Dis een verhaal, maar ook nie. Asof vanuit twee hoeke in dieselfde vertrek, vertel ma en dogter van hul worsteling nadat Henriëtte op 18 gediagnoseer is en Marga en haar man, Frans, die verdoemende woorde moes hoor: Jul kind is skisofrenies. Nou is dit 30 jaar later en Marga en Henriëtte het vrede gemaak. Met die siekte, maar ook met mekaar.

“Do you really think you can clean up bloody scenes like these?”. “Many people start similar businesses, but they never last.” This was the reaction of sceptical policemen and security officers when they first encountered Eileen de Jager (39) and Roelien Schutte (37). But 15 years and about 7 000 crime scenes later, the Blood Sister’s business, Crime Scene Clean-up, is still flourishing. And they have never had a dissatisfied client.

Eileen and Roelien are not only known as the Blood Sisters because they are biological sisters, but also due to the fact that cleaning bloody crime scenes is their day job. Suicides. Homicides. The most gruesome farm murders. But crime is not always involved.

Sometimes the sisters clean up hoarders’ homes – often packed to the ceiling with junk – at other times they help to restore damage caused by fire or floods.

When Errol Tobias was selected for the Springbok rugby team there was an immediate uproar. He became our first black Springbok in 1980 – in the middle of South Africa’s isolation from international sport and growing protest action against the government. In Errol Tobias: Pure Gold he talks openly about his sporting career: from childhood to the great moments in the green and gold. Here are the joys, the losses, and the controversy.

The truth behind legendary rugby matches is revealed, such as the South American tour where Tobias broke a world record, and the disastrous New Zealand tour that was overshadowed by protests against the Springboks. He writes about his close friendship with fellow Springbok legend Rob Louw, and the unwavering support of Danie ‘Doc’ Craven. Tobias also gives his opinion on the quota system of today.

Many others have talked about Errol Tobias and his effect on South African rugby. Here is his side of the story.

Koos Kombuis se outobiografie het al meer as tien drukke beleef. Hierdie heruitgawe verskyn op openbare aandrang.

Sy ganse lewensverhaal, Koos se manier om homself te versoen met sy verlede. Hy vertel van sy heel eerste openbare optrede (op die ouderdom van ongeveer vyf sekondes), van sy jeugjare as hedonis, van die paradokse & die pyn, van hoe lekker die lewe nou vir hom is, van die goue jare wat nog voorlê . . .

O ja, natuurlik ook van die seks & drugs & boeremusiek wat al sy pad gekruis het.

Sewsunker "Papwa" Sewgolum (1930–1978) was a South African golfer who carved a niche for himself in golfing folklore when he became the first golfer of colour to win a provincial open in South Africa (in 1963). Sewgolum, a former caddie, with his wrong-way-round grip (left hand beneath his right), beat 103 white golfers in the Natal Open at the Durban Country Club. He became a symbol of the sports boycott movement when pictures of him receiving his trophy outdoors in the rain, because, due to apartheid, he was not allowed to enter the clubhouse, were published across the world.

In 1965 he beat Gary Player to win the Natal Open for the second time. He also won the Dutch Open in 1959, 1960 and 1964. However, the dream was to be cut short. At the peak of his career, Papwa was banned by the apartheid government from participating in or attending any PGA tournaments. Crushing him further, they also withdrew his passport, denying him the right to play internationally. This slowly broke his spirit, leaving him with nothing but a dream.

This is the story of one man who triumphed again unbelievable odds, only to have his dream snatched from him. Written as fiction, this is a uniquely South African story told by a master storyteller.

Renowned historian Bill Nasson explores how the complex dynamics of the crisis of war shaped the character of South African politics and the life of its fragmented and frequently turbulent society.

His gripping account provides a vivid illustration of the richly varied manner in how the Union's people understood the war, experienced its pressures, responded to its opportunities, and dealt with its burdens. The consequences of the country's entry into war were often fraught and far-reaching, including the shock of a domestic Afrikaner rebellion, the swallowing of German South West Africa, decisive economic change, and wartime habits of violence which lingered on after 1918.

Thoughtful, lively and witty, this is an evocative portrait of South African society in its own world of war.

Min ander gebeurtenisse in die Suider-Afrikaanse geskiedenis het so ’n onuitwisbare indruk gelaat as die Dorslandtrek. Die populêre reisverhaalskrywer Lawrence Green het dit byvoorbeeld beskryf as “the most painful chapter in the whole history of the Afrikaner race”.

Kort ná hulle aankoms op Humpata het die graaf van Mayo die Dorslandtrekkers soos volg beskryf: “Taking them all round, a finer set of men I have never seen; without doubt, during that terrible seven years’ journey it was a case of the survival of the fittest.”

Die Dorslandtrek: 1874–1881 vertel die aangrypende verhaal van die ongeveer 700 persone (benewens ’n onbekende getal swart arbeiders) wat Transvaal gedurende die jare 1874 tot 1877 verlaat het en hulle in 1881 ná ’n swerftog van sewe jaar op Humpata op die hooglande van Angola gevestig het. Gedurende hulle epiese tog het ongeveer 230 blanke trekkers gesterf en ongeveer dieselfde getal na Transvaal teruggekeer. Hoewel ongeveer 130 babas gedurende die trek gebore is, het slegs ongeveer 370 persone hulle beloofde land uiteindelik bereik.

Die Dorslandtrek: 1874–1881 is die eerste boek wat in amper veertig jaar oor dié onderwerp verskyn. Bestaande feite word grondig ontleed en nuwe feite word op ’n omvangryke wyse byeengebring. Die resultaat is die mees omvattende boek oor dié aangrypende gebeurtenis.

In this book you will see over 50 photos of memorable moments of the sporting Madiba, as well as sport stars paying tribute to Madiba after his death.

Featured sports stars include: Tiger Woods, David Beckham, John Smit, Gary Player, Graeme Smith, Lucas Radebe, Bryan Habana, Francois Pienaar, Ernie Els, Sir Alex Ferguson, Cristiano Ronaldo, Baby Jake Matala, Lennox Lewis, Muhammad Ali and many more.

This book of interviews with inspiring South Africans from a variety of walks of life (from the arts to sport, politics and business).

The interviewees share their motivations, leadership styles and influences, personal inspirations, defining moments and other aspects of their lives.

Participants include:

• Carrol Boyes
• Robbie Brozin
• Edwin Cameron
• Bobby Godsell
• Ferial Haffajee
• Michael Jordaan
• Gary Kirsten
• Wendy Luhabe
• Kabelo Mabalane
• Thuli Madonsela
• Herman Mashaba
• Brian Molefe
• Yogavelli Nambiar
• Nkhensani Nkosi
• Terence Nombembe
• Sizwe Nxasana
• Francois Pienaar
• Maria Ramos

Die tragedie wat op Valentynsdag 2013 Reeva Steenkamp se lewe kortgeknip en Oscar Pistorius se status as internasionale sportheld aan skerwe laat spat het, en die ongekende mediadekking van die sensasionele moordverhoor daarna, het verreikende gevolge op vele terreine gehad.

Soos nog nooit tevore nie het die kollig geval op fasette wat ons lewens op talle terreine raak: die manier waarop regspleging in Suid-Afrika geskied; hoe sosiale en nuusmedia opinies genereer, beïnvloed en rapporteer; die publiek se obsessie met heldestatus; en die intriges wat van minnaars moordenaars maak.

Vir hierdie boek het Ilse Salzwedel deur ’n vloedgolf menings gesif om sin te maak van die Oscar-saak. ’n Fassinerende prentjie ontvou waarin sleutelaspekte ontleed word, soos die belang van forensiese besonderhede, die kundigheid van polisie- en regsbeamptes, die rol van die staat en die verdediging in die hof, die effek van mediadekking op die publiek se persepsies, en nog meer.

In die toeganklike, nugtere en nie-sensasionele styl waarvoor dié gerespekteerde joernalis bekend is, vra die skrywer: watter lesse hou ’n tragedie soos hierdie in vir vandag se samelewing?

More than just a story about the personal journey of one of South Africa's most beloved music icons, this extraordinary memoir of PJ Powers - or Thandeka, as she was affectionately renamed by Soweto crowds - is set against the turbulent backdrop of South Africa's recent political history. It features a gallery of political leaders and international celebrities, including the likes of Nelson Mandela, Graga Machel, Chris Hani, Joaquim Chissano, Queen Elizabeth II, Brenda Fassie, Sharon Stone and Robert De Niro.

On Republic Day 1982, a white rock and roll band called Hotline, wearing stonewashed jeans and sporting big hair, took an accidental sho't left into Soweto - a detour that forever changed the life of their lead singer, PJ Powers. Hotline was the first all-white rock and roll band to "cross over" into highly segregated apartheid South Africa, making international headlines in the process. The prolific Powers went on to accomplish extraordinary heights as a solo artist with countless gold and platinum discs.

Here I Am, written with Marianne Thamm, is an intimate and hilarious account of the life and times of one of this country's most recognisable and enduring performers. From the dizzying heights of international stardom to the dark depths of her struggle with alcohol, this is a must-read to explore the heady mix of politics and music of the time.

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.

Goeiemôre, mnr Mandela vertel die uitsonderlike verhaal van hoe Zelda la Grange se lewe, oortuigings en vooroordele omvergewerp word deur die grootste staatsman van ons tyd.

Dit volg die ongelooflike lewenspad van ’n verskrikte tikster in haar vroeë twintigs wat gekies word as Nelson Mandela se lojaalste steunpilaar en haar loopbaan daaraan wy om reisgenoot en versorger te word van die man wat sy ‘Khulu’ noem.

Hierdie boek wentel om liefde en tweede kanse. Dit sal jou lewe raak en jou laat glo elkeen van ons, ongeag wie ons is en wat ons gedoen het, het die mag om te verander.

Good Morning, Mr Mandela tells the extraordinary story of how Zelda la Grange’s life, beliefs and prejudices were transformed by the greatest statesman of our time.

It is the incredible journey of an awkward, terrified young typist in her twenties who was chosen to become Nelson Mandela’s most loyal servant, spending the greater part of her adult working life travelling with and caring for the man she would come to call ‘Khulu’.

This is a book about love and second chances. It will touch your life and make you believe that every one of us, no matter who we are or what we have done, has the power to change.

Larry Joe's upbringing reads like that of many others in South Africa, having been born into a poor family in the Northern Cape and growing up with an alcoholic father and an abused mother. He stole his first loaf of bread at age five, to feed his hungry sister, and his descent into a life of crime, drugs and gangsterism was all but guaranteed. The only light in an otherwise pitch-black world was music: when Larry was four years old, his father showed him a few chords on the guitar. He learnt the rest himself and loved to play for other people. But the grip of crime was iron-clad, and Larry eventually pushed the boundary too far.

Having pulled off a major heist in the town of Douglas, Larry fled to Cape Town, changed his name, and took to the streets. Here he lived for seven years, busking outside shops to earn honest money, and battling his addiction to drugs. Seven years on, still with a price on his head, Larry made a decision and returned to Douglas to face the music.

Enter Aron Turest-Swartz, founding member of South African music sensation 'Freshlyground'. On this fateful World Aids Day in 2008, he watched, intrigued, as Larry Joe wowed the crowds at a concert in Douglas while prison wardens waited in the wings. The two struck up a friendship, and eventually a collaboration, which saw them producing a music album in the grounds of the Douglas Correctional Facility. When Larry was released three years early, he walked out of jail and onto stage.

The Crazy Life of Larry Joe tells the moving story of one man's journey away from certain self-destruction in a world characterised by crime and drugs towards personal freedom and a very real chance of stardom as he realises his musical talents and potential through his own extraordinary efforts and the mentorship of others.

When Charlene Wittstock married Prince Albert of Monaco in a starstudded wedding watched by millions across the world in 2011, rumours of her getting cold feet and her unhappiness about his love children swirled around the couple. Ever since then, the statuesque Olympic swimmer has been in the eye of the paparazzi and the centre of endless tabloid speculation and malicious rumour-mongering.

Is the bubbly, down-to-earth South African lonely in glamorous Monaco? Is it a marriage of convenience? What is truth behind her health issues? These are just some of the questions that roil so publicly around her.

Journalist Arlene Prinsloo sifts fact from fiction in this revealing unauthorised biography of Her Serene Highness Princess Charlene. Prinsloo traces her life from humble beginnings in Zimbabwe, Johannesburg and Durban to the Olympic Games, her jet-set romance with the bachelor prince, a ‘fairy-tale’ wedding and becoming a mother to twins.

At its heart, it’s the story of a woman in search of happiness for herself and her family – and also of the beginning of Charlene defining her own space amid the royal protocol.

The celebrated Springbok rugby hero Joost van der Westhuizen and his wife, the singer Amor Vittone, were a glamorous couple who captured the imagination of many South Africans. Known as their country’s own ‘Posh and Becks’, they were blessed with success, fame, public adulation and an apparently happy marriage. Until a shock report appeared on the front page of a local Sunday newspaper about a sex video …

In this book, the well-known journalist, and a personal friend and confidante of the Van der Westhuizens, Gavin Prins, now recounts the story behind the story – one that has never been published before. Prins, who broke the sex-video scandal on the front page of Rapport, chronicles how a simple farm boy who had become a national rugby hero met the woman of his dreams and married her, only to fall from grace in the most publicly humiliating way possible. With his confession came a measure of redemption – until he was brought to his knees by a lifethreatening illness …

Hard-hitting, often shocking but ultimately uplifting, this is the true story behind the sensational headlines that have dogged South Africa’s most high profile couple.

’n Dekade of wat gelede het Marita van der Vyver soos ’n wafferse prinses van ’n verre land deur Frankryk gereis en ’n vreeslik verleidelike padda leer ken. Omdat sy so graag in sprokies wil glo, het sy gehoop dat as sy hierdie slim padda soen, hy in ’n prins gaan verander. Dis mos hoe sprokies werk.

En wat gebeur toe?

Saam met haar prins sit sy huis op in ’n Franse dorpie. Hulle gaan woon in ’n ou kliphuis in Rue de l’église – Kerkstraat. Dáároor skryf sy in In die hart van ons huis.

En wat gebeur nou?

Hulle trek. En nie waarheen nie . . . Na ’n plek wat bekend staan as Plek van die Paddas.

’n Fontein Voor Ons Deur is ’n reeks stories oor ’n verhuising – ’n Franse verhuising! Maar dit is dan eintlik stories oor dit wat die hart vasmaak aan ’n huis en sy mense; ook dit waarvan jy jou moet losmaak as jy verhuis. En daardie dinge wat altyd met jou saamtrek.

Een ding is seker: Of dit nou in Kerkstraat of Paddastraat is, soos Marita van der Vyver dit sien, bly die lewe ’n fontein bruisend met verrassings.

It's a scene most South Africans are familiar with; something that adds that oomph to your social status as a South African woman. This is a laugh-out-loud take on a woman's home, but is as serious as the security guards in gated communities. It is a quirky look at the women in our lives; our mothers, our sisters, our cousins, our friends, us. It's the relationship between maids and their madams.

Maid In South Africa takes a lighter look at one of South Africa's most important yet most often overlooked relationships of all: that between a domestic worker and her madam. Seen from both perspectives, the book takes on real conversations with both helpers and employers. This delightful book offers a never-before-seen description of types of madams and their families on one hand, and types of helpers on the other. Through these introductions and distinctions, you will not only learn the differences between the city or town helper, but also about the quirks of the Malawian or Zimbabwean helper.

In addition, you discover invaluable truths about maid-madam relationships, including why helpers leave; how to tell the difference between old money and the nouveau riche; and that there is only one type of black madam - the middle-class African madam, because the rich African madam, as well as her Indian and white counterparts, have transcended race.

Carte Blanche burst onto the scene in 1988 as a genre never before seen on South African television: a trail-blazer, a blend of sociological awareness, sophistication and audacity. When pay channel M-Net came up with this different and daring weekly eye-opener that pushed the envelope, it brought promise of freedom and creativity and ended a period in our history in which television news and current affairs were limited to the state broadcaster.

Twenty-five years on, the familiar Carte Blanche melody has become an institution, announcing the end of the weekend and the start of an hour that resists the mundane and stimulates debate. What's become a Sunday night ritual began in a make-shift studio with a small team of firebrands, led by an arrogant, fearless talent, a showman with scant respect for the conventions of the time: Bill Faure was the most dynamic director of his day, a visionary who shared his passionate love of television with the world. He set the stage for what has become South Africa's longest running investigative current affairs show and the most valuable real estate in broadcasting. Faure passed the baton on to an extraordinary generation of journalists that created a vault of diverse memories, brought into homes across the country and into Africa, stories of delight and daring, cheek and chutzpah, heartbreak and heroism, of the weird and whacky. It's said that his spirit still guides Carte Blanche into shaking complacency and bringing to the screen a social and ecological conscience, be it the cruelty meted out to the Tuli elephants, the selfless courage of Sally Trench, or blast off with Mark Shuttleworth.

It's enabled us all to chase car thieves across our borders, catch out rogue mechanics and find out what security guards and plumbers do and don't do in our homes. It's brought to our screens a host of unforgettable characters from the transsexuals of Beaufort West to the shady directors of Aurora.

Carte Blanche: 25 years dips into an era of quality journalism through the eyes of the producers and presenters who have so effectively measured the national mood and recognized defining moments. It's a show that has become part of our landscape and promises to survive another quarter of a century.

In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela describes his house at 8115 Vilikazi Street, Soweto, as '"...identical to hundreds of others... it had the same standard tin roof, the same cement floor, a narrow kitchen, and a bucket toilet at the back". Little did Mandela know when he first moved into the house in 1946 that it would become the stage for some of the most important political events in South Africa's turbulent history and, in recent times, a cultural landmark visited by thousands of tourists each year.

Renowned photographer and close family friend Alf Kumalo captured the day-to-day life of the Mandelas - the raids by the security police and intimate family moments, both of joy and sorrow, as well as Mandela's return to his home after his release from prison in 1990, twenty-eight years after he had left it.

Using this unassuming house as the setting, 8115: A Prisoner's Home collects some of Kumalo's most historically important and beautiful images of the Mandela family and their home, giving us a unique insight into the life of the family who would have a profound effect on South Africa's political landscape.

A fresh new look at South Africa from well-known author Dawid van Lill.

See South Africa is the latest offering from an author whose name has become synonymous with reliable and fast facts. Where regular trivia and fact guides consist of list upon list of information, Van Lill takes a different route here and represents facts about the country at a glance with an innovative visual approach.

On every one of the 90 double-page, full-colour spreads, Van Lill curates interesting and important information that every South African needs to know: from the symbolic meaning of the country’s shield, to the location and height of every lighthouse on the coast of our country. This book will be welcomed in every home – a boon to readers young and old.

South Africans are sports mad, and over many years of competing in the sports arena, the country’s sportsmen and women have generated a wealth of memories. 100 Memorable Sporting Moments chronicles South Africa’s most enduring sporting moments from the very beginning to the present day, including the triumphs of the 2012 London Olympics.

This beautifully illustrated book traces those events that forever live on in the minds of South African sports fans, including highlights like Josiah Thugwane, Penny Heyns and Chad le Clos’s Olympic triumphs, the 1995 and 2007 Rugby World Cups and Bafana Bafana winning the Africa Cup of Nations, and lowlights like Zola Budd’s tangle with Mary Decker, the Proteas’ Cricket World Cup woes and the Ellis Park soccer disaster.

This book is a must read for any South African sports fan and a collector’s item for every sports fan’s library.

The Accidental Ambassador follows on from the successful Tony Leon autobiography, On the Contrary (2008) to showcase Leon's wit and sense of humour as he takes the reader on the journey of his retirement from active political life and into public service as the South African ambassador to Argentina.

From Leon's 'Job interview' with Jacob Zuma in Tuynhuis in 2008, to his immersion in governmental bureaucracy and a three-week crash course on 'How to be an ambassador' to the strange stance and contradictions of South African foreign policy and life in Argentina, he shares with the reader his entertaining experiences of cultural immersion, comical anecdotes and political reflection.

It provides great insight into the behind-the-scenes life of an ambassador.

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.