Hoewel Drienie Joubert geen bang haar op haar kop gehad het nie en met haar selfstandige optrede en gedetermineerde houding gewis haar tyd vooruit was, was sy allermins die kil amasone wat party bronne in die geskiedenis van haar maak. Agter die strak foto’s skuil ’n liefdevolle eggenoot, toegewyde ma, empatieke versorger en vriendin van vele, wat met reg ’n ereplek in die Suid-Afrikaanse geskiedenis verdien. Vir die kultuurhistorikus dr. Celestine Pretorius is die daaglikse lief en leed van mense in vergange tye ’n fassinerende studiegebied. Sy is ’n bekende naam in kultuurhistoriese kringe en ’n gerekende skrywer van navorsingsartikels, onder meer in Tydskrif vir Kultuurgeskiedenis. Die lewensverhaal Drienie Joubert (1830–1916) is nie net 'n boeiende stuk geskiedenis nie, maar ook 'n interessante blik op 'n figuur wat waarskynlik as een van die eerste Boere-feministe beskou kan word.

De la Rey, De la Rey - Generaal Koos de la Rey is weer op almal se lippe. Hierdie veelbesproke held van die Anglo-Boereoorlog geniet saam met Batman en die Ruiter in Swart ikoonstatus onder verskeie generasies. Net soos meer as 'n eeu gelede dien hy as morele leier, 'n sterk figuur waarna mense kan opsien. Maar wie was hy regtig? In Generaal Koos de la Rey: Die leeu van Wes-Transvaal leer ken die leser hierdie heldhaftige generaal - nie net as krygsman met briljante taktiek en interessante opvattings oor oorlogvoering en die staat nie, maar ook as mens en gesinsman. Sy verhouding met sy vrou, sy rol as vader, sy uiteindelike tragiese dood en ander persoonlike inligting kom in hierdie pragboek aan bod. Boonop bevat Generaal Koos de la Rey: Die leeu van Wes-Transvaal 'n groot aantal skaars foto's wat die leeu van die Wes-Transvaal in die verskeidenheid rolle en kontekste uitbeeld.

When the Anglo-Boer War began at the end of 1899, Germans protested profusely. Everybody, from the Conservatives to the Social Democrats took a united stand against the "arch enemy", Britain, and her war in the South of Africa. Only when the South African Union was founded in 1910 did the German public interest in South Africa decrease. This interest left a great number of German publications, which is a reminder of the fact that the general public of the German Reich supported, with great interest, an important world historic event overseas, which remains unprecedented in its intensity and extent.

Whispers from the depths is more than just the story of the building of the Kariba Dam in the mid-1950s. Built in just five years against overwhelming odds, the dam is a monument to engineering excellence. Shrouded in political undertones, the construction of the dam was vital for the hydro-electric power it would provide for Zambia’s burgeoning copper industry. Little thought, however, appears to have been given to the future of the human and animal populations who lived in the valley that would be inundated when the dam was completed. The question has to be asked: Was this awe-inspiring man-made creation achieved at too high a cost in terms of the human suffering and environmental devastation it caused? Central to the story of Kariba was the fate of the Tonga people who had for centuries lived in the Gwembe valley, due to be flooded when the sluice gates were finally closed to halt the flow of the mighty Zambezi River. Approximately 57 000 people were forced to move from their ancestral homes, abandoning family graves and spiritual sites to the depths of Kariba's water. They became a dispersed people who have never been able to reunite as a cohesive society, never again been able to live peacefully on the banks of the river which gave them life. Animals, too, perished in their thousands despite the gallant efforts of wildlife personnel who mounted a hastily planned rescue mission known as Operation Noah. Whispers from the depths gives a voice to the all but forgotten BaTonga. It celebrates their unique culture but deplores the price they paid for progress – a price from which they themselves derived no benefit whatsoever.

This is a story of human survival over the last one million years in the Namib Desert – one of the most hostile environments on Earth.

The resilience and ingenuity of desert communities provides a vivid picture of our species’ response to climate change, and ancient strategies to counter ever-present risk. Dusty fragments of stone, pottery and bone tell a history of perpetual transition, of shifting and temporary states of balance.

Namib digs beneath the usual evidence of archaeology to uncover a world of arcane rituals, of travelling rain-makers, and of intricate social networks which maintained vital systems of negotiated access to scarce resources. It covers a million years of human history in the Namib Desert, including the Earlier, Middle and Later Stone Ages, colonial occupation and genocide, to the invasion of the desert by South African troops during World War I.

This is more than a work of scientific research; it is a love-song to the desert and its people.

From Cabinda in Angola to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, 4 Reconnaissance Regiment conducted numerous clandestine seaborne raids during the Border War. They attacked strategic targets such as oil facilities, transport infrastructure and even Russian ships. All the while 4 Recce’s existence and capability was largely kept secret, even within the South African Defence Force.

With unparalleled access to previously top secret documents, 50 operations undertaken by 4 Recce, other Special Forces units and the South African Navy are described here in Iron Fist From The Sea. The daunting Operation Kerslig (1981), in which an operator died in a raid on a Luanda oil refinery and others were injured, is retold in spine-tingling detail. The book reveals the versatility and effectiveness of this elite unit and also tells of both the successes and failures of its actions. Sometimes missions go wrong, as in Operation Argon (1985) when Captain Wynand Du Toit was captured. This fascinating work will enthrall anyone with an interest in Special Forces operations.

Iron Fist From The Sea takes you right to the raging surf, to the adrenalin and fear that is seaborne raiding.

An essential overview of great kingdoms in African history and their legacies, written by world-leading experts. From the ancient Nile Valley to the savannas of medieval West Africa, the Great Lakes of East Africa and on to the forests and grasslands to the south, African civilizations have given rise to some of the world's most impressive kingdoms. Here, nine leading historians of Africa take a fresh look at these kingdoms over five thousand years of recorded history. How did royal power operate in Africa and how were kings - and queens - 'made'? Did they display their sacred royal power, as in the great public ceremonies of the West African kingdoms of Asante and Dahomey, or hide it away, as beneath the fringed, beaded crowns that concealed the faces of Yoruba kings? How have African peoples recorded, celebrated and critiqued royal authority and its legacies? While absolute monarchy in Africa - as elsewhere in the world - is on the wane in the modern era, 'traditional' kingship continues to exist within many of its present-day nations, preserving ancient cultural ideas about identity and power. Africa's history is often little known beyond the devastation wrought by the slave trade and European colonial rule. Presenting some of the most exciting recent developments in the understanding of states and societies in the deeper past, Great Kingdoms of Africa challenges the outdated notion of the continent as an indistinct realm of 'lost kingdoms'. It shows how kingdoms with deep roots continued to shape African history throughout the twentieth century and into the present day.

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.

The Rise of the African Novel is the first book to situate South African and African-language literature of the late 1880s through the early 1940s in relation to the literature of decolonization that spanned the 1950s through the 1980s, and the contemporary generation of established and emerging continental and diaspora African writers of international renown.

Calling it a major crisis in African literary criticism, Mukoma Wa Ngugi considers key questions around the misreading of African literature: Why did Chinua Achebe’s generation privilege African literature in English despite the early South African example? What are the costs of locating the start of Africa’s literary tradition in the wrong literary and historical period? What does it mean for the current generation of writers and scholars of African literature not to have an imaginative consciousness of their literary past?

While acknowledging the importance of Achebe’s generation in the African literary tradition, Mukoma Wa Ngugi challenges that narrowing of the identities and languages of the African novel and writer. In restoring the missing foundational literary period to the African literary tradition, he shows how early South African literature, in both aesthetics and politics, is in conversation with the literature of the African independence era and contemporary rooted transnational literatures.

This book will become a foundational text in African literary studies, as it raises questions about the very nature of African literature and criticism. It will be essential reading for scholars of African literary studies as well as general readers seeking a greater understanding of African literary history and the ways in which critical consensus can be manufactured and rewarded at the expense of a larger and historical literary tradition.

Let us rewrite our history; A history that speaks of Africa as experienced by Africans. Let us rewrite our history that speaks of ubuntu traditions, isintu practices and umuntu/abantu as central pillars of society. Let us rewrite a narrative that speaks isintu sethu - setso sa rona, isintu - setso sa rona as a 'Set of Rules' for all practices in society. Twenty-five years after the delivery of political democracy, the Edenic projects of nonracialism and the Rainbow Nation have failed because there was no fuller appreciation of what is meant by ubuntu. Ubuntu consists of three integral parts: first, amasiko, which consists of traditions, norms and customs; isintu: rituals, performances and practices that help with the embodiment of ubuntu; and umuntu, the performer and practitioner of isintu and bearer of the ubuntu value system as a state of being and identity. The version of ubuntu that was used and applied immediately after 1994 for engendering nationbuilding should have initially been focused on rebuilding the Black social groups before there were attempts at rebuilding all races, through the defunct Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and forging social cohesion through short-term sporting codes such as the 1995 Rugby World Cup, the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations and the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Such an understanding of ubuntu, exemplified above, came across as sanitised and a quick fix that could not undo centuries of dehumanisation, as characterised by apartheid. By definition and practice, that is anathema to ubuntu since it depreciated the value systems and performances of isintu of the majority population and defiled the humanity of both the Black people and their white counterparts. Isintu ought to be regarded as a tool of inculcation of rules, norms and traditions that structure limits and help with the embodiment of ubuntu. This book regards it as well suited for solving the impasse currently witnessed in South Africa. It is only with the inclusion of the analysis and discussion of isintu that ubuntu may be understood and reveal its performative prowess in the production of identities and a variety of capitals meant to sustain the societies of sub-Saharan Africa. Needless to say, some aspects of ubuntu may well be suitable for export as representative of humanism or critical humanism. However, the system of ubuntu needs to be properly rationalised before it can be chopped down and paraded as a universal tool. The tendency of parading ubuntu as a universal tool of humanism has tended to weaken it along with individuals whose bodies and geographies are a locus for cultivation identities and diverse forms of capital that help enact and sustain local value systems. This book presents the true meaning of ubuntu, which has its roots in communitarian societies and their value systems. As part of an international benchmark on the viability of local value systems as a conceptual framework for performances of production aimed at a fulfilled citizenry, the book compares ubuntu to its counterpart value systems of Confucianism in China and Jantelagen in Sweden.

Dit is 1713. VOC-admiraal Johannes van Steelant bring sy ryklik belaaide retoervloot via die Kaapse diensstasie terug na Nederland uit Batavia. Saam op die vlagskip, sy vyf jong kinders. Op die oop see raak hulle een-een siek. Hete koors, maagpyn, swere – die gevreesde pokke.

Op 12 Februarie gaan die gesin, nou almal gesond, aan land in Tafelbaai. Hul skeepsklere word gewas in die VOC se slawelosie. Enkele maande later is byna die helfte van die Kaapse bevolking dood aan pokke.

In Retoervloot bring VOC-kenner Dan Sleigh dié gegewe, en die verbysterende werkinge van die VOC-retoervlootstelsel, lewend voor die oog. Aan die hand van Van Steelant se nuut-ontdekte skeepsjoernaal, met die agtergrondinkleding wat ’n meesterlike geskiedkundige soos Sleigh kan bied, staan die leser op die dek van vlagskip Sandenburg – ’n magtige skip van ’n roemryke organisasie, dog uitgelewer aan die woedende oseaan. Verder is Retoervloot ’n gedenksteen vir Kaapstad se grootste ramp tot op hede

For two decades before a railway system linked southern Africa’s principal cities in the mid-1890’s, the world’s richest supplies of diamonds and gold were transported by coach and horses to distant ports for export. For Irish soldiers based at Fort Napier, Pietermaritzburg, the temptation of this fabulous wealth proved irresistible: they deserted by the score and, as members of the ciminal ‘Irish Brigade’, embarked on a spree of bank, safe and highway robberies.

Masked Raiders follows the wild exploits of legendary brigands like the McKeone brothers and ‘One Armed Jack’ McLoughlin, who ravaged the subcontinent, from the mining towns of Barberton, Kimberley and Johannesburg, to the borders of Basotholand, Bechuanaland, Mozambique and Rhodesia. With tales of heists, safe-cracking, illegal gold dealings, prison breaks and hidden roadside treasure, the book reveals the potency of the highveld’s ‘criminal heroes’.

Startling insights also reveal how the hidden grammar of brigandage informed political actions of the day, such as the Jameson Raid, and how the movement of bandits across the interior helped shape the borders of what was to become modern South Africa.

PAPERBACK FOR SALE IN AFRICA ONLY The first comprehensive book on the participation of Muslim Fula business elites in the post-independence politics of Sierra Leone This groundbreaking volume explores the history of Muslim Fula business elites' participation in the post-independence politics of Sierra Leone. One of the country's main entrepreneurial groups, the Fula are also part of a largerIslamic presence in West Africa, extending from Senegal to Cameroon. Author Alusine Jalloh examines Fula political relationships with the successive governments of Sierra Leone following independence in 1961: first, with the Sierra Leone People's Party during the prime ministership of the brothers Dr. Milton A. S. Margai and Albert M. Margai, and later with the All People's Congress under the leadership of Siaka P. Stevens and Joseph S. Momoh. The study ends with the ouster in 1992 of President Momoh in a military coup. Using the lens of business history, this important work expands on the themes of immigration and ethnicity, and treats such issues as the rivalry betweenSierra Leonean-born Fula and those born in Guinea, the intersection of Fula business elites and the development of Islam in Sierra Leone, and relations between Sierra Leone and Guinea. The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the business, Islamic, and political history of Sierra Leone, as well as those interested in global business history and ethnic history. Alusine Jalloh is Associate Professor of history and founding director of the Africa Program at the University of Texas at Arlington.

A new collection of stories about real-life characters and events that have shaped our past and that have never been told before - stories of bravery and honour, greed and failure, hope and despair, but ultimately stories of people who went beyond the expected and of events that surpassed the ordinary.

Nine days that set the course of a nation... Johannesburg, Easter weekend, 1993. Nelson Mandela has been free for three years and is in slow-moving power-sharing talks with President FW de Klerk when a white supremacist shoots Mandela's popular young heir apparent, Chris Hani, in the hope of igniting an all-out civil war. Will he succeed in plunging South Africa into chaos, safeguarding apartheid for perhaps years to come? Or can Mandela and de Klerk overcome their differences and mutual suspicion and calm their followers, plotting a way forward? In The Plot to Save South Africa, acclaimed South African journalist Justice Malala recounts the riveting story of the next nine days - never before told in full - revealing rarely seen sides of both Mandela and de Klerk, the fascinating behind-the-scenes debates within each of their parties over whether to pursue peace or war, and their increasingly desperate attempts to restrain their supporters despite mounting popular frustrations. Flitting between the points of view of over a dozen characters on all sides of the conflict, Justice Malala offers an illuminating look at successful leadership in action... and a terrifying reminder of just how close a country we think of today as a model for racial reconciliation came to civil war.

Volume 3 deals with the crucial period of the 1950s and the early 1960s. These were years of mass passive resistance to apartheid; years when the ANC was able to rally hundreds of thousands of supporters for its strategy of non-violent protest. This was the period when the increasingly brutal repressive measures of the state, culminating in the Sharpeville massacre and the banning of the ANC and PAC, finally turned the movement away from its proud tradition of non-violence into the difficult and protracted path of armed struggle.

Cradock is a vivid history of a South African town in the years when segregation gradually emerged, preceding the rapid and rigorous implementation of apartheid. Through the details of one emblematic community, Jeffrey Butler offers an ambitious treatment of the racial themes that dominate recent South African history. Although Butler was born and raised in Cradock, he eschews sentimentality in favour of scholarly precision. Augmenting the obvious political narratives, Cradock examines the poor infrastructural conditions, ranging from public health to public housing, that typify a grossly unequal system of racial segregation but are otherwise neglected in the region's historiography. Butler shows, with the richness that only a local study could provide, how the lives of blacks, whites and coloureds were affected by the bitter transition from segregation before 1948 to apartheid thereafter.

Survival in the 'Dumping Grounds' examines a defining aspect of South Africa's recent past: the history of apartheid-era relocation. While scholars and activists have long recognised the suffering caused by apartheid removals to the so-called 'homelands', the experiences of those who lived through this process more often have been obscured. Drawing on extensive archival and oral history research, this book explores the makings and multiple meanings of relocation into two of the most notorious apartheid 'dumping grounds' established in the Ciskei bantustan during the mid-1960s: Sada and Ilinge. Author Laura Evans describes the local and global dynamics of the project of bantustan relocation and develops a multi-layered analysis of the complex histories-and ramifications-of displacement and resettlement in the Ciskei.

Die grootskaalse verhuising van boere aan die Kaapkolonie se oosgrens, ’n gebeurtenis wat later as die Groot Trek bekend sou word, was teen 1835 reeds in volle swang. Uiteindelik het bykans 10 000 siele huis en haard met ossewaens en veetroppe verlaat met die ideaal: om in die ongetemde Suid-Afrikaanse binneland ’n eie staat en samelewing tot stand te bring. Wie was hierdie Trekkers waarvan die geskiedenis vertel? Hulle was tog mense van vlees en bloed, wat gelag en gehuil, geeet, geslaap en gedroom het. Hoe het hulle die talle struikelblokke op die trekpad oorkom? Was daar tyd vir pret en plesier of was elke dag ’n stryd om oorlewing? Op trek, die resultaat van omvattende kultuurhistoriese navorsing wat met die oog op die 150ste herdenking van die Groot Trek gedoen is, het die eerste keer in 1988 verskyn. Buiten teks, bevat dit foto’s en illustrasies wat ’n nabyblik gee op die daaglikse lewe tydens die Groot Trek – aan die hand van wat beeldende kunstenaars verewig het en persoonlike besittings van die Trekkers wat behoue gebly het, soos dagboeke godsdienstige en ander boeke, wapens, kledingstukke, gebruiksartikels en foto’s.

Africa Reimagined is a passionately argued appeal for a rediscovery of our African identity. Going beyond the problems of a single country, Hlumelo Biko calls for a reorientation of values, on a continental scale, to suit the needs and priorities of Africans. Building on the premise that slavery, colonialism, imperialism and apartheid fundamentally unbalanced the values and indeed the very self-concept of Africans, he offers realistic steps to return to a more balanced Afro-centric identity.

Historically, African values were shaped by a sense of abundance, in material and mental terms, and by strong ties of community. The intrusion of religious, economic and legal systems imposed by conquerors, traders and missionaries upset this balance, and the African identity was subsumed by the values of the newcomers. Biko shows how a reimagining of Africa can restore the sense of abundance and possibility, and what a rebirth of the continent on Pan-African lines might look like. This is not about the churn of the news cycle or party politics – although he identifies the political party as one of the most pernicious legacies of colonialism. Instead, drawing on latest research, he offers a practical, pragmatic vision anchored in the here and now.

By looking beyond identities and values imposed from outside, and transcending the divisions and frontiers imposed under colonialism, it should be possible for Africans to develop fully their skills, values and ingenuity, to build institutions that reflect African values, and to create wealth for the benefit of the continent as a whole.

Deneys Schreiner was one of an illustrious family that produced a world-famous author (his great-aunt Olive); a prime minister of the Cape Colony (his grandfather, W.P, who also defended a Zulu prince against specious charges in a colonial court); and Appellate Justice O.D. Schreiner, his father, who fought against National Party efforts to remove coloured people from the common voters' roll. Deneys was an academic, a scientist and a man of strong liberal principles, with a good sense of humour and widespread interests in the sciences, arts and public affairs. These qualities enabled him, in his quiet, steady way, to transform what was then the University of Natal and the society around it. Between the 1960s and 1980s, he supported and initiated several important endeavours to promote constitutional futures other than those imposed by the apartheid government. One of the most significant of these was the Buthelezi Commission, which he chaired. This biography sets out the contexts of Deneys's forebears, his youth, wartime service, studies in Britain and America, family life, and tenure as vice principal, as well as the context of the times in which he lived. It is based on extensive archival research, supported by interviews with family members, former colleagues, friends and journalists. The picture that emerges is of a man who made a great contribution to the struggle for democracy in South Africa. And then there is the story of his beard, once described as a potent symbol of his presence and implacable integrity.