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Comrades Against Apartheid: The Anc And The Communist Party In Exile

Stephen Ellis and Tsepo Sechaba
Reviewed by By Gail M. Gerhart
Fall 1992
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Stephen Ellis and Tsepo Sechaba
Indiana University Press
1992
214 pp.
$37.50

The African National Congress and the South African Communist Party have been allied for 40 years and, since their unbanning in 1990, all efforts by South Africa's nervous whites to sever the alliance have failed. In this extraordinary book Ellis, a former editor of the London-based Africa Confidential, and the pseudonymous "Sechaba," a member of both organizations, have lifted the alliance's self-imposed veil of secrecy, uncovering many intricacies of the historical partnership. As readers of Africa Confidential will appreciate, not every last detail need be flawlessly accurate for the overall picture to be extremely illuminating. Possibly the most original contribution in a decade to the literature on South African politics.

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