I’m no great fan of Stephen Chan, with his overt emphasis on the Commonwealth and the absence of any understanding of daily lives of Africans, but this book brings out the best in Chan. The first two chapters produce incisive insights into the nationalist, cold war and decolonising commonwealth politics, without however, engaging with any grass-roots motivations and contradictions. It is big men (and one woman, Thatcher) politics, personalities and cold war games. Yet with that particular angle, Chan churns out new insights almost casually: like the double defeat of South African forces in Angola, first in 1975 and secondly at Cuito Cuanavale in 1988, both times at the hands of mobile Cuban forces. Both defeats resulted in drastic changes in the SA polity. The first time around it led to a Kissinger mediated attempt at détente, spelling the end of Rhodesia. The second time, it made the South African securocrats see the folly of the Total Strategy, making way for F W de Klerk and spelling the end of Apartheid. Of course Chan plays down Kissinger and the end of the Cold War. Rather he habitually emphasizes the role played by the Commonwealth (secretariat, of which Chan was a part). In the end the book is heavily biased on the key characters and their interactions: Nelson Mandela (the saint whom Chan despises), Thabo Mbeki (the aloof exile intellectual who doesn’t understand SA, but nevertheless earns Chan’s respect for settling the DRC, Zimbabwe, and next flying off to Darfur) and Jacob Zuma (the cum back kid with the popular touch); Robert Mugabe (the cold, ruthless Maoist intellectual who acts like a fox and is spell-bound by his Generals), and Morgan Tsvangirai (the non-intellectual street fighter, brave, but erratic, a non-statesman), and of course a number of sidekicks like Simba Makoni (young Zanu intellectual in Chan’s view), and Arthur Mutambara (young intellectual with a leaning to Mugabe and mutual liking). There is some good stuff in this, like Chan’s tendency to focus on patronage relations, playing out of seniority and wisdom in the African way, and some key feuds, friendships and altercations (the irony of Mbeki in exile in Lesotho training Jacob Zuma on how to use an AK47, whilst Zuma later dances outside court after defeating Mbeki, singing ‘Bring me my machinegun!’). ( )