Category: Life Story

Dr Willem Steenkamp, son of former SAP-SB CO Maj-Gen Frans Steenkamp, and himself a former NIS officer who did his doctoral thesis on the intelligence function, as well as being a novelist, ambassador, attorney, entrepreneur and polyglot with wide experience of living abroad, and currently the co-editor and business manager of Nongqai magazine, shares his experiences and insights into South Africa’s transition. He gives his personal view on why and how the political war was lost, despite the “armed struggle” battles having been won, explaining that it had always been a political rather than a military conflict, with the “armed struggle” having been just one part of the propaganda war, which latter the former South African government decisively lost due to poor strategic and policy choices.