Mission improbable : a piece of the South African story

In his foreword to the book, Deputy President - now President - Thabo Mbeki hails the telling, after years of confidentiality, of this remarkable story of a peace mission undertaken by a South African lawyer in the late 1980s: a personal quest for a negotiated settlement between the national government of PW Botha and the ANC in the hope of avoiding anarchy and civil war in South Africa.

Richard Rosenthal's "Mission Improbable" slots into the other cross - cutting initiatives that culminated in the joyous night of the signing of the final accords of the Multi-Party Negotiating Process and the holding of South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994.

With those heady days that held the nation and the world in thrall ten years ago receding in memory, this book reminds us of where we came from, and of the journey we have travelled. "Mission Improbable" unfolds like a nail - biting drama, with clandestine meetings in Berne, Frankfurt and Lusaka and the crucial support of the Swiss government in the background. It tells of a political process in which seemingly old-fashioned values such as humility, generosity, forgiveness, and statesmanship, succeeded in facilitating a largely peaceful transfer of power, despite all prophecies and portents of disaster.