In 1994, Brad and Paige Holmes opened a small, live-music venue in the bohemian suburb of Melville in Johannesburg. They called it Bassline, which very soon became synonymous with cigarette smoke, great jazz and nights you wished would never end. They later moved the club to Newtown where it grew in prominence as the ultimate venue for live music, hosting amazing artists like Thandiswa Mazwai, Jimmy Dludlu, Lira, The Soil and Grammy Award-winning group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

In 2016 word spread like wildfire that everyone’s favourite club was closing its doors forever; this place that held all the promises of a new South Africa, a place where people of all races could come together, share a drink, dance and fall in love was to be no more. But as Bassline starts its new journey with Live @ the Bassline, yet another great story begins with Last Night At The Bassline.

In this book, esteemed music historian Professor David Coplan tells the story of Bassline and the Holmes’s journey in it, thus giving musicians and jazz fans something to hold on to even after its closure. This book is a tangible piece of the magic to take home and savour. And those who were never there will be given a chance to experience this dream.

With more than fifty iconic photographs from Oscar Gutierrez and other great photographers, the book is more than just a memoir. It is a gritty, smoky, passionate slice of time. Bassline will always be a reminder of what it feels like to live the impossible.

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.)

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Southern Africa was a jumble of British colonies, Boer republics and African chiefdoms, a troublesome region of little interest to the outside world. Into this frontier world came the Reitz family, Afrikaner gentry from the Cape, who settled in Bloemfontein and played a key role in the building of the Orange Free State.

Frank Reitz, successively chief justice and modernising president of the young republic, went on to serve as State Secretary of the Transvaal Republic. In 1899, he stood shoulder to shoulder with President Paul Kruger to resist Britain’s war of conquest in Southern Africa. At the heart of this tale is the extraordinary life of Deneys Reitz, third son of Frank Reitz and Bianca Thesen. The young Reitz’s account of his adventures in the field during the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), published as Commando, became a classic of irregular warfare. After a period of exile in Madagascar, he went on become one of South Africa’s most distinguished lawyers, statesmen and soldiers. Martin Meredith interweaves Reitz’s experiences, taken from his unpublished notebooks, with the wider story of Britain’s brutal suppression of Boer resistance.

Concise and readable, Afrikaner Odyssey is a wide-ranging portrait of an aristocratic Afrikaner family whose achievements run like fine thread through these turbulent times, and whose presence is still marked on the South African landscape.

That morning, Michelle presented her Psychology honours thesis on men's perceptions of rape. She started her presentation like this, “A woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped than learning how to read …” On that same evening, she goes to a party to celebrate attaining her degree. She and a friend go to the beach; the friend has something she wants to discuss. They are both robbed, assaulted and raped. Within minutes of getting help, Michelle realises she'll never be herself again. She's now "the girl who was raped."

This book is Michelle's fight to be herself again. Of the taint she feels, despite the support and resources at her disposal as the loved child of a successful middle-class family. Of the fall-out to friendships, job, identity.

It's Michelle's brave way of standing up for the women in South Africa who are raped every day.

Van sy eerste dag as nasionale dienspligtige was Francois Verster in die sop weens sy ingebore rebelsheid. Hy vertel op skreeusnaakse wyse van sy basiese opleiding en lewe as troeponderwyser op Omega.

Hierdie geensins verromantiseerde storie bied ’n vars hoek op die Grensoorloggenre en ’n blik op hoe Afrikanermans die nuwe Suid-Afrika beleef.

Reflecting on South Africa´s achievement of majority rule, these volumes take a critical and searching look at the country´s past.

With chapters contributed by the best historians of the country, the volumes elaborately weave together new data, interpretations, and perspectives on the South African past, from the Early Iron Age to the present.

Their findings incorporate new sources, methods, and concepts and represent an important reassessment of all the major historical events, developments, and records of South Africa - written, oral, and archaeological.

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.

Africa is falling. Africa is succeeding. Africa is betraying its citizens. Africa is a place of starvation, corruption, disease. African economies are soaring faster than any on earth. Africa is squandering its bountiful resources. Africa is a roadmap for global development. Africa is turbulent. Africa is stabilising. Africa is doomed. Africa is the future.

All of these pronouncements prove equally true and false, as South African journalists Richard Poplak and Kevin Bloom discover on their 9-year roadtrip through the paradoxical continent they call home. From pillaged mines in Zimbabwe to the creation of an economic marketplace in Ethiopia; from Namibia’s middle class to the technological challenges facing Nollywood in the 21st Century; from China’s investment in Botswana to the rush for resources in the Congo; and from the birth of Africa’s newest country, South Sudan, to the worsening conflict in CAR, here are eight adventures on the trail of a new Africa.

Part detective story, part report from this economic frontier, Continental Shift follows the money as it flows through Chinese coffers to international conglomerates, to heads of state, to ordinary African citizens, all of whom are intent on defining a metamorphosing continent.

Blind Date At A Funeral is a collection of coming-of-age stories by bestselling author Trevor Romain, which he recorded in journals, notebooks and on beer-stained bar napkins over the years and is retelling now.

Trevor takes us on a tour of his own memories, filled with anecdotes about foolish endeavours, dumb decisions, army adventures and the searing pain of losing the love of your life. Each story is accompanied by one of Trevor’s classic drawings and carefully crafted with a pitch-perfect combination of humour and nostalgia.

Both entertaining and deeply moving, this is a book about what it really means to be proudly South African.

As Africa's oldest orchestra, and certainly its most versatile, the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra is a proud part of the fabric of the Mother City. Founded in 1914 as a municipally funded ensemble, the orchestra was privatised in 1986 and later merged with the former Capab orchestra, achieving independence in 2000.

A Century Of Symphony tells the story of Cape Town’s orchestras over the past 100 years. Bringing together reminiscences, anecdotes and heartfelt stories by players, conductors and audience members, images of the orchestra both past and present, and information gathered from city, newspaper and university archives, A Century Of Symphony offers a timeless perspective on the place of orchestral music in the life of the city.

The challenges of running an orchestra in the 21st century are formidable, but the orchestra’s mission to deliver first-class music played by first-class musicians in a sustainable way has never been more apparent. Outreach and education efforts in disadvantaged communities point the way to the future. This is a story not only worth telling, but also worth preserving, for Cape Town’s orchestras have been the cultural jewel of the city for 100 years.

(Includes a shrinkwrapped CD of music played by the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra)

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.

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?

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.

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.

As a sangoma (traditional healer), Nkunzi is able to explore dimensions of her sexual identity because of her relationship with both male and female ancestors.

‘In Zulu culture a man must be a man and do male things and a woman must be a woman and do female things but with sangomas it is more flexible. I can dance like a woman and wear a woman’s clothes and dance like a man and wear a man’s clothes. I can do the work of a man, like slaughtering a goat or a cow although in traditional Zulu culture a woman cannot slaughter …’

Conscious of her constitutional rights as an urban young lesbian in a time of a relentless spate of hate crimes against township lesbians, Nkunzi is simultaneously sensitive to the demands of the guiding ancestral voice of the traditional, rural Zulu patriarch whose name she bears. Her quest is for a middle path of balance and integration between the living and the dead, the traditional and the modern.

Tim Noakes is one of the world’s leading authorities on the science behind sport and a successful sportsman in his own right. Through a lifetime of research, he has developed key scientific concepts in sport that have not only redefined the way elite athletes and teams approach their professions, but challenged conventional global thinking in these areas.

In this new and updated edition of Challenging Beliefs, Noakes shares his views on everything from the myths perpetuated by the sports-drink industry to the prevalence of banned substances, the need to make rugby a safer sport and the benefits of a high-protein, low-carb diet. The teams and athletes with whom Noakes has worked make fascinating backdrops to these topics, highlighting the importance of science in sport in human terms.

In providing an intimate look at the golden threads running through Noakes’s life and career, this remarkable book reveals the landmark theories and principles generated by one of the greatest minds in the history of sports science.

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

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

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

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

Hierdie verhalende nie-fiktiewe werk vertel die storie van Beryl Botman wat aan Russel Botman onthul hoe sy sy skielike afsterwe ervaar en hanteer. “Hoe moet sy leer leef en hul liefde vir mekaar herken in hierdie nuwe dimensies van bestaan?” is die sentrale vraagstuk van die eenrigtinggesprek.

Die gebeure speel af vanaf die oomblikke voordat sy besef dat Russel gesterf het tot die op die dag van die eerste herdenking van sy afsterwe – die verloop van een jaar. Dis vir haar die jaar waarin sy haar op haar diepste sterkpunte beroep; haar troebelste swakhede in die gesig staar en op haar hele wording staatmaak om selfs een tree te gee.

Die vertelling vind in drie dele plaas en begin met ‘n dag-vir-dag weergawe van die eerste twee weke van ervaringe en gewaarwordinge. Die daaropvolgende twee dele is weeklikse en daarna maandlikse onthullings. Haar spirituele en reële blootlegging volg ‘n reis vanaf Stellenbosch tot Wynberg en sommige ander plekke in die wêreld.

Beryl hanteer lewensveranderende besluite en optredes in haar wêreld met die gemak en liefdevolle ondersteuning van familie en vriende, en terselfdertyd die vyandigheid van ander familie en die afsydigheid en verwerping van vriende en kennisse.

Wilfrid Cooper was a rare man during the dark days of apartheid: an advocate whose career coincided almost perfectly with the rise and fall of the Nationalist government, intersecting eerily with that of its “architect” HF Verwoerd, and yet a man whose enlightened principles and liberal thinking saw him regularly defending those less fortunate.

His storied legal career saw him embroiled in numerous political affairs throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. He represented, among others, Verwoerd’s assassin Dimitri Tsafendas; the SWAPO Six in Swakopmund; the families of Imam Abdullah Haron, Mapetla Mohapi and Hoossen Haffajee and others who died “jumping down stairwells while in detention” or hanged by their own jeans in their cells; and Steven Biko and other activists who were arrested by the security police in the dead of night. There were also the highprofile criminal cases, including the original Kebble-style “assisted suicide” of Baron Dieter van Schauroth and the scandalous case of the Scissors Murderess Marlene Lehnberg.

Wilfrid Cooper reached the peak of his considerable legal prowess in a time when South Africans led a parallel existence, the majority downtrodden while white privilege reigned serenely in the suburbs – a time that could have easily provided him a less controversial career had he desired. And yet even as he and his gregarious wife Gertrude enjoyed wonderful and very sociable years in their Newlands home in Cape Town – an area that was itself remodelled under the Group Areas Act – he chose to walk the path less taken in the shadow of Devil’s Peak. This is his story.

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.

Broken Porcelain is not just a book of essays describing one Black woman’s experience of mental illness, but rather a memoir-in-essays that shatters the walls of our hearts and guides us towards empathy – all while providing social commentary that demystifies stigmas of mental illness.

In her singular lyrical prose, Relebone Rirhandzu eAfrika covers topics such as social media’s role in how we view depression, generational trauma, what self-care really is, taking anti-depressant medication, and finding love when you are mentally ill.

The author writes with poignant honesty about the darkness of her mental illness and breaks down what mental illness is (and is not).

A tribute to her father, Makaziwe Mandela shares the most definitive portrait of Nelson Mandela to date, revealing the man behind the anti-apartheid movement that changed the world.

One of Time magazine’s Most Important People of the Twentieth Century, Nelson Mandela continues to be a symbol of equality and justice: a Nobel Prize winner, South Africa’s first Black president, and an unrelenting leader in the movement to dismantle racial inequality. Written by his daughter, her story uncovers the family man behind the international peacemaker persona.

This volume presents an extraordinary assembly of historic biography and imagery alongside never-before-published family stories and personal photographs, Nelson Mandela’s letters to friends and family, journal entries written during his incarceration, and a unique collection of rarely seen charcoal drawings and paintings he began at 83 years old. Chapters chronicle Mandela’s childhood growing up in Mvezo, his time in Johannesburg as leader of the African National Congress, the importance of his familial relationships, decades of imprisonment, and his role as president and philanthropist. An enthralling read illustrated by powerful historic imagery, this tome delves into the life of the man that continues to galvanize so many.

Richard Rive was a writer, scholar, literary critic and teacher in Cape Town. This biography creates the composite qualities of a man who was committed to the struggle against racial oppression and beneath whose public persona lurked a constant and troubled awareness of race and guardedness about his homosexuality.

Unrecognised, ignored and forgotten. The Forgotten Scientist: The Story of Saul Sithole is the untold story of a pioneering black scientist who made a great contribution to the fields of anthropology and ornithology in South Africa. Saul Sithole was so committed to his craft that even the weight of apartheid did not stop him from giving 62 years of his life to the scientific world of birds and fossils. Saul never received the official recognition he deserved - until now. This book validates his contribution, sharing his life's work and laying out a story that will inspire future generations of scientists. This book would not have been possible without the support of Biblionef and funding from the National Heritage Council.