In 1987, a handful of white South African politicians did the unthinkable: they broke ranks with the party of apartheid and went looking for the ANC. Most histories of South Africa's transition tell the story from the outside. This one is told from inside the room.

When Wynand Malan and a group of high-profile National Party supporters walked away to contest the whites-only election on an anti-apartheid platform, they founded the National Democratic Movement (NDM) — and set in motion the contacts, secret meetings, and back-channel talks with the ANC in exile that most South Africans never knew were happening.

Drawing on archival records and the accounts of the people who were there, Jan Hofmeyr reconstructs the NDM's part in the story: the stunning 1987 election results, the Frankfurt discussions with the ANC, the secret meetings of 1987–88, and the road to F.W. de Klerk's speech of 2 February 1990. It is a deliberately short history — clear, fast-moving, and built around the events that actually mattered.

This is the missing chapter in a much-told story: how a small movement of political outsiders helped make the unthinkable conversation possible. Includes a timeline of key dates (1893–1990), short biographies of the people involved, maps, and a personal epilogue on what went wrong after 1994.

A Short History of the National Democratic Movement in South Africa

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