Bradley D Steyn’s astonishing true-life thriller reveals for the first time some of the dirty secrets of a dirty war​​​​​​​ within the borders of South Africa, during the dying days of apartheid.

Undercover with Mandela’s Spies: The Story of The Boy Who Crossed the Square by Bradley D Steyn and Mark Fine is out in May 2019 from Jacana Media.

‘Terror is such a satisfying tactic for a sadist and it was also used by us’ – Bradley Steyn

1988 South Africa teeters on the edge of a state of emergency. 17-year-old Bradley Steyn crosses Pretoria’s Strijdom Square and walks straight into a massacre. Barend Strydom, the notorious white supremacist ‘Wit Wolf’, is mowing down black bystanders relaxing in the square during their lunch break. Bradley cradles a dying man in his arms and, later, with reports of eight dead and 16 seriously injured, he is brought face to face with the insanity of the nation. Suffering from acute PTSD, unable to cope with day-to-day life and consumed by rage, Bradley spirals out of control.

His parents unwittingly initiate the next chapter in the story of the boy who crossed the square when they arrange for him to join the SA Navy. Here, angry and unable to work though his trauma, he is called upon by the apartheid regime’s Security Branch to ‘confront the threat of Communism’, and the navy serviceman joins the dreaded D Section of the Security Branch as a classified government enforcer, but not for long as the underground ANC’s Department of Intelligence and Security (DIS) soon recruits him.

On the political stage events are changing fast: FW de Klerk becomes president, the ANC is unbanned and Nelson Mandela walks to freedom. However, undermining this progress, a sinister
Third Force has formed an alliance between the deep state military-intelligence complex, the neo-Nazis and the white supremacists. With these forces edging the nation toward a bloody race war, President FW de Klerk is forced to make a deal with Nelson Mandela.

Bradley is part of the DIS’s plan to infiltrate this Third Force network before all hope for a free future is destroyed. He goes undercover to help unravel the extremists’ masterplan – but will his time run out before they discover he is working for Mandela’s Spies? This astonishing true-life thriller reveals for the first time some of the dirty secrets of a dirty war.

Categories Non-fiction South Africa South African Current Affairs

Tags Bradley D Steyn FW de Klerk Jacana Media Mark Fine Nelson Mandela New books New releases Undercover with Mandela’s Spies