Cry, The Beloved Country

As it approaches its centenary this year, the African National Congress is under fire from Desmond Tutu and others for writing out of history other people's contributions to the liberation struggle.

Emphasis is on the PAC and on Black Consciousness among those being overlooked. But that is only to repeat and compound the fault.

While Nelson Mandela was locked up, 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.

Whereas 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.