This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies and for Terry Gross.

We live in a time in the United States when our political divisions are so deep and our

discourse so heated, it sometimes seems as if the country could come apart at the seams.

Our guest today, South African-born journalist Justice Malala, has a book about a moment

in the history of his country when the nation came perilously close to dissolving into civil

war.

It was in 1993, when the White-led government of F.W. DeClerk had freed Nelson Mandela from

prison and legalized opposition parties, and delicate negotiations were underway to turn

the country from an apartheid state to a multiracial democracy.

Malala's book is carefully researched, but it's also informed by his own experience.

He was a cub reporter at a South African newspaper, literally his first day on the job, when

an act of political violence threatened to scuttled in negotiations toward majority

rule and send the country into chaos.

His book is a detailed account of the 10 days that followed, which he says offers important

lessons about effective leadership in moments of crisis.

Justice Malala has been a reporter and political analyst in print and television for decades.

His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and

other publications.

He currently writes regularly for the South African Times and Financial Mail, among others,

and is the resident political analyst for E-News Channel Africa.

He's the author of a previous book, we have now begun our descent.

His new book is titled The Plot to Save South Africa, the weak Mandela averted civil war,

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