What does it take to row 5,500km across an Ocean? Or to trek 500 miles through Antarctica? How do we achieve incredible things?

Peter van Kets has done this and more – and yet he could be the average guy next door. A teacher in East London with a fondness for the ocean, Peter was given a rare chance to compete in the 2007 Atlantic Rowing Race. His decision to grasp this opportunity would change his life.

Together with Bill Godfrey, he rowed across the Atlantic and won against the odds. Then he came back two years later to row it alone – a truly epic feat. After that he joined forces with adventure runner Braam Malherbe to represent South Africa in the unique Scott-Amundsen Centenary Race to the South Pole, one of the most gruelling endurance events ever staged.

Peter’s feats of endurance in the face of endless ice, snow and saltwater are testament to the power of the human spirit and the greatness possible when an ordinary person sets out to do extraordinary things. In rowing the Atlantic and trekking the Antarctic, he has come to understand what it takes to conquer the limits of your mind – to conquer your Eighth Summit.

This extraordinary account of imprisonment shows with exacting clarity the awful injustices of the system. Sylvia Neame, activist against apartheid and racism and by profession a historian (see the three-volume, The Congress Movement, HSRC Press, 2015), has not written a classical historical memoir. Rather, this book is a highly personal account, written in an original style. At the same time, it casts a particularly sharp light on the unfolding of a policedominated apartheid system in the 1960s.

The author incorporates some of her experiences in prisons and police stations around the country, including the fabricated trial she faced while imprisoned in Port Elizabeth, one of the many such trials which took place in the Eastern Cape. But her focus is on Barberton Prison. Here she was imprisoned together with a small number of other white women political prisoners, most of whom had stood trial and been sentenced in Johannesburg in 1964–5 for membership to an illegal organisation, the Communist Party. It is a little known story. Not even the progressive party MP Helen Suzman found her way here.

Barberton Prison, a maximum security prison, part of a farm jail complex in the eastern part of what was then known as the Transvaal province, was far from any urban centre. The women were kept in a small space at one end of the prison in extreme isolation under a regime of what can only be called psychological warfare, carried out on the instructions of the ever more powerful (and corrupt) security apparatus. A key concern for the author was the mental and psychological symptoms which emerged in herself and her fellow prisoners and the steps they took to maintain their sanity. It is a narrative partly based on diary entries, written in a minute hand on tissue paper, which escaped the eye of the authorities. Moreover, following her release in April 1967 – she had been altogether incarcerated for some three years – she produced a full script in the space of two or three months. The result is immediacy, spontaneity, authenticity; a story full of searing detail. It is also full of a fighting spirit, pervaded by a sharp intellect, a capacity for fine observation and a sense of humour typical of the women political prisoners at Barberton.

A crucial theme in Sylvia Neame’s account is the question of whether something positive emerged out of her experience and, if so, what exactly it was.

Anna de Jager het in KwaZulu Natal grootgeword. Dit was nog altyd vir haar ʼn passie en selfopgelegde uitdaging om oomblikke vas te vang deur te skryf en te skets. Sy is in 1990 met Gert de Jager getroud en woon in Centurion. Hulle het twee dogters, Anita en Gerda en ‘n skoonseun, Marco. Daar het al verskeie vakpublikasies uit haar pen verskyn, maar hierdie is haar eerste memoires.

Kort nadat sy haar PhD voltooi het, is sy met borskanker gediagnoseer.

Chemo, koekies en tee is ’n openhartige deel van ʼn eiesoortige perspektief, baie genade en dankbaarheid.

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.

This is the story of a brave warrior and “a formidable tactician, a masterly politician and a brilliant orator”; a Xhosa Nkosi who destroyed a British Navy troopship that threatened to annihilate his nation in 1852; the story of how the attack was carried out by a few African black Xhosa people.

This is the story of a lone abalone diver who spent scores of hours investigating the wreck of HMS ‘Birkenhead’ between 1958 and 1988. This is the story how the irrefutable evidence of sabotage was found. This is the story of Britain´s mindless invasion into Xhosaland.

This is the lamentable story how one of the bravest African Royals was buried in a pauper´s hole on Robben Island; a disrespect and disgust to the Xhosa Kingdom in general and the amaRharhabe in particular.

'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.

Jan Smuts, one of the most infamous South Africans of the twentieth century remains a controversial figure. Was he one of the outstanding statesmen of his time or was he perhaps a traitor of Afrikaner interests and possibly a racist? Today there are still strong opinions on Smuts’s role.

Like Paul Kruger at the end of the nineteenth century, and Nelson Mandela as the twentieth century drew to a close, it was Jan Smuts who stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries in the first half of the twentieth century; he was a leader of extraordinary stature and his statesmanship is recognised internationally. And yet, the NP and ANC governments have downplayed his contributions for decades, because it did not endorse their Afrikaner and black nationalist versions of South African history. A reappraisal of Smuts will fill a gap in the literature on the history of South Africa in the first half of the twentieth century. Many of the biographies and other works on Smuts appeared during his lifetime or soon after his death. Today, a few generations later, we have a better perspective on his contributions within the historical context of his time. New evidence continues to come to light, making it possible to reach a more informed opinion on questions about Smuts, issues which previously could not be answered conclusively.

The purpose of the book, written almost three generations after his death, is to recall and re-evaluate Smuts’s contributions in various fields and in this way introduce him to the younger generation. It is important that Smuts be judged in the context of his particular time and circumstances. As far as his outlook on war and peace, civilisation, race and class differences, the capitalist system and South Africa’s place in the wider world are concerned, Smuts was certainly a product of his time. It would be unfair to measure him and his contemporaries against today’s norms and values. To do justice to him, his supporters, as well as his opponents and critics, due consideration should be accorded to how they lived, thought and reasoned in that era.

The first free elections in South Africa's history were held in 1994. Within a year legislation was drafted to create a Truth and Reconcilliation Commission to establish a picture of the gross human rights violations committed between 1960 and 1993. It was to seek the truth and make it known to the public and to prevent these brutal events ever happening again. From 1996 and over the following two years South Africans were exposed almost daily to revelations about their traumatic past. Antije Krog's full account of the Commission's work using the testimonies of the oppressed and oppressors alike is a harrowing and haunting book in which the voices of ordinary people shape the course of history. WINNER OF SOUTH AFRICA'S SUNDAY TIMES ALAN PATON AWARD

Young mother Surinda du Preez stood transfixed, barely able to breathe. A single thought went through her head: "I’m looking at the devil". She was staring straight into the eyes of a man whose alleged crimes had earned him the title: Modimolle monster. She was staring at Johan Kotze. It was 10 January 2012.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this, that a person can do this to another human being.’ – Renier van Rooyen, prosecutor.

3 January 2012 is a day the community of Modimolle in Limpopo, South Africa will never forget. On this day, Johan Kotze did the unthinkable. Kotze not only orchestrated the gang rape of his wife, before torturing her, but also murdered her nineteen-year-old son. His unthinkable actions earned him the name Modimolle monster, and have made him infamous.

Love is War tells the sobering story of the workings of a twisted mind, and the weighty consequences of actions. Maughan takes a walk on the macabre side, through an in-depth analysis of Kotze’s story. From his life before the horrific events, to coverage of the trial, Maughan leaves nothing uncovered.

While the trial continues, and the authorities try to ascertain whether or not Kotze is sane, his now ex-wife tries to deal with the fragile remains of her life, and South Africa holds its breath in the hopes that justice will be served in what is certainly the most talked-about case of the year

Hermann Giliomee, top historian, is seen as the world expert on the history of the Afrikaners. This book presents the essence of his previous, longer academic work in readable language. Many controversial aspects of South Africa’s past and the role therein of the group of people who in time would refer to themselves as “Afrikaners” are told in colour and flavour in story form, leaving readers with a fresh, sometimes challenging perspective on our past .

Gordon Oliver, born in 1939, lives in Cape Town, South Africa. He holds a master’s degree in Religious Studies from the University of Cape Town. He was ordained in the ministry of the Unitarian Church in Cape Town in 2002 and was elected President of International Council of Unitarians and Universalists from 2003 to 2007. Most of his professional life was in Human Resources Management and during this time, he was an elected councillor on the Cape Town City Council, serving for fifteen years. He was Mayor of Cape Town from 1989 to 1991 and had the privilege of welcoming Nelson Mandela to the Cape Town City Hall on the day he was released from prison.

The author tells his story of being born under the Gemini star sign, living a life defined by an unremitting struggle between the conflicting twins of “Yes, I can” and “No, you can’t!” It describes a struggle of early childhood uncertainty, being hidden as a child, of unanswered questions and preferring to be in the background during his childhood through to his middle years.

Generally surrendering to the opinions of others, while holding back on his own views, was the hallmark of his being. Hesitating to take on challenges was a familiar pattern, as was the likelihood of yielding to mediocracy, the easy way out. Tilting the balance away from “No you can’t” to “Yes, I can … and I will” was the major factor in the author’s life towards holding leadership positions in every sphere of his adult public life, from committee secretary early in his professional career to becoming Cape Town’s first citizen.

From the mayoralty to ministry, standing up for justice and the dignity of life and being able to make a difference was the path he chose; mediocracy simply was not good enough.

Beyond Fear is the testimony of Ebrahim Ebrahim, a revolutionary amongst revolutionaries, whose poignant and inspirational account of his years spent dedicated to bringing down the apartheid state is told in ways we have not heard.

As one of the founding members of Umkhonto we Sizwe, he played a central role in directing the sabotage campaign of the early 1960s. Convicted for this, Ebrahim arrived on Robben Island in 1964, where for over 15 years he played a leadership role in the creation of the ‘University of Robben Island’, the university of revolutionary ideology. Soon after his release, Ebrahim became the head of the ANC’s Political Military Committee in Swaziland, and as such, his life was under constant threat. He was abducted in December 1986 by apartheid agents and taken to South Africa to be tortured at John Vorster Square. He was charged with high treason and sentenced to a further 20 years, which would be his second stint on the Island. Ebrahim was, however, released in February 1991.

Beyond Fear also tells the story of his post-1994 life, where he travelled the world doing international conflict resolution work. He later served as South Africa’s deputy minister of foreign affairs. His great love story began at the age of 63 when he met his beloved Shannon Ebrahim with whom he had two children, who were, as he says his ‘greatest teachers’. Ebrahim Ebrahim passed away on 6 December 2021, having become one of South Africa’s most loved heroes.

Tendai Mtawarira is known throughout the rugby world simply as Beast. Or, more often than not, ‘Beeeaaassssttt!’, as crowds from Durban to London, Buenos Aires to Auckland cry whenever he gets the ball. In 2018 he became the most capped prop in Springbok history, earning his 100th Test cap for the Springboks, and in 2019 he became the most capped Super Rugby player in South Africa.

Due to play in his third World Cup in September 2019, Beast has been in a winning series against the British and Irish Lions, contested two Super Rugby finals and won three Currie Cups with his beloved Sharks. Along the way, he has been moved from back row to front row, bullied by xenophobic politicians and undergone three bouts of heart surgery.

Beast is the story of how a humble man from Zimbabwe has become a rugby icon.

A candid account of Patricia Schonstein’s creative, deeply lived life as a novelist.

Annotated with extracts from her writings, this generous memoir welcomes you behind the scenes, into her Workshop and Costumery.

She shows how her own life configures with the scaffolding of her fictions; how characters take up roles both archetypal and simple to tackle existential questions; and how urban landscapes and wilderness serve as the neon-spangled theatres of her story telling.

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.

In Mr Entertainment, we hear the voices of the people who knew Taliep Petersen best: his family, friends and collaborators. Their stories bring to life the spaces he inhabited, vividly recounting scenes from his childhood, his rise to fame from the Cape Coon Carnival stage to the West End, his artistic collaborations, most notably with David Kramer, his family life, and his tragic death and its aftermath.

In this pioneering biography of one of Cape Town’s most beloved entertainers, we encounter Petersen as a complex and many-sided personality whose influence continues to reverberate in national life. Mr Entertainment evokes not just Taliep’s life, but also the music and entertainment worlds of the 1950s to 2000s and their diverse and irrepressible cultural traditions. Along the way, it brings us to the front row of South Africa’s difficult history.

Drawing on the musician’s personal archive and on more than fifty interviews conducted over a decade, Paula Fourie has pieced together a fascinating portrait of Taliep Petersen, acutely observed and poignantly captured.

The intimate and personal story behind the man who tried to kill Verwoerd but didn’t succeed.

“The raucous wail of sirens pierced the quiet Saturday afternoon, making me drop my book and rush outside to see what drama was taking place. A fleet of cars, their sirens screaming, roared along Oxford Road two hundred yards from our house. I stood on the lawn wondering what on earth it was because sirens were rarely heard near our home. I went back inside; the commotion was over. But within half an hour our telephone started ringing non-stop . . .”

9 April 1960 was the day that changed Susie Cazenove’s life – the day her father, David Pratt, shot the Prime Minister of South Africa, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd. Verwoerd, commonly known as the architect of apartheid, didn’t die, but Pratt’s family lived with the legacy of his action.

A chance encounter with the late David Rattray of Fugitive’s Drift led Cazenove to revisit the memories of that terrible day. With Rattray’s encouragement she put pen to paper to describe the extraordinary events of that day and its consequences. Part family memoir, part ode to the settlement of Johannesburg, Cazenove skilfully weaves her family history and the mood in South Africa in the 1950s and 60s as a background to what may have led her father, a farmer and gentle man, to commit a treasonous act.

Born into a perfect family, by 16, Jacqui Burnett wants to kill her father. With his gun.

Decades later, in her early ‘40s, Jacqui believes she has left her turbulent past and the trauma of eight near-death experiences behind her. On the surface, she has everything she’s ever dreamed of – an education, success and a wonderful husband. What Jacqui doesn’t know is that she’s about to lose everything.

"I was about to step into a board meeting but instead I slid from my office chair and cowered under my desk, sobbing. As managing director, I was meant to announce a year of outstanding results; instead, I was paralysed."

In a desperate search for answers, Jacqui travels to America. Alone in the Rocky Mountains, her life starts unravelling and the truth of her chaotic childhood begins to emerge. In her confused attempts to find love and meaning, Jacqui has to face death one more time, along with an avalanche of unexpected obstacles, before rising from the ashes to heal.

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.

Francois Stephanus Malan (1871-1940), an Afrikaner newspaper editor and politician, is one of the most complex figures in South African history. In an era of racism, oppression and exploitation when whites regarded blacks as a barbarous threat to their supremacy he refused to pander to these fears. With the fervour of an Old Testament prophet he argued that white survival could be secured only through the extension of equal political rights to all races.

Yet he was also an Afrikaner nationalist, playing a leading role in the Cape Colony defending the volk’s interests against British domination. But he desired a united, stable and prosperous South Africa in which, free of internal British control, Afrikaners and English-speakers could overcome their enmity and become one nation.

According to the author the purpose of the book is to create a portrait, focusing on the facts that reveal his personality and the essence of his career ― his liberalism, religious belief and progressive theological views, his Afrikaner nationalism and desire to create a South African nation by reconciling Afrikaners and English-speakers, as well as his anti-capitalist views.

While African National Congress narratives dominate much of the scholarship on South Africa’s freedom struggle, Josie Mpama/Palmer’s political life offers a different perspective. Highly critical of the patriarchal attitudes that hindered black women from actively participating in politics, Mpama/Palmer was an outspoken advocate for women’s social equality and encouraged black women to become more involved in national conversations.

The first black woman to join the Communist Party of South Africa and an antiapartheid activist, Josie Mpama/Palmer remained involved in critical issues all her life, especially protests against Bantu Education and other forms of racial and sexist discrimination. She was an integral figure in establishing the Federation of South African Women, an organization open to women of all races.

Mpama/Palmer’s activism and political legacy would become an inspiring example for women in South Africa and around the world to get up and get moving.

Hugh Masekela is a prodigiously talented giant of jazz and world music, and a pioneer in sharing the voice and spirit of South Africa with the rest of the world, but his globetrotting tale transcends music.

Still Grazing was first published in the US in 2004; it is an autobiography which shares rich detail of world-acclaimed jazz giant Hugh Masekela's life, infused with love and loss, sex and drugs, exile and revolution.

He survived it all, with wit, passion, abundant talent and wisdom, and is now bringing his story back home!

The Ven Archdeacon Professor Emeritus Peter Tshobisa Mtuze is a poet, priest and academic. He has worked as an interpreter in the law courts of the old South Africa, as a radio announcer, a salesperson for a publishing company, a civil servant in the homeland government structures, a lecturer at UNISA, and as Editor in Chief of the Greater Dictionary of isiXhosa at Fort Hare. He then joined Rhodes University as Professor and Head of the isiXhosa Department, and he also served there as Deputy Campus Director and Deputy Registrar. From 1966 to date, he has published more than 30 books in many genres – novels, short stories, essays, drama, poetry, autobiography, and cultural and theological publications. Some of these works received awards and accolades from various institutions, and one of his novels is on the list of literary classics. Many of the titles are available in Braille and as audio recordings. Mtuze translated former President Nelson Mandela’s monumental autobiography Long Walk to Freedom into isiXhosa as Indlela ende eya enkululekweni. From a poverty-stricken farm background, he fought his way up to become one of the most accomplished academics, with a PhD from the University of Cape Town, a DTh from UNISA and a DLitt (Honoris Causa) from Rhodes University. Mtuze’s autobiography will serve as an inspiration to one and all.

More than a million black South African women are domestic workers. These nannies, housekeepers and chars continue to occupy a central place in in postapartheid society. But it is an ambivalent position. Precariously situated between urban and rural areas, rich and poor, white and black, these women are at once intimately connected and at a distant remove from the families they serve. ‘Like family’ they may be, but they and their employers know they can never be real family.

Ena Jansen shows that domestic worker relations in South Africa were shaped by the institution of slavery at the Cape. This established social hierarchies and patterns of behaviour and interaction that persist to the present day, and are still evident in the predicament of the black female domestic worker.

To support her argument, Jansen examines the representation of domestic workers in a diverse range of texts in English and Afrikaans. Authors include André Brink, JM Coetzee, Imraan Coovadia, Nadine Gordimer, Elsa Joubert, Antjie Krog, Sindiwe Magona, Kopano Matlwa, Es’kia Mphahlele, Sisonke Msimang, Zukiswa Wanner and Zoë Wicomb. Later texts by black authors offer wry and subversive insights into the madam/maid nexus, capturing paradoxes relating to shifting power relationships. Like Family is an updated version of the award-winning Soos familie published in 2015 and the highly-acclaimed 2016 Dutch translation, Bijna familie.

My father, the monster of the Springs house of horrors

“I kneel on the foot piece next to the bed and lower my head. A piercing, burning pain engulfs my entire face. Dad has kicked me. Blood is gushing from my nose. Then I feel cold water being poured all over my body. Electrical wires shock me, I can’t see through the blood. God, help me.” (Translated)

Landi is the eldest of five children who were rescued from the so-called Springs house of horror. She is now 21 years old and tells her astonishing story for the very first time. In May 2014, police raided the house where a sadistic father had imprisoned, abused and tortured his wife and five children in a rat-infested den of sleaze.

In chilling detail, Landi recalls how their father assaulted them by tasering them, shooting them with a gas pistol and burning them with a blowtorch, how he researched torture methods and nearly drowned them in a bathtub.

She relates her memories to Susan Cilliers, an experienced journalist, who documents it with compassion, skilfully combining it with facts that emanated from the police investigation and court case.

House of Horrors is the shocking tale of a father who took everything from his family in the cruellest possible way, but it is also a story of hope about a brave young girl who eventually finds happiness and healing.