The Miller Center | "Dear Comrade President" | Paul Landau and André Odendaal
The Miller Center | "Dear Comrade President" | Paul Landau and André Odendaal
In early 1986, an ANC President Oliver Tambo called for armed action to confront apartheid, he was also planning for the future by developing the foundations of South Africa's Constitution. André Odendaal, a pioneering historian of Black political organization in South Africa, will speak about his new book Dear Comrade President, centered on the work of Tambo and his colleagues. Odendaal, in conversation with UMD Historian Paul Landau, will also discuss constitutionalism in the frame of recurring crises in South Africa's government and services.
André Odendaal is the vice-chancellor’s writer-in-residence and honorary professor in history and heritage studies at the University of the Western Cape. He started and directed the pioneering Mayibuye Centre for History and Culture in South Africa and was founding director of the Robben Island Museum, democratic South Africa’s first national heritage institution and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Odendaal has published and co-published twenty books under the imprint of his African Lives series since 2016.