Wat dryf ’n beeldskone jong ma van drie daartoe om haar man wreed te laat vermoor? Waarom wou Suretha Brits só graag van haar Leon ontslae raak?

Danksy inligting uit die binnekring van vriende, familie en mense ná aan die polisie-ondersoek, sit die joernalis Charné Kemp die stukkies van die legkaart bymekaar en vertel die volle verhaal van die opspraakwekkende huurmoord op die geliefde Pofadder-hotelbaas.

’n Boeiende ware misdaadverhaal wat draai om geld, diamante, Krugerrande, seks en verraad.

In 2003, Thabo Jijana's father was gunned down in a scrap between rival taxi associations who had been forced to operate from a single rank. A decade later, Thabo faces up to South Africa's most violent industry to try to figure out how and why his father was murdered.

In this searing first-person investigation, Thabo puts a face behind a recurrent tragedy that plagues South African working class communities. By speaking to the people who knew his father best he tries to fill in the blanks that are the years that have followed his father's death.

He begins by trying to reconstruct the night the murder took place, but what he uncovers about the ongoing strife that has plagued government's consistent attempts to formalise this multi-million rand industry comes with more baggage than he expected.

First published in 1967, Ernest Cole’s House of Bondage has been lauded as one of the most significant photobooks of the twentieth century, revealing the horrors of apartheid to the world for the first time and influencing generations of photographers around the globe.

Reissued for contemporary audiences, this edition adds a chapter of unpublished work found in a recently resurfaced cache of negatives and recontextualizes this pivotal book for our time.

Cole, a Black South African man, photographed the underbelly of apartheid in the 1950s and ’60s, often at great personal risk. He methodically captured the myriad forms of violence embedded in everyday life for the Black majority under the apartheid system—picturing its miners, its police, its hospitals, its schools. In 1966, Cole fled South Africa and smuggled out his negatives; House of Bondage was published the following year with his writings and first-person account.

This edition retains the powerful story of the original while adding new perspectives on Cole’s life and the legacy of House of Bondage. It also features an added chapter—compiled and titled “Black Ingenuity” by Cole—of never-before-seen photographs of Black creative expression and cultural activity taking place under apartheid.

Made available again nearly fifty-five years later, House of Bondage remains a visually powerful and politically incisive document of the apartheid era.

This acclaimed book by Steven Pinker argues that, contrary to popular belief, humankind has become progressively less violent over millenia and decades. Can violence really have declined?

The images of conflict we see daily on our screens from around the world suggest this is an almost obscene claim to be making. Extraordinarily, however, Steven Pinker shows violence within and between societies - both murder and warfare - really has declined from prehistory to today. We are much less likely to die at someone else's hands than ever before. Even the horrific carnage of the last century, when compared to the dangers of pre-state societies, is part of this trend.

Debunking both the idea of the 'noble savage' and an over-simplistic Hobbesian notion of a 'nasty, brutish and short' life, Steven Pinker argues that modernity and its cultural institutions are actually making us better people.

Why do so many South Africans prefer taking the law into their own hands to relying on the police? Why are those who do so often cheered or sympathised with?

Of the unprecedented 27 000 recorded murders in South Africa in 2022, at least 1 894 – or 7 per cent – were attributed to mob justice and vigilantism, more than double the number from five years before. In the first nine months of 2023, a further 1 472 mob justice deaths had already been registered.

Mob justice is nothing new, but in recent years it has taken on an undeniably desperate, furious edge. From the breathtakingly violent Zandspruit massacre in May 2021, to the killings during the July unrest two months later, to the march of Operation Dudula across the nation in 2022, vigilantism – and the condoning of it – has never before captured the zeitgeist of South Africa so sharply. What has changed in the past few years, and what does it augur for the future?

Following three recent cases of mob justice, from the hellish metropolitan townships of Gauteng to the far-flung bushveld of northern Limpopo, and drawing on extensive research and interviews, Why We Kill explores the roots, realities and consequences of South Africa’s current crisis of vigilantism.

After a string of police botches, Captain Ben "Bliksem" Booysen was assigned the Krugersdorp Killers' case in 2016.

Eleven people had already been brutally murdered by a group calling themselves Electus Per Deus. Booysen made headlines when he arrested the mastermind Cecilia Steyn, and her accomplices.

South Africa's own "Chuck Norris" takes the reader behind the scenes of the satanic killings, divulging new and shocking details of the crimes that have kept the nation on edge for almost a decade.

Cadre deployment means that the ANC and the state are inextricably intertwined. In KwaZulu-Natal, which has long been the powder keg of South Africa, it’s a monster that means people of competing patronage networks are killing each other for a place at the trough –  for jobs and tenders –  and the taxi industry provides the hitmen, guns and the transport.

Travel with journalist Greg Ardé across KwaZulu-Natal into the dark heart of South Africa and the ANC’s ‘culture of blood’.  

What happens when enemies work to advance similar goals? Who wins, who loses, and why? In Frenemies, Nancy Whittier addresses this question through a study of feminist and conservative opposition to pornography, campaigns against child sexual abuse, and engagement on the Violence Against Women Act. Drawing on extensive research, Whittier shows how feminist and conservative activists interacted with each other and with the federal government, how their interaction affected them, and what each side achieved. Whittier re-conceptualizes relationships between social movements, presenting a model of how "frenemies"-groups that are neither allies nor opponents-work toward related goals. She outlines the dynamics and paths of frenemy relationships, describing the unintended consequences for the groups involved and for their respective movements at large. With high levels of political polarization across the U.S., Frenemies provides a crucial look at both the promise and the risk of cooperation across political differences.

In 2009, Chicago spent millions of dollars to create programs to prevent gang violence in some of its most disadvantaged neighborhoods. Yet in spite of the programs, violence has grown worse in some of the very neighborhoods that the violence prevention programs were intented to help. While public officials and social scientists often attribute the violence - and the failure of the programs - to a lack of community in poor neighborhoods, closer study reveals another source of community division: local politics. Through an ethnographic case study of Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, Wounded City dispells the popular belief that a lack of community is the primary source of violence, arguing that competition for political power and state resources often undermine efforts to reduce gang violence. Robert Vargas argues that the state, through the way it governs, can contribute to distrust and division among community members, thereby undermining social cohesion. The strategic actions taken by police officers, politicians, nonprofit organizations, and gangs to collaborate or compete for power and resources can vary block by block, triggering violence on some blocks while successfully preventing it on others. A rich blend of urban politics, sociology, and criminology, Wounded City offers a cautionary tale for elected officials, state agencies, and community based organizations involved with poor neighborhoods.

Environmental devastation. Local militancy. Smuggling. Violence. All of these describe the Niger Delta, the crude-oil extraction center of Nigeria.

Philip Aghoghovwia offers a unique interpretation of the region's petroviolence, examining the cultural aspects of the extraction industry in the societies within which it operates.

As he considers the charged and often clashing contexts of the industry vs. the ecologies of directly affected peoples/places, Aghoghovwia essentially reframes the environmental challenges that carbon-based civilization poses to local landscapes.

Though much has been written about particular forms of violence related to religion, such as sacrificial rites and militant martyrdom, there have been few efforts to survey the phenomena in all of the world's major religious traditions, historically and in the present, viewing the subject in personal as well as social dimensions, and covering both literary themes and political conflicts. This compact collection of essays provides such an overview. Each of the essays explores the ways in which violence is justified within the literary and theological foundation of the tradition, how it is used symbolically and in ritual practice, and how social acts of vengeance and warfare have been justified by religious ideas. The nature of the connection between violence and faith has always been a topic of heated debate, especially as acts of violence performed in the name of religion have erupted onto the global stage. Some scholars argue that these acts of violence are not really religious at all, but symptomatic of other elements of society or human nature. Others however point to the fact that often the perpetrators of these acts cite the faith's own foundational texts as their inspiration-and that the occurrence of violence in the name of religion exists across all faith traditions. Is violence, then, the rare exception in religious traditions or is it one of the rules? The contributors to this volume explore many possible approaches to this question and myriad others. How is religion defined? Must a religion be centered on supernatural beings? Does the term refer to social behavior or private? Is dogma or practice the key to its essence? Is it a philosophical system or a poetic structure? And how should violence be defined? From whose perspective and at what point is an act to be deemed violent? What act cannot be construed as violent in some way? For instance, are we talking only about war and genocide, or psychological coercion, social restrictions and binding categorizations? Collectively, the essays in this volume reflect the complex and contested meanings of both religion and violence, providing overviews of engagements with violence in Hindu, Buddhist, Chinese, Sikh, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, African, and Pacific Island religious traditions. By shedding light on the intersection of violence with faith, this volume does much to expand the understanding of the nature of religion itself, and the diverse forms it may take.

The relationship between new religious movements (NRMs) and violence has long been a topic of intense public interest--an interest heavily fueled by multiple incidents of mass violence involving certain groups. Some of these incidents have made international headlines. When New Religious Movements make the news, it's usually because of some violent episode. Some of the most famous NRMs are known much more for the violent way they came to an end than for anything else. Violence and New Religious Movements offers a comprehensive examination of violence by-and against-new religious movements. The book begins with theoretical essays on the relationship between violence and NRMs and then moves on to examine particular groups. There are essays on the "Big Five"--the most well-known cases of violent incidents involving NRMs: Jonestown, Waco, Solar Temple, the Aum Shunrikyo subway attack, and the Heaven's Gate suicides. But the book also provides a richer survey by examining a host of lesser-known groups. This volume is the culmination of decades of research by scholars of New Religious Movements.

By 1700 London was the largest city in the world, with over 500,000 inhabitants. Very weakly policed, its streets saw regular outbreaks of rioting by a mob easily stirred by economic grievances, politics or religion. If the mob vented its anger more often on property than people, eighteenth-century Londoners frequently came to blows over personal disputes in a society where men and women were quick to defend their honour. Slanging matches easily turned to fisticuffs and slights on honour were avenged in duels. In this world, where the detection and prosecution of crime was the part of the business of the citizen, punishment, whether by the pillory, whipping at a cart's tail or hanging at Tyburn, was public and endorsed by crowds. The Mob draws a fascinating portrait of the public life of the modern world's first great city.

Annamarie van Niekerk gaan brutaal eerlik om met vraagstukke waarmee ons daagliks worstel: plaasmoord, geweld teen vroue, skuld en onmag, aandadigheid en keuse.

Sy woon in Den Haag, maar keer terug Suid-Afrika toe vir die begrafnis van haar liewe vriend, Ruben, wat saam met sy ma in ʼn wrede plaasmoord vermoor is. Dié reis lei terug na ander reise: Van haar kinderjare in PE in ʼn streng Nasionale huishouding met ʼn Broederbondpa. Na Umtata, waar sy gaan klasgee en verlief raak op ʼn swart kollega. Na Hillbrow, waar die twee van hulle onwettig saamwoon en aktief is in skrywersirkels met vriende soos Nadine Gordimer en Njabulo Ndebele. Tot geweld ook hul verhouding binnedring. Uiteindelik na die tronk, waar sy Ruben se moordenaars gaan soek in haar strewe na verstaan.

Van Niekerk vervleg haar eie storie aangrypend met ’n verkenning van die groot kwessies in ons land. Onder ʼn bloedrooi hemel is ʼn diep ontroerende persoonlike reis, van geweld na genade, meesterlik vertel.

Indigenous societies that are steeped in patriarchy have various channels through which they deal with abusive characteristics of relations in some of these communities. One such route is through songs, which sanction women to voice that which, bound by societal expectations, they would not normally be able to say. This book focuses on the nature of women’s contemporary songs in the rural community of Zwelibomvu, near Pinetown in KwaZulu-Natal. It aims to answer the question ‘Bahlabelelelani – Why do they sing?’, drawing on a variety of discourses of gender and power to examine the content and purposes of the songs.

Restricted by the custom of hlonipha, women resort to allusive language, such as is found in ukushoza, a song genre that includes poetic elements and solo dance songs. Other contexts include women’s social events, such as ilima, which refers to the collective activity that takes place when a group of women come together to assist another woman to complete a task that is typically carried out by women. During umgcagco (traditional weddings) and umemulo (girls’ coming-of-age ceremonies), songs befitting the occasion are performed. And neighbouring communities come together at amacece to perform according to izigodi (districts), where local maskandi women groups may be found performing for a goat or cow stake.

The songs, when read in conjunction with the interviews and focus group discussions, present a complex picture of women’s lives in contemporary rural KwaZulu-Natal, and they offer their own commentary on what it means to be a woman in this society.

If this book saves just one person’s life, Leo Prinsloo will be happy.

Leo became an internet sensation after footage of his reaction to an attempted high-value goods-in-transit heist went viral. Stunned by his cool attitude and focused action in a crisis situation, South Africans had an example of what can happen when good people take a stand. With decades of experience in security – first as a policeman, then in the South African Police Service’s Special Task Force, and now providing arms handling and security training in the private sector – Leo has a wealth of knowledge on how to manage life-threatening incidents.

Driven by a desire to empower South Africans and help them claim back their sense of safety, he offers advice for dealing with every risky situation, from how to handle hijackings and road rage, to how to keep your children safe, to the best way to secure your home and business. He also provides comprehensive information about handling firearms and basic first aid.

Leo’s Guide to Not Becoming a Statistic is a guide to living your safest life in South Africa – something which has become increasingly important as our crime statistics continue to rise. Straight-talking and honest – much like Leo himself – it is an easy to use manual that makes keeping safe accessible, with relatable information and easy to implement tips.

Leo says that taking the first step towards securing your safety is the most important, and his book will help you take that step.