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distance.
    Their operation had its origins in the events that made 1985 the watershed year in the history of South Africa. The cumulative effect of a large number of seemingly unrelated facts and events was such that something needed to be done to break the country out of what seemed to be a stalemate. The war that had started in Angola in 1975 was dragging on, costing millions of rands every day, while the losses in lives and equipment were increasing by the month. The national sports teams could not compete overseas and foreign teams no longer came to visit. The tricameral parliamentary system was a failure, with the Indian and Coloured Houses contributing nothing except protest speeches and the expense of duplicated and triplicated administrations. The government should have known better. Their plan had not worked with the creation of the homelands either. Transkei, Ciskei, Venda and Boputhatswana had all failed the test of democracy, with coups, corruption and poor service delivery the order of the day.
    In the meantime the South African taxpayer had to foot the bill and that in a currency that had, but a year earlier, bought one dollar forty and was now worth less than forty cents.
    The internal protest action had gained momentum after the Soweto uprising in 1976 and the townships were in flames. The military response and police action came to nought. The protesters became more daring and confrontations with the police and the army left many dead. Strike action brought the country to a standstill, for days and weeks on end. The government responded with the declaration of a series of states of emergency, which suspended the operation of laws protecting human rights and civil liberties and muzzled the media. The result was as inevitable as it was predictable: the protesters formed a united front and their movement became unstoppable.
    Not everyone in government could see that. The Cabinet was split between those who wanted to negotiate, and those who wanted to draw the wagons into a laager and fight. The security forces were equally divided, with the police and the army certain that a military solution was to be had, while the National Intelligence Service reported to the State President that the war in Angola could be won, that those who sought to overthrow the government by force would be defeated, but that the existing political and social order could not be maintained in the long run. Change had to come. Apartheid had failed.
    The State President began to see the light. International sanctions were forcing the country to its knees. In the inner circle, where the hands that held the strings of power gathered, he started mooting change. The reaction was uncertain at first. The hawks and doves separated and went their own way, some pursuing theirs in clandestine meetings at the State President’s house and in Switzerland and London, while others built special military vehicles they named after African animals: Ratels, Buffels and Olifante and Rooivalk helicopters. Their atomic bombs they kept secret, but their military hardware was exposed for all to see in the townships, in Angola and at military shows in the Middle East, where they hoped to find buyers.
    The opposition was also divided, but better organised. They were prepared to negotiate and fight at the same time. They knew that they would have to step up their military campaign in order to gain leverage at the negotiating table. They planted bombs in public places, outside the courts, in public eateries, in front of military buildings. They killed impimpi, those suspected of being informers. And they cordoned off whole townships, making it impossible for the police to operate or for the sheriff to serve court documents. The few residents who dared to venture out of the townships to do their shopping in town were stopped on their way back and made to eat the soap they had bought.
    Traitors on both sides crossed the lines and were employed as askari to do the dirty