DEAR COMRADE PRESIDENT, Oliver Tambo and the foundations of South Africa's Constitution

441pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Cape Town, 2022

In his annual presidential address on 8 January 1986, ANC President Oliver Tambo called on South Africans to make apartheid ungovernable through militant action. On the same day he set up a secret think tank in Lusaka called the Constitution Committee. Guided by an analysis by Pallo Jordan, Tambo instructed the seven-member team to prepare a constitutional framework for a liberated, non-racial, democratic South Africa. When the team, which included Albie Sachs, Kader Asmal and Zola Skweyiya, reported to Tambo, they typically addressed him as ‘Dear Comrade President’.

André Odendaal is writer in residence and Honorary Professor in History and Heritage Studies at the University of the Western Cape. His books include The Founders: The origins of the African National Congress and the struggle for democracy;  Pitch Battles: Sport, racism and resistance, co-authored with Peter Hain; and Vukani Bantu, the beginnings of Black protest politics in South Africa to 1912.