Book Launch & 10th Oliver Tambo Memorial Event

Constitution Hill Trust (CHT) and the Oliver & Adelaide Tambo Foundation (OATF) will be hosting the launch of the book Dear Comrade President by André Odendaal with contributions by Albie Sachs. The book is an account of how South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy was engineered through African initiative and agency, and how the template for the 1996 Constitution was forged well before the negotiations of the 1990s, providing a new explanatory framework for the momentous changes at the time.
The book sets a new paradigm by providing insights on the making of South Africa’s Constitution by addressing certain questions relating to the process of the drafting of the Constitution and when that process began. With the current debates and conversations on the process of the making of the Constitution and in some instances, the process being questioned, the timing for the book is ideal as it provides factual context for debates.

The launch, which takes place on the 105th anniversary of Oliver Tambo’s birth, will take the form of a panel discussion hosted by Professor Naledi Nomalanga Mkhize with André Odendaal and Albie Sachs accompanied by young dynamic speakers Adv Tembeka Ngcukaitobi and Thandiwe Matthews. The panellists will deliberate on the book and the context it provides and how this could advance the current debates on the Constitution and what it means for South Africa today.