UMKHONTO WE SIZWE, the ANC's armed struggle

591pp., b/w & colour illus., hardback, d.w., Reprint, Cape Town, (2016) 2017

An account of the armed struggle from its early days in the 1950s to the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as South African president in 1994.

"Simpson’s book is a magnificent achievement, based on thousands of interviews, and recounting what happened at all levels in an almost day-by-day way. Sometimes it feels as though one is right there, trudging through the bush with the barely prepared soldiers, or flitting back and forth across various borders with committed and persistent infiltrators, or setting bombs with the later saboteurs in the streets of South Africa’s cities." Shaun de Waal, Mail & Guardian

"... animates the characters' actions, and the operation; theatres in which they act, with spare, image-textured prose." Jeremy Veary, New Agenda

Thula Simpson is Associate Professor at the University of Pretoria. He is the author of History of South Africa, from 1902 to the present (2021).