Whetsho-otsile Joseph (Joe) Seremane is the founding federal chair of the Democratic Alliance in South Africa. Joe’s story spans six decades and tells of a visionary who survived incarceration at Robben Island, exile to Bophuthatswana and further incarceration at Fort Glamorgan.

Joe starts out as a champion of the banned People’s Africanist Congress but gradually develops a more holistic viewpoint. He concludes that he can contribute to the new democracy by helping to swell the ranks of the opposition. Eventually, in 2002, Joe finds his way to the Democratic Alliance as their founding federal chair. Hurt and disappointment come his way as he is seen as a traitor and a coconut by erstwhile comrades and co-prisoners.

As democracy in his beloved homeland starts to shed its skin of idealism and hope, he has to grapple with grave personal loss and a compelling question: Who is the enemy really?

In his foreword Tony Leon, erstwhile leader of the DA, notes: "I commend Fly the Tattered Dream Coat, both for its deep dive into this country’s history-in-the-making and the human story it describes of one of the more significant but underappreciated fighters for South Africa’s freedom."

In this engaging and authentic record of Joe’s storied careers and background, Dr Maske recounts Joe’s presence in my life at both its happiest and saddest…

A Man, A Fire, A Corpse tells the story of Captain Amos Maneta: a man who was most often referred to as ‘The Top Cop of Soweto’; as written by his son Rofhiwa Maneta.

The book is a collection of the physical and metaphysical bruises collected by the author’s father in his 30-plus years of working in the police service.

Through his father’s story, Rofhiwa Maneta examines the relationship between police and the public. Maneta’s mix of journalism, remembered history, anecdote and autobiography further discusses the relationship between South Africa and violence; while taking a look at what it takes to be an honest policeman in a department whose groundwater is corruption and maladministration.

Gwen Lister is a world-renowned journalist, political activist and free-press advocate. Born in South Africa, she moved to Namibia to pursue her journalism career. She launched (with Hannes Smith) the Windhoek Observer and later, The Namibian.

This memoir chronicles her remarkable life, brave journalism and political activism. 

In December 2010 while in Port Elizabeth, Andy Kawa was abducted, attacked and raped for 15 hours at Kings Beach. Her attackers were never caught. She successfully sued the police for failing to properly investigate her attack.

In November 2018, Port Elizabeth Judge Sarah Sephton found police officers were 'grossly negligent' in the performance of their duties with regards to her case both in the search and investigation.

This is Andy's story.

Tuan Guru – founder of South Africa’s first mosque and madrasah – had been in his grave for half a century. The Cape Muslim population had exploded in size, but was sliding into decline. Many of the imams, lacking education, had become ignorant and entitled. There was unending conflict in the community, which was fought out in the Cape High Court.

In the same year, a group of concerned community elders made a call for a teacher to be sent to the Cape from Istanbul. No-one knows who these people were, but it was their intervention that saw the arrival of Shaykh Abu-Bakr Effendi, an Ottoman scholar, in early 1863.

Welcomed by those keen to learn, he faced abuse from a coterie of imams who felt threatened by him. Sadly, it is their malcontent that has so jaundiced his story for over 140 years. In this well-researched biography, Shafiq Morton reveals for the first time the true story of Shaykh Abu-Bakr Effendi, one of the stand-out historical figures in the growth of Islam at the foot of Africa.

This is the life story of a South African political detainee who underwent 104 days of solitary confinement under Section 29 of the draconian apartheid-era Terrorism Act before being brought to trial with 13 other political activists in what became known as the "Yengeni Trial".

Gertrude Fester begins her story with her childhood and young adult life in Cape Town until she becomes politically active in the city's progressive women's organisation before focusing on her above-ground and underground work for the liberation struggle that led to her detention in the second half of the 1980s.

It is in her depictions of her recollections of the daily experiences of solitary confinement and use of poetry written during this period that Gertrude takes the reader through the physically and emotionally draining experience of solitary confinement in apartheid South Africa during the height of repression and resistance.

'It is through that choice of taking a resistance road, the one less travelled, that I got to experience a liberated life.'

Patric Tariq Mellet took his first steps on this road at the tender age of 8 and by 13, he engaged in his first consequential and difficult political act. He organised a fast in his high school to protest the killing of anti-apartheid cleric, Imam Abdullah Haron in detention. The match had been lit. Arbitrarily classified as 'white' despite his heritage and family, he was ordered to join the armed forces. He refused as he could not take up arms against his own people. Instead he heeded the call of OR Tambo and joined resistance as an MK in exile.

Mellet's autobiography demonstrates a spirit of innate and unbridled resistance, in small and major ways, that liberated Cleaner's Boy from an unpromising and tragic early life to a life of influence driven by a deep understanding of identity. A freedom fighter, a mystic and always a firebrand.

First published in Afrikaans as "Als Is Nie Net Swart En Wit Nie, this expanded memoir probes some of the most pivotal issues facing South Africa today: race, ‘othering’, unremembering, identity, gangsterism, addiction, and the process of making meaning of a society that has become unhinged from its moorings.

Malvory Adams is an author and veteran journalist who served as an editorial executive at mainstream newspapers such as City Press, Sowetan, Die Burger, Beeld and Son. At present, he plies his trade as a News Bulletin Writer at Afrikaanse TV-Nuus on SABC2. Away from the newsroom, he is the singer-songwriter MeZZo.

He walks with the reader through a lion-hearted personal lens and through the purgatory of his travelogue, which starts 15 years before his birth in the tiny Eastern Cape hamlet of Breidbach. He dramatically recounts how his German grandfather robbed him of his grandparents. Premised on that epoch-making deed, he takes the reader on a painful journey of uprooting, an agonising coming of age, and the intricacies of navigating cultural belongings and a bloodline concoction. Next, he plummets horrifyingly into a netherworld of alcoholism culminating in a spine-chilling desperate act.

On this treacherous odyssey to restoration and redemption, the veils of darkness lift, and he now lives in a world that is not stark black and white but where the grey mitigates the storms.

Beyond Diplomacy covers nearly six decades of Riaan “Koedoe” Eksteen's eventful career — from being South Africa's youngest ambassador at the time, taking the helm and transforming broadcasting in South Africa, to being closely involved in Namibia's pre- and post-independence.

Events and altercations that have never before been aired or documented are now put in a new context. For example, what exactly was said in the evening calls when P.W. Botha fired Eksteen as head of the SABC and all that happened after this. His experiences and involvement in South Africa's diplomacy stretched over a period of 27 years starting way back when Verwoerd was prime minister.

During his extraordinary career he served as ambassador under John Vorster, P.W. Botha, F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela.

In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald's only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world's health, economic security and social fabric.

Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents' large, imposing house in New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.

A first-hand witness, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humour to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald's place in the family spotlight and Ivana's penchant for regifting to her grandmother's frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump's favourite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer's. Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists and journalists have sought to explain Donald Trump's lethal flaws. Mary Trump has the education, insight and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick.

She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider's perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world's most powerful and dysfunctional families.

Bukeng ena e ntle le e tletseng kgothatso, Mofts Afrika Borwa, Shudufhadzo Musida, o pheta pale ya moo a tswang teng bophelong; ho tsa mmino le ho tantsha le ho ba sebueng motsaneng o bitswang Ha-Vhangani, a potapotilwe ke lerato haholoholo le tswang ho mme wa hae le Nkgono Gugu.

Empa dintho di a senyeha ha Shudu a fallela toropong e ntjha mme o hloriswa ke bomphato ba hae ka tlelaseng.

Bala kamoo Shudu a hlolang tlhonamo le mathata ao a kopaneng le ona, mme e eba ngwanana, le ho ba motho e moholoya ithutileng ho ithata!

Kha bugu iyi yavhudi i neaho mafulufulu, Mufumakadzana wa lunako wa Afrika Tshipembe, Shudufhadzo Musida, u ri anetshela tshiori tsha he a thoma hone; tsha u imba na u tshina na musidzana a ambesaho a bvaho kusini ku vhidzwaho nga la Ha Vhangani, o tangwaho nga lufuno nahone zwihulusa nga mme awe na makhulu wawe.

Zwithu zwo khakhea kha Shudu musi a tshi pfulutshela doroboni ntswa he a do tambudzwa nga vhane a dzhena navho kilasini.

Vhalani uri Shudu o kunda hani matungu awe na dzikhaedu, na uri a vha musidzana, mualuwa, we a guda u difuna ene mune!

An in-depth exploration of Nuraan Davids’ experience as a Muslim ‘coloured’ woman, traversing a post-apartheid space. It centres on and explores a number of themes, which include her challenges not only as a South African citizen, and within her faith community, but as an academic citizen at a historically white university. The book is her story, an autoethnography, her reparation.

By embarking on an auto-ethnography, she not only tries to change the way her story has been told by others, transforms her ‘sense of what it means to live’ (Bhabha, 1994). She is driven by a postcolonial appeal, which insists that if she seeks to imprint her own way of life into the discourses which pervade the world around her, then she can no longer allow herself to be spoken on behalf of or to be subjugated into the hegemonies of others.

The main argument of Out of Place is that Muslim, ‘coloured’ women are subjected to layers of scrutiny and prejudices, which have yet to be confronted. What we know about Muslim ‘coloured’ women has been shaped by preconceived notions of ‘otherness’, and attached to a meta-narrative of ‘oppression and backwardness’. By centring and using her lived experiences, the author takes readers on a journey of what it is like to be seen in terms of race, gender and religion – not only within the public sphere of her professional identities, but within the private sphere of her faith community.

How public events affect private lives is a Leitmotiv of this moving memoir. Eva and her secular Jewish family managed to evade the Holocaust and lesser public disasters, but not some private ones. They were able to leave Vienna a year after the Nazi Anschluss (Annexation) of Austria. In New York and several other places and cultures, she evolved from a shy, often fearful child and adolescent to an increasingly self-confident feminist and outspoken peace activist.

She married George Moseley believing he was the “black sheep” of his right-wing military family. While his political views and attitude toward her Jewishness sometimes wavered, she remained true to her parents’ social-democratic principles and the “Jewish value” of justice for everyone. Family relations and troubles play out in a context of the Cold War and changes in Jewish status with the rise of Israel. After a not-so-amicable divorce and George’s violent death (an unsolved murder?), her attitude toward Jewishness changed because of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.

Worried about the future her offspring—and everyone else—will face, she devoted much of her time as a dissenting citizen concerned with issues ranging from nuclear weapons and climate change to advocacy for Palestinian rights and opposing unquestioning US support of militarized Israel.

Born into privilege, Joyce Piliso was quick to question her environment. At Crown Mines, Johannesburg, where her father was the Nduna, she lived in the gated compound set aside for the mining elite. Yet she soon discovered that the lives of the men in the barracks on the others side of the fence were harsh. Driven by compassion and the urge to make the world a better place, Joyce set out to be educated, first at Fort Hare, where she studied under ZK Matthews, and then in the UK, where she qualified as a social worker.

Back home, she teaches in Soweto when the 1976 revolt rocks South Africa. From here on, her journey becomes increasingly political.

Piliso­Seroke was a champion for human rights and a passionate feminist ahead of her time. Yet her life is also filled with jazz, travel, her beloved ‘stokkie’ and an unshakeable faith.

In 2009, Canadian entrepreneur Mike Quinn packed his backpack and moved to Lusaka, Zambia on a mission to find African entrepreneurs building scalable, high-impact businesses. There he stumbled across two South African brothers who had founded a business to help unbanked smallholder farmers receive mobile payments in a market where cash was king. After convincing his retired parents to mortgage their house and lend him $100,000, Mike joined as a co-founder of Zoona and became CEO for nine of the next ten years.

With his partners, Mike built a network of more than 3,000 entrepreneur agents across Zambia and Malawi that enabled millions of unbanked consumers to send and receive $2.5-billion in money transfers and remittances. Headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, Zoona raised over $35-million of venture investment and operated on the leading edge of Africa’s emerging fintech ecosystem.

Mike’s remarkable story gives a rare and honest glimpse into the workings of a pioneering African startup through the lens of a purpose-driven entrepreneur who went “all in”. Zoona faced tremendous adversity along the way: currency crises, investment round collapses, ruthless pushback from the major mobile network operators, and a continuous internal struggle to discover and execute a growth strategy that matched the company’s billion-dollar ambition.

It was by failing to win that Mike learned what entrepreneurship – specifically entrepreneurship in Africa – is all about, and it was what motivated him to double down and try again.

Perhaps best known as the snarky narrator and co-founder of the viral YouTube channel CinemaSins, Jeremy Scott cracked the code of turning a passion for film and sarcasm into a full-time job.

Original Sin: From Preacher's Kid to the Creation of CinemaSins is Jeremy's compelling story of family, career, and deep love for movies that launched him into internet stardom. In his trademark, unapologetic voice, Jeremy gives an irreverent and honest take on the wild ride to creating a YouTube sensation. This memoir-with-a-twist sprinkles readers with his personal advice on the combination of dumb luck, know-how, and je-nais-se-quois it takes to be successful on Youtube while hilariously relaying how two friends stumbled into fame.

With anecdotes of laugh-out-loud misadventures and insightful, actionable advice for aspiring YouTubers, Original Sin is the ultimate behind-the-scenes look into the inception of an internet sensation. But more than that, it's one man's love letter to humankind's greatest escape, a pastime that allows us to dream and dwell on beauty, art, and truth. Original Sin is Jeremy Scott's ode to cinema and how often life can imitate the movies.

Basetsana Kumalo shot to fame as a fresh-faced Miss South Africa in 1994 and soon became the face of South Africa’s new democracy. As the first black presenter of the glamorous lifestyle TV show Top Billing, she travelled the world and interviewed superstars like Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jackson, Jon Bon Jovi, Will Smith, the Bee Gees, Gloria Estefan and Luther Vandross. After a successful career in television, Bassie’s drive and ambition took her into the world of business. The street savvy that her entrepreneurial mother gave her stood her in good stead as she built a media empire. When she married the handsome businessman Romeo Kumalo in a fairytale wedding, they became South Africa’s sweethearts and ‘it’ couple.

Bassie: My Journey Of Hope recounts the stories of Bassie’s life as a celebrity, including her relationships with mentors like Nelson Mandela, Winnie Madikizela- Mandela and Graça Machel. She also shares the secrets of her success and all the lessons she’s learnt along the way, and opens up about the pressures of her high-profile marriage to Romeo, their heartbreaking struggle to have a family, and how they made sure that their loving and respectful union has lasted two decades.

Bassie also talks frankly about the domestic abuse she suffered at the hands of boxer Dingaan Thobela and the legal battles she had to fight to protect her name and her brand over the years. She gives her account of the stalker who harassed her for decades, and the nonexistent ‘sex-tape’ allegation that rocked her family and career, leading to painful experiences of cyber-bullying. It is an intimate, inspiring and entertaining account of a remarkable life.

The official memoir of Margo O'Donnell, legendary Irish Country Music singer For fifty years now the name 'Margo' has been synonymous with everything that is positive and enriching in Country and Irish music. Blessed with an instantly recognisable voice, a voice unlike any other in the music business, the Donegal-born singer, despite the ever changing musical trends, has remained a star attraction, much loved by her fans, not only in Ireland and Britain, but also in the USA, Canada, Australia and other far destinations. She still possesses an infectious enthusiasm for performing and recording that she had in those very early days with The Keynotes. This is the story of her life, the successes and difficult times, in her own words.

The face of anorexia is not a glossy model in a perfume ad. It's a starving animal, circling the empty cupboards, blank-eyed and vacant. It's a face frozen in a rictus grin, mouthing lies. 'I'm fine,' it says. 'Everything is under control.' 'I have always felt hungry,' says Emma Scrivener. 'Not just for food, but for everything: from money to recognition. I'm a human chasm, a vortex of insatiable longing.' Rescued from a disorder that nearly killed her, Emma is now passionate about warning others about the dark and hidden world she inhabited for too long. Harrowing, heart-breaking, human and humourous, this book will grip you from start to finish.

“Becoming a mother has been my deepest desire. But it’s not happening. Now what?”

Through her very open and honest first-hand account of her seven-year struggle to conceive, titled Abundantly Empty, Cathy hopes to help remove the stigma, improve understanding and provide inspiration to others on how to cope and keep moving forward.

Abundantly Empty delves deep into the world of infertility and offers an insightful 360-degree perspective, with informative contributions from leading fertility specialists, including Professor Thabo Matsaseng, and her clinical psychologist, as well as input from her husband Julian, family and friends. The egg donors and surrogates share their experiences too. In clear, direct ‘journal’ language, the book traces the highs and lows, the elation and intense grief of the infertility rollercoaster. It also explores its impact on Cathy’s marriage, her friendships and her career.

The primary reason for writing this book, Cathy says, was to send a ‘You are not alone’ message to other couples battling to start a family, to break the silence and increase understanding of what it takes to survive infertility and retain hope, courage and meaning.

Abundantly Empty is an emotionally gripping, heart-warming and useful must-read not just for those on the fertility journey, but also for those on the sidelines who want to provide support, but don’t know how.

Daniel Dumile Qeqe (1929–2005), ‘Baas Dan’, ‘DDQ’. He was the Port Elizabeth leader whose struggles and triumphs crisscrossed the entire gamut of political, civic, entrepreneurial, sports and recreational liberation activism in the Eastern Cape. Siwisa tells the story of Qeqe’s life and times and at the same time has written a social and political biography of Port Elizabeth – a people’s history of Port Elizabeth. As much as Qeqe was a local legend, his achievements had national repercussions and, indeed, continue to this day.

Central to the transformation of sports towards non-racialism, Qeqe paved the way for the mainstreaming and liberation of black rugby and cricket players in South Africa. He co-engineered the birth of the KwaZakhele Rugby Union (Kwaru), a pioneering non-racial rugby union that was more of a political and social movement. Kwaru was a vehicle for political dialogues and banned meetings, providing resources for political campaigns and orchestrations for moving activists into exile.

This story is an attempt at understanding a man of contradictions. In one breath, he was generous and kind to a fault. And yet he was the indlovu, an imposing authoritarian elephant, decisively brutal and aggressive. Then there was Qeqe, the man whose actions were not in keeping with the struggle. This story narrates his role in ‘collaborationist’ civic institutions and in courting reactionary homeland structures, yet through all that he was the signal actor in the emancipation of rugby in South Africa.

A rainbow is synonymous with bravery, brightness, brilliance and vibrancy. In the Bible it is a symbol of God's faithfulness and mercy. Everybody has a story, and in this short memoir, Ronnie van der Merwe tells his story.

Ronnie wants readers who feel that they are different and do not belong, to see that it is OK to be yourself and be comfortable in your skin. Ronnie's trip to Germany as an au-pair led to his personal freedom but it was not always easy.

He shares the good and the bad and wants readers to see that life is beautiful and precious; and that nothing and nobody should keep you from being your authentic self!

Can a tiny vehicle provide the space to rebuild a life? Thunderstone: a sculpted & fearless memoir from the award-winning author of Fifty Words for Snow