Remembering Jacob Sello Selebi

It was in 1989 that the Soviet Union broke up.The Berlin Wall, which separated the former West Germany from East Germany, also collapsed that year. That was also the year in which the cold war ended. And it was largely as a result of the events of this watershed year that Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990 leading to the subsequent demise of the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1994.

In 1989 Selebi was in Gaborone to attend a meeting between the ANC Youth League and the Youth League of the then ruling National Party. The ANC at the time was banned in South Africa, and hence the meeting was held in a neutral venue, Botswana. The meeting followed a series of others held between various white South African organisations with the ANC in exile. The first such meeting was held in 1987 in Dakar, Senegal between the ANC and leading white politicians, academics and businessmen.