Inside Quatro uncovers some of the exile history of the ANC and SWAPO that both organisations would prefer not to remember. Here is a first-hand account of the ANC’s Quatro prison camp and of the mutiny in Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) in Angola in 1984; articles on the SWAPO ‘spy drama’ of the 1970s and 1980s; an analysis of a death in exile with implications relating to Jacob Zuma; and a study of the responses of both the ANC and SWAPO to these episodes of intolerance, repression and excess. In all his essays, Trewhela analyses problems of the liberation struggles with a former insider’s knowledge and a journalist’s ability to ferret out the facts.

“Trewhela has spent much of his life on a voyage of intellectual discovery from his roots in South Africa’s liberation struggle. Most unusually, he remains faithful to his earliest ideals but this has made him the dissident voice of conscience. No one else writes about South Africa with his knowledge, width of experience or his passionate devotion both to the truth and to humane values. It is this which has made him as unpopular with the ANC as he was with their apartheid predecessors.” – R.W. Johnson

About the Author

Born in Johannesburg in 1941, Paul Trewhela worked in underground journalism with Ruth First and edited the underground journal of MK, Freedom Fighter, during the Rivonia Trial. He was a political prisoner in Pretoria and the Johannesburg Fort as a member of the Communist Party in 1964–7, separating from the SACP while in prison. In exile in Britain he was co-editor with the late Baruch Hirson of Searchlight South Africa, banned in South Africa. Since 2006 he has published numerous articles on South African political subjects on the websites Ever-fasternews.com and Politicsweb.co.za.