In November 2019, Deon Wiggett’s sensational weekly podcasts held South Africa in thrall as he hunted down the paedophile who raped him as a schoolboy. Now, in My Only Story, he completes his exposé of Willem Breytenbach, the once brilliant teacher and later media luminary who led a predatory life.

Deon’s mission to expose his abuser takes him from Breytenbach’s high-school years at an agricultural school in South Africa’s hinterland to the famous Grey College in Bloemfontein and the media titan Naspers. But his quest reveals so much more. As he traces systemic failures through schools great and small, he uncovers a culture of complicity that poses a clear and present danger to the country’s children. While investigating men who prey on boys and girls, Deon devises a model that anyone can use to identify paedophiles in their midst. In his own words: ‘It’s pleasant to pretend that men don’t rape children, but once you accept that they do, it becomes surprisingly easy to recognise their trickery. Once you match a universal pattern to a specific man’s profile, you can spot the deceit before it is too late.’

My Only Story is a riveting, thoughtful and often irreverent account of one man’s determination to overcome childhood trauma; to help others face their demons; and to extract some beauty from the boyhood he lost.

Bheki Mseleku is widely considered one of the most accomplished jazz musicians to have emerged from South Africa. His music has a profound significance in recalling and giving emphasis to that aspect of the African American jazz tradition originating in the rhythms and melodies of Africa. The influences of Zulu traditional music, South African township, classical music and American jazz are clearly evident and combine to create an exquisite and particularly lyrical style, evoking a sense of purity and peace that embraces the spiritual healing quality central to his musical inspiration.

The Artistry of Bheki Mseleku is an in-depth study of his musical style and includes annotated transcriptions and analysis of a selection of compositions and improvisations from his most acclaimed albums including ‘Celebration’, ‘Timelessness’, ‘Star Seeding’, ‘Beauty of Sunrise’ and ‘Home at Last’. Mseleku recorded with several American jazz greats including Ravi Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Pharoah Sanders, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins and Abbey Lincoln. His music serves as a vital link to the African–American musical art form that inspired many of the South African jazz legends.

Marianne Thamm delves into her own unconventional life story.

Her German father fought for Hitler and made munitions for Verwoerd. He married her largely illiterate Portuguese mother who worked as a cleaner in England. Today Marianne is the proud mother of two (black) teenagers... Hers is the story of the last century, of the defeat of bigotry and a new era ushered in by Mandela.

Sad at times, deeply moving and, like Marianne, hugely entertaining.

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.

Panicked thoughts. Vivid nightmares. Racing heart. Unrelenting dread. Witnessing the drowning death of her four-year-old brother Owen was the beginning of a lifetime of nightmares. Growing up during the oppressive system, apartheid, in South Africa, increased her anxiety as she struggled with her self-worth. And it was in writing her debut book, A Darker Shade of Pale: A Memoir of Apartheid South Africa, that she unravelled.

In Behind My Smile: The True Story of an Author, a Broken Spirit and a Healer, Beryl dissects her struggles with grief. After a lifelong battle with self-acceptance Beryl found the keys to overcoming the stigma of mental breakdown.

The book offers a candid and absorbing account of Beryl's healing journey. She shares details of the intensive work of clinical psychologist and energy medicine practitioner, Dr Geoff Lyons. This healing encouraged Beryl to explore her belief in the power of her heritage, the gifts available from contact with her ancestors and traditional healing methods. Having found a true healer, Beryl was able to see the richness of a life free of all manner of oppression -- political, psychological, material. Based on her healing she strongly believes that talk therapy and traditional healing must merge.

This story is essential reading for anyone who knows what it means to hover on the edge, and find a way to dive back into life.

As uitgesproke kommenatator wat voor en na 1994 met die regering gebots het, een van die Dakar-gangers wat al in die 1980s die ANC gaan ontmoet het en wereldkenner van die Afrikaners, is Giliomee ten nouste betrokke by ons land se geskiedenis – en hoe ons dit verstaan. Hier verweef hy sy eie lewensverhaal met die van die land en die mense wat hom fassineer in leesbare, narratiewe vorm, vol staaltjies en onvertelde verhale.

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

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

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

Toe Vivian op 16-jarige ouderdom haar pa in die winkel se deur sien staan met sy hoed in sy hand het sy geweet haar lewe gaan onkeerbaar verander – haar pa het sy werk verloor. Hulle word uit hulle huis op Paternoster gesit. Vivian dink sy is gelukkig toe die veel ouer John by die werk in haar begin belangstel. Hy belowe om vir haar gesin ’n huis op Vredenburg te kry, maar min weet sy die huis het ’n prys. Vivian word vervreem van haar familie en verval in ’n spiraal van mishandeling. Sy laat haar egter nie onderkry nie, en besluit eendag dat sy genoeg gehad het. Sy begin haar lewe van voor af bou. Vivian het ’n kop vir besigheid, en ná verskeie poste besluit sy om haar eie wynbesigheid te begin. Nou, jare later, het sy haar eerste oes afgehaal en word die wyn na Wallmart uitgevoer. Vivian se verhaal is een van hoop, passie, deursettingsvermoë en die wete dat God daar is, al lyk die omstandighede hoe sleg.

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.)

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 South African House of Assembly, on 6 September 1966, Dimitri Tsafendas stabbed to death Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. Afterwards, Tsafendas was declared to be a schizophrenic who believed a tapeworm lived inside him which controlled his actions, and that he had no political motive for assassinating Verwoerd. Pronounced unfit to stand trial, Tsafendas went down in history as a deranged parliamentary messenger. For fifty years, this story prevailed. However, this book now reveals the truth about Tsafendas; that he was deeply political from an early age.

He was arrested numerous times, starting in Mozambique, the country of his birth. In Portugal, the security police opened a file on him in 1938, when he was aged only twenty. After the assassination, Tsafendas volunteered a series of incontestable political reasons for killing Verwoerd, but these, along with details of his political past, were never allowed to see the light of day. This book reveals the extent of the cover-up by South Africa’s authorities and the desperate lengths they went to conceal the existence of Tsafendas’s opposition to apartheid. The book exposes one of the great lies in South African history, that Verwoerd was murdered by a mad man. It also offers for the first time a complete biography of this extraordinary man.

Advocate George Bizos characterised Dousemetzis’s work on Tsafendas and Verwoerd’s assassination as ‘monumental’ and of being ‘of major historical importance for South Africa and as to our understanding of Verwoerd’s assassination’. Professor John Dugard said ‘South African history should know the truth about Tsafendas. Dousemetzis has done South Africa a service by correcting the historical record.’

There are a lot of good things about getting older. When you’re young you want everyone to like you and to make an impression. When you’re old you don’t give a damn.' Kate Turkington is fearless and fun, even now in her 80s. From the war-worn East End of London to raising a young family in a remote part of eastern Nigeria and building a career as one of SA's most loved broadcasters, Kate's story is remarkable and revealing. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You will cheer. You may well be shocked.

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 . . .

When the Cradock Four's Fort Calata was murdered by agents of the apartheid state in 1985, his son Lukhanyo was only three years old. Thirty-one years later Lukhanyo, now a journalist, becomes one of the SABC Eight when he defies Hlaudi Motsoeneng's reign of censorship at the public broadcaster by writing an open letter that declares: "my father didn't die for this".

Now, with his wife Abigail, Lukhanyo brings to life the father he never knew and investigates the mystery that surrounds his death despite two high-profile inquests.

Join them in a poignant and inspiring journey into the history of a remarkable family that traces the struggle against apartheid beginning with Fort's grandfather, Rivonia trialist and ANC Secretary-General Rev James Calata.

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)

Jean Doyle, A Portrait is a glorious tribute to one of South Africa’s quietest artists. This part-biography, part critique explores how Jean has formed, shaped, forged and polished her career. Frequently told through her private sculpture notes, it goes beneath the layers of bronze and clay to the inspirational heart of her work, tracing her artistic journey. It celebrates the freshness, simplicity, intelligence, unmistakable sense of humour and, strikingly, the modest humility with which Jean Doyle has emerged as one of the greatest story-telling South African artists of our time.

In June of 2010, William Kentridge asked Denis Hirson to join him in a public conversation at the opening of Cinq Thèmes, the artist’s retrospective exhibition at the Jeu du Paume in Paris. So fruitful was this event that the two decided to have further conversations, public and private, whenever the time and the occasion seemed right. Nine engagements followed, allowing them to explore at great length the many issues and themes arising from Kentridge’s work. These conversations, in which a writer and an artist grapple with the enormous complexities of making art, grow out of a friendship that stretches back to the 1980s and that is deeply entwined in the fortunes of the city where they both grew up and the country that is the wellspring of their work.

Born in Cambridge in 1951, Denis Hirson lived in South Africa until the age of twenty-two, studying social anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In 1975 he settled in France, where he has worked as an actor and lecturer at the École Polytechnique. He has written seven books, almost all of them at the frontier between prose and poetry and concerned with memories of South Africa in the time of apartheid. The most recent of these is the novel The Dancing and the Death on Lemon Street. He has also assembled and edited three anthologies of South African writing, including In the Heat of Shadows: South African poetry 1996–2013. Ma langue au chat, a book in French about the delight and torture experienced by an Anglophone when speaking and writing in French, is forthcoming from Les Éditions du Seuil in October 2017.

William Kentridge was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1955. He is a graphic artist, filmmaker and theatre artist renowned for his humanist and poetic perspective on apartheid, colonialism and totalitarianism, and on their lingering effects. Best known for his allegorical animations of charcoal drawings that he erases and appends frame by frame, Kentridge has explored disciplines ranging from sculpture to books, stereoscope to opera. His works are included in numerous international collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and the Albertina Museum, Vienna. His acclaimed production of Wozzeck travels to the Metropolitan Opera, New York, for the 2019–20 season.

In haar bykans 35 jaar het Shéri Brynard merkwaardige mylpale bereik ten spyte van die feit dat sy as baba met Trisomie-21-Downsindroom gediagnoseer is. Sy vertel hoe die liefde en aanvaarding van diegene naaste aan haar, veral haar ma, Susette, haar gevorm het.

Sy deel met die leser die opwindende avonture op haar pad, die seerkry, vrees, en verliese (die grootste hiervan die dood van haar pa, Jerry), asook die werklikhede waarmee sy as ’n volwassene met Downsindroom gekonfronteer word. Dan gesels haar ma oor ’n lewe in die skaduwee van ’n kind met Downsindroom. Sy deel openhartig haar geloofstryd toe sy gehoor het haar kind het Downsindroom en haar en haar dogter se reis die onbekende in. Shéri – Nes ek is is ’n boek wat grense verskuif, want soos Shéri tereg vra: “Wat is nou eintlik normaal?”

Dié boek herinner die leser juis dat ons as kinders van God elkeen ons volle potensiaal kan bereik, ongeag die uitdagings waarvoor ons te staan kom.

What kind of president will Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma be if she is chosen at the ANC’s December 2017 congress? She has been fairly media-averse and hasn’t granted many interviews in the past few years, but taking a closer look at her history does provide some clues about the kind of leader she is.

In this book, journalist Carien du Plessis looks at Dlamini-Zuma’s early years, education and involvement in the struggle; her role as a cabinet minister under all four presidents of democratic South Africa; and her achievements as African Union Commission chairperson.

The book considers her feminism and political philosophy; tracks her presidential ambitions and campaigning; and explores how her personal relationship with one of her most important backers, President Jacob Zuma, will influence her leadership.

In 1964, the security police in Johannesburg detained Hugh Lewin. He was later tried and convicted on charges of sabotage. He spent seven years in prison, secretly recording his experiences, and those of his fellow inmates, on the pages of his Bible. On release, rather than submit to 24-hour arrest, he left South Africa on a one-way visa.

One of the finest ever examples of prison writing from South Africa, Bandiet was originally released during Hugh Lewin’s exile, and published by Random House in 1978. Selected poems and journalism interspersed with line-drawings by another of Pretoria’s inmates, Jock Strachan, appear alongside a freshly typeset version of the complete text of the original book.

Alan Paton called Bandiet “splendid” and commented on its lack of rancour and exaggeration. He spoke of its truthfulness and its quality, and called it a document of great historical value.

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.

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.

Allister Sparks joined his first newspaper at age 17 and was pitched headlong into the vortex of South Africa’s stormy politics. The Sword And The Pen is the story of how as a journalist he observed, chronicled and participated in his country’s unfolding drama for more than 66 years, covering events from the premiership of DF Malan to the presidency of Jacob Zuma, witnessing at close range the rise and fall of apartheid and the rise and crisis of the new South Africa.

In trenchant prose, Sparks has written a remarkable account of both a life lived to its full as well as the surrounding narrative of South Africa from the birth of apartheid, the rise of political opposition, the dawn of democracy, right through to the crisis we are experiencing today.

In 1990 two South African mothers were faced with an impossible choice, one that no mother should ever have to make. Should they surrender the child they had lovingly raised in order to get back the baby they had given birth to?

Megs Clinton-Parker and Sandy Dawkins chose nurture over nature, simply unable to give up their two-year-old sons who were switched at birth at an East Rand hospital. Instead they decided to try to make their strange relationship work, although they lived in different cities, 500km apart. And they decided to sue the South African state, whose negligence had altered the fates of two families forever. Robin Dawkins and Gavin Clinton-Parker grew up living each other’s lives, brothers-but-not-brothers, acutely aware that their mothers’ hearts were torn.

Unable to escape the consequences of the swap, Robin decided at the age of 15 that it was time to claim what was rightfully his, adding a further twist to this bitter saga.

Mark Pilgrim has wanted to ‘be on radio’ since he was thirteen years old, yet it always seemed like an unobtainable dream. It took a life-threatening illness to motivate him to pursue his passion.

At the age of eighteen his radio dream was on the back burner. Mark had just completed the first year of a B.Com degree at university and had secured a bursary to complete his studies. Things were looking good. Then the blow fell: he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. After surgery and throughout months of chemotherapy his initial despair was transformed into determination. He found the inner strength to fight the illness, change his career direction, and to make his lifelong dream a reality.

Beyond The Baldness is a personal account of Mark’s journey of determination, following every opportunity to audition for radio and television. From the humble beginnings of living in a trailer park, today Mark is one of South Africa’s best-known and most recognisable personalities, having deejayed on South Africa’s biggest radio stations and hosted some of the most memorable television shows like ‘Big Brother’ and SA’s biggest ever game show ‘The Power of 10’. His voice is also used in countless radio and television commercials.

As a motivational speaker, Mark spends a lot of his time engaging with delegates at conferences, chatting about his experience with cancer as well as the sudden heart attack he had at the age of 38.

His positive approach to life is inspirational and it will encourage everyone who reads this book to chase their dreams!