After 20 years of freedom in South Africa we have to ask ourselves difficult questions: are we willing to perpetuate a lie, search for facts or think wishfully? Freedom has been enabled by apartheid's end, but at the same time some of apartheid's key institutions and social relations are reproduced under the guise of 'democracy'. This collection of essays acknowledges the enormous expectations placed on the shoulders of the South African revolution to produce an alternative political regime in response to apartheid and global neo-liberalism. It does not lament the inability of South Africa's democracy to provide deeper freedoms, or suggest that since it hasn't this is some form of betrayal. Freedom is made possible and/or limited by local political choices, contemporary global conditions and the complexities of social change. This book explores the multiplicity of spaces within which the dynamics of social change unfold, and the complex ways in which power is produced and reproduced. In this way, it seeks to understand the often non-linear practices through which alternative possibilities emerge, the lengthy and often indirect ways in which new communities are imagined and new solidarities are built. In this sense, this book is not a collection of hope or despair. Nor is it a book that seeks to situate itself between these two poles. Instead it aims to read the present historically, critically and politically, and to offer insights into the ongoing, iterative and often messy struggles for freedom.

'Through her courageous resistance, she has, for a moment, drawn global attention to the ongoing struggle of Saudi women. The striking image of a young woman, wielding nothing but a cellphone, facing down the force of an oppressive government is an apt metaphor for this fraught moment in Saudi Arabia's history.' THE WASHINGTON POST A gripping true story of bravery and sacrifice by a young woman whose escape from Saudi Arabia captivated the world. In early 2019, after more than a year of careful planning, Rahaf Mohammed boarded a plane and finally escaped from Saudi Arabia. If caught, she was sure she would be killed, like other rebel women who had tried to flee her country's oppressive regime. But the eighteen-year-old only made it as far as Bangkok before her passport was taken away. It was a trick, and soon she found herself trapped, barricaded in a hotel room. As men pounded on her door, the teenager decided to reach out to the world on Twitter - and the world answered. Her account gained forty-five thousand followers overnight and offered her a vital lifeline. This was Rahaf's chance at a new life, the one she had dreamed of. Now Rahaf tells her remarkable story for the first time and reveals the dystopian reality of what life is like for women within Saudi Arabia. From the guardianship system, which places unmarried women under the full control of their male relatives, to the secretive online underground network of Saudi runaways plotting their escape, Rebel is a gripping memoir of resistance and bravery by a woman determined to tell the truth about life in the closed kingdom.

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2022 A Financial Times Politics Book of the Year 2021 A fascinating account of Russia's famous dissident and the politics he embodies. Who is Alexei Navalny? Poisoned in August 2020 and transported to Germany for treatment, the politician returned to Russia in January 2021 in the full glare of the world media. His immediate detention at passport control set the stage for an explosive showdown with Vladimir Putin. But Navalny means very different things to different people. To some, he is a democratic hero. To others, he is betraying the Motherland. To others still, he is a dangerous nationalist. This book explores the many dimensions of Navalny's political life, from his pioneering anti-corruption investigations to his ideas and leadership of a political movement. It also looks at how his activities and the Kremlin's strategies have shaped one another. Navalny makes sense of this divisive character, revealing the contradictions of a man who is the second most important political figure in Russia-even when behind bars. In order to understand modern Russia, you need to understand Alexei Navalny. This updated version includes new material following Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

This is study of six Chartist Leaders. It portrays movements for democracy and social progress, and explores the role of the uneasy middle classes, in movements for working class rights. The comparative analysis provides insights in to the development of dissent, the nature of class and of radicalism in the nineteenth century. An introduction sketches the historical context. - Dr. Peter M McDouall, fiery orator and Scottish surgeon, who built his practise and his political reputation at Ramsbottom, near Bury in Lancashire. - the Rev. Henry Solly, Chartist pamphleteer and Unitarian Minister who lived and worked in Yeovil and Cheltenham Spa and became a nationally-known campaigner for co-operatives, anti-slavery, the vote, and rational recreation, - Rev. James Scholefield, a chaplain from Manchester who campaigned for the ten hour week: a teacher, apothecary, surgeon and vegetarian, - Richard Bagnall Reed, a blacksmith, who became the manager of the Newcastle Chronicle, he also ran guns to Garibaldi for Italian unification, - William Villiers Sankey, an aristocrat, son of an Irish Volunteer and Member of Parliament, who resided among the political elite of London, he represented Edinburgh at the Chartist Convention, - The Rev. Benjamin Parsons. a radical and political preacher who used the Bible to justify campaigns for social justice, from the Gloucestershire.

Born in England, Helen Joseph came to South Africa via India when she was 26. Living a privileged life did not stop Helen from questioning racism and inequalities in her adopted country. It was only in her forties when she began working actively to bring about political change. Helen played key roles in the Congress of Democrats, Federation of South African Women, UDF and ANC. Charged with treason in the 1950s and one of the leaders of the march by women in 1956, the "granny" of the struggle had the dubious honour of being the first South African placed under house arrest. Undeterred by bannings, she constantly challenged her opponents and still had the time to form strong friendships with activists such as Lilian Ngoyi and David Webster. When asked why she continued to fight against apartheid, Helen replied, 'It makes me more rich than anybody I can think of.' This book shares those riches with a generation of readers who now live in a democracy that Helen herself did not live to see. They Fought for Freedom tells the life stories of southern African leaders who struggled for freedom and justice. In spite of the important roles they played in the history of southern Africa, most of these leaders have been largely ignored by the history books. The series tells their stories in an entertaining manner, in clear language and aims to restore them to their rightful place in history.

In this uplifting memoir, a professor and activist shares what birds can teach us about life, social change, and protecting the environment. Trish O’Kane never expected to be a birder. She was a world-traveled journalist with no science background who surprised herself in her forties by falling in love with birds. Cut to seventeen years later, and O’Kane is a highly qualified ornithologist who teaches at the University of Vermont and is the creator of the hugely popular course Birding to Change the World, on which this book is based. It was a lone red cardinal and a bumptious cast of house sparrows that changed everything for O’Kane after Hurricane Katrina shattered her life in New Orleans. Watching birds thrive throughout the devastated city became her salvation—making her laugh, helping her deal with the trauma, and setting her on a whole new path. Soon O’Kane found herself pursuing a natural sciences PhD in Wisconsin, where she became a full-on bird obsessive—logging hours and hours in a stunningly diverse urban park, binoculars glued to her eyes, filling field notebooks with observations of bird doings and dramas, and volunteering in a bird nursery at a wildlife rehabilitation center. But it wasn’t until that park, her bird-watching haven, was threatened with development that O’Kane became an environmental activist—taking her cues from the birds. She began to avianize: to adapt for human use birds’ strategies for defending their nests and offspring. Like the birds, she and her fellow human park lovers harnessed the power of raised voices and collective action to save the park. Each chapter in Birding to Change the World features at least one species of bird that O’Kane has learned from. She recounts the astonishing science of bird life, including migration and survival strategies, along with many moving and compelling stories about birds and the humans who are fascinated by them. Over the course of this heartfelt memoir, O’Kane shows what birds can teach us—and how that education can be a transformative force for social change.

Voices of Liberation: Archie Mafeje should be understood as an attempt to contextualise Mafeje's work and thinking and adds to gripping intellectual biographies of African intellectuals by African researchers. Mafeje's scholarship can be categorised into three broad areas: a critique of epistemological and methodological issues in the social sciences; the land and agrarian question in sub-Saharan Africa; and revolutionary theory and politics (including questions of development and democracy). Noted for his academic prowess, genius mind, incomparable wit and endless struggle for his nation and greater Africa, Mafeje was also hailed by his daughter, Dana El-Baz, as a 'giant' not only in the intellectual sense but as a human being. Part I discusses Mafeje's intellectual and political influences. Part II consists of seven of Mafeje's original articles and seeks to contextualise his writings. Part III reflects on Mafeje's intellectual legacy.

*A Times, Financial Times, Observer and Nature Book of the Year* We still have time to change the world. From Greta Thunberg, the world's leading climate activist, comes the essential handbook for making it happen. You might think it's an impossible task: secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed never seen, against all the odds. There is hope - but only if we listen to the science before it's too late. In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over one hundred experts - geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and indigenous leaders - to equip us all with the knowledge we need to combat climate disaster. Alongside them, she shares her own stories of demonstrating and uncovering greenwashing around the world, revealing how much we have been kept in the dark. This is one of our biggest challenges, she shows, but also our greatest source of hope. Once we are given the full picture, how can we not act? And if a schoolchild's strike could ignite a global protest, what could we do collectively if we tried? We are alive at the most decisive time in the history of humanity. Together, we can do the seemingly impossible. But it has to be us, and it has to be now.

This collection of literary/historical essays, written 1970-2010, covers political subjects as diverse as 17th Century Quaker persecution history, the social impact of Malthus, the self-emancipation of English women, Eleanor Rathbone on the human rights of girls and German women's resistance to Hitler. The more literary subjects include the social thinking of the English Romantics, Dickens' Great Expectations, Simone Weil's great essays attacking militarism and Virginia Woolf's opposition to the State -- as well as contemporary American women poets on the problem of war. But despite all its diversity, this collection has one unifying theme -- the necessity for resistance, for thinking against the current', as Virginia Woolf wrote in Thoughts on Peace in an Air-raid'. The torch of resistance to oppression and militarism is shown to have been continuously handed on through the generations from the seventeenth century to our own day by men and women who had the courage, at whatever personal cost, to 'fight with the mind'. This book of passionate, lively essays is not merely a treasure trove for biographical researchers; it is also strengthening medicine, introducing us to unfamiliar forebears who can help us in our current struggle for a better world. As Simone Weil said: "We can find something better than ourselves in the past".

Offers new insights into the struggle against Apartheid, and the poverty and inequality that instigated political resistance.

On 3 September 1984 a bloody uprising set the African townships of the Vaal Triangle aflame. Triggered by dissatisfaction over rent increases and a local government that was failing to provide any meaningful political power or social transformation to the black majority, it heralded the insurrectionary period that was to profoundly challenge the administrative and coercive capacities of the apartheid state and greatly contribute towards its demise. Led by a broad coalition of civic organisations, student bodies and trade unions, nationwide protests followed demanding a new political and social order. By the mid-1980s the ideological influence of the African National Congress (ANC) had established its hegemony among township activists and was regarded as the main force in the liberation struggle.

Arguing that liberation from poverty and inequality played as significant role in driving the struggle against apartheid as political rights, Rueedi shows how the enactment of the ideals of the 1955 Freedom Charter during the insurrectionary period shaped how communities understood liberation and freedom, both during and after apartheid. She explores the ways in which the establishment and subsequent failure of the model townships was intertwined with struggles for social transformation and dignity; investigates the links between underground networks of the ANC and above ground community structures; and examines how increasing state repression fuelled militancy and political violence, leading to an impasse that signalled the beginning of the end of the apartheid regime.

While South Africa has many stories about the struggle years, yet many more remain untold. For the Fallen; honouring the unsung heroes and heroines of the liberation struggle was inspired by a radio interview with the late Govan Mbeki. In that interview Mbeki emphasised the need for South Africans to tell their stories and spread knowledge. It took a while for Ndlela to heed those words and tell his story in this book. This book is as much about the author’s concerns that a generation who have only known freedom will forget or never even understand the great price it took to gain that freedom, as it is about the often forgotten heroes and heroines who showed their ultimate commitment to their ideals. The book chronicles the author’s journey from Bedford in the Eastern Cape as a young boy, fearful and yet defiant of the police who harassed him and his friends, to the young militant who became an MK soldier whose exile took him to Lesotho, Zambia, Angola and Swaziland. He describes the inspiration he gained from the heroes and heroines he encountered on this journey. These heroes and heroines included the primary school teacher who encouraged parents to broaden their thinking and who stressed the importance of education; the radical high school teacher who defied the “system “and the school curriculum to teach real, “current” history and the man of God who was required to save souls in more ways than one. As the reader accompanies Ndlela on this retrospective journey, one will encounter individuals who would later play a pivotal role in the establishment and concretisation of the democratic South Africa, people such as Thenjiwe Mtintso, Chris Hani, Jeff Radebe, Rev Makhenkesi Stofile, Mvuyo Tom and many others. For the Fallen is above all, a reminder that our freedom was not lightly gained and that we should keep telling these stories, lest we forget.

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.

Sol Plaatje is celebrated as one of South Africa’s most accomplished political and literary figures. A pioneer in the history of the black press, editor of several newspapers, he was one of the founders of the African National Congress in 1912, led its campaign against the notorious Natives Land Act of 1913, and twice travelled overseas to represent the interests of his people. He wrote a number of books, including – in English – Native Life in South Africa (1916), a powerful denunciation of the Land Act and the policies that led to it, and a pioneering novel, Mhudi (1930). Years after his death his diary of the siege of Mafeking was retrieved and published, providing a unique view of one of the best known episodes of the South African War of 1899–1902. At the same time Plaatje was a proud Morolong, fascinated by his people’s history. He was dedicated to Setswana, and set out to preserve its traditions and oral forms so as to create a written literature. He translated a number of Shakespeare’s plays into Setswana, the first in any African language, collected proverbs and stories, and even worked on a new dictionary. He fought long battles with those who thought they knew better over the particular form its orthography should take. This book tells the story of Plaatje’s remarkable life, setting it in the context of the changes that overtook South Africa during his lifetime, and the huge obstacles he had to overcome. It draws upon extensive new research in archives in southern Africa, Europe and the US, as well as an expanding scholarship on Plaatje and his writings. This biography sheds new light not only on Plaatje’s struggles and achievements but upon his personal life and his relationships with his wife and family, friends and supporters. It pays special attention to his formative years, looking to his roots in chiefly societies, his education and upbringing on a German-run mission, and his exposure to the legal and political ideas of the nineteenth-century Cape Colony as key factors in inspiring and sustaining a life of more or less ceaseless endeavour.

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. – and the first to include recently declassified FBI files.   In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.   He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death.   As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became its only modern-day founding father – as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr. In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.  

They Fought for Freedom tells the life stories of southern African leaders who struggled for freedom and justice. In spite of the important roles they played in the history of southern Africa, most of these leaders have been largely ignored by the history books. The series tells their stories in an entertaining manner, in clear language and aims to restore them to their rightful place in history.

A "powerful" (The Wall Street Journal) biography of one of the 19th century's greatest statesmen, encompassing his decades-long fight against slavery and his postwar struggle to bring racial justice to America.Thaddeus Stevens was among the first to see the Civil War as an opportunity for a second American revolution--a chance to remake the country as a genuine multiracial democracy. As one of the foremost abolitionists in Congress in the years leading up to the war, he was a leader of the young Republican Party's radical wing, fighting for anti-slavery and anti-racist policies long before party colleagues like Abraham Lincoln endorsed them. These policies--including welcoming black men into the Union's armies--would prove crucial to the Union war effort. During the Reconstruction era that followed, Stevens demanded equal civil and political rights for Black Americans--rights eventually embodied in the 14th and 15th amendments. But while Stevens in many ways pushed his party--and America--towards equality, he also championed ideas too radical for his fellow Congressmen ever to support, such as confiscating large slaveholders' estates and dividing the land among those who had been enslaved. In Thaddeus Stevens, acclaimed historian Bruce Levine has written a "vital" (The Guardian), "compelling" (James McPherson) biography of one of the most visionary statesmen of the 19th century and a forgotten champion for racial justice in America.

This is the powerful and moving life story of one of South Africa's leading trade union activists, from her childhood in Sophiatown to her first marriage and divorce, the dark days of her six months in detention and her lasting contributions to labour organisation in South Africa. Strikes have followed me all my life was first published in 1989 by The women's press but was never available in South Africa. Emma Mashinini's autobiography is an accessible, engaging account of a self-effacing union organiser, gender-rights activist and a phenomenal woman who has lived a difficult life and endured many challenges: detention without trial for six months (most of which were spent in solitary confinement); losing two daughters and a son-in-law; health problems as a result of detention; and constant abuse at the hands of apartheid's enforcers. But Emma's story is one of courage. It is engaging, at times sad (there is a heart-breaking moment in the text when she forgets her daughter’s name while in solitary confinement), but mostly it is an inspirational account of a selfless individual. This edition includes a Foreword by Jay Naidoo that brings the reader up to date with Emma’s life and opinions and the state of the labour movement in South Africa as well as moving letters from Mashinini's family that were written to her on her 80th birthday. This is a classic South African memoir in the same vein as Ellen Kuzwayo's call me woman, which recalls and preserves vital accounts of South Africa's history.

'Defying the Dragon' tells a remarkable story of audacity: of how the people of Hong Kong challenged the PRC's authority, just as its president reached the height of his powers. Is Xi's China as unshakeable as it seems? What are its real interests in Hong Kong? Why are Beijing's time-honoured means of control no longer working there? And where does this leave Hongkongers themselves? Stephen Vines has lived in Hong Kong for over three decades. His book shrewdly unpacks the Hong Kong-China relationship and its wider significance-right up to the astonishing convergence of political turmoil and international crisis with Covid-19 and the 2020 crackdown. Vividly describing the uprising from street level, Vines explains how and why it unfolded, and its global repercussions. Now, the international community is reassessing relations with Beijing, just as Hong Kong's rebellion and China's handling of the pandemic have exposed the regime's weakness. In a crisis that has become existential all round, what lies ahead for Hong Kong, China and the world?

The inspirational story of the ordinary people who forged the documents that saved thousands of Jewish lives in World War Two. 'Powerful ... gripping ... inspiring' JONATHAN DIMBLEBY Between 1940 and 1943, a small group of Polish diplomats and Jewish activists in Switzerland engaged in a wholly remarkable - and until now, almost completely unknown - humanitarian operation. Under the leadership of the Polish Ambassador, Aleksander Lados, they undertook a systematic programme of forging identity documents for Latin American countries, which were then smuggled into German-occupied Europe to save the lives of thousands of Jews facing extermination in the Holocaust. The Lados operation was one of the largest rescue missions of the entire war, and The Forgers tells this extraordinary story for the first time. We follow the desperate bids of Jews to obtain these life-saving documents, and their painful uncertainty over whether they will be granted protection from the Nazis' murderous fury. And we witness the quiet heroism of those who decided to act in an attempt to save thousands of lives. 'As gripping as it is moving' JULIA BOYD, author of Travellers in the Third Reich 'Original and thought-provoking' RICHARD OVERY, author of Blood and Ruins 'Astonishing' KATJA HOYER, author of Beyond the Wall

'A towering achievement. There is simply nothing like it in the history of Black radical thought' Cornel West 'Cedric Robinson's brilliant analyses revealed new ways of thinking and acting' Angela Davis 'This work is about our people's struggle, the historical Black struggle' Any struggle must be fought on a people's own terms, argues Cedric Robinson's landmark account of Black radicalism. Marxism is a western construction, and therefore inadequate to describe the significance of Black communities as agents of change against 'racial capitalism'. Tracing the emergence of European radicalism, the history of Black African resistance and the influence of these on such key thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James and Richard Wright, Black Marxism reclaims the story of a movement.