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Books > Promotion > Freedom Day > Biography
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.
When John Kgoana Nkadimeng travelled from Sekhukhuneland to the Witwatersrand in 1944, he was one of thousands of migrants seeking work in town. But his encounters with racial injustice and contact with activists drew him down a very different path, one which was dedicated to the struggle. Mokgomana tells the story of Nkadimeng, from his origins in the rural village of Manganeng, in an area with a long history of resistance to colonial rule, through his growing involvement in trade unions, the Communist Party and the ANC. He spearheaded rural opposition to Bantu Authorities, helped take new MK recruits out of the country, and played a crucial role in re-establishing the ANC underground after the state smashed resistance networks. In 1976 he fled South Africa for the perilous terrain of building MK organisations in Swaziland and Mozambique. In 1982 he settled in Lusaka and played a pivotal part in the leadership of the ANC, Communist Party and SACTU during that decisive decade. Mokgomana represents a new focus on an under-acknowledged leader and offers fresh perspectives on over four decades of struggle history. It is also the story of the family which supported him, enduring harassment and separation, and their own splintered trajectories through exile and homecoming.
“Twenty-one years [since the TRC] that have led to this Pretoria courtroom, and to the appearance of this giant man who, 46 years ago, claimed to have been the only eye witness to Uncle Ahmed’s suicide. Joao Rodrigues was the state’s star witness at the 1972 inquest. He would have been deemed pretty perfect for the job of covering the murder of Uncle Ahmed. A white South African of Portuguese descent, he worked as an administrative clerk at security police headquarters in Pretoria. After more than 10 years of service he had ascended just one step up the police hierarchy, to the rank of sergeant – proof, if nothing else, of his loyalty to the cause for his role in covering up the murder of Uncle Ahmed.” Follow Ahmed Timol’s nephew, Imtiaz Cajee, on his 20-year journey to find his uncle’s killer and bring him to justice. In 1971, a state inquiry found that Ahmed Timol, held by the security branch of the tenth floor of John Vorster Square, committed suicide by jumping to his death. Forty-six years later, a new inquiry found that Ahmed Timol was murdered. Only one man remained alive who could tell the truth, a lowly clerk from the police, who was in the room when Timol was pushed. Joao Rodrigues has now been charged with murder and defeating and or obstructing the administration of justice. The book is a wonderful evocation of a time and places; Johannesburg, London, Mecca, Moscow. The last years of Timol’s life, the woman he loved, and his commitment to a non-racial and free South Africa. His last days are detailed here; the roadblock that was set up to catch him and his treatment by the security police. Not content with finding his uncle’s murderer, Cajee has been on a quest for justice for other murdered victims of apartheid, whose killers never applied to the TRC and who were never charged, despite the information being available. Cajee investigates the possible deal that was done between the National Party and the ANC during the early 90s, and asks how it is possible that so many murderers and torturers were not prosecuted. He is clear that now is the time to find these people and prosecute them. The book is unputdownable, and one that will leave you deeply touched.
Breaking a Rainbow, Building a Nation covers the university protests that took place in 2015–2016, better known as the #FeesMustFall protests. Rekgotsofetse (Kgotsi) gives us his first-hand account of what happened prior to the protests and what led to the events of October 2015 at the various university campuses and nationally. This is a four-part retelling of what happened on the ground amongst the students, first at #RhodesMustFall, then moving to the university responses and management and what ultimately led to #FeesMustFall nationwide. Chikane then looks at student politics now and how they are different from 1976, specifically the fact that the protests were being led by so-called coconuts, who are part of the black elite. The book poses the provocative question, can coconuts be trusted with the revolution?
Joe Modise (1929-2001), a Sophiatown bus driver-turned freedom fighter, was a humble man who tended to avoid the limelight. A protege of the Mandela leadership in the 1950s mass struggle, he was one of the youngest among that decade’s Treason Trial, and was a senior commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) from its inception, facing danger and privation most of his adult life. Modise served with acclaim as democratic South Africa’s first Minister of Defence and won the loyalty of his former enemy when many thought the country could be plunged into civil war or held to ransom by old-order apartheid generals. The fact that Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo selected him for key positions over five decades of exacting struggle testifies to their sustained confidence in him. This fact alone belies the impression some might have that he was an amoral warlord. As a government minister, he led a modest lifestyle and did not die a wealthy man. This book interlinks frank and engaging interviews with family and friends, comrades in-arms and former adversaries. Those who knew him reveal a warm human being and provide endearing insights into who Modise really was. As a soldier, statesman and leader, he has left behind an astonishing legacy that deserves to be widely known.
We have a lot to be positive about in South Africa. With all our problems, it’s easy to feel bleak. But hold those thoughts, because Legends might be just the tonic you need to drive off the gloom. This book tells the stories of a dozen remarkable people – some well known, others largely forgotten – who changed Mzansi for the better. Most South Africans are proud of Nelson Mandela – and rightly so. His life was truly astounding, but he’s by no means the only person who should inspire us. There’s King Moshoeshoe, whose humanity and diplomatic strategies put him head and shoulders above his contemporaries, both European and African. And John Fairbairn, who brought non-racial democracy to the Cape in 1854. Olive Schreiner was a bestselling international author who fought racism, corruption and chauvinism. And Gandhi spent twenty years here inventing a system of protest that would bring an empire to its knees. Legends also celebrates Eugène Marais’s startling contributions to literature and natural history (despite a lifelong morphine addiction); Sol Plaatje’s wit, intelligence and tenacity in the face of racial zealots; Cissie Gool’s lifetime fighting for justice and exposing bigots; and Sailor Malan’s battles against fascists in the skies of Europe and on the streets of South Africa. And then there’s Miriam Makeba, who began her life in prison and ended it as an international singing sensation; Steve Biko, who shifted the minds of an entire generation; and Thuli Madonsela (the book’s only living legend), who gracefully felled the most powerful man in the land. Engagingly written and meticulously researched, Legends reminds South Africans that we have a helluva lot to be proud of.
A highly readable, dramatic story of a colourful South African journey in politics lasting over 50 years, from anti-apartheid protester to Right Honourable Lord, from Pretoria childhood to senior British Cabinet Minister. A Pretoria Boy begins with the story of how Peter Hain’s journey came full circle when he used parliamentary privilege in 2017–18 to expose looting and money laundering, supplied with the ammunition by his ‘deep throat’ inside the Zuma State. In so doing, he put South Africa’s state capture and corruption on the front pages of the New York Times and Financial Times, which some suggest played a part in Zuma’s toppling. Going back to an anti-apartheid childhood in Pretoria in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there are vivid descriptions of his parents’ arrest, banning, harassment, helping an escaped political prisoner, the hanging of a close white family friend, and enforced exile to London in 1966 after the government prohibited his architect father from working. It tells of how, at aged 19, Hain organised and led militant anti-Springbok demonstrations in exile in London in 1969–1970, for which he was denounced by the South African media as ‘Public Enemy Number One’. It is about how he narrowly escaped jail after a South African government-financed prosecution landed him in the Old Bailey in 1972 for conspiracy to disrupt those all-white South African sports tours and, then in 1975, how he was framed for a bank theft committed by an apartheid security agent. His return to South Africa came first on a secret mission in December 1989, then as a parliamentary observer during the 1994 elections. The book ends with his perspective on the country’s future.
Drawing on Nelson Mandela's own unfinished memoir, Dare Not Linger is the remarkable story of his presidency told in his own words and those of distinguished South African writer Mandla Langa 'I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.' Long Walk to Freedom. In 1994, Nelson Mandela became the first president of democratic South Africa. Five years later, he stood down. In that time, he and his government wrought the most extraordinary transformation, turning a nation riven by centuries of colonialism and apartheid into a fully functioning democracy in which all South Africa's citizens, black and white, were equal before the law. Dare Not Linger is the story of Mandela's presidential years, drawing heavily on the memoir he began to write as he prepared to finish his term of office, but was unable to finish. Now, the acclaimed South African writer, Mandla Langa, has completed the task using Mandela's unfinished draft, detailed notes that Mandela made as events were unfolding and a wealth of previously unseen archival material. With a prologue by Mandela's widow, Graça Machel, the result is a vivid and inspirational account of Mandela's presidency, a country in flux and the creation of a new democracy. It tells the extraordinary story of the transition from decades of apartheid rule and the challenges Mandela overcome to make a reality of his cherished vision for a liberated South Africa.
Professor. Pundit. Public nuisance. In his columns, books and on social
media, Jonathan Jansen is prolific and he likes to speak his mind about
schools and universities, race, politics and our complex South African
society.
For over three decades, the remarkable story of Umkhonto we Sizwe’s
Special Operations Unit has remained largely untold. Formed under the
direct command of ANC president Oliver Tambo and senior ANC and SACP
leader Joe Slovo, this elite unit executed some of the most daring and
high-profile attacks against the apartheid state in the 1980s. From the
spectacular 1980 Sasol bombings to the 1987 attack at the Wits Command,
Special Ops was at the forefront of the armed struggle, targeting
strategic economic and military sites with precision and determination.
Between 1960 and 1989 in South Africa, more than 130 people were
executed for crimes that had a political motive. Who were they, what
did they do, and why did they do it?
Born in 1917 in Bizana in the Eastern Cape, Oliver Reginald Tambo became Nelson Mandela's legal partner and a prominent member of the ANC's Youth League. Following the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, Tambo left South Africa to set up the ANC's international mission. As President of the ANC in exile, he led the fight against apartheid on both the diplomatic and military fronts. He died in 1993 on the eve of liberation. Tambo had a profound influence on the ANC during the difficult years of uncertainty, loneliness and homesickness in exile. His simplicity, his nurturing style, his genuine respect for all people seemed to bring out the best in them. This is the story of one of South Africa's great sons - 'the most loved leader', the Moses who led his people to the promised land but did not live to enter it.
By uncovering the untold story of Vesta Smith (1922–2013), a community activist from Noordgesig, Soweto, this biography addresses a crucial gap in the literature on the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Based on extensive interviews and previously unexamined archival materials, it reveals how her Christian faith fuelled her commitment to non-racialism and lifelong pursuit of social justice and how her non-sectarian, anti-apartheid activism connected generations, ideologies and communities. This book reframes Ma Vesta’s legacy, celebrating her contributions while offering fresh insights into non-racialism, the politics of the everyday and the role of black women and Christians in the liberation struggle. A powerful tale of resilience and hope, it stands as an inspiration for contemporary movements seeking social justice and community empowerment.
Khulu Radebe had had a full life. Then, at the age of 50, he discovered that he was a king. As a teenager, Khulu Radebe was part of the Alexandra Township 1976 uprisings. Arrested and sent to Robben Island, he was one of the youngest prisoners there. Returning to Alex, he participated in the township’s 1986 Six Days War. Radebe joined the armed struggle, repeatedly dodging death from the enemy and from fellow MK soldiers in Angola. At age 50, and proving a prophet’s prediction correct, Khulu Radebe learned about his royal roots. He was informed that he was the ruler of the AmaHlubi people of the Embo Nation, a nation that stretches along the east coast of Africa. In chronicling his extraordinary life and times in this landmark autobiography, Radebe, in a humane and vivid way, chronicles too the revolutionary path for freedom in South Africa. Alexandra Township in Johannesburg is a central character in this book and Radebe reveals an astonishing story of the post-1990 war between Inkatha and the ANC in Alex. Gripping, bold and original, Comrade King, is an unforgettable story.
What was it like to be a freedom fighter in the 1980s? Eighteen members of the ANC’s military underground tell their stories, describing their backgrounds, their roles in the armed struggle and their lives since the fall of apartheid. In 1987, the apartheid minister of law and order boasted that the security forces had crushed Umkhonto we Sizwe in the Western Cape. He could not have been more wrong. The Ashley Kriel Detachment, named after one of their slain comrades, conducted over thirty operations between late 1987 and early 1990, playing a crucial role in the defeat of an unjust system. In Voices from the Underground, eighteen members of the AKD give accounts of their involvement in the armed struggle. The book traces their varying journeys into MK, via student activism, trade unions, religious organisations and UDF politics. It details their training in Angola, Botswana, Tanzania, Cuba and South Africa, and their experiences of detention and interrogation. Members recall the stresses of couriering arms and explosives across police roadblocks, hiding in safe houses and evading capture. They talk about the operations they executed, the measures they took to avoid civilian casualties, and their responses to security breaches and the deaths of comrades in the line of duty. Above all, this is a book about people, showing the effects of apartheid on their lives, their reasons for joining the armed struggle, the challenges of surviving in the underground while raising children, and their experiences of returning to civilian life or, in some cases, integrating into the SANDF. Voices from the Underground gives a human face to ordinary people who took up arms to fight a violent state for the freedom of all South Africans.
A collection of Robert Sobukwe’s political writings, speeches and court testimonies supplemented by an account of his years in Kimberley following his release from Robben Island. There are several accounts of Robert Sobukwe’s courageous role in contesting South Africa’s system of apartheid and of his incarceration on Robben Island after the Anti-Pass Campaign that led to the tragic events of Sharpeville in March 1960. Far less attention has been paid to the years the leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress spent in Kimberley, between 1969 and 1978, after his release from the Island. Darkest Before Dawn, the follow-up to Lie on Your Wounds: The Prison Correspondence of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, captures the story of the post-prison years of Sobukwe’s life. This latest compilation complete with a biographical narrative by the editors and enriched with images from Sobukwe’s life in this period of his life demonstrates the many challenges Sobukwe faced as well as his continued political resolve to fight for an end to apartheid. This is captured in the many meetings he had in spite of banning orders and letters he exchanged with friends and admirers, including the celebrated novelist Bessie Head whose letters to Sobukwe are published here for the first time. Sobukwe continued to meet political allies, such as Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko, he pursued a legal career and played host to international visitors. The portrait of Sobukwe that emerges is that of a highly ethical man, a figure of dignity and fortitude, and a wise elder whose commitment to the people of Africa and to the vision of Pan-Africanism who remained undeterred, despite his being forced to live, in his final years, under near impossible conditions. To do justice to Sobukwe’s legacy, his intellectual contribution and his unfailing desire to pursue liberation for the African people, we need to view his biography against the backdrop of his words. Darkest Before Dawn includes a definitive collection of his political writings, speeches, unpublished court testimonies, interviews with Gail Gerhart and Joe Thloloe, and expansive annotations by the compilers. The book ends with a reflective essay which highlights the ongoing pertinence of Sobukwe’s legacy.
Set in Fordsburg between the 1950s and 1990s against the backdrop of apartheid, A Home on Vorster Street invites us into the life of Razina Theba and the vibrant community to which she and her characterful Indian-Muslim family belongs. The book offers an intimate, vividly told narrative of a family bound by loyalty to their culture, religion and each other. At times laugh-out-loud funny, and at others emotional, painful and tender-hearted, Theba’s memoir is a spirited exploration of the themes of family, racism, cultural heritage and identity.
In her much anticipated memoir, Sisonke Msimang writes about her exile childhood in Zambia and Kenya, young adulthood and college years in North America, and returning to South Africa in the euphoric 1990s. She reflects candidly on her discontent and disappointment with present-day South Africa but also on her experiences of family, romance, and motherhood, with the novelist’s talent for character and pathos. Militant young comrades dance off the pages of the 1970s Lusaka she invokes, and the heady and naive days of just-democratic South Africa in the 1990s are as vividly painted. Her memoir is at heart a chronicle of a coming-of-age, and while well-known South African political figures appear in these pages, it is an intimate story, a testament to family bonds and sisterhood. Sisonke Msimang is one of the most assured and celebrated voices commenting on the South African present – often humorously; sometimes deeply movingly – and this book launches her to an even broader audience.
Leon and his twin Norman were born in August 1929, the youngest of four children born to Mary and Mark Levy, immigrants from Lithuania. His father died when Leon was six; to heroic degree, his mother carried the family – financially, practically and emotionally – in her widowhood. Leon was an intensely bookish boy but left school aged sixteen to help makes ends meet through a series of jobs. Deeply affected by the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust, Leon was radicalised in the Hashomer Hatza’ir, a left-wing Zionist youth movement. He was seventeen when he joined the Communist Party and became a committed young activist. In 1953, at the age of twenty-four, Leon became a full-time trade unionist. ‘It was a defining moment in my life story,’ he writes. ‘It gave practical form to my political beliefs; it also determined the shape and scope of my life. It transpired that I would spend the next six decades and more working in trade unions, industrial relations and mediation.’ A comrade in the trade union movement nicknamed Leon, TsabaTsaba – which means “here, there and everywhere”. Anyone who reads Leon’s account of his years as a full-time unionist will agree that the soubriquet was well earned. (Alongside trade union work, Leon was also committed to the remarkable Discussion Club, which he co-founded and ran throughout the 1950s; he was also secretary of the South African Peace Council from 1951 to 1961.) In the mid-1950s, he was part of a small group of progressive trade unionists who pushed for the formation of the first non-racial trade union federation in South Africa. These aspirations were realised in March 1955 with the launch of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). Later that year Leon was elected president and remained in that position for nine years. SACTU linked day-to-day concerns of workers with support for national liberation and the abolition of apartheid and was one of the five organisations which formed the Congress Alliance. As SACTU leader, Leon served on the committee that directed the activities of the Alliance; he was present at Kliptown when the Freedom Charter was adopted – and as SACTU president was one of the five original signatories of the Freedom Charter. Political activism of this order came at a high price. Leon Levy was served with banning orders and arrested several times; he was Accused No 4 of the 156 people arrested and charged with treason, and from November 1958 was one of the final 30 (and with Helen Joseph one of only two whites) who faced charges until the trial was finally dismissed in March 1961. He was detained for five months during the 1960 State of Emergency. In May 1963 he was the first person to be detained under the notorious General Laws Amendment Act, known as the 90-day Act. Unable to continue his work he chose to go into exile in the United Kingdom. There, he studied politics, economics and industrial relations at Oxford – and then applied what he had learned in a series of positions in industrial relations. After 1994, he was determined to make the skills and knowledge that he had acquired available to a democratic South Africa – and he and his wife Lorna returned to the country of their birth in 1997. In a remarkable final phase of his career, Leon took office shortly after his 70th birthday as a full-time commissioner for the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration – and spent the next 19 years in this capacity.
Bantu Holomisa is one of South Africa’s most respected and popular political figures. Born in the Transkei in 1955, he attended an elite school for the sons of chiefs and headmen. While other men his age were joining Umkhonto weSizwe, Holomisa enrolled in the Transkeian Defence Force and rose rapidly through the ranks. As head of the Transkeian Defence Force, Holomisa led successive coups against the homeland regimes and then became the head of its military government. He turned the Transkei into a ‘liberated space’, giving shelter to ANC and PAC activists, and declared his intention of holding a referendum on the reincorporation of the Transkei into South Africa. These actions brought him immense popularity and the military dictator became a liberation hero for many South Africans. When the unbanned ANC held its first election for its national executive in 1994, Holomisa, who had by now joined the party, received the most votes, beating long-time veterans and party stalwarts. He and Mandela developed a close relationship, and Holomisa served in Mandela’s cabinet as deputy minister for environmental affairs and tourism. As this biography reveals, the relationship with both Mandela and the ANC broke down after Holomisa testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, among other issues, that Stella Sigcau and her cabinet colleagues had accepted a bribe from Sol Kerzner. After being expelled from the ANC, Holomisa formed his own party, the United Democratic Movement, with Roelf Meyer. As leader of the UDM, Holomisa has played a prominent role in building coalitions among opposition parties and in leading important challenges to the dominant party. This biography, written in collaboration with Holomisa, presents an engaging and revealing account of a man who has made his mark as a game changer in South African politics.
Nelson Mandela is widely considered to be one of the most inspiring and iconic figures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of putting pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has bestowed his entire extant personal papers, which offer an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life. A singular international publishing event, Conversations with Myself draws on Mandela’s personal archive of never-before-seen materials to offer unique access to the private world of an incomparable world leader. Journals kept on the run during the anti-apartheid struggle of the early 1960s; diaries and draft letters written on Robben Island and in other South African prisons during his twenty-seven years of incarceration; notebooks from the post-apartheid transition; private recorded conversations; speeches and correspondence written during his presidency – a historic collection of documents archived at the Nelson Mandela Foundation is brought together into a sweeping narrative of great immediacy and stunning power.
This extraordinary account of imprisonment shows with exacting clarity the awful injustices of the system. Sylvia Neame, activist against apartheid and racism and by profession a historian (see the three-volume, The Congress Movement, HSRC Press, 2015), has not written a classical historical memoir. Rather, this book is a highly personal account, written in an original style. At the same time, it casts a particularly sharp light on the unfolding of a policedominated apartheid system in the 1960s. The author incorporates some of her experiences in prisons and police stations around the country, including the fabricated trial she faced while imprisoned in Port Elizabeth, one of the many such trials which took place in the Eastern Cape. But her focus is on Barberton Prison. Here she was imprisoned together with a small number of other white women political prisoners, most of whom had stood trial and been sentenced in Johannesburg in 1964–5 for membership to an illegal organisation, the Communist Party. It is a little known story. Not even the progressive party MP Helen Suzman found her way here. Barberton Prison, a maximum security prison, part of a farm jail complex in the eastern part of what was then known as the Transvaal province, was far from any urban centre. The women were kept in a small space at one end of the prison in extreme isolation under a regime of what can only be called psychological warfare, carried out on the instructions of the ever more powerful (and corrupt) security apparatus. A key concern for the author was the mental and psychological symptoms which emerged in herself and her fellow prisoners and the steps they took to maintain their sanity. It is a narrative partly based on diary entries, written in a minute hand on tissue paper, which escaped the eye of the authorities. Moreover, following her release in April 1967 – she had been altogether incarcerated for some three years – she produced a full script in the space of two or three months. The result is immediacy, spontaneity, authenticity; a story full of searing detail. It is also full of a fighting spirit, pervaded by a sharp intellect, a capacity for fine observation and a sense of humour typical of the women political prisoners at Barberton. A crucial theme in Sylvia Neame’s account is the question of whether something positive emerged out of her experience and, if so, what exactly it was.
Beyond Fear is the testimony of Ebrahim Ebrahim, a revolutionary amongst revolutionaries, whose poignant and inspirational account of his years spent dedicated to bringing down the apartheid state is told in ways we have not heard. As one of the founding members of Umkhonto we Sizwe, he played a central role in directing the sabotage campaign of the early 1960s. Convicted for this, Ebrahim arrived on Robben Island in 1964, where for over 15 years he played a leadership role in the creation of the ‘University of Robben Island’, the university of revolutionary ideology. Soon after his release, Ebrahim became the head of the ANC’s Political Military Committee in Swaziland, and as such, his life was under constant threat. He was abducted in December 1986 by apartheid agents and taken to South Africa to be tortured at John Vorster Square. He was charged with high treason and sentenced to a further 20 years, which would be his second stint on the Island. Ebrahim was, however, released in February 1991. Beyond Fear also tells the story of his post-1994 life, where he travelled the world doing international conflict resolution work. He later served as South Africa’s deputy minister of foreign affairs. His great love story began at the age of 63 when he met his beloved Shannon Ebrahim with whom he had two children, who were, as he says his ‘greatest teachers’. Ebrahim Ebrahim passed away on 6 December 2021, having become one of South Africa’s most loved heroes.
'You empower yourself and then you reach out to others.' Uplifting life lessons from one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known... through the eyes of the grandson whose life he changed forever. In his book Going to the Mountain, Ndaba Mandela shares the story of his coming-of-age alongside South Africa's rebirth. It is a remarkable journey, and one that took him from the violent, segregated Sowetto ghettos to his grandfather's presidential home. As a young boy, Ndaba was constantly shunted from place to place. But at eleven years old he was unexpectedly invited to live with his grandfather, Nelson Mandela, even though he had met him only once before, during a prison visit. And, slowly, they built a relationship that would affect both of them profoundly. Ndaba's teenage years were complicated, but as he approached his twenty-first birthday, Mandela decided that Ndaba was finally ready to 'go to the mountain' - a test of courage during which you become a man. At the end of this gruelling ritual journey, the elders of the Mandelas' tribe gathered and Ndaba's grandfather was there, as ever, to share his greatest life lessons. From Nelson Mandela, Ndaba learned the spirit of endurance, the triumph of forgiveness, the power of resistance and the beauty of reconciliation. And as Mandela grew older, Ndaba had the chance to repay his grandfather's love and support by demonstrating the ways in which he'd understood all that he had taught him. Intimate and inspirational, Going to the Mountain is a powerful reminder of how one person can impact profoundly on another, and a testament to the awesome power within us to change ourselves and our world.
An updated new edition of the original publication issued by the ANC Elections Committee to honour the legacy of Comrade Oliver Tambo, late president and national chairman of the African National Congress. This little book provides an overview of his life and generous contributions during the struggle for a new South Africa. Written in an engaging style by esteemed historian Luli Callinicos, this `mini-biography' is accessible to all ages. |
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