WALKING WITH GIANTS

337pp., illus., paperback, Cape Town, 2017

Foreword by Ahmed Kathrada.

Sindiso Mfenyana was born in 1940 in the Eastern Cape. He was recruited into the ANC underground while at Fort Hare University, went into exile in Botswana, and received further education in the Soviet Union. After graduating in 1967 from the Kiev Economics Institute he was deployed to Budapest to represent the ANC Youth Section at the World Federation of Democratic Youth. He played a leadership role in the ANC in exile for decades and was secretary to ANC President, Oliver Tambo. He returned to South Africa in the early 1990s and became the first black person to occupy the position of Secretary to Parliament. On his retirement from Parliament in 2004 he took up an ambassadorial position in Tanzania. He retired from the diplomatic corps in 2011.

"A true non-racialist with a broad view of the world, he reflects a generation of South Africans who were educated in the East European socialist countries. He was widely read and knowledgeable about global affairs; he understood the politics of most African countries and hoped to contribute to the building of a new South Africa." Professor Janet Cherry, Department of Development Studies, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University