Walking the Cliff’s Edge: The New Nation’s Rhetoric of Resistance in Apartheid South Africa

This article examines the rhetoric of resistance used by South African anti-apartheid journalists to expose the links between the apartheid government and death squads.By utilizing allusions, repetition, and a concept I refer to as “subversive enthymemes,” these journalists managed to reveal publicly information about death squad activity in a context of overwhelming constraints almost a full decade before these facts were confirmed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.