In the 1990s, when I was just a teenager, South Africa embarked upon a remarkable process to end apartheid, draft a new constitution and establish a society based on equality and justice. Nelson Mandela had been released from Robben Island after almost three decades, exiles were beginning to return, and political negotiations had begun to determine how decades of white minority rule would be ended without a massive loss of life.
Those negotiations were tense and difficult, continually undermined by rightwingers who were hellbent on holding on to apartheid. Each time there was progress, the Conservative party and a range of white supremacist groups would question the authority and the legitimacy of FW de Klerk, the then president of the country.
