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!

Sixteen-year-old Engela flees to Bloemfontein because the leader of the Satanic Group 13 wishes to kill her. Her path crosses with Pieter, a friend of her brother’s, who turns her over to the owner of a brothel in return for money he owes him.

After a desperate and impoverished childhood Engela, as a rebellious teenager, becomes mixed up with Satanism, alcohol and drugs and is eventually kept as a sex slave. Her only wish is to escape, but how? Every night the club’s doors are shuttered. Her final shot at freedom is the young student Jacques who works in the club’s reception area. But then he also disappears from the scene following a mysterious accident in the Drakensberg . . .

In the second part of the book Elanie shares with the reader her awful experiences. She relates how she learned to cope with her feelings of despair, loneliness, pain and humiliation from a Christian perspective. She reaches out to other former victims of sex trafficking and encourages them to open their hearts in order to achieve emotional healing. She talks about the power of forgiveness and acceptance, and also offers essential practical advice for parents and their children.

Willie Steyn, the author, was one of six hundred Boer prisoners sent by ship to the island of Ceylon to be interned in the Diyatalawa prisoner-of-war camp during the Anglo-Boer War. While their ship was anchored in Colombo harbour on a dark, moonless night, Steyn and four of his fellow prisoners lowered themselves into the sea, each waiting until his predecessor had got away undetected by the guards on board and in vessels patrolling around the ship.

The charm of Steyn’s personal account of his adventures lies in its understatement and its matter-of-fact simplicity. He does not portray himself as a hero, nor does he lay any claim to fame, but his account gathers intensity and force as the story progresses. Willie Steyn was intent on escape from the moment he was taken into captivity, and the reader experiences a corresponding intensity, encountering Willie as a free spirit throughout his captivity and his protracted journey home.

Deneys Reitz – author of Commando and well known for his own bravery – called Steyn ‘one of our bravest men’, and described Steyn’s escape as ''a deed that is in my opinion without equal in the history of escape.''

As a young girl, Ismé Bennie didn’t realize how privileged she was. A white South African growing up during the apartheid era, her life was one of pleasure. She was a child at play under the warm African sun.

As she grew, however, and became more aware of the suffering of the black community in her country, she began to understand the evils of apartheid in a way that only those who lived through it can.

White Schooldays is a reflection on the relative normalcy of Bennie’s life in the 1940s and 1950s—a life filled with her pets, family, sports, and friends. As a Jew, Bennie was a minority within a minority, but she still enjoyed the benefits of life as a white South African. Her everyday pleasurable experiences stand in stark contrast to the violence, discrimination, and political upheaval that went on around her. As Bennie changed from a girl to a woman, the bliss of ignorance faded away.

White Schooldays is Bennie’s homage to a way of life that was special and beautiful for those who were privileged enough to lead it…and a look at the political reality of the times to keep it all in perspective.

It is the world's oldest and most famous ultramarathon. South Africa's Comrades Marathon has teased, tormented and tortured runners from all over the world since 1921. Those who have endured it say it changes lives, speaks to the soul and turns the ordinary into extraordinary. According to many, it is liberating.

Bob de la Motte should know. Winner of five Comrades medals, including three golds, his grit and determination during several epic duels with nine-time winner Bruce Fordyce enthralled the world throughout what was arguably the marathon's defining passage in the politically charged 1980s.

In this extraordinary, compassionate, candid, humorous and captivating personal memoir, Bob explains his fascination and passion for the most famous ultramarathon in the world and recounts the truth behind the hyped-up rivalry. He explores allegations of cheating and blood doping, highlights the hypocrisy in South African and international sport and elaborates on his decision to join the Chicken Run to Australia. He also provides fascinating perspectives on international politics and business on four continents and gives a crystal ball insight into the future of the Comrades Marathon.

For runners, sportspeople, sports lovers and those who simply enjoy a damned good read, Runaway Comrade will inevitably be your best buy of the year!

Mandela's Kinsmen is the first study of the fraught relationships between the ANC and their relatives inside apartheid's first 'tribal' Bantustan.

Timothy Gibbs reinterprets the complex connections between nationalist elites and the chieftaincies, and overlapping ideologies of national and ethnic belonging. In South Africa, like the rest of the continent, the chieftaincies had often been well-springs of African leadership in the early 20th century, producing leaders such as Nelson Mandela, who hailed from the 'Native Reserves' of rural Transkei. But then the apartheid government turned South Africa's chieftaincies into self-governing, tribal Bantustans in order to shatter African nationalism, starting with Transkei in 1963.

Drawing on a wealth of first-hand accounts and untapped archives, Mandela's Kinsmen offers a vividly human account of how the Bantustan era ruptured rural society. Nevertheless, Gibbs uncovers the social and political institutions and net- works that connected the nationalist leadership on Robben Island and in exile to their kinsmen inside the Transkei. Even at the climax of the apartheid era - when interlocking nationalist insurgencies spiralled into ethnically based civil wars across South Africa and the southern African region - elite connections still straddled Bantustan divides.

These relationships would shape the apartheid endgame and forge the post-apartheid policy.

'The heavy smell of blood filled the air, and every moment you had this intense fear that the next bullet was meant for you.' So remembered William Thorne, a South African volunteer soldier who fought in the muddy trenches along the River Somme in France on Europe’s Western Front. A boy of nineteen at the time, he was one of thousands of South Africans who took part in the 1916 Somme Offensive between the Allied forces and the Germans. It was one of the bloodiest and costliest conflicts of the First World War, resulting in over a million deaths.

The men of the 1st South African Infantry Brigade were involved on a large scale and distinguished themselves in all major engagements during the campaign. But their bravery came at a price. In the first month alone, after six days of fighting to recapture the village of Longueval and clear Delville Wood of enemy soldiers, of the brigade’s 3 433 soldiers, only 750 were left standing. The rest were dead or wounded. By the armistice, the South Africans had suffered some 15 000 casualties in France, of which one third had died.

On the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War, The Somme Chronicles tells the gripping stories of the men of the 1st South African Infantry Brigade via their letters and diaries, providing an invaluable, human account of one of history’s most devastating conflicts.

At 34, Heyneke Meyer was fired as head coach of a Super Rugby team for the second time. But when on 19 May 2007 his Bulls side became the first South African team to capture the Super title, the dark years at Loftus Versfeld were suddenly forgotten. And Meyer was regarded as the coach among coaches.

Because it is there – on the playing field – that coaches and players are judged. And yet the scoreboard never tells the full story of how people achieved success ‘overnight’. In Meyer’s case it was an arduous journey of more than seven years during which he defined and changed professional rugby. This is leadership. And leadership is what Coach is about – people who have fundamentally changed a sport, an industry, a way of thinking, and, ultimately, lives.

Marco Botha sat in conversation with some of South Africa’s foremost sports leaders and interprets their diverse success stories in his narrative writing style:

• From Meyer to Brendan Venter, who helped turn Saracens into a super club and the Sharks into the 2013 Currie Cup champions.
• As an international hockey player, Sherylle Calder noticed something ‘special’ about her own visual abilities and researched this together with Professor Tim Noakes. ‘The Eye Lady’ was instrumental in England (2003) and South Africa (2007) winning the Rugby World Cup and Ernie Els bagging his second British Open golf title in 2012.
• Former Springbok Sevens coach Paul Treu advanced rugby sevens as a world sport by regularly getting his team to tower above seemingly superior sides. One innovation at a time.
• Gary Kirsten and Paddy Upton guided the Indian national cricket team to glory with a leadership style that empowered players and developed them as human beings – the ‘new school’ of coaching. With the same approach they helped the Proteas become the number one team in the world in all three formats of the game.

These remarkable leaders have made champions out of ordinary people. And the reasons for this will certainly surprise you . . .

This is a fascinating collection on the life and times of Brenda Fassie, which includes a Foreword by Hugh Masekela and contributions from people who knew Brenda in both professional and personal capacities. It is being published in the year of the tenth anniversary of her death and is intended as both a tribute and to give fresh insight into Africa's biggest pop star.

The collection includes reminiscences, criticism, elegies, essays and appreciation by friends, ex-lovers, critics, poets, academics and musicians, reflecting the endless and boundary-crossing legacy of Brenda Fassie.

Funny, crazy, poignant, insightful and tragic, I'm Not Your Weekend Special traces the highs and lows of Brenda Fassie's life, celebrating the significance of this South African icon.

This book is an account of Paul O'Sullivan's role in helping to not only nail South Africa's most powerful policeman, but also the world's top cop. It is based on thousands of pages of emails, statements, affidavits, letters, press reports, court records and transcripts as well as interviews with O'Sullivan himself. This version provides a perspective from his point of view as a key player in the saga. While O'Sullivan's name consistently appears in almost every key breaking story around the Selebi matter, his role, for whatever reason, has been played down.

The Jackie Selebi story, and the satellite narratives that orbited it, is a truly remarkable chronicle that requires commitment and stamina to grasp fully. There is so much detail, so much subterfuge, lying, dishonesty and cover-up by Selebi and his cronies that it is extremely challenging and almost impossible to pick out one comprehensive, linear thread. The drama played itself out in different layers and strata of South African society, sometimes simultaneously and often in an apparently unrelated fashion. The characters that populate the saga, apart from Jackie Selebi, include the then president of the country, his political rival, myriad crooked, corrupt businessmen, a gallery of rotten, very senior rogue cops, a phalanx of undercover intelligence operatives, two- bit hired guns, scrap metal dealers, drug and human traffickers, international criminal syndicates and a cast of thousands of common-or-garden-variety petty thugs and criminals.

"Sounds like a movie," say most of those who have asked about this project. Yes, but what is startling and disturbing is that this is no fairy-tale. Those of us who have become accustomed to the commodification of crime as "entertainment" in popular television series have this need to make sense of it by blurring fiction with chilling reality.

Paul O'Sullivan is no suave James Bond in a tuxedo, equipped with special equipment, downing his martini surrounded by a bevy of women. When dealing with criminals he can be abrasive, brusque and uncompromising. But who wouldn't be in a world that is populated with real thugs and dangerous killers, people who kill, maim and disrupt law and order and destabilise the country? These are sociopaths and psychopaths who do not care how much harm they cause as they go about their "business". So, what drove or drives O'Sullivan? Revenge? A thirst for justice? It's simple really. Paul O'Sullivan hates criminals and low-lifes like dogs hate flies. His long career in international law enforcement has equipped him with the intellectual and physical tools to deal with the most canny and violent of criminals.

He enjoys hunting them down and, like the radioactive bite that imbues Spiderman with special powers, criminals provide O'Sullivan with an energy and a stamina that seems to grow in proportion to the challenges they present him. His work, he says, is far from done. He is presently attempting to ensure that Czech-born fugitive, Radovan Krejcir, is extradited to his home country to face numerous charges.

After serving twenty-seven years of a lifetime sentence for conspiring to overthrow South Africa's apartheid government, Nelson Mandela emerged to become both the catalyst and the symbol of post-apartheid South Africa. He served as the country's first black president and has since been internationally acclaimed as a powerful and vigilant humanitarian.

John Carlin began covering South African politics while serving as the London Independent's Bureau Chief in South Africa in 1989, and formed a relationship with Nelson Mandela in the decades since. Mandela has called Carlin's journalism 'courageous' and 'absolutely inspiring'. Now, Carlin reflects back on the man he has studied and admired for much of his career. The book will begin with Mandela's release from prison in 1990, and will end with the last time Carlin saw Mandela face-to-face in the early 2000s.

Spanning decades, and chronicling both personal and national memories, Carlin's tribute to Mandela is a fitting retrospective on a life well lived and its enduring legacy.

When Mark Boucher played his first game of cricket for South Africa, a senior player took him aside and bluntly told him he was the worst wicketkeeper ever to play in the national side. Over a decade later, when Bouch finally retired with a plethora of records under his belt and to huge acclaim from the public, he took grim satisfaction in relating this piece of history.

Through My Eyes is the story of a man with remarkable sporting prowess. Born into a sports-mad family in East London, he excelled in squash, tennis and rugby before choosing cricket as his preferred sport. His extraordinary achievements on the field are well known - he was voted SA player of the year in 1998, 2000 and 2006. What is not so well known, and makes up much of this book, are the behind-the-scenes stories and anecdotes. Stories of staring down the barrel of defeat and of celebrating victory; of developing strong bonds with teammates Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis and others that go way beyond mere friendship. What emerges is the image of a man who always fought for the underdog, whose never-say-die attitude inspires those around him.

Bouch's career was brought to a dramatic end on a cricket pitch in England when the bail of a stump punctured his left eye. But, in his own words, "I lost sight but gained vision".

True to his character of gritty determination, Bouch has rededicated his life to a new cause, that of the environment and particularly the critically endangered rhino.

World icon, anti-apartheid activist, leader. Nelson Mandela’s life has been like no other and his own epic journey was recorded in the autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. That story has taken on another life in the movie of the same name.

This film and historical companion takes readers through many key points in Mandela’s life, from his upbringing in the Eastern Cape to his arrival in Johannesburg to the many and varied journeys that he undertook while he and his fellow activists fought against the apartheid regime.

Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom captures the story of this extraordinary man who, throughout everything that has happened in his life, has remained constant and focused with an undying need to see a better life for all the citizens of his country. The book features images from the movie as well as original photographs of Nelson Mandela and the many characters who have played significant roles in his life. There are also quotes from the autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, snippets of his story and quotes from the central characters in his life’s journey.

Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom also contains a Prologue by Anant Singh, who produced the movie, an insightful Foreword by Ahmed Kathrada and an interesting Introduction by British screenwriter, William Nicholson.

Set in McGregor in the Klein Karoo where she bakes bread in a wood-fired oven, this book reflects Hester’s intuitive feeling for the connections between the soul and food, particularly food that is prepared with care, according to traditional principles and methods.

Hester's Book of Bread is infused with a fine sense of humour, helpful hints and mouth-watering recipes. It’s a book as irresistible as the smell of bread fresh from the oven.

The stories in Children Of A Bitter Harvest document moments in the lives of children who worked in the heart of South Africa's wine industry between 1996 and 2010, as framed by the uprisings on farms at the start of 2013.

The book is made up of over 100 interconnected flashes, or fragments of stories, taken from the lives of farm workers, farmers, child workers, human rights lawyers, and ordinary people affected by the agricultural industry in the Western Cape. The children in the book are no longer children; they are young adults in a new South Africa that offers them certain freedoms to overcome the shackles of race and class domination. However, without the kind of radical economic and social restructuring that would make this possible, all of the children represented in the book remain extremely poor adults.

The author documents how, for these children, their child labour of the 1990s inevitably gave way to adult labour and powerfully demonstrates that the breath between childhood and adulthood is as tender as it is tenuous. We are a nation that has managed to end the brutality of apartheid, but we are a nation that has yet to replace brutality itself.

South African Battles describes 36 battles spread over five centuries. These are not the well-trodden battlefields of standard histories, but generally lesser-known ones. Some were of critical importance, while some were infinitely curious.

Who, for instance, has heard of the battles of Nakob, Middelpos, Mome Gorge or Mushroom Valley? Who knows about the four black women that Bartolomeu Dias brought with him on his pioneering voyage of exploration? Who knows that there was a significant battle in what is now the Kruger National Park in 1725? Who knows about the military episode where not a shot was fired but which brought South Africa into the Great War? Who knows that Germany once invaded South Africa?

Written in a light, humorous and personal style, each chapter is self-contained, like a short story. They can be read one a night, and mulled over next day with the promise of further enjoyment to come. South African Battles is an ideal bedside book, as well as an engaging travel companion.

But there is also a twist in the tale at the end. Caveat lector, or lectrix!

As the favoured son of a tribal headman, Nelson Mandela was perhaps always destined for greatness. However, Mandela was to spend some 27 years of his life behind bars but during this time he rose up to become a powerful symbol of the struggle against apartheid and racism.

Through a series of revealing photographs and concise but illuminating text, this book charts Mandela’s long journey from young firebrand to elder statesman and global icon.

Fractured Lives is a memoir of one woman's experiences as a documentary filmmaker covering the wars in southern Africa during the 1980s and 1990s. Part autobiography, part history, part social commentary and part war story, it offers a female perspective on a traditionally male subject. Growing up in South Africa in a politically active family, Toni went to Britain as an exile in 1965 in the wake of the famous Rivonia Trial, and in the years to follow, became a filmmaker. Despite constant difficulties fighting for funding and commissions from television broadcasters, and the prejudices of working in a male-dominated industry, Toni made several remarkable films in Mozambique and Angola. These bear witness to the silent victims of war, particularly the women and children. Fractured Lives paints the changing landscape of southern Africa: Namibian independence and the end of the war in Mozambique bring hope - but also despondency. Yet there is also the possibility of redemption, of building new lives for the victims of war. In its final chapters, Fractured Lives traces the power of survival and the opportunities for new beginnings. Fractured Lives concludes with Toni's return to South Africa after nearly three decades in exile. However, the joy following the demise of apartheid is tempered by the poignancy of returning to a place that for so long had existed in her dreams alone and the realization that home will forever lie somewhere else.

People love talking about Loui Fish. She has been called many things: social butterfly, party animal, sex kitten, flirt, and cougar. But to that list one can also add: gorgeous, successful, and witty. She is not to be underestimated – she is most definitely her own person, with a zest for life. Not many people can claim to have rubbed shoulders with Victoria and David Beckham or boast Jimmy Choo as a personal friend or George Michael as a former neighbour.

In her revealing autobiography, Walking in My Choos, she recounts how, as a child, she had always wanted to marry a rock star. Early in her adult life there was a brief dalliance with Steve Hofmeyr. James Small took her out of the Boland, but in return she was introduced to his temper and his fists. Eventually she married the love of her life, Mark Fish, and became part of a social group known as Footballers’ Wives – women to whom the labels on their underwear are as important as the cars they drive.

This is a tale of passion, violence and love. Of haute couture and life in the fast lane. But it is also the story of a vulnerable woman who ultimately realises that money only gets you so far, and that all the glory and admiration can’t guarantee happiness. Does it really matter what everyone else says?

“Why am I writing my story? I am not a victim. I am not a bad person. I am just a girl who fell in love with a young man. Who might still be in love with him. But I’m not 24 anymore. I was married for almost 11 years. And why are we not married anymore? Well, as my icon once remarked in an interview with Martin Bashir: ‘It was getting a little crowded.’ Like me, she was referring to her marriage. She was known as Princess Diana.”

A comparative historical study of the narrative of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. A persistent theme among historical narratives of South African presidential politics was that Mandela is a 'hero,' and that his style embodied an inclusive approach. His former deputy and successor, on the other side, was regarded a little harshly as a 'prince.' The book is concerned with the historical contexts in which these two narratives were centered, and it takes the reader on a journey of what South African history could look like when Mandela, a character of legend, is cast in the role of an introverted ruler, and Mbeki as manifesting the sense of an outsider.

Mbeki had a reputation for being 'an opinionated foreigner' in South Africa's politics of avant-gardism and universalism. Mandela & Mbeki: The Hero and the Outsider presents a picture of the period 1912-2008, organized around a number of themes of current interest: the 'invention' of traditions and modern nations, Black Consciousness, the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress, the working class, and the middle class. It is a stimulating account with a great deal of interesting detail, taking the debate about these two protagonists beyond the 'orthodox' platform to which it had been taken in the mid-1990s.

The book demonstrates, on the one hand, that Mandela's legend amounts to a great deal more than the surge of his charisma, and that his Republicans' avant-gardism did much to make Mandela the leader he became. On the other hand, the book also demonstrates that Mbeki was a pragmatist and a 'hyphenate' leader, both by custom and by principle, and was historically programmed by his exile past into the primordialist he became.

Daar is min gesigte op Suid-Afrikaanse televisie so wyd herken en geliefd soos die van Johan Stemmet, en min kenwysies so sinoniem met naweekaand-vermaak as die vrolike Noot vir Noot-klingel. Dat Johan Stemmet al vir meer as dertig jaar ononderbroke by televisie betrokke is, voor en agter die skerms, mag dalk sommige verras (hy lyk dan nie 'n dag ouer as dertig nie?) - maar nog interessanter is die doodgewone aardsheid en opregte menswees wat die toonaard bepaal vir die gebore Weskusklong se lewenslied. Woord vir Woord is 'n reis deur Johan se lewe: 'n kleurvolle concerto met 'n goeie sarsie dawerende akkoorde (geweet dat Johan as student vir Paul Getty II partytjiemusiek verskaf het? Of die een was wat gesorg het vir Tolla van der Merwe se eerste televisieverskyning?) en onverwagse vingerlopies (hy't Afrikaans gegee by Rondebosch Boys High - en dink self sy onderbaadjies op televisie lyk verspot!). Of jy nou 'n getroue aanhanger is, of eerder grappenderwys dink 'Kyk hoe kyk hy vir my!' - Woord vir Woord is meer as bloot die vertel van 'n fassinerende lewe. Dis ook die verhaal van die ontvouing van die Suid-Afrikaanse televisiebedryf en 'n sout-van-die-aarde-storie wat nie anders kan as om wyd te resoneer en te boei nie!

Dr Marius Barnard is probably best remembered as a member of the pioneering medical team that performed the world's first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in 1967, with his brother Chris. He was also an MP for the Progressive Federal Party, he worked to improve cardiac surgery standards behind the Iron Curtain and globally, and he played a leading role in the creation of critical illness insurance - his invention, and one that has played a significant part in creating protection insurance policies with local and international companies to the direct benefit of the sick and ailing.

From his humble beginnings in the Karoo town of Beaufort West to his position as one of the world's leading cardiac surgeons, this book is a fascinating account of his life and work, and his relationships with his brother, his colleagues and his adversaries.

With candour, authenticity and charm it brings to life the spellbinding successes and formidable challenges of this international medical icon.

’n Biografie oor Pik Botha, een van Suid-Afrika se kleurrykste figure, en in sy tyd die langsdienende Minister van Buitelandse Sake ter wêreld.