Customer Reviews

The Crucible: Forging South Africa's Future

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I've not read this book. Here is the information I have gathered on it.

Between 1981 and 1988, Don Beck made 63 trips to South Africa and worked directly with Nelson Mandela and F.W. De Klerk to abolish apartheid. He applied the system of Spiral Dynamics based on the work of Clare Graves.

Beck says:

"My role was to shift the categories people were using to describe the South African groupings from 'race,' 'ethnicity,' 'gender,' and 'class' into the natural value-system patterns and the dynamics of change. Many were able to connect across these great divides to find the basis for a sense of being 'South African.' Mr. Mandela sought for a non-racist, non-ethnic, non-tribal, and non-gender society, one based on human respect and mutual accountability."

The book originated as a six-part newspaper series, created by Don Beck and Graham Linscott (U.S. Consul General in Durban), and which was published in major South African newspapers in 1989. Some readers credit the series for changing their minds toward the future of their country.

Seeing the impact that it had, the two moved forward to get it published. It ended up being self-published because, as Beck said in an interview with Ken Wilber, "no publisher would touch it." They did a print run of about 4,500. It has color plates, and, according to Beck, was at the top of the bestseller list in Johannesburg for a while.

Ken Wilber says of this book: "It is an exquisite study."