The country was ablaze. There were bomb blasts, massacres, assassinations. The right wing wanted a Volkstaat, Inkatha wanted secession for KwaZulu and was prepared to fight for it. It was a time fraught with danger. It was a time loaded with possibility. Peter Harris saw it from the inside. In January 1994 he was seconded to the newly formed Independent Electoral commission with South Africa’s first democratic election only three months away. A dedicated group of people tasked with the impossible. This story – enthralling, moving, thrilling – reveals the forces at work behind the scenes: those intent on destruction, those committed to delivering an election against the odds, and conspiracy to strike at the heart of the election. Birth is about a vulnerable moment. It is...
PETER HARRIS graduated from Oxford in classical Chinese and has a Ph.D. in Asian history from Monash. He lived and worked for many years in different parts of Asia including China, where he was representative of the Ford Foundation and a visiting professor at Nanjing University. He is now a Senior Fellow in the China Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Volumes he edited for Everyman’s Library include The Travels of Marco Polo, The Art of War, Zen Poems, Three Hundred Tang Poems, and Hanshan: Cold Mountain Poems.
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