Publisher's Synopsis
1990. President FW de Klerk does the previously unthinkable - he releases Nelson Mandela. South Africa is set on the road to Black majority rule. Conservatives are aghast; the White military in turmoil. De Klerk is soon forced to dismiss 23 top officers, including several generals, for plotting to block the transition. Many analysts expect a military coup. However, in the end peace prevails and the new Rainbow Nation is born, with Mandela as South Africa's first Black president. He and his successor, Thabo Mbeki, favour national reconciliation, non-racialism and modern market economics - as committed to by all parties to the 1994 Accords. Then, in 2007, Mbeki and the moderates are ousted from the leadership of the ruling ANC, their defeat engineered by former Moscow-oriented hawks with support of the SA Communist Party and young populist radicals. Statements that the 1994 Settlement is a "sell-out" of Black interests, that a "second revolution" is needed, soon replace reconciliation. Africanism replaces non-racialism. Nationalisation of the farms, mines and banks is loudly propagated. Increasingly, there's fear that South Africa is indeed on its way to becoming a second Zimbabwe. Did right-wing securocrats anticipate, in the run-up to the 1994 transfer of power, that De Klerk and Mandela's noble experiment may one day fail? That the ANC may in future abandon its commitment to the 1994 Accords? Did they prepare a contingency plan? Were all of the Apartheid State's weapons of mass destruction in fact destroyed? WMDs that included a nuclear arsenal and missiles capable of reaching Moscow and Havana, as well as the world's 2nd most advanced chemical & biological warfare capability, after that of the Soviet Union. Did renegade White officers plot to hide some of these weapons as part of a secret fall-back plan? WMDs to be used to blackmail a future government perceived to be reneging on the 1994 Accords and leading South Africa to becoming a 2nd Zimbabwe? PROJEK EKSODUS bursts on the scene as just such a secret plan, first revealed to French journalist Oedipa de Kersausson during a traumatic midnight visit by a sinister messenger from the TuGStaf, the shadowy Command Council of an underground Afrikaner Weermag. TuGStaf threatens a repeat of the biblical plagues if the South African government does not accede to its demand for a homeland (a "Volkstaat") for the Afrikaner people. This TuGstaf demands in terms of the right to self-determination enshrined in Section 235 of South Africa's constitution. Oedipa finds herself at the centre of this rapidly evolving drama. Intelligence agencies launch desperate efforts to confirm whether TuGStaf actually possesses WMDs. Such evidence mounts ominously, revealing vast sums of money hidden offshore, as well as the sophistication of the Apartheid NBC arsenal. The action moves from Europe to the Caribbean and back again. Inside South Africa, the trauma and tragedy that ensues as a result of the Rainbow Nation ideal being abandoned and, instead, fighting the pre-1990 battles all over again, is highlighted by the horrific impact this has on ordinary lives. Exposed to the opposing views and interests of the many different stakeholders, Oedipa begins to suspect intrigues from every corner - all the while realising, as TuGStaf relentlessly releases its plagues, what a blessing the Rainbow Nation concept of President Mandela had been.
