Equally skilled in different trades than in the art of love, the Italian prisoners-of-war (POWs) who were incarcerated in South Africa during the Second World War are a source of great fascination to this day.

The first Italian POWs arrived in the Union of South Africa in early 1941, most of them being held in Zonderwater Camp outside Cullinan or in work camps across the country. The government of Jan Smuts saw them as a source of cheap labour that would contribute to harvesting schemes, road-building projects such as the old Du Toit’s Kloof Pass between Paarl and Worcester and even to prickly-pear eradication schemes.

Prisoners of Jan Smuts recounts the stories of survival and shenanigans of the Italian POWs in the Union through the eyes of five prisoners who had documented their experiences in memoirs and letters. While many POWs seemed to appreciate the opportunities to gain new skills, others clung to the Fascist ideas they had grown up with and refused to work.

Many opted to remain in South Africa once the war had ended, forging quite a legacy. These included sculptor Edoardo Villa, who left an important mark in the local and international art world, and businessman Aurelio Gatti, who built an ice-cream empire whose gelato was to delight generations of South Africans.

Part literary history, part feminist historiography And Wrote My Story Anyway critically examines influential novels in English by eminent black female writers.

Studying these writers' key engagements with nationalism, race and gender during apartheid and the transition to democracy, Barbara Boswell traces the ways in which black women's fiction critically interrogates narrow ideas of nationalism. She examines who is included and excluded, while producing alternative visions for a more just South African society.

This is an erudite analysis of ten well-known South African writers, spanning the apartheid and post-apartheid era: Miriam Tlali, Lauretta Ngcobo, Farida Karodia, Agnes Sam, Sindiwe Magona, Zoe Wicomb, Rayda Jacobs, Yvette Christianse, Kagiso Lesego Molope and Zukiswa Wanner. Boswell argues that black women's fiction could and should be read as a subversive site of knowledge production in a setting, which, for centuries, denied black women's voices and intellects.

Reading their fiction as theory, for the first time these writers' works are placed in sustained conversation with each other, producing an arc of feminist criticism that speaks forcefully back to the abuse of a racist, white-dominated, patriarchal power.

In a telegram dated 29 April 1963, thirty-year-old Afrikaans poet Ingrid Jonker thanks André Brink, a young novelist of twenty-eight, for flowers and a letter he sent her. In the more than two hundred letters that followed this telegram, one of South African literature’s most famous love affairs unfolds. Jonker’s final letter to Brink is dated 18 April 1965. She drowned herself in the ocean at Three Anchor Bay three months later.

More than fifty years on, this poignant, often stormy relationship still grips readers’ imaginations.

In December 2014, three months before his death on 6 February 2015, André Brink offered these never-before-seen letters, as well as personal photographs, for publication.

When Robert and Michael, a pair of starry-eyed twins see a Boeing 707 at an airport in the mid-1960s, it’s love at first sight.

But who's going to one day pay for their dream to work in aviation? This is apartheid South Africa. Coloured boys can't eat alongside white people, let alone jet off to Paris and study aeronautical engineering!

But in high school they discover an unlikely aptitude for French. Armed with scholarships, they head off to Paris and their once ordinary lives are changed forever.

Shrouded in secrecy due to the covert nature of their work, the legendary Recces have fascinated South Africans for years. Now one of these elite soldiers has written a tell-all book about the extraordinary missions he embarked on and the nail-biting action he experienced in the Border War.

Shortly after passing the infamously gruelling Special Forces selection course in the early 1980s, Koos Stadler joined the so-called Small Teams group at 5 Reconnaissance Regiment. This subunit was made up of two-man teams and was responsible for numerous secret and highly dangerous missions deep behind enemy lines. With only one team member, Stadler was sent to blow up railway lines and enemy fighter jets in the south of Angola. As he crawled into and out of enemy-infested territory, he stared death in the face many times.

A gripping firsthand account that reveals the near superhuman physical and psychological powers these Special Forces operators have to display.

Mzuzephi Mathebula, also known as Jan Note and later as Nongoloza, founded the Umkhosi Wezi-ntaba (Regiment of the Hills), forerunner of the notorious "28" gang. He became known as the King of Nineveh, a man who sought social justice, paradoxically, through antisocial means. Nongoloza's story is also the story of South Africa's violent and racially accentuated past and, to an extent, provides clarification for the criminality that afflicts the present-day society.

Nongoloza Mathebula’s life is a poignant illustration of how political circumstances affect lives and how those lives encourage myths, setting in motion a spiral of events that eventually neither politics nor people have any control over. Van Onselen’s insightful biography tells the story of how a young man became a hardened criminal as the result of a minor incident.

Nongoloza Mathebula’s life is a poignant illustration of how political circumstances affect lives and how those lives encourage myths, setting in motion a spiral of events that eventually neither politics nor people have any control over.

In this truly remarkable life story, Saray Khumalo shares her epic journey to the top of the world: Mount Everest.

From her childhood in Zambia and Zaire, to a corporate career in South Africa, through marriage and motherhood, Saray harboured one overriding ambition: to reach the summits of the world’s highest mountains. She first summited Mount Kilimanjaro, and then others, but her ultimate goal was to summit Everest. After three unsuccessful attempts, Saray became the first black African woman to summit the world’s highest peak. Her success was hard won, though – along the way, she suffered severe personal setbacks, serious health issues and life-threatening injuries.

But her perseverance finally paid off, and Saray’s success at high altitude has helped change the narrative about who belongs on the mountains and whose stories are told. Saray’s story, which redefines common perceptions about what women are capable of doing and achieving, will inspire girls and women from all walks of life. In this fascinating memoir, she shares not only her incredible mountaineering feats, but also the lessons she learnt about life, perseverance and failing forward.

To celebrate her 14-year clean and sober birthday, Ferguson organises to take a R3.2 million Ferrari California out on a test drive for the day. Twenty minutes before she returns the car, she is involved in a spectacular car crash, during which she experiences a near-death collision.

The crash is a catalyst for a series of life-changing events. Over the following months her long-term relationship implodes in a heart-ripping showdown of betrayal and deception. She is faced with a litany of legal and financial nightmares as a result of the Ferrari being written off, while certain members of the dog-eat-dog motoring journo industry relish in her downfall. “The thing is that any fool should have been able to see that I was traumatised. Finding a Dutch lesbian in your man’s bed, writing off a R3.2-million Ferrari, hardly sleeping for a year, facing the chop at work, watching your recent Ex-Boyfriend’s penis snap, plus writing a book about a stump-legged, murder-accused athlete … Well, hello! Who wouldn’t feel a tad fucking out of control?”

After she admits herself to a clinic to address her meltdown, in her trademark gritty tell-it-all and often hilarious style, she interrogates the controversial pharma-whore psychiatric industry as she is diagnosed and medicated over her three-week stay. Ultimately Crashed sees Ferguson slowly coming to grips with the meaninglessness of outward material success as she embarks on a painful journey of introspection in search of intangible inner peace and self love in a crazy out of control world. It’s South Africa’s very own The Girl (Monk) Who Crashed (Sold) her (his) Ferrari.

Crashed is the highly anticipated final installment of the 3-part memoir trilogy, following in the steps of her South African bestsellers Smacked (2005) and Hooked (2010).

Lebogang Seale has written a personal and poignant account of the impact of South Africa’s failing and flailing land reform policy on ordinary people desperate for restorative justice.

One Hundred Years of Dispossession shows not only that land reform in South Africa is a criminal failure and monumental disappointment, but more than that, it is a betrayal that punishes the affected communities whose quest for justice remains denied.

The Springbok rugby captain, over more than a century, has represented many things to many South Africans. He has united, and he has divided. He has thrilled, he has disappointed. He has inspired, he has disheartened. He has triumphed, he has failed. But he has always had an impact.

In this revealing narrative, Edward Griffiths and Stephen Nell depict the men who have been able to call themselves ‘Springbok Captain’ through their backgrounds, triumphs and disappointments. Relive the heyday of rugby legends Bennie Osler, Danie Craven, Hennie Muller, Johan Claassen, Naas Botha, Francois Pienaar, Gary Teichmann, Joost van der Westhuizen, Andre Vos and others.

Now fully updated with the accounts of Bobby Skinstad, Victor Matfield and Jean de Villiers, The Springbok Captains is the epic story that lies at the heart of South African rugby.

Die daggaplant (Cannabis sativa) word al vir duisende jare gebruik. Dit is, inderdaad, ’n baie nuttige plant om materiaal en toue mee te vervaardig. Dit is egter die bekendste vir die psigotropiese effekte van dagga se aktiewe bestanddeel, tetrahidrokannabinol (THC).

Die kwessie oor of dagga verslawend is, is nog nie heeltemal duidelik nie. Baie navorsing word gedoen om korrekte en interessante inligting vir gebruikers, hul naasbestaandes, handelaars en almal wat oor dagga wonder, beskikbaar te stel.

Hierdie handleiding bring die leser op datum met alles wat ons weet aangaande dagga. Slegs wanneer al die feite op die tafel is, is dit sinvol om ’n opinie oor hierdie wonderlike plant te waag.

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country.

Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's antiapartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.

Long Walk To Freedom is his moving autobiography, in which he tells the extraordinary story of his life - an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph!

Shirley Zinn’s story is one of determination, courage, and triumph over incredible adversity.

Born and raised on the Cape Flats, Shirley never allowed her past to dictate her future. She proved that the typical story of a girl from the Cape Flats – that of gangsterism, alcoholism and teenage pregnancy – didn’t have to be her story. Instead she relentlessly pursued her own goals and forged an impressive academic career even when she faced significant odds. And when she’d done that, she set out to conquer the world of business.

Shirley is a formidable woman with an amazing story to tell. She has risen to the top of the pile in both academic and business circles, and yet she has retained great humanity and empathy in the face of great personal tragedy.

Her story has lessons for us all – whether we are ordinary or extraordinary, whether we work in business, in government, or at home. Shirley’s story will inspire you and show you that it is possible to achieve your goals, if you are prepared to swim upstream and be single-minded in getting where you want to be.

When Chris Hani, leader of the South African Communist Party and heir apparent to Nelson Mandela, was brutally slain in his driveway in April 1993, he left a shocked and grieving South Africa on the precipice of civil war. But to 12-year-old Lindiwe, it was the love of her life, her daddy, who had been shockingly ripped from her life. In this intimate and brutally honest memoir, 36-year-old Lindiwe remembers the years she shared with her loving father, and the toll that his untimely death took on the Hani family. She lays family skeletons bare and brings to the fore her own downward spiral into cocaine and alcohol addiction, a desperate attempt to avoid the pain of his brutal parting.

While the nation continued to revere and honour her father’s legacy, for Lindiwe, being Chris Hani’s daughter became an increasingly heavy burden to bear.

"For as long as I can remember, I’d grown up feeling that I was the daughter of Chris Hani and that I was useless. My father was such a huge figure, such an icon to so many people, it felt like I could never be anything close to what he achieved – so why even try? Of course my addiction to booze and cocaine just made me feel my worthlessness even more".

In a stunning turnaround, she faces her demons, not just those that haunted her through her addiction, but, with the courage that comes with sobriety, she comes face to face with her father’s two killers – Janus Walus, still incarcerated, and Clive Derby Lewis, released in 2015 on medical parole. In a breathtaking twist of humanity, while searching for the truth behind her father’s assassination, Lindiwe Hani ultimately makes peace with herself and honours her father’s gigantic spirit.

As a medical detective of the modern world, forensic pathologist Ryan Blumenthal’s chief goal is to bring perpetrators to justice. He has performed thousands of autopsies, which have helped bring numerous criminals to book. In Autopsy he covers the hard lessons learnt as a rookie pathologist, as well as some of the most unusual cases he’s encountered.

During his career, for example, he has dealt with high-profile deaths, mass disasters, death by lightning and people killed by African wildlife. Blumenthal takes the reader behind the scenes at the mortuary, describing a typical autopsy and the instruments of the trade. He also shares a few trade secrets, like how to establish when a suicide is more likely to be a homicide.

Even though they cannot speak, the dead have a lot to say – and Blumenthal is there to listen.

Dwarstrekkers, nonkonformiste, buitestaanders, randeiers...Noem hulle wat jy wil, Suid Afrika het meer as sy deel eksentrieke karakters opgelewer wat mense van die vroegste tye af na hulle asem laat snak of verstom agter hulle hand laat fluister het.

Hierdie rare mense het met die jare hul merk gemaak op vele terreine.

Dis hulle wat Daniël Lotter aan 'n nuwe geslag lesers bekendstel.

South Africa in the 1970s was a divided and increasingly traumatised country, seemingly permanently in the toils of apartheid, and with little space available for open discussion of apartheid policies or awareness of just what those policies were meaning in the lives of people. It was in this context that David Philip, a South African already involved for several years in publishing, became convinced there must be more opportunity for books with informed discussion and debate to be written and published within the country.

He persuaded his wife Marie, also with publishing experience, that they could together set up their own independent publishing company, to publish 'Books that matter for Southern Africa'- in social history, politics, literature, or whatever, good of their kind and ready to challenge mainstream apartheid thinking.

This is an anecdotal account - a memoir - of the lows and highs of a small, cheerful, underfunded but vibrant 'oppositional' publishing company, David Philip Publishers, from the year 1971 through to the birth of the new South Africa.

Previously published as Mandela's Way Written by the co-author of international bestseller Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela: Portrait of an Extraordinary Man presents fifteen powerful lessons on life and leadership based on the life and work of Nelson Mandela (1918 - 2013), whose fight against apartheid in South Africa has become an enduring example of resistance against injustice and oppression. A recipient of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, Mandela is a man who truly changed the course of world history and is arguably the most inspirational figure of the past century. Stengel spent almost three years with Mandela working on his bestselling autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, and through that process became a close friend. Written with the blessing of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, to which the author will donate a percentage of his royalties, Nelson Mandela: Portrait of an Extraordinary Man is an inspirational book of wisdom that will encourage people of all ages to look within themselves to improve their lives, to reconsider the things they take for granted, and to think about the legacy they leave behind.

Nelson Mandela: By Himself is the definitive book of quotations from one of the great leaders of our time. This collection - gathered from privileged authorised access to Mandela's vast personal archive of private papers, speeches, correspondence and audio recordings - features nearly 2000 quotations spanning over 60 years, many previously unpublished.

How do Muslims fit into South Africa’s well-known narrative of colonialism, apartheid and postapartheid?

South Africa is infamous for apartheid, but the country’s foundation was laid by 176 years of slavery from 1658 to 1834, which formed a crucible of war, genocide and systemic sexual violence that continues to haunt the country today. Enslaved people from East Africa, India and South East Asia, many of whom were Muslim, would eventually constitute the majority of the population of the Cape Colony, the first of the colonial territories that would eventually form South Africa.

Drawing on an extensive popular and official archive, Regarding Muslims analyses the role of Muslims from South Africa’s founding moments to the contemporary period and points to the resonance of these discussions beyond South Africa. It argues that the 350-year archive of images documenting the presence of Muslims in South Africa is central to understanding the formation of concepts of race, sexuality and belonging.

In contrast to the themes of extremism and alienation that dominate Western portrayals of Muslims, Regarding Muslims explores an extensive repertoire of picturesque Muslim figures in South African popular culture, which oscillates with more disquieting images that occasionally burst into prominence during moments of crisis. This pattern is illustrated through analyses of etymology, popular culture, visual art, jokes, bodily practices, oral narratives and literature. The book ends with the complex vision of Islam conveyed in the postapartheid period.

There has been a lot of furore in the United States about Critical Race Theory (CRT). Opponents to it claim that it has saturated society at different levels, including the alleged indoctrination of school children and the poisoning of the media and public life. The assertion is that it is divisive and racist towards white people. It is sometimes referred to derisively in the shorthand ‘woke’. This panic has now reached our shores. Critical whiteness studies is an offshoot of CRT that Thandiwe Ntshinga believes is desperately needed in South Africa.

She pokes holes in the belief that leaving whiteness undisturbed for analysis creates justice and normalcy. Instead, she says perpetually studying every other identity can only create the assumption that they are perpetually the problem. By design.

The title of this book comes from one of the first comments she received on Tiktok when discussing her findings and research.

Lord Alfred Milner was a public servant of the late Victorian era. He was also one of Britain’s most famous – or notorious, depending on your point of view – empire builders who left an indelible imprint on the history of South Africa.

Carefully chosen by Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain to bring President Paul Kruger’s Boers to heel, Milner was primarily, though not solely, responsible for the Anglo-Boer War – a conflict that proved to be the beginning of the end of the British Empire. For three years after the war, a determined Milner set out to reconstruct the country, leaving behind a group of young administrators who contributed significantly to the unification of South Africa, but also resentment among Afrikaners for their mentor’s language and education policies.

Back in England, Milner involved himself via the House of Lords in all the great issues of British politics, while continuing to promote the ends of Empire through the activities of the Round Table movement.

In this biography, the first by a South African, Richard Steyn argues that Milner’s reputation should not be defined by his eight years’ service in South Africa alone. Chosen for his famed administrative abilities as Britain’s War Secretary, Milner did much to shape the Allied victory in the First World War. If his personal qualities and beliefs made him the wrong man to send to South Africa, where he failed to accomplish the over-ambitious goals he set himself, he was the right man in a far greater international conflict.

The Billionaire Career is an allegory of risk, playing to your strengths and discovering yourself to become successful in business.

It tells the story of Dan, a man who wants more from his job and his life. He yearns to start his own business, and for the freedom and control that being his own boss would give him but he is faced with numerous challenges – for one thing, how to start a business with next to no money.

But everything changes one day when he’s faced with a choice at work.

In 2022 Elon Musk - one of the richest and best-known people on earth - made headlines worldwide with his bid to buy Twitter, and he is often in the news for his entrepreneurial exploits and his controversial tweets. Who is this boundary-pushing billionaire with grand plans of inhabiting Mars, and what lies at the heart of his vision? Why is he so utterly unafraid of risk?

As an awkward Pretoria schoolboy who loved comics and science fiction, Musk's early years and singular family background were crucial in forming his stellar ambitions. Journalist and author Michael Vlismas, who attended the same high school as Musk, knows well the environment that shaped him and offers new insights into Musk's development, including his troubled relationship with his father.

Tracing his remarkable life, from his South African childhood to his move to Canada at 17 and then to the US - where Musk made millions out of PayPal and built Tesla and SpaceX into two of the world's most famous companies - this is the revealing new story of a man driven to preserve the optimism he sees in humanity and find a future for humans 'out there among the stars'.

Feeling an exile in the country of his birth, the talented journalist and leading black intellectual Bloke Modisane left South Africa in 1959. It was shortly after the apartheid government had bulldozed Sophiatown, the township of his childhood. His biting indictment of apartheid, Blame Me on History, was published in 1963 – and banned shortly afterwards.

Modisane offers a harrowing account of the degradation and oppression faced daily by black South Africans. His penetrating observations and insightful commentary paint a vivid picture of what it meant to be black in apartheid South Africa. At the same time, his evocative writing transports the reader back to a time when Sophiatown still teemed with life.

This 60th-anniversary edition of Modisane’s autobiography serves as an example of passionate resistance to the scourge of racial discrimination in our country, and is a reminder not to forget our recent past.