... Leys and Saul write about the past with a present agenda in mind. They wish to understand why a party which proclaimed socialism for so long has, since coming to power, followed a capitalist path and adopted what they call a neo-colonial economic strategy. They find the answer to lie, in part, in the suppression of democracy within SWAPO, which they attribute mainly to the brutalising effects of the war. And so they speak of the outcome as liberation without democracy, on the grounds that the present order is not really democratic because it does not empower the masses. And they reject any Robespierre-like justification that the terror used served a just purpose, in this case the ejection of South Africa from Namibia. -