Cape Town based Max du Preez is a veteran South African journalist, author, and public speaker. He is an influential and highly regarded political analyst because of his deep insights into the political dynamics of the last four decades, his access to the main political actors and his honest, forthright approach.

After graduating in Political Science at the University of Stellenbosch in 1973, he worked as a newspaper journalist covering South African politics and the conflicts in its neighbouring states, later serving as political editor of Financial Mail, Sunday Times and Business Day

In 1987 he was a member of Frederik van Zyl Slabbert’s group that held talks with the ANC’s exiled leadership in Dakar, Senegal. In 1988 he founded and edited the pioneering anti-apartheid weekly Vrye Weekblad. When it was closed down in 1994, he joined the South African Broadcast Corporation as a documentary filmmaker and anchor. He produced and presented the influential 87 documentaries on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, The Special Report on the TRC, and the award-winning actuality programme Special Assignment. He is a popular columnist and op-ed writer for local and occasionally British and European publications.

He is the author of twelve books on South African history and politics, including The Rough Guide to Nelson Mandela published internationally, and A Rumour of Spring – South Africa After Twenty Years of Democracy, published in November 2013, that won the coveted Alan Paton Award for southern African non-fiction.

Among his many awards are The Louis M Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism from the Niemann Fellows at Harvard University; the Nat Nakasa Award for Courageous Journalism from the SA National Editors’ Forum; the Pringle Prize from the National Union of Journalists; the Award for Outstanding Journalism from the Foreign Correspondents Association; the Yale Globalist International Journalist of 2006; The Ahmed Kathrada Award; the Master of Social Sciences Award from the University of Cape Town and honorary doctorates from the Universities of Stellenbosch and the Free State.