The 1930s and 40s were tumultuous decades in South Africa’s history. The economy declined sharply in the wake of the Wall Street crash, giving rise to a huge number of poor whites and the growth of a militant and aggressive Afrikaner nationalism that often took its lead from the Nazis in Germany.

A Perfect Storm reveals how the right-wing’s malevolent message moved from the margins to the centre of political life; how antisemitism seeped into mainstream political life with real and lasting consequences. Milton Shain, South Africa’s leading scholar of modern Jewish history, brings into sharp relief the ‘Jewish Problem’, detailing the rise of influential organisations such as the Grey Shirts and the New Order, which fanned the flames of antisemitism. He devotes considerable attention to the Ossewa-Brandwag, which, by 1941, constituted the largest yet mobilisation of Afrikaners.

The National Party itself contributed to the climate of hostility to Jews. It was instrumental in ensuring that only few of the Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and elsewhere were permitted as immigrants. The National Party contributed to the prevailing climate of Jew-baiting. Indeed, some of its worst offenders were accorded high office after 1948 when the National Party came to power.

How are we to explain the resurgence of customary chiefs in contemporary Africa? Rather than disappearing with the tide of modernity, as many expected, indigenous sovereigns are instead a rising force, often wielding substantial power and legitimacy despite major changes in the workings of the global political economy in the post–Cold War era—changes in which they are themselves deeply implicated.

This pathbreaking volume, edited by anthropologists John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, explores the reasons behind the increasingly assertive politics of custom in many corners of Africa. Chiefs come in countless guises—from university professors through cosmopolitan businessmen to subsistence farmers–but, whatever else they do, they are a critical key to understanding the tenacious hold that “traditional” authority enjoys in the late modern world.

Together the contributors explore this counterintuitive chapter in Africa’s history and, in so doing, place it within the broader world-making processes of the twenty-first century.

The 1976 Soweto uprising represented a real turning point in South Africa's history. Even to contemporaries it seemed to mark the beginning of the end of apartheid. It also brought into the political equation the role of youth, who were to play a vital role in the township revolts of the 1980s.

What commenced as a peaceful and coordinated demonstration rapidly turned into a violent protest when police opened fire on students. Orlando West, the centre of the confrontation on the day, was transformed into a space of political contestation. For the first time, students claimed the streets and schools as their own. Soweto parents were shocked by these events, revealing an important generational divide. Thereafter, forging student and parent unity became a central objective of the liberation movement.

This short history brings alive the sequence of events and delves into the significance the uprising had on South African politics.

Die boek gee 'n voelvlugoorsig van die vier Suid-Afrikaanse kolonies gedurende die Eduardiaanse tydperk van 1902–1910. Die tydperk word deur Karel Schoeman beskou as die “hoogtepunt van die hele Imperiale gedagte” wat uiteindelik met die uitbreek van die Eerste Wereldoorlog sou eindig. Die klem val egter nie op die politieke besluite en ontwikkelinge nie, maar op die persoonlikhede van leiers- en ander figure, die omstandighede in die vier kolonies met hulle stede en dorpe, belangrike sosiale gebeurtenisse, die aanloop tot unifikasie in 1910 en die uitwerking van die belangrike naturelle grond-wet van 1913 op die lewenswyse van swart mense direk na Uniewording. Kort maar insiggewende tiperings word gegee van persoonlikhede so uiteenlopend soos oudpresident Steyn, Lord Milner, die dramaturg Stephen Black, die bendeleier Robert Foster, die avontuurlustige Mrs Edith Maturin en die deelsaaier Kas Maine. Ruim aanhalings uit verskillende bronne verlewendig die bespreking van alledaagse omstandighede op verskillende plekke in wat later die Unie van Suid-Afrika sou wees, soos die sketse van Jacob Lub oor die lewenswyse in Johannesburg, die setlaar Leonard Flemming se boeke oor sy eensame bestaan op 'n afgelee Vrystaatse plaas, en die talle verwysings na riksjas in die reisbeskrywings van besoekers aan Durban. Besonder boeiend is ook die hoofstukke oor die rol van Joodse smouse en handelaars in onder andere die volstruisveerbedryf en die toestande in die inrigting vir melaatses op Robbeneiland. Talle anekdotes en klein kameebeskrywings maak van Imperiale somer 'n besonder interessante leeservaring. Die boek word toegelig met ruim fotoseksies wat 'n visuele beeld van die era gee.

This story of a middle-class white South African family unfolds between the years 1939 and 1964 - a transformative period in South Africa’s political landscape.

It is told through the eyes and experiences of the younger son and his rite of passage into a country of racial segregation that gradually opens his eyes to the many injustices imposed upon the majority of the country’s population, coupled with a realization that his white privileges are sustained at the brutal expense of others.

The comprehensive sequel to the best seller Great Trek Uncut. This well researched, hard hitting and detailed account of our history covers the period of 1852 through to 1918 and highlights milestone events which affected all the different people of this country from the time of the four independent states through Union and beyond.

Wonderful stories illustrate some of the complexities of our society and show how difficult it was, and is, to mould a homogenous society out of our diverse cultures and people. Throughout the theme of the title re-occurs “It's our land you want”, as the struggle for land, cattle and power characterizes every conflict in our history.

Whilst charting the unfolding history, wonderful stories make the book difficult to put down. Stories which include Nongquase and the decimation of the Xhosa Nation; One President - two Countries; “Daar Kom die Alabama”; Moshesh and the Basuto Wars, The discovery of diamonds, The First South African War, the discovery of gold, the Jameson Raid; the Griqua Trek, the second South African War, the Bambatha Rebellion, the birth of the African National Congress and Nationalist Party, the Boer Rebellion, World War 1 including the Mendi and Delville Wood and many vivid stories which make this not only a comprehensive history book, but and entertaining and easy to read story which brings the people and events to life.

Drawing from several hundred first-person accounts, most of which are unpublished, Spear reshapes our understanding of Mandela by focusing on this intense but relatively neglected period of escalation in the movement against apartheid.

Landau’s book is not a biography, nor is it a history of a militia or an army; rather, it is a riveting story about ordinary civilians debating and acting together in extremis.

Contextualizing Mandela and MK’s activities amid anti-colonial change and Black Marxism in the early 1960s, Spear also speaks to today’s transnational anti-racism protests and worldwide struggles against oppression.

An unprecedented study of how Christianity reshaped Black South Africans’ ideas about gender, sexuality, marriage, and family during the first half of the twentieth century.

This book demonstrates that the primary affective force in the construction of modern Black intimate life in early twentieth-century South Africa was not the commonly cited influx of migrant workers but rather the spread of Christianity. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, African converts developed a new conception of intimate life, one that shaped ideas about sexuality, gender roles, and morality.

Although the reshaping of Black intimacy occurred first among educated Africans who aspired to middle-class status, by the 1950s it included all Black Christians—60 percent of the Black South African population. In turn, certain Black traditions and customs were central to the acceptance of sexual modernity, which gained traction because it included practices such as lobola, in which a bridegroom demonstrates his gratitude by transferring property to his bride’s family. While the ways of understanding intimacy that Christianity informed enjoyed broad appeal because they partially aligned with traditional ways, other individuals were drawn to how the new ideas broke with tradition. In either case, Natasha Erlank argues that what Black South Africans regard today as tradition has been unequivocally altered by Christianity.

In asserting the paramount influence of Christianity on unfolding ideas about family, gender, and marriage in Black South Africa, Erlank challenges social historians who have attributed the key factor to be the migrant labor system. Erlank draws from a wide range of sources, including popular Black literature and the Black press, African church and mission archives, and records of the South African law courts, which she argues have been underutilized in histories of South Africa. The book is sure to attract historians and other scholars interested in the history of African Christianity, African families, sexuality, and the social history of law, especially colonial law.

The Thabo Mbeki I Know is a collection that celebrates one of South Africa’s most exceptional thought leaders. The contributors include those who first got to know Thabo Mbeki as a young man, in South Africa and in exile, and those who encountered him as a statesman and worked alongside him as an African leader.

In The Thabo Mbeki I Know, these friends, comrades, statesmen, politicians and business associates provide insights that challenge the prevailing academic narrative and present fresh perspectives on the former president’s time in office and on his legacy – a vital undertaking as we approach a decade since an embattled Thabo Mbeki left office. Edited by Miranda Strydom and Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, The Thabo Mbeki I Know provides readers with an opportunity to reassess Thabo Mbeki’s contribution to post-apartheid South Africa – as both deputy president and president – to the African continent and diaspora – as a highly respected state leader – and to the international community as a whole.

In The Great Pretenders: Race and Class under ANC Rule, veteran political analyst Ebrahim Harvey delivers a stinging critique of the ANC. This must-read analysis reveals the complete failure of the ANC to roll back the race and class divide.

Harvey argues that a series of events – including HIV/AIDS denialism, the Marikana shootings, the Nkandla funding scandal, mass student protests, the Esidemeni tragedy, systemic corruption and state capture – are rooted in policy choices made by the ANC during negotiations and in power. This book is not just an evisceration of the ANC, however, as Harvey is able, through many interviews and patient delving into the past and present, to provide an indispensable guide to the future.

The Great Pretenders is fierce, passionate and provocative. It is certain to provoke those in power, stirring debate on not only the pernicious issue of race relations in South Africa, but on how to create the shared society promised us.

This rich and absorbing biography of Can Themba, iconic Drum-era journalist and writer, is the definitive history of a larger-than-life man who died too young. Siphiwo Mahala’s intensive and often fresh research features unprecedented archival access and interviews with Themba’s surviving colleagues and family.

Mahala’s biography takes a critical historical approach to Themba’s life and writing, giving a picture of the whole man, from his early beginnings in Marabastad to his sombre end in exile in Swaziland. The better-known elements of his life – his political views, passion for teaching and mentoring, and family life – are woven together with an examination of his literary influences and the impact of his own writing (especially his famous short story ‘The Suit’) on modern African writers in turn. Mahala, a master storyteller, deftly follows the threads of Themba’s dynamic life, showcasing his intellectual acumen, scholarly aptitude and wit, along with his flaws, contradictions and heartbreaks, against a backdrop of the sparkle and pathos of Sophiatown of the 1950s.

Can Themba’s successes and failures as well as his triumphs and tribulations reverberate on the pages of this long-awaited biography. The result is an authoritative and entertaining account of an often misunderstood figure in South Africa’s literary canon.

South Africa’s democracy is often seen as a story of bright beginnings gone astray, a pattern said to be common to Africa. The negotiated settlement of 1994, it is claimed, ended racial domination and created the foundation for a prosperous democracy – but greedy politicians betrayed the promise of a new society.

In Prisoners Of The Past, Steven Friedman astutely argues that this misreads the nature of contemporary South Africa. Building on the work of the economic historian Douglass North and the political thinker Mahmood Mamdani, Friedman shows that South African democracy’s difficulties are legacies of the pre-1994 past. The settlement which ushered in majority rule left intact core features of the apartheid economy and society. The economy continues to exclude millions from its benefits, while racial hierarchies have proved stubborn: apartheid is discredited, but the values of the pre-1948 colonial era, the period of British colonisation, still dominate. Thus South Africa’s democracy supports free elections, civil liberties and the rule of law, but also continues past patterns of exclusion and domination.

Friedman reasons that this ‘path dependence’ is not, as is often claimed, the result of constitutional compromises in 1994 that left domination untouched. This bargain was flawed because it brought not too much compromise, but too little. Compromises extended political citizenship to all but there were no similar bargains on economic and cultural change. Using the work of the radical sociologist Harold Wolpe, Friedman shows that only negotiations on a new economy and society can free South Africans from the prison of the past.

This book explores South Africa’s tumultuous history from the aftermath of the Second Anglo-Boer War to the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on never-before-published documentary evidence – including diaries, letters, eyewitness testimony and diplomatic reports – the book follows the South African people through the battles, elections, repression, resistance, strikes, massacres, economic crashes and health crises that have shaped the nation’s character.

Tracking South Africa’s path from colony to Union and from apartheid to democracy, History of South Africa documents the influence of key figures including Pixley Seme, Jan Smuts, Lilian Ngoyi, H.F. Verwoerd, Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, P.W. Botha and Jacob Zuma. The book also gives detailed accounts of definitive events such as the 1922 Rand Revolt, the Defiance Campaign, Sharpeville, the Soweto uprising and the Marikana massacre. Looking beyond the country’s borders, it unpacks military conflicts such as the World Wars, the armed struggle and the Border War. The book explores the transition to democracy and traces the phases of ANC rule, from the Rainbow Nation to transformation to state capture. It examines the divisive and unifying role of sport, the ups and downs of the economy, and the impact of pandemics from the Spanish flu to AIDS and COVID-19.

As South Africa faces a crisis as severe as any in its history, the book shows that these challenges are neither unprecedented nor insurmountable, and that there are principles to be found in history that may lead us safely into the future.

In the early planning stages of Freedom Park, Robin Binckes participated as a member of the history sub-committee. The amount of debate and argument, much of it heated, astounded him. Practically every event discussed was interpreted from diametrically differing viewpoints. One of the most controversial topics was the Great Trek, the 1836 Boer exodus from the Cape Colony.

Traditionally writers on the subject have covered the event from a perspective not only of 'white history' but predominantly of 'Afrikaner history'. It has always been seen as 'an Afrikaner event'. It was anything but. As the Great Trek and the events leading up to it involved every section of the population - Zulu, Sotho, Ndebele, Xhosa, Khoisan, Khoikhoi, Coloured, British, English-speaking South African and Boer - it is time to portray the trek in that light, in the context of a unbiased, modern South Africa.

Like most history the dots are all connected; it is impossible to separate the Great Trek from events which took place as far back as the Portuguese explorers because those early events shaped the backdrop to the causes of the Great Trek. Most writers have specialized in the trek itself whereas Binckes has adopted a broader approach that studies the impact of the earlier white incursions and migrations - Portuguese, Dutch, French and British - on southern Africa, to create a better understanding of the trek and its causes. Drawing heavily on eyewitness accounts wherever possible, he has consolidated these with the perspectives of leading historians, the final product being an objective and comprehensive record of one of the seminal events in South African history.

This book shows that the Afrikaner was, is, and always will be, an important player in South African society, but it shows him as part of a bigger picture. The author distances himself from the noble characters stereotyped for the past two centuries and portrays them in their true light: wonderful, courageous people with human feelings, strengths and failings.

A highly readable, dramatic story of a colourful South African journey in politics lasting over 50 years, from anti-apartheid protester to Right Honourable Lord, from Pretoria childhood to senior British Cabinet Minister.

A Pretoria Boy begins with the story of how Peter Hain’s journey came full circle when he used parliamentary privilege in 2017–18 to expose looting and money laundering, supplied with the ammunition by his ‘deep throat’ inside the Zuma State. In so doing, he put South Africa’s state capture and corruption on the front pages of the New York Times and Financial Times, which some suggest played a part in Zuma’s toppling. Going back to an anti-apartheid childhood in Pretoria in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there are vivid descriptions of his parents’ arrest, banning, harassment, helping an escaped political prisoner, the hanging of a close white family friend, and enforced exile to London in 1966 after the government prohibited his architect father from working.

It tells of how, at aged 19, Hain organised and led militant anti-Springbok demonstrations in exile in London in 1969–1970, for which he was denounced by the South African media as ‘Public Enemy Number One’. It is about how he narrowly escaped jail after a South African government-financed prosecution landed him in the Old Bailey in 1972 for conspiracy to disrupt those all-white South African sports tours and, then in 1975, how he was framed for a bank theft committed by an apartheid security agent. His return to South Africa came first on a secret mission in December 1989, then as a parliamentary observer during the 1994 elections.

The book ends with his perspective on the country’s future.

In Morafe, Khumisho Moguerane has written a luminous exploration of two generations of the prominent Molema family. They were ‘border people’, who straddled what would become present-day South Africa and Botswana.

Beginning in the 1880s at the frontier of the new British territories of British Bechuanaland (North West and Northern Cape provinces) and the Bechuanaland Protectorate (Botswana), where the political boundary between these two territories is negligible and where skin colouring did not yet necessarily connect with a particular social or political status, nor did it yet really affect economic opportunity. Morafe ends in the 1950s, where the political boundary matters profoundly, dividing two very different colonial dispensations of colonial racial ordering and classification, and two separate traditions of nationalist politics.

With this landmark publication, Moguerane reveals that the ‘nation’ is less ‘out there’ in public institutions and political struggles, but ‘in here’, in the everyday drama of personal and ordinary lives.

Parcel of Death recounts the little-told life story of Onkgopotse Abram Tiro, the first South African freedom fighter the apartheid regime pursued beyond the country’s borders to assassinate with a parcel bomb.

On 29 April 1972, Tiro made one of the most consequential revolutionary addresses in South African history. Dubbed the Turfloop Testimony, Tiro’s anti-apartheid speech saw him and many of his fellow student activists expelled, igniting a series of strikes in tertiary institutions across the country. By the time he went into exile in Botswana, Tiro was president of the Southern African Student Movement (SASM), permanent organiser of the South African Student Organisation (SASO) and a leading Black Consciousness proponent, hailed by many as the ‘godfather’ of the June 1976 uprisings.

Parcel of Death uses extensive and exclusive interviews to highlight significant influences and periods in Tiro’s life, including the lessons learned from his rural upbringing in Dinokana, Zeerust, the time he spent working on a manganese mine, his role as a teacher and the impact of his faith in shaping his outlook. It is a compelling portrait of Tiro’s story and its lasting significance in South Africa’s history.

‘A biography of Onkgopotse Tiro, who was at once a catalyst and an active change agent in the South African struggle for freedom, is long overdue. For generations to come, this book will be a source of valuable information and inspiration.’ – MOSIBUDI MANGENA

In The Eight Zulu Kings, well-respected and widely published historian John Laband examines the reigns of the eight Zulu kings from 1816 to the present.

Starting with King Shaka, the renowned founder of the Zulu kingdom, he charts the lives of the kings Dingane, Mpande, Cetshwayo, Dinuzulu, Solomon and Cyprian, to today’s King Goodwill Zwelithini whose role is little more than ceremonial.

In the course of this investigation Laband places the Zulu monarchy in the context of African kingship and tracks and analyses the trajectory of the Zulu kings from independent and powerful pre-colonial African rulers to largely powerless traditionalist figures in post-apartheid South Africa.

Die Herero-opstand 1904–1907 is ’n heruitgawe van ’n boek wat ses keer tussen 1976 en 1979 deur HAUM gepubliseer is. Die lotgevalle van die Hererovolk word in hierdie boek geskets, ’n stuk geskiedenis wat ’n sentrale plek in Namibie se kleurryke geskiedenis beklee. Die opstand van die Herero’s in 1904 teen Duitse koloniale gesag kan beskou word as die enkele gebeurtenis wat die gebied se volksverhoudinge die ingrypendste verander het. Die Herero-opstand 1904–1907 vertel van die geleidelike opbou na die konflik, die skielike uitbarsting van geweld en die tragiese afloop vir die Herero’s toe duisende verhonger het en hulle grond en politieke seggenskap verloor het.

A recent wave of research has explored the link between wh- syntax and prosody, breaking with the traditional generative conception of a unidirectional syntax-phonology relationship. In this book, Jason Kandybowicz develops Anti-contiguity Theory as a compelling alternative to Richards' Contiguity Theory to explain the interaction between the distribution of interrogative expressions and the prosodic system of a language. Through original and highly detailed fieldwork on several under-studied West African languages (Krachi, Bono, Wasa, Asante Twi, and Nupe), Kandybowicz presents empirically and theoretically rich analyses bearing directly on a number of important theories of the syntax-prosody interface. His observations and analyses stem from original fieldwork on all five languages and represent some of the first prosodic descriptions of the languages. The book also considers data from thirteen additional typologically diverse languages to demonstrate the theory's reach and extendibility. Against the backdrop of data from eighteen languages, Anti-contiguity offers a new lens on the empirical and theoretical study of wh- prosody.

When working on the UNESCO Slave Route project in the early 2000s, Botlhale Tema discovered the extraordinary fact that her highly educated family from the farm Welgeval in the Pilanesberg had originated with two young men who had been child slaves in the midnineteenth century. She pieced together the fragments of information from relatives and members of the community, and scoured the archives to produce this book.

Land Of My Ancestors, previously published as The People Of Welgeval, tells the story of the two young men and their descendants, as they build a life for themselves on Welgeval. As they raise their families and take in people who have been dispossessed, we follow the births, deaths, adventures and joys of the farm’s inhabitants in their struggle to build a new community.

Set against the backdrop of slavery, colonialism, the Anglo-Boer War and the rise of apartheid, this is a fascinating and insightful retelling of history. It is an inspiring story about friendship and family, landownership and learning, and about how people transform themselves from victims to victors.

A new prologue and epilogue give more historical context to the narrative and tell the story of the land claim involving the farm, which happened after the book’s original publication.

Die tweede versameling van prof. Fransjohan Pretorius se rubrieke oor die geskiedenis van Suid-Afrika van die vroegste tye tot taamlik onlangs wat in die dagblad Beeld verskyn het.

Maak kennis met nog helde en hendsoppers, die skurke en sterre van die land se verlede in kort en boeiende rubrieke wat die leser se geheue sal verfris oor al die grootste momente in ons geskiedenis asook 'n paar minder bekende maar ewe interessante gebeure.

"That summer afternoon, I had no way of knowing the book would radically alter my existence. Yet that proved to be the case."

So writes folklorist José Manuel de Prada-Samper about a chance discovery more than thirty years ago of an obscure book called Specimens of Bushman Folklore in a second-hand bookshop in England.

Part historical detective story, part memoir, Fading Footprints traces the author’s journey into the magical folklore of the /xam hunter-gatherers of the Upper Karoo. Through archival research and on field trips in South Africa, De Prada-Samper is able to humanise the /xam as he delves into the work and lives of researchers William Bleek and Lucy Lloyd, who recorded the stories of San prisoners in Cape Town in the late 1800.

The author learns that many are still told to this day by farm workers in forgotten corners of the Northern Cape and that, contrary to common belief, the culture and traditions of South Africa’s first people are still alive.

1994 symbolised the triumphal defeat of almost three and a half centuries of racial separation since the Dutch East India Company planted a bitter almond hedge to keep indigenous people out of `their' Cape outpost in 1659. But for the majority of people in the world's most unequal society, the taste of bitter almonds linger as their exclusion from a dignified life remain the rule.

In the year of South Africa's troubled coming-of-age, veteran investigative journalist Michael Schmidt brings to bear 21 years of his scribbled field notes to weave a tapestry of the view from below: here in the demi-monde of our transition from autocracy to democracy, in the half-light glow of the rusted rainbow, you will meet neo-Nazis and the newly dispossessed, Boers and Bushmen, black illegal coal miners and a bank robber, witches and wastrels, love children and land claimants.

With their feet in the mud, the Born Free youth have their eyes on the stars.

Die agtste en laaste deel van die reeks Kolonie aan die Kaap beskryf die agteruitgang en verval van die VOC en die gevolge wat dit vir Kaap gehad het gedurende die laaste kwarteeu van die VOC-bewind. Swanesang dek die tydperk vanaf die dood van goewerneur Rijk Tulbagh tot en met die eerste Britse besetting van die Kaap in 1795. Sy opvolgers, J.A van Pletterberg, J.C. de Graaff, die waarnemende goewerneur Rhenius en die laaste goewerneur, J.A. Sluysken, en die onsekerheid wat die laaste deel van die VOC-tydperk gekenmerk het, word belig. Afgesien van die amptelike rolle wat verskeie VOC-amptenare gespeel het, word ook aandag aan hulle karaktereienskappe en persoonlike lewens gegee om sodoende lewe aan die geskiedkundige figure te gee. Schoeman slaag egter veral daarin om naas die amptenary ook ’n beeld te gee van die lewe van gewone mense in die breer Kaapse samelewing. Besonder boeiend is die bespreking van die reise van verskeie natuurkundiges, soos die Swede Thunberg en Sparrman, die Skotte Masson en Paterson, die Nederlander Robert Jacob Gordon en die Franse Sonnerat en Le Vaillant. Veral die flambojante Le Vaillant se boeke was baie populer en het bygedra om die Kaap en sy interessante fauna en flora wyd bekend te maak. In die laaste hoofstukke word aandag gegee aan die Franse Rewolusie en ander politieke veranderinge in Europa wat Nederland verswak en tot die Britse oorname van die Kaap gelei het.