Roelf Meyer: A Political Memoir by Roelf Meyer (with Tony Leon)
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“We were negotiating the impossible.”
Few people have shaped modern South Africa as directly as these two. Veteran statesman Tony Leon sits down with Ambassador Roelf Meyer for a wide-ranging, candid conversation on his new book Roelf Meyer: A Political Memoir. Together they trace Roelf’s unlikely journey from a sheep farm in Cariad in the Eastern Cape to the heart of the negotiations at Kempton Park, serving under four presidents — P.W. Botha, F.W. de Klerk, Nelson Mandela and now Cyril Ramaphosa. They unpack the world that shaped him, the Afrikaner nationalism that pre-dated apartheid, the strange bedfellows of white empowerment, and the moment the National Party finally drew a line in the sand.
Roelf Meyer’s new book is Roelf Meyer: A Political Memoir, as told to Annaliza Burgess. Part political history, part personal reckoning, it traces one of the most consequential political lives of South Africa’s transition.
Roelf Meyer is a former Minister in the governments of F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, the National Party’s chief negotiator at Kempton Park, and currently South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States.
Tony Leon is a former leader of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Alliance, a former South African Ambassador, and a best-selling author.
Few people have shaped modern South Africa as directly as these two. Veteran statesman Tony Leon sits down with Ambassador Roelf Meyer for a wide-ranging, candid conversation on his new book Roelf Meyer: A Political Memoir. Together they trace Roelf’s unlikely journey from a sheep farm in Cariad in the Eastern Cape to the heart of the negotiations at Kempton Park, serving under four presidents — P.W. Botha, F.W. de Klerk, Nelson Mandela and now Cyril Ramaphosa. They unpack the world that shaped him, the Afrikaner nationalism that pre-dated apartheid, the strange bedfellows of white empowerment, and the moment the National Party finally drew a line in the sand.
Roelf Meyer’s new book is Roelf Meyer: A Political Memoir, as told to Annaliza Burgess. Part political history, part personal reckoning, it traces one of the most consequential political lives of South Africa’s transition.
Roelf Meyer is a former Minister in the governments of F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, the National Party’s chief negotiator at Kempton Park, and currently South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States.
Tony Leon is a former leader of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Alliance, a former South African Ambassador, and a best-selling author.
