Undercover with Mandela’s Spies: The Story of the Boy who Crossed the Square
Publish date: 10 June 2019
Issue Number: 827
Diary: IBA Legalbrief Africa
Category: General
Undercover with Mandela’s Spies: The Story of the Boy who Crossed the Square
By Bradley Steyn and Mark Fine
Jacana Media. R310
In 1988, SA teeters on the edge of a state of emergency. Seventeen-year-old Bradley Steyn crosses Pretoria’s Strijdom Square and walks straight into a massacre. Barend Strydom, the notorious white supremacist ‘Wit Wolf’, is mowing down black bystanders relaxing in the square during their lunch break. Steyn cradles a dying man in his arms and, later, with reports of eight dead and 16 seriously injured, he is brought face to face with the insanity of the nation. Suffering from acute PTSD, unable to cope with day-to-day life and consumed by rage, Steyn spirals out of control. On the political stage events are changing fast: FW de Klerk becomes President, the ANC is unbanned, and Nelson Mandela walks to freedom. However, undermining this progress, a sinister Third Force has formed an alliance between the deep state military-intelligence complex, the neo-Nazis and the white supremacists. With these forces edging the nation toward a bloody race war, De Klerk is forced to make a deal with Nelson Mandela. Steyn is part of the plan to infiltrate this Third Force network before all hope for a free future is destroyed. He goes undercover to help unravel the extremists’ masterplan – but will his time run out before they discover he is working for Mandela’s Spies? This astonishing true-life thriller reveals for the first time some of the dirty secrets of a dirty war.
