Slovo: The Unfinished Autobiography

A revealing and highly entertaining autobiography of one of the key figures of South Africa's African National Congress. As an immigrant, a Jew, a communist, a guerrilla fighter and political strategist - and white - few public figures in South Africa were as demonized by the apartheid government as Joe Slovo.

Joe Slovo began his political life as a lawyer at the Johannesburg Bar where he was a colleague and close collaborator of Nelson Mandela in the 1950s, serving as his lawyer in that period. He was co-founder with Mandela of the ANC's guerrilla movement and became the first white person elected to the ANC leadership. Slovo began writing this autobiography after the fatal bomb attack on his first wife, Ruth First, portrayed in the film 'A World Apart'. After many years in prison and exile, Slovo returned to South Africa where he was to play a leading role in the constitutional negotiations. Following South Africa's first democratic elections in April 1994, he won widespread respect and admiration as Minister for Housing. He died of cancer in January 1995.