Anne Biccard has worked as an emergency doctor in Johannesburg for more than 30 years. It is a job that is both terrifying and thrilling, where death can be outwitted by skill and quick thinking, and the pressure eased by dark humour. The coronavirus, however, has added another dimension of fear.

In this heartwarming and at times hilarious memoir she recounts some of the cases that have burst in through her doors, such as the woman who mistook her Dettol for beer and the man who tried to run down his cardiologist. There is sadness, too, as she remembers the patients who didn't make it.

Above all, she writes of the camaraderie and dogged determination of health workers holding fast in the face of the Covid-19 nightmare as they battle, every day, to save a stranger's life.

Imbokodo: Women Who Shape Us is a groundbreaking series of books which introduces you to the powerful stories of South African women who have all made their mark and cleared a path for women and girls. These books recognise, acknowledge and honour our heroines and elders from the past and the present. South African women are silent no more on the roles that we have played in advancing our lives as artists, storytellers, writers, politicians and educationists. The title 'Imbokodo' was been chosen as it is a Zulu word that means "rock" and is often used in the saying 'Wathint' Abafazi, Wathint' Imbokodo!', which means "You Strike a Women, You Strike a Rock!" These books were made possible with the support of Biblionef and funding from the National Arts Council. In 10 Curious Inventors, Healers & Creators you will read about the women who shape our world through education, science and maths. You will read about women who became teachers, nurses, social workers, scientists and community workers, overcame obstacles and through their work fought for social change.

Imbokodo: Women Who Shape Us is a groundbreaking series of books which introduces you to the powerful stories of South African women who have all made their mark and cleared a path for women and girls. These books recognise, acknowledge and honour our heroines and elders from the past and the present. South African women are silent no more on the roles that we have played in advancing our lives as artists, storytellers, writers, politicians and educationists. The title 'Imbokodo' was been chosen as it is a Zulu word that means "rock" and is often used in the saying 'Wathint' Abafazi, Wathint' Imbokodo!', which means "You Strike a Women, You Strike a Rock!" These books were made possible with the support of Biblionef and funding from the National Arts Council. In 10 Extraordinary Leaders, Activists & Protesters you will read about women who fought against colonialism and oppression. Here are the stories of women heroes through history, whose stories are connected because of a shared passion for equality and justice.

In September 2018, Collan Rex, former water polo coach at Parktown Boys High, was found guilty of 144 charges of sexual assault and sentenced to 23 years in prison. He had molested and choked a boarding house full of school boys into silence and shame, leaving behind a trail of broken lives. His response in court? It'd been done to him, in the same way, at the same school.

Now the victims, the parents and the abuser tell their stories.

Siya Khumalo het grootgeword in ’n Durbanse township waar net een opruiende preek ’n skare kon laat toesak op enigeen wat as “anders” beskou is. In Siya se geval was “anders” om gay te wees. Hy het daarom begin om indringend na seks, politiek en godsdiens te kyk. Hy ontbloot tegnieke wat vandag deur magsfigure gebruik word en wys hoe veral gay mense die prooi word van politici en pastore wat wil ryk word deur die armes en populêre vooroordele uit te buit.

“There was no definite decision on the length of the [hunger] strike – it was to go on until their demands for release were met, or until collapse. They became slow and flagging and they didn’t talk much.”

Previously banned and unavailable in South Africa, Helen Joseph writes a moving personal account of enduring the Treason Trial - one of the longest and most important trials in South African history. She shares stories of the Pony Post -the trialists' own postal service and language, the treatment of prisoners, and the ‘real heroes’ of the Trial: the wives of the accused. She writes honestly and details the trialists' perseverance, struggles, compassion and commitment to fighting oppression for all South Africans.

This edition is a vital addition to curating our South African history and to our ever-growing Pocket Series.

In this a no-holds-barred account of her post addiction addictions, Ferguson becomes enslaved by self-help fads, Oprah, 12 step meetings, dodgy men and social media. She finds herself trapped in a world where instant gratification and narcissism is the norm. She struggles to break the cycle of "more, more,more", of use and abuse which is deeply embedded in her DNA. 

South African icon Pieter-Dirk Uys has been on stage over 7 000 times. In this funny and tender memoir, Uys reveals the person behind the persona.

We meet his forbidding, musically driven Afrikaner father, his brilliant but troubled mother, and Sannie Abader, his Cape Flats ma who raised him in Pinelands, Cape Town.

Filled with photographs from the family album and 40 years of satire, The Echo Of A Noise also features Pieter’s Paarlse ouma, his strudel-baking German Oma, his devotion to Sophia Loren, the invention of Evita Bezuidenhout, and the joys and sorrows of a remarkable life.

Belonging is a tale of coming home to love, acceptance and inspiration. This deeply personal account of a journey of self-discovery and personal growth tells of the emotional and physical transformation of a sensitive child who never felt ‘enough’.

In this compelling narrative, Alison's challenging journey is set against the backdrop of South Africa's turbulent path to democracy. Along the way, influential figures who have shaped and continue to shape Alison's growth are introduced, offering a poignant reflection on her life.

This beautifully written book aims to inspire you to become all that you can be.

Op 29 April 1963 stuur die 29-jarige digter Ingrid Jonker ’n telegram aan André P. Brink. Sy bedank die 27-jarige skrywer vir blomme en ’n brief wat hy aan haar besorg het. In die meer as tweehonderd skrywes wat hierna tussen die twee volg, ontvou sekerlik die bekendste liefdesverhouding in die Afrikaanse literêre geskiedenis. Jonker se finale brief aan Brink is gedateer 18 April 1965 – drie maande voordat sy die see in loop by Drieankerbaai.

’n Halfeeu later word lesers se verbeelding steeds aangegryp deur die hartstog van dié teer, dikwels stormagtige verhouding.

In Desember 2014, drie maande voor sy dood, het André P. Brink die liefdesbriewe tussen hom en Ingrid Jonker vir publikasie aangebied. Die briewe is nog nooit voorheen gepubliseer nie en sluit onbekende persoonlike foto’s in.

Alhoewel hierdie twee persone betreklik onbelangrik was in die geskiedenis van die vroee Kaap, is hulle lewens goed gedokumenteer en slaag Karel Schoeman daarin om 'n verbasend omvattende en interessante beeld te herskep van die lewe onder die hoer Kaapse amptenary in die vroee agttiende eeu.

Juby Mayet was a force of life. Her autobiography takes us from life as a youngster growing up in Fietas, Johannesburg, through marriage, life as a ‘girl reporter’ for first The Golden City Post, then Drum magazine, and on through apartheid and her resistance to it.

Written in her inimitable style, thumbing a nose always at convention or those in authority, it gives a unique insight into one of the only women writers at Drum – and one who could drink just as hard as Can Themba or Nat Nakasa.

Khotso Sethuntsa, the near-legendary medicine man, was believed to be a worker of powerful and dangerous magic. Khotso was renowned and feared throughout South Africa and beyond, even after his death in 1972. He created a fabulous eccentric kingdom around himself. He has been surrounded by mystery: the origins of his fortune and the extent of his powers shrouded in secrecy. This title takes us into the world of one of southern Africa's best-known herbalists.

Khotso was famed, especially, as a seller of ibangalala, a herbal remedy for sexual potency, and ukuthwala, a terrifying procedure for acquiring long-term wealth. Also, he claimed to be in spiritual contact with Paul Kruger, hinting that his fortune derived from the long-lost Kruger millions. Meanwhile, leading Afrikaner Nationalists politicians, including H.F.Verwoed and J.G.Strijdom, sought Khotso out - for his medicines for political power, it has been said. Some believed that Khotso had entered into an occult pact with the mamlambo, the seductive mermaid woman who grants wealth at a terrible price. It is rumoured that the tragic twists and turns in his life sprung from this. Yet, as one of his many wives said, he was, too, ""a lively, joking medicine man who loved money, sex and laughter.""

This title unravels many of the mysteries surrounding Khotso Sethuntsa. It explores his unique empire and tracks his extraordinary career.

Shafiq Morton’s historical study From the Spice Islands to Cape Town deals, as the subtitle indicates with “the life and times of Tuan Guru”, one of the key figures in the history of Islam at the southern point of Africa. ‘Abdullah Ibn Qadi ‘Abd ul-Salam, later known among Cape Muslims as Tuan Guru (Grand Teacher), was born in Tidore in 1712. For much of his life he was an advisor to Sultan Jamal al-Din, the ruler of the spice revenue-funded Sultanate of Tidore on the tropical Maluku islands in the Southeast Asian archipelago. At the age of 68, Tuan Guru landed at the Cape on board De Zeepard. As political prisoners, he and his fellow courtiers were immediately incarcerated on a bleak and windswept Robben Island, a place he referred to as Pulau Aylan. On his release from his second spell of banishment Tuan Guru played a pioneering role in organising and educating the faithful, making him “our country’s first recorded urban activist”.

Morton tells, for those readers interested in the underclass history of the Cape, an engrossing tale of Tuan Guru’s history in Tidore, the world of his upbringing, his banishment, his supposed spiritual powers and his leadership. He spends a full chapter, Chapter 10, on the meaning of Ma’rifat al-Islam wa’l-Iman and traces the considerable impact of Tuan Guru and his descendants on life in the Cape Muslim community and the broader South African society. Through the Arabic orthography the Awwal madrasah played a pivotal role in developing an alternative communal literacy tradition that gradually changed from Malayu to Cape Dutch and gave rise to what we today know, as the Arabic-Afrikaans scribal tradition. Beginning with Tuan Guru, successive imams and Muslim leaders established the local Islamic education tradition and network of community support organisations that outlasted the Batavian, British and the early South African administrations and are still flourishing well into the 21st century.

Morton’s account is well-written and worthy of the story of a remarkable man whose legacy lives on through his writings, the religious and educational traditions he fostered and through the achievements of his many descendants. It is a welcome addition to the growing collection of biographical and historical works on underclass figures and communities.

Margaretha van Hulsteyn (also known as Scrappy) is the daughter of respected Pretoria attorney Sir Willem van Hulsteyn, and she's an aspiring actress. While studying in London after the Great War, Scrappy changes her name to Marda Vanne and enters into a relationship with one of the foremost actresses of her day, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies.

However, on a visit to her parents in the Union of South Africa, Marda meets Hans Strydom, an attorney and uncompromising radical politician with the soubriquet ‘The Lion of the North’. Their meeting changes the course of her life, at least temporarily… Strydom went on to become a principal progenitor of the harshest discriminatory legislation which endured for decades until his nephew, President FW de Klerk, in a volte-face, dismantled the laws of apartheid.

A work of biographical fiction, The Lion & The Thespian is based on the true story of the marriage of Hans Strydom, prime minister of South Africa from 1954 to 1958, to the actress Marda Vanne. Veteran author David Bloomberg (former executive mayor of Cape Town, and founder of Metropolitan Life), following extensive reading and research, has adhered faithfully to the chronology of the lives of the main protagonists, their personalities and the historical facts with which they were associated. Creative license has allowed Bloomberg to recreate appropriate scenes and dialogue, complemented by reported sources and recorded speeches.

Hierdie boek het ontstaan as 'n verhaal oor die lewe van 'n besonderse mens: David Samaai. Maar baie gou besef jy dat dit eintlik 'n boek oor 'n baie besonderse familie, die Samaai-familie woonagtig in Paarl, is. Davy Samaai was 'n legendariese tennisspeler, 'n begaafde musikant, 'n inspirerende skoolhoof of hardwerkende onderwyser. Hy het ook met sy voorbeeld gelei.

Sol Plaatje is one of South Africa's most important political and literary figures. A pioneer in the history of the black press, he was one of the founders of the African National Congress, a leading spokesman for black opinion throughout his life, and the author of three well-known books: Mafikeng Diary, Native Life in South Africa, and his historical novel, Mhudi. These books are not Plaatje's only claim to fame.

In the course of a prolific career he wrote letters to the press, newspaper articles and editorials, pamphlets, political speeches, evidence to government commissions of enquiry, unpublished autobiographical writings, and many personal letters. Together they provide both an engaging personal record and a very readable - and revealing - commentary on South African social and political affairs during the era of segregation, from 1899 through to Plaatje's tragically early death in 1932. What he wrote has a unique historical importance, all the more meaningful from the perspective of a democratic South Africa.

Brian Willan has assembled and edited this fascinating collection from a variety of disparate and often obscure sources, making a comprehensive selection of Plaatje's writings available to a wider audience.

A memoir like no other – Claudine Shiels and her sister Lisa van der Merwe have brought South Africa’s oldest sexual abuse case to court. The sisters used the Frankel 8 Criminal Procedures decision to bring court action against their sexually abusive step-uncles forty years later – this is their story.

On a hot summer evening in 1967, eight-year-old Claudine Brown watched from the back seat of a car stalled on a railway track in the suburbs of Cape Town, as a fast-moving train hurtled towards them. Her mother sat frozen with fear in the driver's seat. The events leading up to this moment were unremarkable, giving no clue to their catastrophic timing. The aftermath was brutal and childhood-wrecking, leaving Claudine and her younger sister Lisa world-weary before they had even got started.

When her mother, unraveled by post-traumatic shock, abandoned the family, and her father reached for the nearest comfort to ease his pain – a new wife – Claudine had only one defense against the years of exploitation and physical, emotional and sexual abuse that followed: hope. She remembered what normal life was, and plotted her course back there.

A story for men and boys about never coming of age. And for women who want to know why.

Gareth has published half a dozen novels, made a horror film, run a 90 kilometre race in which he bled through his shoes, successfully failed to play right wing for Manchester United, attempted the Olympics at 38, wrestled a ghost, been the spokesperson for a company whose head office exploded, been run over by a Honda, survived two almost plane crashes and is currently filming a superhero TV show.

And yet Gareth’s story is also your story. It’s about the small moments and the big events that make up a life. About the few victories and the many defeats, the adventures and the calamities. The missteps and the madness. From his bumbling days at school, to fumbled encounters with girlfriends and disasters on the sports field and in the office … this is a story for boys and men everywhere. And for women, of course, because contained within these pages are vital clues as to what makes the male mind tick.

This isn’t just Gareth’s story – it’s everyone’s.

'n Biografie van die bekroonde skrywer Jeanne Goosen, met foto's, briewe en bydraes van vriende wat vertel hoe hulle dié ikoniese figuur ken. Die skrywer, Petrovna Metelerkamp, is die 2019-wenner van die ATKV-Veertjie vir nie-fiksie vir Ingrid Jonker - 'n Biografie. Die boek bevat materiaal wat voorheen ontoeganklik was en beloof om ure se leesgenot te verskaf aan die duisende aanhangers van die digter-dramaturg en skrywer van Ons is nie almal so nie.

’n Epiese reis in ’n klein seiljag van Frankryk tot aan die Namakwalandse kus gedurende die Tweede Wêreldoorlog, sabotasiepogings en planne om Eerste Minister Jan Smuts in ’n sluipmoord om die lewe te bring . . . In die vroeë 1940’s is die Suid-Afrikaanse publiek aangegryp deur die uitdagende optrede van die Olimpiese bokser en swaargewigkampioen Robey Leibbrandt. Hy was dodelik gekant teen Suid-Afrika se deelname aan die oorlog.

Sy ekstremisme, opvlieënd-heid en onverdraagsaamheid was tipies van ’n politieke fanatikus. Leibbrandt het ’n aanhanger van Nasionaal-Sosialisme geword toe hy in 1936 vir Suid-Afrika in Berlyn aan die Olimpiese Spele gaan deelneem het. Hy was besig met opleiding in Europa toe die oorlog uitbreek. Die Duitse militêre intelligensiediens het hom kort daarna gewerf om sabotasieopleiding te ontvang. Die Duitsers het Leibbrandt teruggestuur na Suid-Afrika as deel van Operasie Weissdorn. Sy missie? Om die militante deel van die Afrikaner-opposisie te werf en met hulle hulp skeeps- en haweinstallasies, asook nywerhede, te vernietig, en om oproer in die Uniemagte te stook.

Dit was nie lank nie of die polisie was op Leibbrandt se spoor en hy is ná een van die grootste polisiesoektogte in hegtenis geneem. Sy hoogverraadsaak in 1943 en 1944 het hoofopskrifte gehaal. Dié biografie werp nuwe lig op hierdie enigmatiese historiese figuur en wat sy fanatisme aangevuur het.

The classic story of life in Apartheid South Africa.

Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa's most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American university.

This extraordinary memoir of life under apartheid is a triumph of the human spirit over hatred and unspeakable degradation. For Mark Mathabane did what no physically and psychologically battered "Kaffir" from the rat-infested alleys of Alexandra was supposed to do -- he escaped to tell about it.

On 22 November 1977, 40 years ago, Robert Smit and his wife Jean were brutally murdered in their Springs home. They were shot and stabbed several times. The words RAU TEM were spray-painted in red on the walls. A high-ranking member of the National Party, Robert Smit was involved in probable sanctions-busting activities through a front company, SANTAM International.

Told by Liza Smit, daughter of Robert and Jean, who was 13 years old at the time of the murders, this is a book of two stories, the story of the life-long and destructive impact the murders had on the lives of those left behind, and particularly and very poignantly on that of Liza’s own life.

It also tries to unravel the mystery of the murders. We follow Liza as she gathers evidence to present to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and meets with a wide array of those who might help solve the crime, from ministers to shady conmen. Despite Liza’s efforts and the huge public interest in the murders, despite the numerous conjectures on who might have murdered this high-ranking politician and his wife, despite the complicated reasons put forward as to who might have given the orders to have them killed, 40 years later we are no closer to a conviction and trial.

Die outobiografie dek die eerste 25 jaar van Joubert se lewe, haar grootwordjare in die Paarl, haar skooljare, studentejare aan die universiteite van Stellenbosch en Kaapstad, eerste onderwysposte en haar slyping in die joernalistiek. Dit is 'n outobiografie wat met verstommende detail 'n beeld bied van 'n bepaalde era in die land se geskiedenis, maar ook van die wording van 'n skrywer. Joubert deins nie terug van omstrede kwessies nie, en onder meer kom haar betrokkenheid by die Ossewabrandwag aan bod. Maar die vernaamste beeld is die van 'n skrywer wat as kind reeds die drang na woorde ervaar, wat in die onstuimige tyd na die Tweede Wereldoorlog te midde van klomp invloede haar onafhanklike stem as skrywer probeer vind.

Francois, Hunter, Wynand, Jaco en Johnny is die vyf lede van Fokofpolisiekar. Sedert hul eerste optrede in 2003 het dié band dikwels die koerante gehaal: Musiekjoernaliste was opgewonde oor hulle klank, maar hul omstrede uitlatings het dikwels groter opslae gemaak. Maar wie skuil agter die uitdagende naam?

Sommige lesers sal verbaas wees om te hoor dat die meeste van die lede in 'n charismatiese kerk bevriend geraak het, dat hulle 'n bemarkingsveldtog uitgedink het nog voordat hulle enige liedjies geskryf het en dat hulle eens op 'n tyd skaars sjampoe kon bekostig. In Biografie van 'n Bende kan nuuskieriges lees van Fokofpolisiekar se lewe in die huis wat hulle 'The Barracks of Rebellion' gedoop het, asook van die ander suksesvolle splintergroepe wat ontstaan het uit dié kerngroep.

In hierdie biografie word vertel hoe dié uiteenlopende individue boesemvriende geword het en die eerste suksesvolle Afrikaanse punkrockgroep gestig het deur bloed, sweet en 'n paar goeie sakebesluite. Dié boek is Fokofpolisiekar se eerste goedgekeurde biografie.