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Tomorrow Is Another Country: The Inside Story of South Africa's Road to Change
The companion to Allister Sparks's award-winning The Mind of South Africa , this book is an extraordinary account from South Africa's premier journalist of the negotiating process that led to majority rule. Tomorrow is Another Country retells the story of the behind-the-scenes collaborations that started with a meeting between Kobie Coetsee, then minister of justice, and Nelson Mandela in 1985. By 1986, negotiations involved senior government officials, intelligence agents, and the African National Congress. For the next four years, they assembled in places such as a gamepark lodge, the Palace Hotel in Lucerne, Switzerland, a fishing hideaway, and even in a hospital room. All the while, De Klerk's campaign assured white constituents nothing would change. Sparks shows how the key players, who began with little reason to trust one another, developed friendships which would later play a crucial role in South Africa's struggle to end apartheid.
"A gripping, fast-paced, authoritative account of the long and mostly secret negotiations that brought South Africa's bitter conflict to its near-miraculous end. Sparks's description of these talks sometimes brings a lump to one's throat. He shows how the participants' deep mutual suspicion was gradually replaced by excitement at the prospect of making a momentous agreement—and also by the dawning realization that the people on the other side were human beings, perhaps even decent human beings."—Adam Hochschild, New York Times Book Review
"A splendid and original history. . . . Sparks's skillful weaving of myriad strands—Mandela's secret sessions with the committee, the clandestine talks in England between the African National Congress and the government, the back-channel communications between Mandela and the A.N.C. in exile, the trepidation of Botha and the apparent transformation of his successor, De Klerk—possesses the drama and intrigue of a diplomatic whodunit."—Richard Stengel, Time
"Sparks offers many reasons for hope, but the most profound of them is the story this book tells."—Jacob Weisberg, Washington Post
"The most riveting of the many [accounts] that have been published about the end of apartheid."— The Economist
"A gripping, fast-paced, authoritative account of the long and mostly secret negotiations that brought South Africa's bitter conflict to its near-miraculous end. Sparks's description of these talks sometimes brings a lump to one's throat. He shows how the participants' deep mutual suspicion was gradually replaced by excitement at the prospect of making a momentous agreement—and also by the dawning realization that the people on the other side were human beings, perhaps even decent human beings."—Adam Hochschild, New York Times Book Review
"A splendid and original history. . . . Sparks's skillful weaving of myriad strands—Mandela's secret sessions with the committee, the clandestine talks in England between the African National Congress and the government, the back-channel communications between Mandela and the A.N.C. in exile, the trepidation of Botha and the apparent transformation of his successor, De Klerk—possesses the drama and intrigue of a diplomatic whodunit."—Richard Stengel, Time
"Sparks offers many reasons for hope, but the most profound of them is the story this book tells."—Jacob Weisberg, Washington Post
"The most riveting of the many [accounts] that have been published about the end of apartheid."— The Economist
261 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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About the author
Allister Sparks
7 books10 followersAllister Haddon Sparks was a South African writer, journalist and political commentator. He was the editor of The Rand Daily Mail when it broke Muldergate, the story of how the apartheid government secretly funded information projects.
Sparks later wrote a number of critically-acclaimed books on South Africa's transition from apartheid, including Tomorrow is Another Country (1996), The Mind of South Africa (1991) and more recently Beyond the Miracle: Inside the New South Africa (University of Chicago Press 2006). Sparks founded the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in South Africa and was its executive director from 1992 to 1997.
Sparks later wrote a number of critically-acclaimed books on South Africa's transition from apartheid, including Tomorrow is Another Country (1996), The Mind of South Africa (1991) and more recently Beyond the Miracle: Inside the New South Africa (University of Chicago Press 2006). Sparks founded the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in South Africa and was its executive director from 1992 to 1997.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 19, 2022
A sad truth: What most people celebrate as "the end of Apartheid" was in reality a reupholstered regime of brutal capitalist exploitation and injustice, this time maintained by a group of ex-revolutionary black politicians who were convinced that neoliberalism was the only option. Thus began a new chapter in the long history of injustices in South Africa, which Andy Clarno called "neoliberal apartheid" and brilliantly exposed in his Neoliberal Apartheid: Palestine/Israel and South Africa after 1994.
Reading this volume gave me a headache. Learning that the leaders of ANC were holding secret talks with the Apartheid officers in luxury resorts, having poolside discussions to "share common values about what we wanted to achieve", while the regime recklessly continued to massacre anti-apartheid protesters; that the Apartheid businessmen and intelligence officers thought they "can do business with the ANC. They are not radical. They are willing to negotiate. They are not dangerous"; that both parties slowly but surely stifled the revolutionary spirit of the anti-apartheid movement was painful.
One has to do justice to the South African ruling classes' clarity of vision when it comes to their class interests. Here's what de Lange, an ultra-nationalist Apartheid politician and an intellectual said in 1986, during a secret meeting with the ANC leadership:
"Look, we Afrikaners thought we needed many things to secure our future: segregated living areas, no mixed marriages, and all that. We thought if we didn't have them, this black continent would swallow us up and the Afrikaners would cease to exist as a people. But the reality is that we can remove the segregated living areas tomorrow and it's not going to make any difference, because your people don't have the money to move into the expensive white suburbs. So from your point of view it will be a meaningless change, but for us Afrikaners it will mean we will wake up one day and realize that nothing has changed, that we are still all right... Why do we need a white government anyway?"
Indeed. Just let the apartheid of money do its job, while your most "revolutionary" black government entertains the impoverished masses with their brand new freedom of hunger and unemployment.
And this is my last word about the long-dead author of the book: What kind of a shameless, unblushing person one has to be to call Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect and the implementer of the Apartheid doctrine, as "apartheid's Karl Marx and Stalin rolled into one" (p. 240), while it was the global communist solidarity that bedevilled the Apartheid regime since the first day it was founded and backed by the global imperialist countries as the fortress of anti-communism in Africa? Prick.
Reading this volume gave me a headache. Learning that the leaders of ANC were holding secret talks with the Apartheid officers in luxury resorts, having poolside discussions to "share common values about what we wanted to achieve", while the regime recklessly continued to massacre anti-apartheid protesters; that the Apartheid businessmen and intelligence officers thought they "can do business with the ANC. They are not radical. They are willing to negotiate. They are not dangerous"; that both parties slowly but surely stifled the revolutionary spirit of the anti-apartheid movement was painful.
One has to do justice to the South African ruling classes' clarity of vision when it comes to their class interests. Here's what de Lange, an ultra-nationalist Apartheid politician and an intellectual said in 1986, during a secret meeting with the ANC leadership:
"Look, we Afrikaners thought we needed many things to secure our future: segregated living areas, no mixed marriages, and all that. We thought if we didn't have them, this black continent would swallow us up and the Afrikaners would cease to exist as a people. But the reality is that we can remove the segregated living areas tomorrow and it's not going to make any difference, because your people don't have the money to move into the expensive white suburbs. So from your point of view it will be a meaningless change, but for us Afrikaners it will mean we will wake up one day and realize that nothing has changed, that we are still all right... Why do we need a white government anyway?"
Indeed. Just let the apartheid of money do its job, while your most "revolutionary" black government entertains the impoverished masses with their brand new freedom of hunger and unemployment.
And this is my last word about the long-dead author of the book: What kind of a shameless, unblushing person one has to be to call Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect and the implementer of the Apartheid doctrine, as "apartheid's Karl Marx and Stalin rolled into one" (p. 240), while it was the global communist solidarity that bedevilled the Apartheid regime since the first day it was founded and backed by the global imperialist countries as the fortress of anti-communism in Africa? Prick.
February 11, 2015
This is a good report on the fascinating story of the negotiations between the ANC, in particular Nelson Mandela, and the South African government in the years that preceded the end of apartheid. Conversations between Mandela and government representatives actually began four years before his release. That period allowed representatives of both sides to become well acquainted, and to build up the trust that carried them through the challenges of turning an idea into a reality. The event awaited the transition from Botha to De Klerk, as well as the activist government ministers' and their aids' ability to convince top leaders that it had to happen according to the compromises they had worked out.
The book also describes the course of the conventions that worked out the new constitution. The astounding thing was how often both sides came back to the table after violence by extremists seemed certain to completely derail the process. Sparks was present at some of the events that turned violent, and his reporting puts you right there. He presents a meticulous investigation of the rogue military organizations that perpetrated or enabled much of that violence, some of it attacks by Inkatha on the ANC and other groups supporting the transition. He also interviewed almost all the key players, so you get rounded portraits of how they gradually came to work together, and of their strengths and weaknesses.
The book was published just as Mandela was elected, so Sparks's guessing about how the future would play out missed the truth and reconciliation process. I want to read more about that, as the descriptions of the atrocities on both sides makes clear how much had to be resolved.
The book also describes the course of the conventions that worked out the new constitution. The astounding thing was how often both sides came back to the table after violence by extremists seemed certain to completely derail the process. Sparks was present at some of the events that turned violent, and his reporting puts you right there. He presents a meticulous investigation of the rogue military organizations that perpetrated or enabled much of that violence, some of it attacks by Inkatha on the ANC and other groups supporting the transition. He also interviewed almost all the key players, so you get rounded portraits of how they gradually came to work together, and of their strengths and weaknesses.
The book was published just as Mandela was elected, so Sparks's guessing about how the future would play out missed the truth and reconciliation process. I want to read more about that, as the descriptions of the atrocities on both sides makes clear how much had to be resolved.
April 4, 2014
Every South African should read this book especially the post 1994 generation!
March 15, 2025
This is a highly informative book that details the end years of the Apartheid struggle, with all its network of actors, movements, parties, and all its ups and downs. However, it lacks a critical lens of what is lost when one takes the conciliatory and negotiated approach to social transformation as opposed to a more decisively revolutionary rupture and upheaval.
To be fair, Sparks does briefly conclude with mentioning class-conflict in his predictions of South Africa's new rising social antagonisms/contradictions, and acknowledges how the wealthy land-owning bourgeoisie are still majority white, while the proletariat and lumpen-proletariat are still majority black (almost as if Apartheid hadn't ended in the economic sphere), he sees this only as a problem of political stability which should be quelled by the new state, rather than revolutionarily transformed as well.
Lastly, the epilogue describing Hendrik Verwoerd, the chief architect white-supremacist of Apartheid, as "apartheid's Karl Marx and Stalin rolled into one" (p. 240) is utterly ridiculous, considering how ideologically opposite he was.
Overall, it was very informative and useful to read!
To be fair, Sparks does briefly conclude with mentioning class-conflict in his predictions of South Africa's new rising social antagonisms/contradictions, and acknowledges how the wealthy land-owning bourgeoisie are still majority white, while the proletariat and lumpen-proletariat are still majority black (almost as if Apartheid hadn't ended in the economic sphere), he sees this only as a problem of political stability which should be quelled by the new state, rather than revolutionarily transformed as well.
Lastly, the epilogue describing Hendrik Verwoerd, the chief architect white-supremacist of Apartheid, as "apartheid's Karl Marx and Stalin rolled into one" (p. 240) is utterly ridiculous, considering how ideologically opposite he was.
Overall, it was very informative and useful to read!
January 24, 2019
the book portrays South Africa and how oppression was implemented.
September 27, 2022
That final chapter looking to SA's future hits different in 2022
April 22, 2025
Interesting book!
July 20, 2015
Fast-paced fact-filled and gripping, polished it off in a day. Reads like a political thriller, includes all of the play by play political events involved in the negotiation and work towards South Africa's first free election without the dehumanizing system of apartheid. I found some chapters here to have been repeated in Sparks' biography of Desmond Tutu, "Tutu: Authorized".
As an American, I was shocked to find the use of the word "Spook" in a chapter heading and find it offensive and inappropriate no matter whom it is referencing.
It is disturbing that so many criminals in the security forces who systematically targeted anti-apartheid ANC consensus builders received either light sentences, commuted sentences, or had sentences changed later to be abbreviated.
New details about Mandela include his prodigious memory for names and faces, described here as an "index card memory"; his lack of basic clothing in prison despite the much lauded "improved prison cell" stories about how much better his treatment became, and a brief mention of prisonmate Mac Maharaj's jailtime transcription and smuggling out of Mandela's memoirs. Once again I am astonished of how little of actual conditions of Robben Island cell life is given even in such a liberal book.
Certainly a must-read for those interested in how minds are changed, how a conscience is awakened, how a democracy can change people.
As an American, I was shocked to find the use of the word "Spook" in a chapter heading and find it offensive and inappropriate no matter whom it is referencing.
It is disturbing that so many criminals in the security forces who systematically targeted anti-apartheid ANC consensus builders received either light sentences, commuted sentences, or had sentences changed later to be abbreviated.
New details about Mandela include his prodigious memory for names and faces, described here as an "index card memory"; his lack of basic clothing in prison despite the much lauded "improved prison cell" stories about how much better his treatment became, and a brief mention of prisonmate Mac Maharaj's jailtime transcription and smuggling out of Mandela's memoirs. Once again I am astonished of how little of actual conditions of Robben Island cell life is given even in such a liberal book.
Certainly a must-read for those interested in how minds are changed, how a conscience is awakened, how a democracy can change people.
July 8, 2012
Kind of a South African version of Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787 in that it relates the issues and difficulties surrounding the creation of a nation's Constitution. Of course, the challenges facing South Africans in the 1990's were vastly different from what the American founders were facing two hundred years earlier.
An interesting book, but I may have read too many books recently on a similar subject. It covers, from a different perspective, much of the same ground that Nelson Mandela reported on in the final chapters of his autobiography. (Long Walk to Freedom) This was the 16th of 19 consecutive books about Africa that I'm reading this year, and the third in a row about the end of apartheid. My next book is going to be a light-hearted book about a safari guide in Botswana, and it should be a very welcome and much needed change of pace.
An interesting book, but I may have read too many books recently on a similar subject. It covers, from a different perspective, much of the same ground that Nelson Mandela reported on in the final chapters of his autobiography. (Long Walk to Freedom) This was the 16th of 19 consecutive books about Africa that I'm reading this year, and the third in a row about the end of apartheid. My next book is going to be a light-hearted book about a safari guide in Botswana, and it should be a very welcome and much needed change of pace.
September 7, 2014
This is a very good overview of the negotiations that led to the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, and the birth of democratic South Africa. It’s very easy to read, and covers a lot of detail of who was involved and how and when, but doesn’t get bogged down in the details. For that reason, this is definitely not a comprehensive overview, but it does cover all the major stuff. I really enjoyed reading it.
The only thing I was missing, and I sort of expected it, was more of a balanced story. This one was generally a view of all the subversive and terrible things the apartheid government engaged in during the negotiations (and there were many, to be sure), but didn’t go into the other side of things hardly at all – like the things the ANC and IFP were doing, although the political aspects of IFP did get a decent amount of words. So overall, a good addition to all of the books on the transition in South Africa – and one of the first, so a very important addition.
Definitely recommend it.
The only thing I was missing, and I sort of expected it, was more of a balanced story. This one was generally a view of all the subversive and terrible things the apartheid government engaged in during the negotiations (and there were many, to be sure), but didn’t go into the other side of things hardly at all – like the things the ANC and IFP were doing, although the political aspects of IFP did get a decent amount of words. So overall, a good addition to all of the books on the transition in South Africa – and one of the first, so a very important addition.
Definitely recommend it.
April 21, 2017
Fine insight into the events that helped end apartheid. Doesn't fall into the trap of glorifying Mandela like what happened in "Invictus". If I had one gripe it would be that not enough emphasis is put into explaining the exact details of how both the ANC et al. and National Party came to an agreement for a new constitution. That said, the author, whom often had a dramatic first-hand account of the events from this era, analyses virtually all the major and minor key players from the South African Peace Process.
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June 13, 2007Useful for understanding the negotiations process surrounding the end of white minority rule. Suprising at times and well documented. Provides useful insight concerning the charcter of Nelson Mandela and De Clerk. The question this entire book raised for me was: if they had known what was going to happen to South Africa, would they have made the settlement?
June 10, 2019
I read this book in the midst of many others detailing the end of Apartheid and the end of the freedom struggle. It provided an insight but I think suffered from being read amongst a miasma of other information.I felt it provided no special view or knowledge that I had not read somewhere else.
November 8, 2012
Another very important read for anyone interested in the history of South Africa, from the end of Apartheid to the birth of the new country. Well-documented journalism.
July 24, 2015
read a bit too much like a textbook in some places, but provided interesting background and insight behind the scenes of ending apartheid in South Africa
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews