The Mandela Revolution: A British Soldier's Inside View of His Rise to Power

On 27 April 1994, South Africa went to the polls and delivered the first  black government in the country’s history. This was the Mandela  Revolution. This is not the story of how the Rainbow Nation was formed,  but it tells a story of one part of the revolution; a vital part, that  had to occur to give legitimacy to the new South Africa both at home and  abroad. It highlights the political necessity that drove a process and  the seemingly inevitable failure that it became. Not a failure of the  process itself, but a failure that had to occur to permit acceptability;  it resulted in the end of South Africa as a hegemony.

This  account focuses on how the military forces supporting the Apartheid  regime and those committed to its overthrow came together to form a new  national force, reflecting the new multi-racial, multi-faith  democracy. The process appeared unacceptable in some measure to all  sides, but the political instruction in 1994 was that there was to be  the integration of the South African defense Force and the armed wings  of the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress to form  the South African National defense Force.

Within this  revolution, there was a small detachment from the British armed forces  that were charged with assisting this transition. They were required to  oversee and assist a process that had never been done before and often  had to operate alone. It is a story of highs and lows, of sudden death,  breakdowns and ultimately of hope.

This is a personal account of  three years spent in the middle of this staggering transitional  experiment. It was Security Sector Reform and Disarmament,  Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) before such processes were  coined by the United Nations and arguably it was considerably more  successful than any such venture attempted by the United Nations. It is a  book that demonstrates how success and failure can occur  simultaneously.