DEAR COMRADE PRESIDENT by André Odendaal, with editorial contributions by Albie Sachs (Penguin, R340)
A well-worn anecdote describes how South Africa's new democratic Constitution was written by Kadar Asmal and Albie Sachs sitting around the Asmal kitchen table in Dublin.
As Odendaal's 441-page tome shows, the story of the formulation and transition to constitutional democracy was a good deal more complex. The apartheid government's