3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful account, 29 April 2008
By Seth J. Frantzman - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Warfare by Other Means: South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s (Hardcover)
The second book in Peter Stiffs trilogy (The Covert WarThe Silent War) about South Africa's covert wars is perhaps the most controversial. It covers a large variety of material and operations spanning the period 1977 to 1994. Some of the material came to light during the Truth and Reconciliation hearings but much more of it comes from Mr. Stiff's own digging and interviews. This is harrowing stuff including many lethal injections of captured guerillas who could not be turned into double agents and numerous assassinations and murders of others.
While Stiff's other writing has focused on special forces this focuses on the role of undercover agents, government support of coup attempts, the policy of supporting the homelands and their rulers, the recruitment of anti-ANC local activists in those homelands and the dismantling of the ANC during the period of `Total onslaught'. Some of the most harrowing and diabolical material involves Operation Barnacle in which captured SWAPO guerillas were drugged, killed and thrown out of airplanes. The story of the 1989 attempt to place a baboon foetus outside Desmond Tutu's house borders on the ludicrous or something from Hollywood.
Peter Stiff is at his best describing the conversations and minute by minute details of operations, some that went wrong and some that didn't, as in one case where an injection that was supposed to prove fatal had no affect and the operator had to strangle the victim instead. Maps, drawing and pictures adorn the material so the reader is never lost and is always on the edge of his seat waiting for more. Each story is self contained to some extent and although the cast of character is immense, many of them can be read by themselves so the reader is not forced to absorb a gargantuan amount of material without enjoying and savoring each chapter. What is most interesting is to see the number of times that Recce and other SADF officers refused to cooperate with the less than legal methods of the CCB and others, saying they preferred to fight an enemy that shoots back, not inject people with poison in the back of vans and then blow them up.
This book is not merely about the skullduggery of the Apartheid Nationalist government, it is also about the very real and horrendous activities of MK terrorists, such as the bomb attack carried out under operation Vula.
The book is essential reading historically because it reveals a great amount of material about the ongoings in Ciskei, Transkei and KwaZulu, including figures such as General Holomisa and Oupa Gqozo and George Matansima. The story of the AWB and Eugene Terre Blanche is told in full as is the story of the `white terrorist' Dries Kriel. Stiff has done it again with this masterful, wonderful to read, account of South Africa. Another must read for anyone interested in the period.
Seth J. Frantzman
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Contains gripping fiction, 18 May 2008
By G. P. Dodds - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Warfare by Other Means: South Africa in the 1980s and 1990s (Hardcover)
Peter Stiff is a gripping writer but sadly with this book he has descended into the realms of gutter journalism.
His account of Operation Direksie, which appears on pages 353 to 367 describes an operation which was launched to try to rescue former Rhodesian SAS operators, and persons from related organisations, from Chikurubi prison in Zimbabwe in 1988. This account has been shown to be outrageously defamatory to the highly experienced and skilled special forces operators involved. Essentially a true story has been embellished to make it seem that the operators were bungling drunken idiots.
The story would have been gripping enough if the writer had just stuck to the facts. To sink to such depths in a supposed history book is shocking.