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I would argue that history students should understand that the whole body of historical writing consists of interpretations of the past. They should be able to analyse a wide variety of texts and form their own opinions on a historical topic, and should be able to construct a coherent argument, using evidence to support their opinion. In doing so, they should be actively aware that their argument is no more “true” than that offered by any other historian. It is as much a product of their personal biography and the social formation in which they live as of the evidence used in its construction. Even this evidence is the product of other personal biographies and other social forces.

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expelled from the party when Dadoo was its chairman. This broader context is not mentioned, and there is no mention either that it had been a central committee decision that Dadoo should leave the country to mobilise international solidarity and consolidate the external structures of the party, 6 so Turok's snide remark is the only reason given as to why Dadoo was sent abroad.These caveats aside, the book is a welcome addition to the scholarship on South Africa's revolutionary turn. The attempt to bring about a revolution in South Africa was ultimately defeated by the apartheid state's brutal repression, mass arrests, and imprisonments, including that of Mandela, or, for those who managed to escape, political exile, and apartheid was to remain in place for the next thirty years. While the strategic shift from nonviolence to armed insurrection is often blamed for the apartheid state's ensuing retaliation, Landau importantly reminds us that 'Mandela and his comrades could not see the future' but, in a Marxist sense, '[t]hey tried to make it' (292).

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