Adam Habib, vice-chancellor of Wits University and the most prominent and outspoken university official during the recent student protests, takes a characteristically frank view of the past three years on South Africa's university campuses in this new book. He focuses on the student protests at Wits, drawing on his own intimate involvement and negotiations with the students, and records university management and government responses to the events. He critically examines the student movement and individual student leaders who emerged under the banner #FeesMustFall, discusses how to achieve truly progressive social change in South Africa, on our campuses and off, and reimagines the future of South African higher education.Rebels and Rage is both a historical account of a tempestuous time and a thoughtful reflection on the issues the protests kicked up from Habib's perspective not only as a high-ranking member of university management, but also as a political scientist and intellectual.
DO YOU DREAM of a future free of financial stress? One where you can afford to start your own business, travel or retire comfortably? In Make Your Money Work For You, investment specialist Anthea Gardner shows you how to ‘sweat your assets’ and grow your wealth to achieve these dreams – and you won’t even need a degree in accounting.Gardner makes the world of investing accessible by:Illustrating why it’s important to know the difference between saving and investingExplaining key terms, from ‘unit trusts’ and ‘retirement annuities’ to ‘compound interest’Clarifying the role of different players, such as financial advisors and asset managersDescribing how easy it is to buy shares on the stock marketYou don’t need millions to start. You can launch your financial future by investing just R100 a month. It’s time to take action and make your money work for you.
More than 25 years have passed since South Africans were being shot or hacked or burned to death in political violence, and the memory of the trauma has faded. Nevertheless, some 20 500 people were killed between 1984 and 1994. Conventional wisdom has it that most died as a result of the ANC's people's war.Many books have been written on South Africa's political transition, but none has dealt adequately with the people's war. This book does. It shows the extraordinary success of the people's war in giving the ANC a virtual monopoly on power, as well as the great cost at which this was done. The high price of it is still being paid.Apart from the terror and killings it sparked at the time, the people's war set in motion forces that cannot easily be tamed. Violence, once unleashed, is not easy to stamp out. 'Ungovernability', once generated, is not readily reversed.For this new edition, Anthea Jeffery has revised and abridged her seminal work. She has also included a brief overview of the ANC's National Democratic Revolution for which the people's war was intended to prepare the way. Since 1994, the NDR has been implemented in many different spheres. It is now being speeded up in its second and more radical phase.
Are the courts the only arm of government that can fulfil the Constitution’s promise? Is there too much interference by the courts in politics? Is law a weapon in politics? Is politics outside the law? Lawfare is the potent clash of these ideas.This book is essential reading to bring forward the lessons from our past. A bold and unique collaboration between legal experts Michelle le Roux and Dennis Davis, it explores a series of landmark cases that came to define South Africa’s legal and political landscape. It examines how the law has been used and abused. Defining cases litigated in the apartheid past, in the constitutional era and right up to the recent days of state capture are examined.This book is a response to populist attacks on the Constitution. It affirms that South Africa’s Constitution holds the promise of the law as one progressive tool to use in dismantling racial inequality, holding government accountable and constructing a free, dignified, equal and just society.
A bold and innovative social history, The Seed is Mine concerns disenfranchised black people who did so much to shape the destiny of South Africa. After years of interviews with Kas Maine and his neighbours, employers, friends, and family – a rare triumph of collaborative courage and dedication – Charles van Onselen has recreated the entire life of a man who struggled to maintain his family in a world dedicated to enriching whites and impoverishing blacks, while South Africa was tearing them apart.
RW JOHNSON’S BEST-SELLING How Long Will South Africa Survive? was hailed by financial writer Alec Hogg as ‘a masterpiece in unblemished reality’. Published at the height of the Zuma presidency, it accurately forecast that South Africa’s credit rating would be downgraded to junk status. Johnson warned that this sorry progress might end in an IMF bail-out and wholesale change to the political system.These predictions, novel at the time, were quickly confirmed by events. Now, with Cyril Ramaphosa in the hot seat and an election looming. Johnson picks up the story, analysing how Ramaphosa came to power and how Zuma has fought back. Recovery from the deep economic damage caused by Zuma will not be easy and the prospect of an IMF bail-out is now measurably closer. The key question is whether Ramaphosa and his supporters can restore the lost dream of the Mandela years.Johnson is easily the most incisive analyst of the South African situation. He offers his own suggestions for a road out of the crisis and a tough-minded assessment of where the country stands at this critical hour.
Growing up in suburban Pretoria, Steve Joubert dreamed of a career as a pilot. After undergoing SAAF pilot training, a freak injury put an end to his hopes of flying fighter jets. Instead he learned to fly the versatile Alouette helicopter.He had barely qualified as a chopper pilot when he was sent to the Border, where he flew missions over Namibia and southern Angola to supply air cover to troops on the ground. As a gunship pilot, Steve saw some of the worst scenes of the war, often arriving first on the scene after a contact or landmine attack.He also recalls the lighter moments of military life, as well as the thrill of flying. A born maverick, his lack of respect for authority often got him into trouble with his superiors.His experiences affected him deeply, and led him eventually to question his role in the war effort. As the Border War escalated, his disillusionment grew. This gripping memoir is a powerful plea for healing and understanding.
Bill Schroder is the stuff teaching legends are made of. He was strict, yet kind; firm and consistent, yet creative and playful when needed. He knew the magical mix of discipline and care needed to ensure the loyalty of his students.In this warm-hearted, inspiring and often funny memoir, Schroder looks back on four decades as an English and Latin teacher and, later, headmaster, including 19 years at Pretoria Boys High.His holistic approach to teaching earned him the respect of both teachers and students. Teaching is not only about conveying knowledge, he believed, but also about looking after the emotional needs of students. For Schroder, the institution was never more important than the individual - he always put his students first.As a headmaster he became known for doing things his own way. He gave students a voice where others wanted to silence them, he found creative ways to turn problem schools around and never allowed departmental admin to get in the way of teaching. In the early 1990s when schools were opened to all races, Pretoria Boys High under him played a leading role in transforming their school. In his retirement he also served as a consultant and a mentor to a school in a Pretoria township.Here is a teacher who left an indelible mark on thousands of pupils from Cape Town to Pretoria.
MEET DAISY DE MELKER, who 'lovingly' prepared a flask of strychnine-laced coffee for her son. She is very different from Najwa Petersen, who carefully planned a 'house robbery' to eliminate her musician husband. Chané van Heerden placed her victim's facial skin in the freezer for preservation, yet Phoenix Racing Cloud Theron wished to dispose of her mother's body before it was even cold. And Dina Rodrigues? She 'wouldn't harm a fly' - but went and organised a hit on a baby.Women are not paragons of virtue who cannot commit murder. Nor are they always insane when they do deliberately cause death. And the women with 'blood on their hands' are not homogeneous.In Blood on Her Hands, award-winning journalist Tanya Farber investigates the lives, minds and motivations of some of South Africa's most notorious female murderers, from the poisonous nurse Daisy de Melker, to the privileged but deeply disturbed Najwa Petersen, to the mysterious Joey Haarhoff, who died before revealing the fate of her victims. Written in a style lighter than the subject matter might suggest, Blood on Her Hands will keep you reading until late at night.
CAPE TOWN'S POPULAR high-end night spots attract an array of clientele, from young partygoers to politicians, models to moguls. In parallel with this is a sleazy underworld where control of the lucrative nightclub-security scene is the ultimate prize, for which some are prepared to pay using extortion and murder as the main currencies.South Africa's private-security sector is massive, an informal police force increasingly relied on as confidence in traditional policing wanes. But it's an industry tainted by ties to underworld figures and events.The Mother City's security turf wars have their roots in pre-democratic South Africa, and branch into Cape Flats gang battles raging since the 1990s. Dotting this landscape are colourful and contentious figures - Yuri 'The Russian' Ulianitski, nightclub-security kingpin and rumoured apartheid-state operative Cyril Beeka, convicted drug dealer Radovan Krej¿í¿, controversial businessman Nafiz Modack and Mark Lifman. Making surprise appearances are high-ranking police officers as well as prominent members of the ANC and government.Journalist Caryn Dolley has interviewed numerous criminal and suspects, often putting herself in danger in pursuit of the truth. Here she weaves her research into a story that lays bare the reality of Cape Town's nightclub-security wars: a vast network of information and misinformation in which innocent members of the public enjoying a night out inadvertently rub shoulders with some of the city's most infamous criminals.
The ongoing assassinations of anti-apartheid activists led to rumours that some kind of third force must be responsible. The South African government flatly denied any involvement. All investigations of the matter were met with stony silence.The first crack in the wall came with the publication by the Vrye Weekblad newspaper of the extraordinary story of Dirk Coetzee, former Security Branch Captain. His tale of murder, kidnapping, bombing and poisoning provided corroboration of the shocking confessions made by Almond Nofemela on death row. Slowly the dark secret started unravelling under the probing of determined journalists.In the Heart of the Whore introduces the reader to the secret underworld of the death squads. It explains when and why they were created, who ran them, what methods they employed, who the victims and perpetrators were.Jacques Pauw was more closely involved with the subject than any other person outside the police and armed forces. In this groundbreaking work he looks at the devastating effect of the secret war on the opponents of apartheid as well as the corrosive effects on the people who committed these crimes.T
Jacques Pauw has been an investigative journalist for more than three decades. Before the phenomenal success of The President’s Keepers, he spent years tracking down apartheid death squads. Into the Heart of Darkness, first released in 1997, was the result of this work.Despite official denials and cover-ups, the rumours of apartheid’s death squads have now been proved to be all too real. Hundreds of anti-apartheid activists were killed and thousands tortured by a group of bizarre assassins, the foot soldiers of apartheid’s secret war.Jacques Pauw has been more closely involved with apartheid’s killers than any other journalist. For more than seven years, he has hunted them down and become a witness to their secret and forbidden world.Into the Heart of Darkness will take you on a journey into the minds and lives of the men who went out to kill and kill again. What caused these souls to become so dark and guided them to so much evil?
I sat there divided. Though my grandfather was visibly shaken by the force of this memory, and I knew I was seeing him more vulnerable than I had ever seen him, I felt a bubbly thrill because this was such good stuff, and I remember turning my eyes away from his distressed face to make sure the wheels of the dictaphone were still turning. When Daniel is tasked with writing the biography of his grandfather, Jules Browde - one of South Africa’s most celebrated advocates - he sharpens his pencil and gets to work. But the task that at first seems so simple comes to overwhelm him. As the book begins to recede - month after month, year after year - he must face the possibility of disappointing his grandfather, whose legacy now rests uncomfortably in his hands. The troubled progress of Daniel’s book stands in sharp contrast to the clear-edged tales his grandfather tells him. Spanning almost a century, these gripping stories compellingly conjure other worlds: the streets of 1920s Yeoville, the battlefields of the Second World War, the courtrooms of apartheid South Africa. The Relatively Public Life of Jules Browde turns the conventions of a biography inside out. It is more than the portrait of an unusual South African life, it is the moving tale of a complex and tender relationship between grandfather and grandson, and an exploration of how we are made and unmade in the stories we tell about our lives.
Ton Vosloo is one of South Africa’s most widely admired newspapermen and businessmen. Under his leadership, Naspers evolved from a print group into a media giant with investments across the world. In his memoir, Vosloo tells the story of his remarkable career, spanning fifty-nine fractious years – years that saw a great many changes in South Africa, in the media and politically.Born in 1937 in Uitenhage, Vosloo started out writing sports reports for local newspapers while he was still at school. Once he had cut his teeth in newspaper journalism, his career took him to Parliament, where he worked as a parliamentary correspondent, and then on to editing Beeld, the popular Afrikaans daily. In 1970, he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University; it was during this time in the USA that he became increasingly aware of the unsustainability of apartheid.In 1983, Vosloo was appointed managing director of Naspers and set about vigorously transforming the company. On the commercial front, with Koos Bekker and other media companies, he established M-Net, the country’s first pay-television network. In 1992, Vosloo became chairman of Naspers, with Bekker later succeeding him. Today, Naspers’s story of singular and commercial success continues – a success that has its roots in Ton Vosloo’s stewardship.
In 2012 Angy Peter was bringing up her young children with her husband is Bardale, Mfuleni on the Cape Flats. Angy was an activist, and spent her days collecting evidence for a commission of inquiry into policing that had the chance to change law enforcement across the country’s troubled townships. She was vocally against vigilante violence and a go-to person when demanding better services from the police.But when the commission started its hearings, Angy found herself on trial for murdering – necklacing – a young neighbourhood troublemaker, Rowan du Preez. The state’s case centred on the accusation Rowan had allegedly made with his dying breath – that Angy had set alight the tyre around his neck.Simone Haysom takes us into the heart of a mystery: was Angy Peter framed by the police for a murder she didn’t commit? Or was she a wolf in sheep’s clothing who won a young man’s trust and then turned on him in the most brutal way?
LOUIS BOTHA, THE FIRST PRIME MINISTER of the Union of South Africa, was a brilliant Boer general who won significant victories over the British in the early stages of the Anglo-Boer War. When the weight of the British arms eventually overwhelmed the Boers, Botha and Jan Smuts encouraged peace between English and Afrikaner and led the four South African colonies into Union in 1910.Botha was a big-hearted and generous man in his dealings with all. In 1914, he had to put down an Afrikaner rebellion over the Union’s participation in the Great War. The experience broke his heart, as many of the rebels were old Anglo-Boer War comrades. At Versailles in 1919, representing South Africa, he pleaded unsuccessfully for magnanimity towards a defeated Germany. Globally respected, Botha and Smuts operated as a double act before Botha’s untimely death in August 1919.Richard Steyn’s recent books, Jan Smuts: Unafraid of Greatness and Churchill and Smuts: The Friendship, have won him a loyal readership. In Louis Botha: A Man Apart, he again masterfully brings to life a great South African.
The South African Special Forces achieved exceptional results with small groups of elite soldiers instead of larger, conventional teams. The Team Secret shows that the same principle applies to the business world – a small team has a greater chance at completing projects efficiently, within a budget and on time.Teams, rather than individuals, form the DNA of many companies and they play a pivotal role in achieving strategic and financial success. Like Special Forces teams, they must function as a well-oiled machine firing on all cylinders.The book identifies the key characteristics of an efficient team, how to select the right team members, how to inculcate an ethos centred around team principles and how to lead an effective team. It speaks to both team members and team leaders across all managerial levels – from a team leader in a call centre to a project manager or CEO.In short: To fast-track your business, shape up your teams!
Through the institution of the Zulu monarchy, the distinguished historian John Laband has written a riveting account of the whole sweep of Zulu history. Shaka, Africa’s most famous warrior-king, was the formidable, conquering founder of the Zulu kingdom. Two hundred years later, Goodwill Zwelithini, the current king, is a constitutional monarch with only informal political influence.Beginning with the reign of Shaka, the book follows his successors – Dingane, Mpande and Cetshwayo – tracking their drive to power through assassination and civil war, and charting their resistance to colonialism. Although defeated in war, Cetshwayo and his heir, Dinuzulu, struggled to retain something of their kingly authority during the brutal transition to full colonial control. Laband describes how, in the oppressive century of colonial and apartheid rule, their successors – Solomon and Cyprian – strove to have their abolished royal status restored, and how Goodwill Zwelithini finally achieved this goal when the post-apartheid government recognised his royal rank once more.The Eight Zulu Kings also places the Zulu kings in the context of other African monarchs and discusses their shared royal traditions and their common challenges. By bringing the personalities of the Zulu kings into focus, the book assesses how effectively, within the possibilities of his own era, each ruler dealt with the opportunities and threats of his reign.
Jan Christian Smuts was soldier, statesman and intellectual, one of South Africa’s greatest leaders. Yet little is said about him today even as we appear to live in a leadership vacuum. Afrikaner sonder grense is a re-examination of the life and thought of Jan Smuts. It is intended to remind a contemporary readership of the remarkable achievements of this impressive soldier-statesman. The author argues that there is a need to bring Smuts back into the present, that Smuts’ legacy still has much to instruct. He draws several parallels between Smuts and President Thabo Mbeki, both intellectuals much lionised abroad and yet often distrusted at home. This book is a highly readable account of Smuts’ life. It also examines a number of overarching themes: his relationships with women, spiritual life, intellectual life and his role as advisor to world leaders. Politics and international affairs receive the lion’s share, but Smuts’ unique contributions to other fields - for example, botany - are not neglected. Afrikaner sonder grense does not shy away from the contradictions of its subject. Smuts was one of the architects of the United Nations, and a great champion of human rights, yet he could not see the need to reform the condition of the African majority in his own country.
A brave civil servant blows the whistleTHE STORY OF A SARS 'ROGUE UNIT' became entrenched in the public mind following a succession of sensational reports of illegal spook operations published by the Sunday Times. The unit, the reports claimed, had spied on President Jacob Zuma, run a brothel and entered into illegal tax settlements.In a plot of Machiavellian proportions, Johann van Loggerenberg, who headed the elite crime-busting unit, and nearly the entire top management were forced to quit SARS. Van Loggerenberg's select team of investigators, with an impeccable track record of busting high-level financial fraudsters and nailing tax criminals, lost their careers and their reputations.Now, in this extraordinary account, they finally get to put the record straight. There was no 'rogue unit'. The public had been deceived, seemingly by powers conspiring to captures SARS for their own ends. Shooting down the allegations he faced one by one, van Loggerenberg tells the story of what really happened inside SARS and shares details of some of the unit's real investigations.
South Africa is a land of contrasts, as the tourist brochures promise, and this is true for the game of rugby. From the Pretoria heartland to the aspirant Eastern Cape, from the hardscrabble Cape Flats to the islands of privilege at Bishops and Grey College. No other rugby-playing nation has to grapple with so much diversity. Different languages, classes, races and cultures - each bearing the wounds of the country''s fractured past - have to be melded into winning teams. Liz McGregor has spent the past three years shadowing Currie Cup, Super 14 and Springbok teams across the country, and has come to the conclusion that it is this very diversity, combined with the pain of the past and the dreams of a great united future, that provide the elusive alchemy that separates a good team from a great one. Touch, Pause, Engage! is more than a book about rugby. It is an intimate look at how South Africa''s erstwhile elite is adapting to its new circumstances. Team South Africa has been through many a maul and bruising scrum, but is inching closer and closer to the tryline.
Here is Nelson Mandela the statesman, the prisoner, the father, sometimes the joker, and occasionally the disciplinarian. Mandela is shown in snapshot, in the memories of old friends like George Bizos, in the words of inspiring legends like Muhammed Ali, leading the Defiance Campaign against apartheid laws, or doing the famous Madiba shuffle to Ladysmith Black Mambazo with Queen Elizabeth II. 100 Mandela Moments is an accessible introduction to the man who so profoundly influenced the South Africa of today. The story of his life that emerges is as varied and complex, as touching and inspiring, as Madiba himself.
Prenumerera på vårt nyhetsbrev för att få fantastiska erbjudanden och inspiration för din nästa läsning.
Genom att registrera dig accepterar du vår personuppgiftspolicy.
