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A life in transition:
Alex Boraine
Alex Boraine's life is a
fascinating story of fighting
injustice and turning dreams
into reality. A child of
the Great Depression, he rose
from lowly beginnings in a
working-class family to become
head of the Methodist Church,
and MP for the Progressive
Federal party, and deputy
chairperson of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission
This is
an insider's account of a range
of important institutions and
events in South African history:
the halls of parliament in the
1970s and 1980s, the
controversial conference with
the ANC in Dakar in 1987, and
the hearings of the TRC in the
mid-1990s. Boraine gives
insights into people he met
along the way, including Harry
Oppenheimer, Steve Biko, Van Zyl
Slabbert, Thabo Mbeki and
Desmond Tutu. He also
takes us beyond South Africa to
some of the world's most
turbulent trouble spots, from
Serbia to Sierra Leone, Liberia
to Sri Lanka.
Something about the
author:
Alex Boraine was born in Cape
Town in 1931. After
entering the ministry, he
studied at Rhodes, Oxford and
Drew University in the USA.
He was appointed youngest-ever
President of the Methodist
Church of Southern Africa in
1970, worked as an employment
practices consultant for Anglo
American, and was elected to
parliament as an MP for the
Progressive Party in 1974. He
resigned in 1986 and, together
with Frederik van Zyl Slabbert,
founded IDASA, which organised
the 1987 meeting with ANC
leaders in Dakar, Senegal.
Boraine was one of the main
architects of the Truth And
Reconciliation Commission, and
served beside Desmond Tutu as
its deputy chairperson from 1996
to 1998. After teaching
transitional justice at the New
York University Law School, he
became the founding president of
the International Center for
Transitional Justice, and has
travelled to many contries that
are in transition from
dictatorship to democracy, at
the invitation of governments
and NGOs' to share the South
African experience and to assist
countries in their search for a
democratic culture and
sustainable peace
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