Max du Preez' critical view on South Africa after after 20 Years of Democracy

South Africa's foremost journalists and political analysts, Max du Preez, has written a bitter book on the society and politics of his home country: A Rumour of Spring. South Africa after 20 Years of Democracy.

South Africa's foremost journalists and political analysts, Max du Preez, has written a bitter book on the society and politics of his home country: A Rumour of Spring. South Africa after 20 Years of Democracy.

The year 2014 marks the twentieth anniversary of South Africa's democracy and will undoubtedly be a crucial year for the country. Indications are that we will have reached a tipping point, if we survive 2014 with our stability, our democracy and our freedom intact, the future will look a lot brighter. My publishers and I agreed that it would be a good idea to take stock of where South Africa is after two decades of democracy. I had just completed a vast body of research on the political processes leading up to the settlement of 1994 for the South African Democracy Education Trust's Road to Democracy series, and had started working my way through the developments and trends of every year since then. It was going to be a monstrous book, a magisterial and wannabe definitive body of work. I ended up dissecting more than a few dozen books and collecting many thousands of documents, speeches and newspaper clippings. After working my way through several weighty contemporary political biographies and books such as Hein Marais's awe-inspiring 600-page South Africa Pushed to the Limit, R.W. Johnson's contrarian 700-page South Africa's Brave New World and Susan Booysen's excellent 500-page The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Political Power, I realised that I might as well abandon my efforts at academic prowess.(I also remembered how annoyed I always am when I see a book I think I should read and, when I take it off the bookshelf, it weighs two kilograms. Come on, who has time to read two kilograms of dense writing? Life is too short!) I realised that I should be suitably humble and concentrate on my strengths: simplifying things, explaining things, telling stories, making difficult reading accessible to concerned citizens with limited time. It did, of course, help that this is exactly what I do on a daily basis as a columnist for three newspapers, a public speaker and an analyst for commercial clients. It was quite a relief that I wouldn't have to compete for the nod of approval of the academic world or those who call themselves political analysts. So here's the product: my understanding of where we are as a nation twenty years after our liberation and my reading of what the future could hold. A guide, if you will, to help South Africans better understand their society, government, political processes and interactions, and the economy at a time of uncertainty, confusion and anxiety. My thanks to my advisor-in-chief and the designer of this book's cover, my wife Angela Tuck; to all the politicians, colleagues and friends I consulted during the writing process; and to Robert Plummer and his very able colleagues at Zebra Press.

Wo is Max du Preez?

Max du Preez is one of South Africa's foremost journalists and political analysts. After working as a political correspondent for various newspapers, he founded Vrye Weekblad, South Africa's first anti-apartheid Afrikaans newspaper, in 1988,and after 1994 he launched the television programmes Special Report on the Truth Commission and Special Assignment. His books include Pale Native, Dwars, Of Lovers, Warriors and Prophets, Oranje Blanje Blues, OfTricksters, Tyrants and Turncoats and Oor Krygers, Korrelkoppe en Konkelaars. He is currently a syndicated political columnist, public speaker and documentary filmmaker. Among his awards are the Pringle Award from the South African Society of Journalists, the Louis M Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism from the Nieman Fellows at Harvard University, and the Excellence in Journalism award from the Southern African Foreign Correspondents Association. He was the 2006 Yale Globalist International Journalist of the Year and the 2008 recipient of the Nat Nakasa Award for Integrity and Courage in Journalism from the SA National Editors Forum. He is a fellow of the Centre for Leadership Ethics in Africa at the University of Fort Hare and extraordinary professor at the School of Communications at North-West University.