THE SECRET THREAD, personal journeys beyond apartheid

356pp., illus., paperback, Hidden History Series, Unisa Press, Pretoria, 2018

ISBN: 9781868889044

A history of work of the Christian Fellowship Trust (CFT), co-founded by Dutch Reformed Church minister Beyers Naudé in 1964. The trust gave grants and arranged programmes for some 300 people to travel on two- to three-month study tours, initially from South Africa to Europe and other parts of the world, and later from Europe to South Africa and Namibia. Founded on the idea that travel would expose people to different perspectives and strengthen them to challenge the theology of apartheid, the only request made of the grantees was to write a report describing their experience. This book is based on these reports, as well as on records kept by the secretaries of CFT, and correspondence, interviews and discussions with grantees, hosts, programme organisers and activists the grantees met.

Deborah Ewing's involvement with CFT began in 1987, while she was working as a journalist and volunteering with the Anti-Apartheid Movement in London. When in 1988 she undertook a four-month undercover mission to South Africa to report on the experiences of community activists and journalists, the CFT provided cover for her assignment. Shortly after her return to London she was asked to join the CFT UK committee and much later, after her move to Durban, to help tell this story.