South Africans often are deeply polarised in our perspectives of the present and the past. Our ‘ways of seeing’ are fraught with division, and we fail to understand the complexities when we do not see what lies beneath the surface.

There is no denying that the Jacob Zuma presidency took a significant toll on South Africa, exacerbating tensions and exposing the deep fractures that already exist in our society along the lines of race, class and even ethnicity. The Zuma years were marked by cases of corruption and state capture, unprecedented in their brazenness, and increased social protests – many of which were accompanied by violence – aggressive public discourse, lack of respect for reason and an often disturbing resistance to meaningful engagement.

Importantly, those years also placed enormous pressure on our democratic institutions, many of which still bear the scars, and challenged the sovereignty of the Constitution itself.

As an analyst and governance specialist at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) for twelve years, February has had a unique perch. Turning and turning is a snapshot of her IDASA years and the issues tackled, which included work on the arms deal and its corrosive impact on democratic institutions, IDASA’s party-funding campaign, which February helped lead, as well as work on accountability and transparency.

Combining analytical insight with personal observations and experience, February highlights the complex process of building a strong democratic society, and the difficulties of living in a constitutional democracy marked by soaring levels of inequality. There is a need to reflect on and learn from the country’s democratic journey if citizens are to shape our democracy effectively and to fulfill the promise of the Constitution for all South Africans.

With extraordinary access to the Trump White House, Michael Wolff tells the inside story of the most controversial presidency of our time.

The first nine months of Donald Trump’s term were stormy, outrageous―and absolutely mesmerizing. Now, thanks to his deep access to the West Wing, bestselling author Michael Wolff tells the riveting story of how Trump launched a tenure as volatile and fiery as the man himself. In this explosive book, Wolff provides a wealth of new details about the chaos in the Oval Office.

Among the revelations:

• What President Trump’s staff really thinks of him
• What inspired Trump to claim he was wire-tapped by President Obama
• Why FBI director James Comey was really fired
• Why chief strategist Steve Bannon and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner couldn’t be in the same room
• Who is really directing the Trump administration’s strategy in the wake of Bannon’s firing
• What the secret to communicating with Trump is
• What the Trump administration has in common with the movie The Producers

Never before has a presidency so divided the American people. Brilliantly reported and astoundingly fresh, Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury shows us how and why Donald Trump has become the king of discord and disunion.

The shocking, definitive account of the 2020 election and the first year of the Biden presidency by two New York Times reporters, exposing the deep fissures within both parties as the country approaches a political breaking point.

This is the authoritative account of an eighteen-month crisis in American democracy that will be seared into the country’s political memory for decades to come. With stunning, in-the-room detail, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns show how both our political parties confronted a series of national traumas, including the coronavirus pandemic, the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and the political brinksmanship of President Biden’s first year in the White House.

From Donald Trump’s assault on the 2020 election and his ongoing campaign of vengeance against his fellow Republicans, to the behind-the-scenes story of Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate and his bitter struggles to unite the Democratic Party, this book exposes the degree to which the two-party system has been strained to the point of disintegration. More than at any time in recent history, the long-established traditions and institutions of American politics are under siege as a set of aging political leaders struggle to hold together a changing country.

Martin and Burns break news on most every page, drawing on hundreds of interviews and never-before-seen documents and recordings from the highest levels of government. The book asks the vitally important (and disturbing) question: can American democracy, as we know it, ever work again?

''When we said [in 2014] the ANC was falling, many people in the ANC thought we were suffering from the worst form of madness. But today those who said so then secretly approach us to ask: “How did you foresee all this?” By “this” they mean all the internal political mess the ANC has brought to itself since we wrote the first edition of this book. Indeed, a lot of “this” has taken place over the past three years. That is why the title of this second edition is The Fall of the ANC Continues." Political governance in South Africa continues to collapse. Scandals of corruption, evidence of nepotism, rampant maladministration in provinces, incompetence in public offices and a general decline in the quality of leadership are there for all to see. In the view of Prince Mashele and Mzukisi Qobo, this state of affairs has its origins in the messiness and collapse of the African National Congress. As helplessness deepens in our society, concerned citizens ask: "What will happen to South Africa?" The Fall of the ANC Continues seeks to answer this question of the fate that awaits the country.

New York Times bestselling author of Fire And Fury and Siege completes the trilogy on the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

We all witnessed some of the most shocking and confounding political events of our lifetime: the careening last stage of Donald J. Trump’s reelection campaign, the president’s audacious election challenge, the harrowing mayhem of January 6, the buffoonery of the second impeachment trial. But what was really going on in the inner sanctum of the White House during these calamitous events? What did the president and his dwindling cadre of loyalists actually believe? And what were they planning?

Michael Wolff pulled back the curtain on the Trump presidency with his 2 previous bestsellers and now he closes the door on the presidency with a final, astonishingly candid account.

Wolff embedded himself in the White House in 2017 and gave us a vivid picture of the chaos that had descended on Washington. Almost four years later, Wolff finds the Oval Office even more chaotic and bizarre, a kind of Star Wars bar scene. At all times of the day, Trump, behind the Resolute desk, is surrounded by schemers and unqualified sycophants who spoon-feed him the “alternative facts” he hungers to hear―about COVID-19, Black Lives Matter protests, and, most of all, his chance of winning reelection. Once again, Wolff has gotten top-level access and takes us front row as Trump’s circle of plotters whittles down to the most enabling and the president reaches beyond the bounds of democracy as he entertains the idea of martial law and balks at calling off the insurrectionist mob that threatens the institution of democracy itself.

As the Trump presidency’s hold over the country spiraled out of control, an untold and human account of desperation, duplicity, and delusion was unfolding within the West Wing. Landslide is that story as only Michael Wolff can tell it.

In The Great Pretenders: Race and Class under ANC Rule, veteran political analyst Ebrahim Harvey delivers a stinging critique of the ANC. This must-read analysis reveals the complete failure of the ANC to roll back the race and class divide.

Harvey argues that a series of events – including HIV/AIDS denialism, the Marikana shootings, the Nkandla funding scandal, mass student protests, the Esidemeni tragedy, systemic corruption and state capture – are rooted in policy choices made by the ANC during negotiations and in power. This book is not just an evisceration of the ANC, however, as Harvey is able, through many interviews and patient delving into the past and present, to provide an indispensable guide to the future.

The Great Pretenders is fierce, passionate and provocative. It is certain to provoke those in power, stirring debate on not only the pernicious issue of race relations in South Africa, but on how to create the shared society promised us.

For those who could read between the lines, the censored news out of China was terrifying. But the president insisted there was nothing to worry about. Fortunately, we are still a nation of skeptics. Fortunately, there are those among us who study pandemics and are willing to look unflinchingly at worst-case scenarios.

Michael Lewis’s taut and brilliant nonfiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the outbreak of COVID-19. The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected.

A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society. A secret team of dissenting doctors, nicknamed the Wolverines, has everything necessary to fight the pandemic: brilliant backgrounds, world-class labs, prior experience with the pandemic scares of bird flu and swine flu…everything, that is, except official permission to implement their work.

Michael Lewis is not shy about calling these people heroes for their refusal to follow directives that they know to be based on misinformation and bad science. Even the internet, as crucial as it is to their exchange of ideas, poses a risk to them. They never know for sure who else might be listening in.

The careful management of costs and operations are two of the most essential elements of operating any successful organization, public or private. While the private sector is driven by profit-maximizing incentives to keep costs to a minimum, the public sector's mission and goals are guided by a different set of objectives: to provide a wide range of essential goods and services to maintain social order, improve public health, revitalize the economy, and, most importantly, to improve the quality of life for its citizens. Although the objectives are different, it is just as important for public decision makers to make the best use of available resources by keeping the cost of operation to a minimum. This book demonstrates that with a careful emphasis on cost accounting, operations management, and quality control, all organizations and governments can increase efficiency, improve performance, and prepare to weather hard times. This book is divided into three parts: Part I offers thorough coverage of cost fundamentals, with an emphasis on basic cost concepts, cost behavior, cost analysis, cost accounting, and cost control. Part II examines optimization in costs and operations in government including traditional or classical optimization with applications in inventory management and queuing, followed by mathematical programming and network analysis. Finally, Part III explores special topics in cost and optimization, in particular those related to games and decisions, productivity measurement, and quality control. Simple, accessible language and explanations are integrated throughout, and examples have been drawn from government so that readers can easily relate to them. Cost and Optimization in Government is required reading for practicing public managers and students of public administration in need of a clear, concise guide to maximizing public resource efficiency.

Die bewindsoorname van 'n oorwegend swart regerende party in 1994 het 'n nuwe beleid ten opsigte van grondbesit in Suid-Afrika ingelui. Hierdie beleid is daarop ingestel om die wanbalans wat grondbesit betref reg te stel, dus om van die blanke grondeienaars, wat by verre die grootste deel van die landbougrond besit, grond weg te neem en dit aan die swart bevolkingsgroep, wat tussen 75% en 80% van die totale landsbevolking uitmaak, beskikbaar te stel. Die veronderstelling is dat die meeste blanke grondeienaars (of hulle voorsate) die grond wat hulle besit wederregtelik bekom het en dit daarom nou aan die 'regmatige' eienaars moet teruggee. Daar bestaan ook 'n persepsie dat alle grond aan swart mense oorgedra moet word – dat die klok teruggedraai moet word na die tyd toe Afrika swart was en wit mense slegs in Europa eiendom besit het. Die skrywers vra die vraag of grondhervorming in Suid-Afrika wel enigsins haalbaar of nodig is? Kan die ander bevolkingsgroepe van die land, die wittes en gekleurdes, daarop aanspraak maak dat die land ook aan hulle behoort. Kan hulle dus se: 'Dit is ons land ook'?

Emerging out of the theoretical and practical urge to reflect on key contemporary debates arising in biopolitical scholarship, this timely book launches an in-depth investigation into the concept and history of biopolitics. In light of tumultuous political dynamics across the globe and new developments in this continually evolving field, the book reconsiders and expands upon Michel Foucault's input to biopolitical studies. Featuring rigorously structured investigations into the genealogies, dimensions, and practices of biopolitics, this incisive book introduces novel voices and perspectives into the biopolitical corpus. Contributions from eminent scholars investigate core topics of governing populations, community, and sovereignty, as well as exploring areas that remain undertheorized in the field of biopolitics, including the political accounts of non-human entities, developments in sexual health policy, and the biopolitics of time. Broad in scope, the book draws from the foundations of the biopolitical canon to forge new horizons and create opportunities for novel theoretical and empirical analysis. Debating Biopolitics will be an invaluable tool for scholars and postgraduate students of political science and political philosophy. Its empirically driven research will also benefit practitioners and policymakers interested in the biopolitical dimension of decision-making and policy analysis.

Assembling scholarship on the subject of nationalism from around the world, this Research Handbook brings to the attention of the reader research showcasing the unprecedented expansion of the scholarly field in general and offers a diversity of perspectives on the topic. It highlights the disarray in Western social sciences and the rise in the relative importance of previously independent scholarly traditions of China and post-Soviet societies. Nationalism is the field of study where the mutual relevance of these traditions is both most clearly evident and particularly consequential. Chapters explore specific cases (some of them previously underexplored) across a range of topics, including: the construction of a national identity, the institutionalization of nationalism, democracy and self-determination, the roles of class, ethnicity, religion and race in nationalism, and the connection between nationalism and the economy. Offering a comparative perspective on nationalism across different regions and civilizations, this Handbook also allows the reader to compare and evaluate different approaches across the social sciences, re-examining their utility. Political science, sociology and international relations scholars will find this to be an essential read in exploring the wide-ranging differences in nationalism across different countries, and its effects both historically and in modern times. This will also be a valuable book for policy-makers looking for different perspectives on the topic.

The Handbook on Governmentality discusses the development of an interdisciplinary field of research, focusing on Michel Foucault’s post-foundationalist concept of governmentality and the ways it has been used to write genealogies of modern states, the governance of societal problems and the governance of the self. Bringing together an international group of contributors, the Handbook examines major developments in debates on governmentality, as well as encouraging further research in areas such as climate change, decolonial politics, logistics, and populism. Chapters explore how governmentality reshapes policy analysis as political practice, the relationship between Foucault’s ideas of government and postcolonial experiences, and how governmentality can illuminate discourse on the green economy and biopolitics. Analysing how contemporary socio-political issues including feminist politics, migration, and racialized medicine are interwoven with the concept of governmentality, this Handbook sheds light on the modern-day uses of Foucault’s work. Providing a comprehensive overview of research on governmentality, this Handbook will be essential reading for students and scholars of development studies, geopolitics, political economy, organizational studies, political geography, postcolonial theory, and public policy. It will also be a key resource for policy makers in the field looking for a deeper theoretical understanding of the topic.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. Jon Pierre and Guy Peters expertly guide the reader through governance - one of the most widely used terms in political science - and its differing interpretations, with comprehensive discussion of the key issues covering global as well as local level governance. A detailed look into what constitutes 'good governance', whether produced by a government or by more informal means, is also explored. Key features include: examination of what governance is, how it is created and the differing styles of governance how governance is becoming more collaborative between governments and the private sector an investigation into the governance process and outcomes, including topics such as bargaining, negotiation and the use of political power. This insightful Advanced Introduction will be an excellent resource for both graduates and undergraduates studying governance and political science. It will also be a useful guide for academics who are interested in governance and who need a concise introduction.

American Government: A Brief Introduction teaches students how to interpret and question data in charts, graphs, and polls that they encounter daily in social media. Drawing on her expertise as both a teacher and researcher, new co-author Hahrie Han helps students develop essential quantitative literacy as they learn how American government works. A reconceptualized introductory chapter establishes a foundation for interpreting empirical evidence, and a unique framework built around the themes of governance and representation, helps students understand how the concepts and processes of American government function in their daily lives. Together with a robust media program that offers opportunities to remediate and apply these skills, American Government: A Brief Introduction builds the knowledge and confidence that enables students to think for themselves-whether in the voting booth, community participation, or interpreting in the news.

First friends, then bitter enemies, John Kennedy and Richard Nixon shared a rivalry that had a dramatic impact on American history. One would become the most dashing figure of the post-World War II era, the other would live into his eighties, haunted and consumed by the rivalry. In Kennedy and Nixon, Christopher Matthews offers a surprising look at these two political giants, offering a stunning portrait that will change the way we think about both of them. Starting as congressmen in the class of 1946, the two men developed a friendship and admiration for each other that would last for more than a decade. But what drove history was the enmity between these two towering figures whose 1960 presidential contest would set the nation's bitter course for years to come. Matthews shows how the early fondness between the two men (Kennedy told a trusted friend that if he didn't receive the Democratic nomination in 1960, he would vote for Nixon) degenerated into distrust and paranoia, the same emotions that, in the early 1970's, ravaged the nation. Christopher Mattew's revealing book sheds light on this complicated relationship and the role that it played in shaping America's history.

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. This timely and insightful Research Agenda for Federalism Studies brings together comparative reflections from leading scholars across five continents on the past, present and future of federalism research. Addressing the research needs of federalism studies around the world, contributors focus on political theory, constitutionalism, self-rule, gender, diversity and conflict resolution, as well as challenges for federalism in Africa, Asia and Europe, to identify contemporary research lacunae and seek out new directions for investigation. In a world where more than 40 percent of the world's people live in federal systems, this impressive book provides accessible guidance through a profuse and complex research terrain. This rich source of ideas and research pathways offers critical insight for graduate students of political science and comparative government, as well as senior scholars seeking fresh perspectives on federalism studies. Contributors include: N. Aroney, J. Bednar, H. Bhattacharyya, P. Dardanelli, J. Dinan, A. Fenna, A.-G. Gagnon, T.O. Hueglin, S. Keil, J. Kincaid, A. Lecours, S. Mueller, F. Palermo, C. Saunders, N. Steytler, A. Tremblay, A. Valdesalici, J. Vickers

A masterful biography of Lincoln that follows his bitter struggle with poverty, his self-made success in business and law, his early disappointing political career, and his leadership as President during one of America's most tumultuous periods.

Jacob Rees-Mogg is one of the most prominent and controversial figures in contemporary British politics. He is a man who divides opinion in his own party, in Parliament and across the country. An arch-Brexiteer with significant business interests and a large personal fortune, he has long been a vocal critic of the European Union and of Prime Minister Theresa May's attempts to negotiate a Brexit deal. As chairman of the powerful anti-EU organisation the European Research Group, he has also been a thorn in the side of those seeking to dilute Brexit. While many people mock him for his impeccable manners and traditional attitudes - he has been dubbed `the Honourable Member for the eighteenth century' - an equally great number applaud him for his apparent conviction politics. Undoubtedly, Rees-Mogg stands out among the current crop of MPs and his growing influence cannot be ignored. In this wide-ranging unauthorised biography of the Conservative Member of Parliament for North East Somerset, Michael Ashcroft, bestselling author of Call Me Dave: The Unauthorised Biography of David Cameron, turns his attention to one of the most intriguing politicians of our time.