Xoliswa Nduneni-Ngema loved the theatre and dreamed of being an actress. She soon discovered that acting wasn't for her – managing productions was. She meets rising-star, Mbongeni Ngema and they marry.  As his success grows, they start a company that births the hit Sarafina! But beneath the stardom, Xoliswa experiences constant abuse.  With Fred Khumalo, she tells her powerful story. 

Bart, die aantreklikste ou in haar matriekklas, soen Esli uit haar vel. Vir meer as veertig jaar deel hulle hul lewens, maak saam kinders groot en sien om na vriende en familie. Jaarliks vier hulle Kersfees in Kleinmond met geskenke en trifle en stappies langs die see met hul worshond.

Maar hoekom val Bart se broer uit ’n boom voor Esli se ouerhuis? En watter donker geheim is onderliggend aan Bart se ma se vreemde gedrag en onfatsoenlike grappe? Wat dink kollegas van Esli se haarstyleksperimente en panda-oë? Verdien sy om in die spaarkamer te skuil omdat sy, volgens Bart, aand na aand die kos brand en die hond se pote laat nat word as dit reën?

In So Lyk ’n Vrou vertel Ilse Verster van Esli se heelwording en hoe sy, ná ’n leeftyd van mishandeling, in ’n rooi rok op die strand kon staan met een vuis in die lug en vry kon voel. Sy gee stem aan ’n stukkende vrou wat net wil hê die pyn moet stop. Sy deel wat dit verg om jou teen die muur op te trek, jou teen die samelewing te handhaaf en jouself te red.

When South Africa’s golden girl of broadcasting, Tracy Going’s battered face was splashed across the media back in the late 1990s, the nation was shocked. South Africans had become accustomed to seeing Going, glamorous and groomed on television or hearing her resonant voice on Radio Metro and Kaya FM. Sensational headlines of a whirlwind love relationship turned horrendously violent threw the “perfect” life of the household star into disarray.

What had started off as a fairy-tale romance with a man who appeared to be everything that Going was looking for – charming, handsome and successful – had quickly descended into a violent, abusive relationship.

“As I stood before him all I could see were the lies, the disappearing for days without warning, the screaming, the threats, the terror, the hostage-holding, the keeping me up all night, the dragging me through the house by my hair, the choking, the doors locked around me, the phones disconnected, the isolation, the fear and the uncertainty.”

The rosy love cloud burst just five months after meeting her “Prince Charming” when she staggered into the local police station, bruised and battered. A short relationship became a two-and-a-half-year legal ordeal played out in the public eye. In mesmerising detail, Going takes us through the harrowing court process – a system seeped in injustice – her decline into depression, the immediate collapse of her career due to the highly public nature of her assault and the decades-long journey to undo the psychological damages in the search for safety and the reclaiming of self. The roots of violence form the backdrop of the book, tracing Going’s childhood on a plot in Brits, laced with the unpredictable violence of an alcoholic father who regularly terrorised the family with his fists of rage.

“I was ashamed of my father, the drunk. If he wasn’t throwing back the liquid in the lounge then he’d be finding comfort and consort in his cans at the golf club. With that came the uncertainty as I lay in my bed and waited for him to return. I would lie there holding my curtain tight in my small hand. I would pull the fabric down, almost straight, forming a strained sliver and I would peer into the blackness, unblinking. It seemed I was always watching and waiting. Sometimes I searched for satellites between the twinkles of light, but mostly the fear in my tummy distracted me.”

Brilliantly penned, this highly skilled debut memoir, is ultimately uplifting in the realisation that healing is a lengthy and often arduous process and that self-forgiveness and acceptance is essential in order to fully embrace life.

So lyk ’n vrou, Ilse Verster se hartroerende verhaal oor Esli se lewe van mishandeling deur ’n gewelddadige eggenoot, het lesers in 2022 geskok en aangegryp. ’n Vrou staan op is die vervolg op die blitsverkoper en vertel van die nuwe hoofstuk in Esli se lewe.

Ná ’n uitmergelende egskeiding wat haar finansieel byna ruïneer, reis Esli Kaap toe om perspektief te kry op ’n lewe waar sy nie meer ’n slagoffer is nie. Dan gebeur daar ’n wonderwerk. Sy ontmoet iemand en hulle besluit om te trou. Uiteindelik is die geluk, vrede en veiligheid waarna sy haar lewe lank gehunker het, vir Esli beskore.

Máár haar stryd is nog lank nie verby nie. Post-traumatiese stres, ’n vreemde omgewing en nuwe verhoudings bring onverwagse uitdagings. Ook baie vrae, soos: Hoe kan ’n mens gelukkig wees, maar steeds huil? Die ongekende blootstelling wat tydens boekbekendstellings, praatjies en mediaonderhoude volg op die sukses van So lyk ’n vrou, maak dinge ook nie makliker nie. Esli kan haar nie volledig losmaak van die verlede nie, want almal stel moeilike vrae. Terselfdertyd moet sy ander slagoffers van narsisme moed inpraat.

In ’n Vrou staan op deel die skrywer haar ervarings van die moets en moenies in die proses na heelwording. Want om ’n oorwinnaar te wees, verg ook moed, deursettingsvermoë en ’n sekure instink vir oplossings wat wérk.

She was confident, beautiful and financially secure. When she arrived in London with her daughter the future looked bright and she was hoping for a lasting, mature relationship. But within days, things started to go wrong. Was he manipulating her? Maybe it was all in her head? She started a diary, evidence to reassure herself that she wasn’t going mad. This is the true story of a strong, independent woman's descent into abuse, and how she eventually escaped.

At the height of her journalism career, more than one million households across the country knew her name and her face. Her reportage on human suffering and triumph captivated viewers, and with it Vanessa Govender shot to fame as one of the first female Indian television news reporters in South Africa. Always chasing the human angle of any news story, Govender made a name for herself by highlighting stories that included the grief of a mother clutching a packet filled with the fragments of the broken bones of her children after they’d been hacked to death by their own father, and another story where she celebrated the feisty spirit of a little girl who was dying of old age, while holding onto dreams that would never be realised. Yet Govender, a champion for society’s downtrodden, was hiding a shocking story of her own. In Beaten But Not Broken, she finally opens up about her deepest secret – one that so nearly ended her career in broadcast journalism before it had barely kicked off.

She was a rookie reporter at the SABC in 1999. He was a popular radio disc jockey, the darling of the SABC’s Lotus FM, a radio station catering to nearly half a million Indian people across South Africa. They were the perfect pair, or so it seemed. And if anyone suspected the nature of the abusive relationship, Govender says, she doesn’t believe they knew the full extent of the horror that the popular DJ was inflicting on this intrepid journalist. The bruising punches, the cracking slaps, and the relentless episodes filled with beatings, kicking and strangling were as ferocious as the emotional and verbal abuse he hurled at her. No one would know the brutal and graphic details of Govender’s story … until now.

In Beaten But Not Broken, this Indian woman does the unthinkable, maybe even the unforgiveable, in breaking the ranks of a close-knit conservative community to speak out about her five-year-long hell in this abusive relationship. Her story also lays bare her heart-breaking experiences as a victim of childhood bullying and being ostracised by some in her community for being a dark-skinned Indian girl. Govender tells a graphic story of extreme abuse, living with the pain, and ultimately of how she was saved by her own relentless fighting spirit to find purpose and love. This is a story of possibilities and hope; it is a story of a true survivor.

The perfect match. Or so she thinks. Her warmth and empathy. His charisma and ambition. Yet, Cathy feels safer teaching battle-scarred gangsters in a prison classroom than at home with her own partner.

By day she walks on eggshells. At night she sleeps on the backseat of her car. Her safe place is an all-night roadhouse; her best friend, her journal. The slow boil intensifies until, one day, Cathy finds her grandmother’s armoire smashed to pieces in her bedroom, a hammer on the floor, her life in splinters beside it.

Part memoir, part inspiration, Boiling A Frog Slowly is unflinching in its confrontation of abuse and utterly courageous in its portrayal of redemption.

A searing investigation that challenges everything you thought you knew about domestic abuse.

Domestic abuse is a national emergency: one in four Australian women has experienced violence from a man she was intimate with. But too often we ask the wrong question: why didn’t she leave? We should be asking: why did he do it?

Investigative journalist Jess Hill puts perpetrators – and the systems that enable them – in the spotlight. See What You Made Me Do is a deep dive into the abuse so many women and children experience – abuse that is often reinforced by the justice system they trust to protect them. Critically, it shows that we can drastically reduce domestic violence – not in generations to come, but today.

Combining forensic research with riveting storytelling, See What You Made Me Do radically rethinks how to confront the national crisis of fear and abuse in our homes.

"Warm, honest and true--A Woman Makes A Plan is full of insight as well as a good dose of humor, offering readers a lifetime of hard-won advice." --Diane Von Furstenberg The international supermodel shares personal stories and lessons learned from a life of "living dangerously--carefully"

Maye Musk is a fashionable, charming, jet-setting supermodel with a fascinating and tight-knit circle of family and friends--and is 71 years old. But things were not always so easy or glamorous--she became a single mom at 31, struggling through poverty to provide for her three children; dealt with weight issues as a plus-size model and overcame ageism in the modeling industry; and established a lifelong career as a respected dietitian, all the while starting over in eight different cities across three countries and two continents. But she made her way through it all with an indomitable spirit and a no-nonsense attitude to become a global success at what she calls the "prime of her life."

As everyone who follows her obsessively on social media knows, Maye is a fount of frank and practical advice on how the choices you make in every decade can pay off in surprising, exciting ways throughout your life. In A Woman Makes a Plan, Maye shares experiences from her life conveying hard-earned wisdom on career (the harder you work, the luckier you get), family (let the people you love go their own way), health (there is no magic pill), and adventure (make room for discovery, but always be ready for anything). You can't control all that happens in life, but you can have the life you want at any age. All you have to do is make a plan.

A fusion of conversations, observations, and personal reflections on his own experiences, work with men, and scholarship, Why Men Hurt Women and Other Reflections on Love, Violence and Masculinity is Kopano Ratele’s meditation on love, violence and masculinity.

This book seeks to imagine the possibility of a more loving masculinity in a society where structural violence, failures of government and economic inequality underpin much of the violent behaviour that men display. Enriched with personal reflections on his own experiences as a partner, father, psychologist and researcher in the field of men and masculinities, Why Men Hurt Women and Other Reflections on Love, Violence and Masculinity is Kopano Ratele’s meditation on love and violence, and the way these forces shape the emotional lives of boys and men.

Blending academic substance and rigour in a readable narrative style, Ratele illuminates the complex nuances of gender, intimacy and power in the context of the human need for love and care. While unsparing in its analysis of men’s inner lives, Ratele lays out a path for addressing the hunger for love in boys and men. He argues that just as the beliefs and practices relating to gender, sexuality and the nature of love are constantly being challenged and revised, so our ideas about masculinity, and men’s and boys’ capacity to show genuine loving care for each other and for women, can evolve.

This set of 7 volumes, originally published between 1984 and 1998, provides illuminating and practical information on Domestic Abuse. Aimed at both students and practitioners across a range of disciplines, the volumes explore topics including, provision of services for domestic abuse victims, the law, homelessness, advice for those coming into contact with violence and victims of abuse, public policy and the experience of domestic abuse victims themselves.

This book explains violent and abusive behaviour and places it in a social context. It can help readers of any age and sexual orientation to change their own behaviour and to recognise when they are being controlled. "I can honestly say that without reading this book (9 times no less ) I don't think that I would be here today, relaxed in my own home with my children that I love so much."

Are you repeating old patterns in relationships?

Do you struggle to express your boundaries, standards and core values with your partner?

Want to shift the narrative in your dating life and become the best version of yourself?

Too often, conversations about toxic relationships have revolved around them: their choices, their behaviour, their problem. Right?

Wrong.

Loving Me After We is here to set you you straight and help you on your path to healing. In this warm, encouraging and honest guide, psychotherapist Ginger Dean will show you:

• How your trauma responses can keep you trapped in the cycle of toxicity
• Why you choose unavailable but familiar partners
• How you can break free from co-dependency
• What you need to do to move on from the past to create a future where you can truly thrive

Every day more than three women in South Africa, on average, are murdered by their male intimate partners. This book looks at the stories of South African women who were subjected to unimaginable periods of fear and terror, who endured sustained physical, emotional and psychological attacks, all at the hands of men.

Dr Nechama Brodie explores decades of brutal domestic violence and coercive control and she examines women’s changing rights and current legal protections.

Confrontation is a memoir based on real events. Set in the early nineties, it follows the journey of a child growing up in South Africa’s season of change.

But all is not as it seems – biologically, domestically, emotionally – three words that immediately takes shape like the head, neck and tail of a monster brooding beneath the bed. Domestic unrest casts a thick veil over a much greater problem.

“One of your greatest challenges in this world, my darling, would be men... It’s a shame because you think you’re the relationship type?” So-called advice from a friend who suggested being gay might be a better option than what she was contemplating. Not that she had a choice. She wasn’t entirely herself yet, and that was the problem.

Kirsty Steinberg is the pen name for the author. Confrontation is her debut work.

Every year in England and Wales alone, one in twenty adults suffer domestic abuse, two thirds of them women. Every week, two men kill a woman they were intimate with. And still we ask the wrong question: Why didn't she leave? Instead, we should ask: Why did he do it? Investigative journalist Jess Hill puts perpetrators -- and the systems that enable them -- in the spotlight. Her radical reframing of domestic abuse takes us beyond the home to explore how power, culture and gender intersect to both produce and normalise abuse. She boldly confronts uncomfortable questions about how and why society creates abusers, but can't seem to protect their victims, and shows how we can end this dark cycle of fear and control. 'See What You Made Me Do' is a profound and bold confrontation of this urgent crisis and its deep roots. It will challenge everything you thought you knew about domestic abuse.

Winner of the 2022 Research Publication Book Award from the Association of Chinese Professors of Social Sciences in the United States. Based on ethnographic research with victims of intimate partner violence since 2014, this book brings to the forefront women's experiences of, negotiations about, and contestations against violence, and men's narratives about the reasons for their violence. Using an innovative methodology - online chat groups, it foregrounds the role of history, structural inequalities, and the cultural system of power hierarchy in situating and constructing intimate partner violence. Centering on men and women's narratives about violence, this book connects intimate partner violence with invisible structural violence - the historical, cultural, political, economic, and legal context that gives rise to and perpetuates violence against women. Through examining the ways in which women's lives are constrained by various forms of violence, hierarchy, and inequality, this book shows that violence against women is a structural issue that is historically produced and politically and culturally engaged.

Using historical and current examples from film, television, literature, advertisements, and music, this book reveals the ways that rape and abuse are typically presented-and misrepresented-and evaluates the impact of these depictions on consumers. Incidences of domestic abuse and sexual assault aren't only commonplace nationwide and the source of a shockingly large number of serious injuries and deaths; they're also problems that are often subject to myths and misleading depictions in popular culture and media. The author of this important book seeks to shed light on the situation by examining the specific issues related to domestic violence and sexual assault, from the scope and extent of the problem to victim and offender characteristics, and from common misconceptions to societal, cultural, and judicial responses and prevention efforts. Each chapter discusses movies, music, literature, and other forms of popular culture that address issues of domestic abuse and sexual assault, identifying both accurate depictions and problematic examples. The final section of the book addresses how our culture responds to and attempts to prevent domestic abuse and sexual assault, covering depictions of police response to these kinds of crimes in popular culture, how the justice system handles these cases, and individual and community efforts to curb domestic abuse and sexual assault. A compendium of films, documentaries, popular books, and song lyrics featuring domestic abuse and sexual assault enables readers to easily investigate the subject further. Addresses both positive and negative depictions of domestic abuse and sexual assault from recent popular culture, utilizing examples from film, television, literature, music, advertisements, and more Presents information that is ideal for undergraduate courses in gender studies, sociology, and psychology as well as communications and popular culture classes Utilizes the most current research on dating and domestic and sexual violence to clearly demonstrate the importance of how these issues and crimes are depicted in popular culture Provides a comprehensive appendix of additional resources that directs students in investigating the topic further

Little Jamey, 21/2 years old, is placed with experienced foster carer, Cathy Glass, as an emergency. The police and social services have no choice but to remove two-year-old Jamey from home after his mother leaves him alone all night to go out partying. When he first arrives with foster carer Cathy Glass, he is scared, hungry and withdrawn, craving the affection he has been denied for so long. He is small for his age and unsteady on his feet - a result of being left for long periods in his cot. Cathy and her family find Jamey very easy to love, but as he settles in and makes progress, a new threat emerges. Coronavirus and lockdown change everything.

Domestic violence, interpersonal violence, intimate partner violence, or gender-based violence continues to be a social problem that is rarely understood or discussed in many parts of society, worldwide. The same holds true in the Anglophone Caribbean. Most Caribbean societies are patriarchal in nature, as most men govern and create the political and economic landscape where citizens live. This edited volume brings together reputable scholars of rigorous academic research from various disciplines (e.g., political science, law, linguistics, criminology, nursing, social work and psychology) to clearly explain the conceptual definition of domestic violence within the Latin American and Caribbean region's socio-political context. It will highlight who are the perpetrators as well as the victims of domestic violence and the consequences of allowing domestic violence to perpetuate in the region. This book is unique in the market today, as it is the only book grounded in the Caribbean providing a comprehensive overview of domestic violence with regards to the significance, victims, perpetrators, and the consequences.

'Will help so many learn to recognize what an abusive relationship is' - Mel B 'I read it all in one sitting, it is brilliant! This book is so relatable and Maddy's funny and engaging approach starts serious conversations' - Teresa Parker, Women's Aid Are you forever finding yourself in the stranglehold of controlling companions? Well, fear not, because once you've finished reading this book, you'll be able to wave ta-ta to unhappy and unhealthy relationships for good. Consider me the Psycho Sprucer, Bad Boy Buster, the Hot Mess Assessor - ready to leave your love life sparkling. How to Leave Your Psychopath is a candid account of the complex, subtle nature of coercive control and abusive relationships from comedian Maddy Anholt, who - until her eyes were opened - had spent her entire dating life trapped in them. Relatable and accessible, the book covers all the common techniques these toxic twerps use to exert control, including gaslighting, breadcrumbing and negging. This book is the ultimate handbook to help you see and respond to red flags, recognize controlling traits, and learn to give any prospective date a score on Maddy's unique 'Psychometer', from super-empath to psychopath. Vitally, by interweaving psychological insight and autobiographical anecdotes, Maddy shows you the road to self-discovery, leading you on the path to safer dating and a healthier, more joyful life. Funny, judgement-free and full of brilliant first-hand advice, this empowering guide will help anyone ditch their controlling partner to find freedom and happiness.