Mandela and the General

“I was a soldier, he was a terrorist,” Gen. Constand Viljoen says of Nelson Mandela, setting the stage for a revealing true account of an unexpected reconciliation that arose out of the demise of racial apartheid in South Africa. Carlin (Playing the Enemy), a British foreign correspondent who spent years stationed in South Africa, draws upon multiple firsthand accounts to portray a nation teetering on the precipice of civil war after Mandela is freed from prison and his African National Congress party seems poised for electoral victory over the white elite. In response, Viljoen, a retired war hero, is called back into “service” by white nationalists in the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, who want him to lead them in taking the country back by force. Viljoen is plagued by visions of Africa awash in blood—vividly illustrated by Malet—and begins meeting with Mandela in private. Their discourses change Viljoen’s mind, his life, and the course of history. The painterly art, with sparing use of muted blues, yellows, and shocks of red, is evocative but sometimes marred by awkwardly placed text in all caps. The title has strong education market potential; Carlin and Malet’s portraits reveal the depth of Mandela’s remarkable statesmanship, and show that if every war has two sides, so too does every peace. [em](Nov.) [/em]

This review has been updated to clarify a statement about how text appears in the book.