Chained Together:: Mandela, de Klerk, and the Struggle to Remake South Africa

With skepticism that is sometimes helpful and sometimes approaches jaundice, Ottaway, a former Washington Post correspondent in South Africa, offers his view of the tortuous political negotiations since 1990. By concentrating on the lives and work of the leaders--state president F. W. de Klerk and African National Congress head Nelson Mandela--Ottaway provides some useful insight, pointing to de Klerk's lieutenants as the true architects of reform, and showing how Mandela clashed with his own organization over the trial of his wife Winnie, whom the author compares to Evita Peron. But Ottaway's nearly exclusive focus on top-level negotiations leads him to fault the two isolated leaders for missing a ``historic opportunity to become the first great bridge builders of the New South Africa,'' an assessment that does not take full account of the role of the media, businesses, and the townships of this country during its murky, wrenching transition. Had Ottaway broadened his lens a bit, his book would be richer and more nuanced. (Nov.)