Out of Africa

First, Eugene Terre'Blanche. The ANC's uncompromising support for its Soviet paymaster, right up to the bitter end, considerably extended the apartheid era by prolonging American support for that regime until the Cold War was safely over. And the truly effective opposition to apartheid came from the non-violent, non-Marxist, non-racial, pro-Commonwealth tradition of Alan Paton and Helen Suzman, figures who suffered far more than those who were no doubt painfully, but nevertheless comfortably, exiled in London, or Moscow, or wherever.

Whatever happened to the 1980s Radical Right, who may have waived the Union Flag at home, but who cheered on Terre'Blanche's public burning of it abroad? Surely they are not now anywhere near the running of anything? The Afrikaans Protestant Church, the Dutch Reformed breakaway that Terre'Blanche attended and which conducted his funeral, now has a whites-only church in London.

And today, Abel Muzorewa. The British Government held out for the Soviet-backed Joshua Nkomo, as if he would have been any better than the Chinese-backed Robert Mugabe, and therefore refused to recognise the Muzorewa Government. The rest is history. Can you name the British Prime Minister in 1980?