VincentRead More