November 1985 was a hopeful month for the world but not for South Africa. Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan held their first meeting, offering the strongest signal in 40 years that the superpowers might prevail upon each other to shelve their strategies for mutually assured destruction. South Africa was rushing in the opposite direction. Tensions between anti-apartheid militants and the police exploded into the most violent escalation of racial hostility since Queen Victoria’s redcoats and King Cetshwayo’s battalions inflicted savage slaughter on each other in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. [read the full story here]