Jacana Media is proud to make this important book available again, now with a completely new introduction. First published by Oceanbooks, New York and Melbourne and University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg in 2001, the book was short-listed for the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award in 2002.

In the public imagination the struggle that saw the end of apartheid and the inauguration of a democratic South Africa is seen as one waged by black people who were often imprisoned or killed for their efforts. Raymond Suttner, an academic, is one of a small group of white South Africans who was imprisoned for his efforts to overthrow the apartheid regime. He was first arrested in 1975 and tortured with electric shocks because he refused to supply information to the police. He then served 8 years because of his underground activities for the African National Congress and South African Communist Party.

After his release in 1983, he returned to the struggle and was forced to go underground to evade arrest, but was re-detained in 1986 under repeatedly renewed states of emergency, for 27 months, 18 of these in solitary confinement, because whites were kept separately and all other whites apart from Suttner were released. In the last months of this detention Suttner was allowed to have a pet lovebird, which he tamed and used to keep inside his tracksuit. When he was eventually released from detention in September 1988 the bird was on his shoulder. Suttner was held under stringent house arrest conditions, imposed to impede further political activities. He, however, defied his house arrest restrictions and attended an Organisation for African Unity meeting in Harare in August 1989 and he remained out of the country for five months. Shortly after his return, when he anticipated being re-arrested, the state of emergency was lifted and the ANC and other banned organisations were unbanned. Suttner became a leading figure in the ANC and SACP.

The book describes Suttner’s experience of prison in a low-key, unromantic voice, providing the texture of prison life, but unlike most ‘struggle memoirs’ it is also intensely personal. Suttner is not averse to admitting his fears and anxieties.

The new edition contains an introduction where Suttner describes his break with the ANC and SACP. But, he argues, the reason for his rupturing this connection that had been so important to his life were the same – ethical reasons – that had led him to join. He remains convinced that what he did was right and continues to act in accordance with those convictions.

In November 1949 D.D.T. Jabavu, the South African politician and professor of African languages at Fort Hare University, set out on a four-month trip to attend the World Pacifist Meeting in India. He wrote an isiXhosa account of his journey which was published in 1951 by Lovedale Press. This new edition republishes the travelogue in the original isiXhosa, with an English translation by the late anthropologist Cecil Wele Manona.

The travelogue contains reflections on Jabavu’s social interactions during his travels, and on the conference itself, where he considered what lessons Gandhian principles might yield for South Africans engaged in struggles for freedom and dignity. His commentary on nonviolent resistance, and on the dangers of nationalism and racism, enriches the existing archive of intellectual exchanges between Africa and India from a black South African perspective.

The volume includes chapters by the editors that examine the networks of international solidarity – from post-independence India to the anti-colonial struggle in East Africa and the American civil rights movement – which Jabavu helped to strengthen, biographical sketches of Jabavu and of Manona, and an afterword that reflects on the historical and political significance of making African-language texts available to readers across Africa.

What makes a working mother and average athlete decide to take on a massive physical and mental challenge to run, cycle and kayak the perimeter of South Africa, covering 6 772 km in less than five months? Kim van Kets was inspired by her desire to demonstrate to her daughter the fact that mothers are heroes too. She was able to justify the 'time-out' after having built up a credit balance of 150 days owed to her by her adventurer husband. Her story is a positive and enthusiastic 'off the beaten track' South African adventure and is amusing, anecdotal and inspiring.

It tells of the physical and mental challenges of the journey but focuses on stories surrounding the people and places she encountered along the way, including those of the ancient Kalahari farmer who pronounced her to be a 'Ramkat' and the Nama goatherd who seemed doubtful about her gender and anxious to be rid of her. The book is also a wonderful South African travelogue and is studded with nuggets of history and fascinating trivia about the plants, animals, characters and places as well as brief summaries of important life lessons the journey highlighted for the author.

It will leave the reader feeling upbeat, inspired and eager to explore the splendour of the beloved country and its people.

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

The Jacana series of pocket guides is meant for those who are looking for a brief but lively introduction to a wide range of relevant topics of South African history, politics and biography. Written by some of the leading experts in their fields, the individual volumes are informative and accessible, inexpensive yet well produced, slim enough to put in your pocket and carry with you to read.

Steve Biko is often seen as the charismatic leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, who played a useful stopgap role in South African politics in the late 1960s and 1970s. This biography of Biko shows, on the contrary, just how fundamental he was to the transformation of South Africa in the second half of the 20th century – and just how relevant he remains today.

Seks, leuens en die internet is ’n rou, eerlike vertelling deur ’n vrou wie se hart gebreek is, maar weier om moed op te gee. Op 50 lyk al die prinse en perde bra gehawend, maar vasbeslote durf sy die wilde wêreld van aanlyn afsprake aan, moedig op soek na haar sielsgenoot. Hierdie boek is deel van die immergewilde selfhelp-genre en kombineer die onderwerpe van verhoudings; seks en selfondersoek. Dis ’n eerlike en soms skreeusnaakse memoir - maar ook ’n nuttige gids oor die wêreld van aanlyn afsprake.

Nelson Mandela was one of the most revered figures of our time. He committed himself to a compelling political cause, suffered a long prison sentence, and led his violent and divided country to a peaceful democratic transition. His legacy, however, is not uncontested: his decision to embark on an armed struggle in the 1960s, his solitary talks with apartheid officials in the 1980s, and the economic policies adopted during his presidency still spark intense debate, even after his death. The essays in this Companion, written by experts in history, anthropology, jurisprudence, cinema, literature, and visual studies, address these and other issues. They examine how Mandela became an icon during his lifetime and consider the meanings and uses of his internationally recognizable image. Their overarching concerns include Mandela's relation to 'tradition' and 'modernity', the impact of his most famous public performances, the oscillation between Africanist and non-racial positions in South Africa, and the politics of gender and national sentiment. The volume concludes with a meditation on Mandela's legacy in the twenty-first century and a detailed guide to further reading.

In this memoir, the first of two, Dikgang Moseneke pays homage to the many people and places that have helped to define and shape him. These influences include his ancestry; his parents; his immediate and extended family; and his education both in school and on Robben Island as a 15-year-old prisoner. These people and places played a significant role in forming his principled stance in life and his proud defiance of all forms of injustice.

Robben Island became a school not only in politics but an opportunity for dedicated studies towards a law degree that would provide the bedrock for a long and fruitful career. The book charts Moseneke’s rise as one of the country’s top legal minds, who not only helped to draft the Constitution, but for 15 years acted as a guardian of it for all South Africans.

Not only did Moseneke assist in shaping our new Constitution, he has helped to make it a living document for many South Africans over the past 15 years.

This emotionally captivating, suspense-filled, spiritually engaged, romantic memoir will appeal to cat lovers of all kinds, as well as conservationists, New Age spiritual seekers, armchair travellers, and vicarious adventurers.

In this captivating, suspenseful memoir, white lion conservationist Linda Tucker describes her perilous struggle to protect the sacred white lion from the merciless and mafia-like trophy-hunting industry, armed only with her indomitable spirit and total devotion.

Compellingly written in the intimate style of a journal, Tucker describes with unflinching honesty her fears, doubts, hopes, and dreams, all the while unfolding for us an unforgettable tale of adventure, romance, spirituality, and most of all, justice.

Beneath the Nelson Mandela Boulevard flyover on Cape Town's foreshore lives a community of stowaways, young Tanzanian men from the slums of Dar es Salaam.

When journalist Sean Christie meets Adam Bashili, he comes to know the extraordinary world of Beachboys, a multi-port, fourth-generation subculture that lives to stow away and stows away to survive. But Sean starts to accompany the beachboys on trips around their everyday Cape Town, he becomes more than a casual observer, serving as sometime moneylender, driver, confidant and scribe, and eventually joining Adam on an unprecedented tour of Dar es Salaam's underworld and a reckless run down Africa's east coast.

Under Nelson Mandela Boulevard remaps both city and continent, introducing us to the places and people we so frequently overlook.

Mine-protected and mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles are today standard in the US, most major western armed forces and many other armies as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The South African Army was already routinely using mine-protected armoured personnel carriers and patrol vehicles forty years ago even if they looked primitive and ungainly. A few years later, the South African Army had reached the stage where it could deploy entire combat groups into battle zones equipped with only mine-protected vehicles, including their ambulances and supply trucks. By then the mine-protected vehicles had also become effective for use in combat, rather than just protected transport, the Casspir being the chief example. More to the point, they saved countless soldiers and policemen from death or serious injury, and the basic concepts now live on in the various MRAP types in service today. The valuable lessons learned by the South Africans with their early designs of these combat-proven vehicles has led the country to become one of the global leaders in the design of MRAPs which are locally manufactured and exported around the world. Surviving the Ride is a fascinating pictorial account featuring more than 120 of these unique South African-developed vehicles, spanning a forty-year period, with over 280 photographs, many of which are previously unpublished.

Like so many of her generation, Lwando Xaso came of age alongside the beginnings and growth of South Africa’s constitutional democracy. Her journey into adulthood was a radically different one from that of earlier generations, marked by hope that changing perceptions would usher in a new and free society.

Made in South Africa – A Black Woman’s Stories of Rage, Resistance and Progress is a vibrant collection of essays in which Lwando examines with incisive clarity some of the events that have shaped her experience of South Africa – a country with huge potential but weighed down by persistent racism and inequality, cultural appropriation, sexism and corruption, all legacies of a complicated history.

As a young lawyer intent on climbing the corporate ladder, Lwando’s life’s direction was changed by a personal experience of the oppressive capacity of a supposedly democratic government when it unjustly fired a close family friend and mentor from a senior government position. She found herself on his legal team and the turmoil the case created within her led her to further her studies in constitutional law, and to pick up her pen and share with a wider audience her views of what was happening in her beloved country.

Her outlook was further shaped by her experience of clerking at the Constitutional Court for Justice Edwin Cameron, which deepened her respect for the South African Constitution, and what it really means for a resilient people to strive continually to live up to its moral and legal standards.

Lwando’s writing reflects her unflinching resolve to live according to the precepts of our groundbreaking Constitution and offers a challenge to all South Africans to believe in and achieve ‘the improbable’.

Shauwn 'Mamkhize' Mkhize is a larger than life personality who, like her father and brother before her, is loved and misunderstood in equal measure. Her combination of political and business acumen runs in her family, and so is her ability to garner the sometimes-grudging admiration of those who have followed her rise to fame and fortune in the democratic dispensation. In her memoir, Mamkhize: My World, My Rules, this remarkable businesswoman shares the details of her cloistered but privileged childhood, which was torn asunder by the assassination of her father and the subsequent quest by her brother to avenge his death. She tells the story of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from her unique vantage point, as a family member of a victim.

As a young accounting graduate freshly returned from an overseas experience, Shauwn lands what initially seems to be a dream job with the multinational corporation that had sponsored her training abroad. It soon dissipates into disappointment - work that receives insufficient pay and she bravely ventures into business. In this book, she dispels the urban legends about her wealth, family, marriage and subsequent divorce. She reflects on the much-publicized story of her reinvention as Mamkhize, the soccer boss, and shares the lessons that she has learned from the experiences that life has given her. A woman with incredible agency, Mamkhize allows the reader a glimpse into her family life and her formative years. She illuminates how they have shaped the woman that she is today.

Not one to reveal every single trick of her trades (after all, she is the business), Shauwn Mkhize manages to regale without spoiling her aura of mystique. While touching the reader with her love for her parents, siblings and children, this memoir displays the dexterity with which she navigates modern life while striving to maintain a sense of tradition that keeps her grounded.

“Die lewensstroom vat ons na onbekende plekke. Ons kan kies watter bagasie ons met ons saamneem – dikwels is dit goed wat maar kon gebly het. Soms verborge dinge waarvan ons nie eens aktief bewus is nie. Soos die eendmossels buite sig op die boeg,” skryf Susanna Pienaar.

Susanna, ’n musikus, is ’n lewenslustige, suksesvolle vrou – ondernemend en vol waagmoed. Met die Pase vertrek sy na ‘n kunstefees. Daar, in ’n spookagtig donker kerk, begin die aanloop tot traumatiese gebeure wat haar lewe binne vier en twintig uur drasties verander. Sy word gestroop van alles wat vir haar kosbaar is – die gebruik van haar vingers en ander ledemate, haar finansiële welvaart, haar geliefde Lucas. Uiteindelik word sy gedurende haar mediese behandeling en fisieke rehabilitasie gelykgemaak met medemense wie se enigste tuiste onder bokse, onder brûe was.

Haar worsteling met haar verliese en soeke na identiteit lig die sluier oor die invloede in haar verlede, hoe dit haar lank gelede op ’n plattelandese dorpie gevorm het: die onskuld en kameraderie van kinders; die obskure doen en late van die gemeenskappie (dikwels goeie mense); haar worsteling met godsdiens in ’n huis waar die gesin uitmekaar geskeur word deur geloofsverskille tussen ouers. En ook die onnoembare ...

Die laaste noot? deur Susanna Pienaar oor haar lewenservarings staan in die teken van “Da Capo al fine” – ’n musikale aanwysing wat beteken: begin weer voor en speel tot die laaste noot ...

Zanzibar’s brief and brutal revolution is almost forgotten. During the Cold War, the small archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Tanganyika, became significant in the early ‘60s because of its vulnerability and position at the edge of Africa’s rotting Colonial corpse. As had the early Arab slavers, religious pioneers and Imperial European adventurers, so too the purveyors of Communism and Socialism used Zanzibar as a base for their ambitions in Africa.

From here they began making swift incisions into the carcass and white Southern African tribes began to show concern while the West shrugged.

This book tells the story of a boy’s journey through the turbulent waters of his own young life during these urgent moments in Equatorial East Africa and Southern Africa. It is a tale of love and loss.

’n Bekroonde joernalis, Malvory Adams, skrik wakker in ’n hospitaalbed en wonder hoe hy daar beland het. Dit tref hom soos ’n tienpondhamer tussen die oë: Sy selfmoordpoging het misluk! ’n Bleddie “Samaritaan” het hom uit die kloue van die dood weggeruk.

Malvory se hartverskeurende lewensreis sleep jou enduit saam en laat jou by tye na jou asem snak.

Als is nie net swart en wit nie skets ’n prentjie van swaarkry, stryd, sukses, selfvernietiging, ’n dans met die dood en die lewe.

’n QR-kode word ook by Als is nie net swart en wit nie ingesluit van sy nuutste liedjie, “Hemel-Dal” asook ’n Engelse weergawe genaamd “Heaven’s Vale”.

Pushing Boulders tells the extraordinary story of a Cape Town man born in an old police station during apartheid, who struggles to overcome immense political and social odds to become one of the first people ever to graduate with master’s degrees from five of the world’s top universities, including Harvard, MIT and Oxford. At the height of his successful international business career, at the age of 40, he foregoes wealth and status, sells his Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, Jaguar and other luxury cars, to pursue his mission to use education to enable and inspire others to thrive. ​

With frequent references to his diaries and letters, the book is written with frankness and candour so often absent in autobiographies. It offers readers a rare insight into the life of a uniquely talented and accomplished person, revealing his doubts and heartaches as well as the secrets to his immense ability to pick himself up and soldier on. The book reveals how his compassion for others changed his life and gave it purpose.

Pushing Boulders is a story about pursuing dreams. It shows that, with self-belief and resilience, you can push aside the boulders that block your path to success. It tells a powerful and inspirational story that will leave you believing that even your most outrageous dreams are possible, and leave you energised to begin pursuing them.

In the first three months of 1976, during his imprisonment on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela wrote the bulk of his autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom". This was an illegal act, and the manuscript had to be smuggled out by fellow prisoner Mac Maharaj on his release that year. Maharaj used the opportunity to ask Mandela and other political prisoners to write essays about South Africa's political future. These were smuggled out with Mandela's autobiography, and are published, 25 years later, in this book.
These essays provide a "snapshot" of the thinking of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and other prominent Robben Island prisoners before the 1976 Soweto uprising changed the face of politics in South Africa. As such they provide an insight into our history. Each essay is preceded by a biographical introduction and a sketch of the author specially commissioned for this volume.

Nosipho Siwisa-Damasane is a black female success story in modern South Africa. From humble apartheid-era beginnings in Peddie in the Ciskei, she now heads up one of the leading coal export terminals in the world and influences the upper strata of corporate South Africa. But stories like hers are all too rare, even in an age of increasing female empowerment. Passionate about women (and youth) development in Africa, she wants to hasten the change and see more women thrive.

In Finding The Woman Within, Siwisa-Damasane recounts the struggles of her upbringing and the lessons she has learnt in her path to the top, from the challenges of completing her schooling after becoming a teenaged mother to managing corporate dynamics when she’s the only woman in the room.

The book offers simple lessons for transformational leadership from a woman in a man’s world covering, among other topics, the importance of personal responsibility, inclusive leadership, employee engagement, positive management of corporate politics, work-life balance and continuous learning.

It's been two decades since the fall of apartheid, a quarter century since the liberation of Eastern European states, five decades since the death of American "Jim Crow," and seventy-plus years since the beginning of the emancipation of the African states. Freedom has advanced, yet there are some Black people in South Africa, the United States, and other parts around the globe who question if it has advanced far enough and are embittered.

I am a Black woman born to the racist apartheid regime of South Africa. My family suffered the slights of apartheid--petty and grand-as well as the poverty, degradation, street violence, lack of opportunity, and other ills of the system. In telling my story, as well as the stories of some of my friends and teachers, I share my perspective on the issues I have grappled with-including choice, identity, forgiveness, and humanity--with those who are wrestling with similar issues in the United States, my adopted home country, and in South Africa, the country of my birth. Deprivation and marginalization are, after all, as hurtful and debilitating in inner city Baltimore as they are in Soweto, and making a deliberate decision to move forward in the face of either, or both, is always powerful, no matter what your address or particular circumstances.

Lindi was born in Soweto to anti-apartheid activist forebears. Her dad was murdered and her paternal granddad exiled as part of the struggle. Lindi's maternal granddad fought for the dignity of the oppressed, while her female forebears taught her the importance of making good lifestyle choices. Lindi earned four degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand and Boston University, is qualified as an attorney in South Africa, and is a finance professional at Amazon's headquarters in Seattle.

Coming of age in South Africa as apartheid falls, a young mixed-race woman struggles to overcome her identity and heritage.

Born into poverty and state-mandated third-class status, Jesmane was weighed down by self-doubt, feelings of inferiority and shame even though she was at the top of her class and showed great promise. After graduating from a prestigious South African university, earning a master's degree at Harvard University and becoming Head of Business Engagement for Africa at the World Economic Forum, she continued to wrestle with internal conflicts and contradictions stemming from her past. In this touching memoir, Jesmane and various South African colleagues explore their early lives, embrace the crippling contradictions forced upon them by apartheid, and craft new narratives for themselves, narratives of acceptance, inclusion, and boundless possibilities.

As a mixed-race (coloured) woman, whose genes connect her with all parts of Africa, as well as East Asia, South Asia, Germany, Wales, Netherlands, and other parts of the world, Jesmane is a microcosm of nations riven by internal strife. She reconciled with herself by deliberately turning to the conflicts and contradictions within. Doing so forced her to explore her past, grapple with lingering emotions, and come to a new understanding of herself, to a new healing. Our world today, divided and fractured, would benefit from a similar process of self-reconciliation, of exploration of national and individual stories, followed by the embrace of contradictions and the crafting of new narratives of acceptance, inclusion, and boundless possibilities.

The stories Jesmane tells in this book - her story, and those of people from around the world spanning from US, Mexico across to India, Pakistan, Nepal and to Rwanda - can bring healing and inspiration to all.

(Jesmane Boggenpoel is an experienced business executive and a former Head of Business Engagement for Africa at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. She has served on the boards of various South African and international organisations. She is a Chartered Accountant (South Africa) and holds a Master's degree from Harvard University's JFK School of Government. Jesmane was honoured as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and is a Harvard Mason fellow.)

It begins with the endearing story of a young girl's childhood and coming of age as a minister's daughter in turbulent South Africa; and, it draws a compelling picture of the good and evil that surrounded her and their impact on her heart and life.

The contrast between the stunning natural beauty of South Africa and the pervasive violence and fear that she encounters play out on the pages of this story, as does her relationship with God as she navigates ordeals of deep loss and severe trials. The division of South Africa and the effect on the lives of her family are also lightly addressed. The second half of the book depicts their struggles and setbacks, as she and her family attempt to carve out a new life in the United States. However, she also shares the laughter enjoyed with friends and the comfort that only a cup of hot tea can bring.

Reminiscent of the writing style of Frank McCourt, Jenny's captivating story depicts her journey with candor and openness. We can relate and are encouraged because most of us have encountered trials and struggles on our journey. Jenny is one of us.

Once, chef Brett Ladds was given a cigar by Fidel Castro, he talked weightlifting with Swazi king Mswati III and his cooking made Quincy Jones sing. For many years he also served Nelson Mandela many cups of rooibos tea and made him his favourite meals.

Ladds was the executive chef of the SA government and manager of the presidential guesthouse at Bryntirion Estate in Pretoria from 1994-1999 where he served both Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. It was a naive and star-struck 21-year-old Ladds who started working at the guesthouse in the months before the first democratic election. During this time he was always in the background when struggle stalwarts like Steve Tshwete, Joe Modise and Dullah Omar met Mandela to discuss the future of the country.

This heart-warming book tells of a young man’s coming of age at a turning point in our history. His stories about meeting kings and queens, presidents, rock stars and even the pope are laced with his unique, self-deprecating sense of humour. Of Queen Elizabeth he says it felt like speaking to his gran. “I asked myself, how does all that power fit into this lovely, caring lady?” Of Robert Mugabe: “He never moaned about a thing.”

Then there are the Russian diplomats and their drinking habits and the Saudi-Arabian sheik who had 8 television sets installed in his room and bought 20 blankets at R5000 each for his stay.

It’s a book to make you laugh and cry. And Madiba’s favourite champagne? Pêche Royale . . .

The boy was born in 1938, under the majestic Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa, to a strong mother and an absent father. The boy was known by his nick-name, Tokkie. This memoir makes one laugh at Tokkie’s antics and the trouble they get him into. At other times, one cries with the boy who is often cold and hungry, and has to grow up too quickly in post war South Africa.

To add insult to injury, his step-father buys a baboon that Tokkie has to feed, even though the baboon often bites him and never allows him to win the tree-scaling races. When Tokkie is grown, he has an encounter with God that changes his life and his name as he becomes Pastor Theodor Jerry Hewett. Miracles take place and his heartfelt cry of ‘God can do it again’, resonates throughout this narrative.

The story includes the funny, yet sometimes heartbreaking journey of the ministry in South Africa, all the while capturing the heartbeat of Africa.

In the beginning God, chose Africa for Peter; Amanzimtoti - a village by the sea in which he played with the dolphins, fished for sharks, watched his friend die from a shark attack. Peter, not even ten years old, slept in prison cells while his father, a doctor, sewed up the wounds of injured Zulu fighters. He explored the river vleis for birds’ eggs while the spirit of Tokoloshe roamed about him and Leguaans, huge Nile-like monitor lizards, readied to attack.

During the war years, on the beach, he discovered broken lifeboats and drowned bodies of British troops. Their flesh stripped away by sharks. He was present when his father fought black mambas.

The author shares his stories of growing up in a village on the shores of the Indian ocean before he left to walk the length and breadth of Africa into the Middle East and across Europe.

(Be sure to visit peterfrickel.com)