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The Introduction opens with a vignette focusing on John Vorster’s historic meeting with Kenneth Kaunda at Victoria Falls in 1975. This leads into the book’s central thesis: that South Africa’s African outreach during the 1970s reflected heated conceptual and political debates over the relationship between the apartheid system and the new postcolonial world, which in turn reflected fundamental differences over the relationship between nation, race, and state in the regime’s mission. The Introduction outlines the interplay of the central ideas across three levels: diplomacy, regional strategy, and domestic politics. It also introduces the major conceit of the narrative: the tension between, between the ideas favored by John Vorster’s “doves” and P. W. Botha’s “hawks.” Finally, it outlines how the book seeks to reposition the history of the apartheid state in relation to African nationalism, the global Cold War, and state formation in the global south.

This chapter deals with the rivalry between the USSR and China, and their exploitation of the third world countries in that context. It is believed that without the Cold War, Asia, Africa, and Latin America would have been different nations. In 1976, Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda spoke of the Soviet presence in South Africa as “a plundering tiger with its deadly cubs coming through the back door.” The Soviets and Chinese, on one hand, and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), on the other, transformed one another into weapons by teaching guerilla warfare. The chapter recounts the events that led the leaders of Zimbabwe to use China and Soviet Union for weaponry, and how the Soviets and the Chinese created African guerillas by recruiting civilians under false pretense.

Shilts is elevated as the closing speaker for the Fifth International AIDS Conference in Montreal, Canada in June 1989. Despite the esteem of the speech invitation, members of ACT-UP and others interrupt his remarks with heckles. The contrast of the prestigious speaking engagement contrasted to the simmering feelings of resentment and anger toward Shilts and his writing on/about HIV and AIDS is on full display. This conflict is symbolic of Shilts’s entire career where great honor and respect often resided alongside great scorn and vitriol. The complexity of Shilts’s attempt to be an openly gay reporter writing for a mainstream newspaper about gay subjects presents a need to more fully consider Shilts’s understanding of the societal or cultural role of the journalist.