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The Reunion is a series from the BBC’s Radio 4. Each week it reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history. In this edition, host Sue MacGregor looks back to the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. She gathers together the key individuals involved in secret talks which led to Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
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MacGregor is joined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who led the Free Mandela Campaign throughout the 1980s; Dr Niel Barnard, who was the head of South Africa’s National Intelligence Service and who had dozens of clandestine meetings with Mandela; Professor Willie Esterhuyse, an Afrikaner academic who liaised between the government and the ANC; Aziz Pahad, who was a core member of the ANC and led many of its delegations; former President Thabo Mbeki, who was a lead negotiator for the ANC; and journalist and political commentator Allister Sparks, who chronicled the negotiations in a revealing book.
Former President FW de Klerk also contributes to the program, describing the surprise that he and other cabinet figures felt when they learnt of the years of secret meetings.
Discussion
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