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Books > History > African history > General

Afrikaner Identity - Dysfunction And Grief (Paperback): Yves Vanderhaeghen Afrikaner Identity - Dysfunction And Grief (Paperback)
Yves Vanderhaeghen
R280 R219 Discovery Miles 2 190 Save R61 (22%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

This close media study considers how, squeezed in the moral vice of past and present, Afrikaners look in a mirror that reflects only a beautiful people.

It is an image of upstanding, hard-working citizens. To hold on to that image requires blinkers, sleights of hand and contortion. Above all, it requires an inversion of the liberation narrative in which the wretched of South Africa are the historical oppressors, besieged in their language, their homes, their jobs.

They are the new `grievables', an identity that requires intricate moral manoeuvres, and elision as much of the past as of transformation.

491 days - Prisoner number 1323/69 (Paperback): Winnie Madikizela-Mandela 491 days - Prisoner number 1323/69 (Paperback)
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela; Edited by Swati Dlamini, Sahm Venter; Nelson Mandela Foundation Nelson Mandela Foundation 2
R250 R195 Discovery Miles 1 950 Save R55 (22%) In Stock

On a freezing winter’s night, a few hours before dawn on 12 May 1969, security police stormed the Soweto home of Winnie Mandela and detained her in the presence of her two young daughters, then aged eight and ten. Rounded up in a group of other anti-apartheid activists under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act, designed for the security police to hold and interrogate people for as long as they wanted, she was taken away. This was the start for Winnie Mandela of a 491-day period of detention and two trials. Forty-one years after her release on 14 September 1970, Greta Soggot, the widow of David Soggot, one of Winnie Mandela’s advocates during the 1969/1970 trials, handed her a stack of papers that included a journal and notes that she had written in detention. 491 Days: Prisoner number 1323/69 shares with the world Winnie Mandela’s moving and compelling journal as well as some of the letters written between affected parties at the time. Readers gain insight into the brutality she experienced, her depths of despair as well as her resilience and defiance under extreme pressure.

Sol Plaatje's Mhudi - History, Criticism, Celebration (Paperback): Sabata-Mpho Mokae, Brian Willan Sol Plaatje's Mhudi - History, Criticism, Celebration (Paperback)
Sabata-Mpho Mokae, Brian Willan
R320 R250 Discovery Miles 2 500 Save R70 (22%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi is one of South Africa’s most famous novels.

First published in 1930, it is the first full-length novel by a black South African writer, and is widely read and studied in South African schools, colleges and universities. It has been translated into a number of different languages. Written over 30 years before Chinua Achebe’s famous Things Fall Apart, Mhudi is a pioneering African novel too, anticipating many of the themes with which Achebe and other writers from the African continent were concerned.

Mhudi has had a complicated history. Critics have been divided in their views, and there was a delay of ten years between the time Plaatje wrote the book and when it was published. A century on from when it was written, the time is now right to both celebrate its composition and to assess its meanings and legacy.

In this book, a distinguished cast of contributors explore the circumstances in which Mhudi was both written and published, what the critics have made of it, why it remains so relevant today. Chapters look at the eponymous feminist heroine of the novel and what she symbolizes, the role of history and oral tradition, the contentious question of language, the linguistic and stylistic choices that Plaatje made. In keeping with Mhudi’s capacity to inspire, this book also includes a poem and short story, specially written in order to pay tribute to both the book and its author.

Plague, Pox And Pandemics - A Jacana Pocket History Of Epidemics In South Africa (Paperback): Howard Phillips Plague, Pox And Pandemics - A Jacana Pocket History Of Epidemics In South Africa (Paperback)
Howard Phillips
R195 R153 Discovery Miles 1 530 Save R42 (22%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

Over the last decades, we have seen more than three dozen new infectious diseases appear, some of which could kill millions of people with one or two unlucky gene mutations or one or two unfavourable environmental changes. The risks of pandemics only increase as the human population grows; therefore to direct our future we should examine our past. Howard Phillips provides the first look into the history of epidemics in South Africa, probing lethal episodes which significantly shaped this society over three centuries.

Focusing on devastating diseases such as smallpox, bubonic plague, Spanish influenza, polio and HIV/Aids, Plague, Pox and Pandemics probes their origin, their catastrophic course and their consequences in both the short and long term. Their impact ranges from the demographic to the political, the social, the economic, the spiritual, the psychological and the cultural. As each of these epidemics occurred at crucial moments in the country's history - early in European colonisation, in the midst of the mineral revolution, during the South African War and World War I, as industrialisation was getting under way, and within the eras of apartheid and post-apartheid - the book also examines how these processes affected and were affected by the five epidemics, thereby adding important dimensions to an understanding of each.

To those who read this book, South African history will not look the same again.

Under Devil's Peak - The Life And Times Of Wilfrid Cooper, An Advocate In The Age Of Apartheid (Paperback): Gavin Cooper Under Devil's Peak - The Life And Times Of Wilfrid Cooper, An Advocate In The Age Of Apartheid (Paperback)
Gavin Cooper 2
R260 R203 Discovery Miles 2 030 Save R57 (22%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

Wilfrid Cooper was a rare man during the dark days of apartheid: an advocate whose career coincided almost perfectly with the rise and fall of the Nationalist government, intersecting eerily with that of its “architect” HF Verwoerd, and yet a man whose enlightened principles and liberal thinking saw him regularly defending those less fortunate.

His storied legal career saw him embroiled in numerous political affairs throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. He represented, among others, Verwoerd’s assassin Dimitri Tsafendas; the SWAPO Six in Swakopmund; the families of Imam Abdullah Haron, Mapetla Mohapi and Hoossen Haffajee and others who died “jumping down stairwells while in detention” or hanged by their own jeans in their cells; and Steven Biko and other activists who were arrested by the security police in the dead of night. There were also the highprofile criminal cases, including the original Kebble-style “assisted suicide” of Baron Dieter van Schauroth and the scandalous case of the Scissors Murderess Marlene Lehnberg.

Wilfrid Cooper reached the peak of his considerable legal prowess in a time when South Africans led a parallel existence, the majority downtrodden while white privilege reigned serenely in the suburbs – a time that could have easily provided him a less controversial career had he desired. And yet even as he and his gregarious wife Gertrude enjoyed wonderful and very sociable years in their Newlands home in Cape Town – an area that was itself remodelled under the Group Areas Act – he chose to walk the path less taken in the shadow of Devil’s Peak. This is his story.

The House Of Tshatshu - Power, Politics And Chiefs North-West Of The Great Kei River c1818-2018 (Paperback): Anne Mager, Phiko... The House Of Tshatshu - Power, Politics And Chiefs North-West Of The Great Kei River c1818-2018 (Paperback)
Anne Mager, Phiko Jeffrey Velelo
R333 R260 Discovery Miles 2 600 Save R73 (22%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

In rural South Africa today, there are signs that chieftaincies are resurging after having been disbanded in colonial times. Among these is the amaTshatshu of the Eastern Cape, which was dis-established in 1852 by the British, and recognised once more under the democratic ANC dispensation, in 2003.

Bawana, leader of the amaTshatshu, was the first Thembu chief to cross the Kei River, in the mid-1820s, to open up the northeastern frontier of the Cape Colony. His successors and followers fought the British in the frontier wars but were defeated. In tracing his history and that of his descendants this book explores the meaning of chieftainship in South Africa—at the time of colonial conquest, under apartheid’s Bantustans, and now, post apartheid. It illustrates not only the story of a beleaguered and dispossessed people but also the ways in which power is constructed. In addition, it is about gender and land, about belonging, identity and naming. The book unsettles accounts of chiefly authority, unpacks conflicts between royal families, municipalities and government departments, and explores the impasse created by these quarrels. It retrieves evidence that the colonial state sought to obliterate and draws the disempowered back into the process of making history.

The authors are both closely associated with the land and the people of the amaTshatshu. One is a historian, who grew up on their land, and the other is counsellor to the chief. As such, they bring their knowledge and respective skills to bear in this book. The collaboration of a black and a white author sets up a creative tension which animates the text and is a powerful element of the book.

The Keeper Of The Kumm (Paperback): Sylvia Vollenhoven The Keeper Of The Kumm (Paperback)
Sylvia Vollenhoven 2
R405 Discovery Miles 4 050 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Too much of South Africa’s history has been lost and suppressed, leaving a void for many South Africans. Sylvia Vollenhoven brings together her life and that of a long-ago ancestor, Kabbo, a respected Khoisan storyteller.

She writes of her experience as being “too black” for her coloured schoolmates, working as one of the early female journalists in the misogynistic environment of the 70s, and of the constant impact on her life of her background – including her ancestors.

Fordsburg Fighter - The Journey Of An MK Volunteer (Paperback): Amin Cajee Fordsburg Fighter - The Journey Of An MK Volunteer (Paperback)
Amin Cajee; As told to Terry Bell 2
R130 R102 Discovery Miles 1 020 Save R28 (22%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

When Amin Cajee left South Africa to join the liberation struggle he believed he had volunteered to serve a democratic movement dedicated to bringing down an oppressive and racist regime. Instead, he writes, in this powerful and courageous memoir, "I found myself serving a movement that was relentless in exercising power and riddled with corruption".

Fordsburg Fighter traces an extraordinary physical journey – from home in South Africa, to training in Czechoslovakia and the ANC’s Kongwa camp in Tanzania to England. The book is both a significant contribution to opening up the hidden history of exile, and a documentation of Cajee’s emotional odyssey from idealism to disillusionment.

In his introduction to the book, Paul Joseph, ex-treason trialist, South African Communist Party member and MK recruiter, writes: ”What happened to them and to the others in that chaotic and confused time is both sad and tragic. But his honestly told story is essential for us to have a fuller picture of our history, if only to ensure, perhaps, that future generations will learn from our mistakes.’

Poverty in South Africa - Past and present (Paperback): Colin Bundy Poverty in South Africa - Past and present (Paperback)
Colin Bundy
R293 Discovery Miles 2 930 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

South Africa’s social landscape is disfigured by poverty, inequality and mass unemployment. Poverty in South Africa: Past and Present argues that it is impossible to think coherently or constructively about poverty, and the challenge it poses, without a clear understanding of its origins, its long-term development, and it’s changing character over time. This historical overview seeks to show how poverty in the past has shaped poverty in the present. Colin Bundy traces the lasting scars left on the face of South African poverty by colonial dispossession, coerced labour and segregation; and by a capitalist system distinctive for its reliance on cheap, right-less black labour. While the exclusion of the poor occurs in very many countries, in South Africa it has a distinctive extra dimension. Here, poverty has been profoundly racialised by law, by social practice, and by prejudice. He shows that the ‘solution’ to the ‘poor white question’ in the 1920s and ’30s had profound and lasting implications for black poverty. After an analysis of urban and rural poverty prior to 1948, he describes the impact of apartheid policies and social engineering on poverty. Over four decades, apartheid reshaped the geography and demography of poverty. This pocket history concludes with two chapters that assess the policies and thinking of the ANC government in its responses to poverty. One describes the remarkable story of the social security programme developed by the ANC in government since 1994, and finds that cash transfers – pensions and grants – have been the most effective mechanism of redistribution used by the ANC, even though the party remains edgy and anxious about a ‘culture of entitlement’. A final chapter reviews the distribution and dimensions of contemporary poverty, inequality and unemployment, and considers available policy options – and their shortcomings.

Mandela - The Authorised Biography (Paperback, New Edition): Anthony Sampson Mandela - The Authorised Biography (Paperback, New Edition)
Anthony Sampson 1
R310 R248 Discovery Miles 2 480 Save R62 (20%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

Widely considered to be the most important biography of Nelson Mandela, Anthony Sampson's remarkable book has now been updated by acclaimed South African journalist, John Battersby.

Over a decade after his presidency of South Africa, Nelson Mandela remains an inspirational figure to millions of people -- both in his homeland and far beyond her borders. He is, without doubt, one of the most important figures in global history. Mandela's opposition to apartheid and his 27 year incarceration at the hands of South Africa's all-white regime are familiar to most.

In this utterly compelling book, eminent biographer Anthony Sampson, who knew his subject since 1951, reveals the man behind the events that rocked a continent -- and changed the world. With unprecedented access to the former South African president -- the letters he wrote in prison, his unpublished jail autobiography, extensive conversations, and interviews with hundreds of colleagues, friends, and family -- Sampson depicts the realities of Mandela's private and public life, and the tragic tension between them.

Newly updated by distinguished South African journalist John Battersby, Mandela is the ultimate biography of one of the twentieth century's greatest statesmen.

Maverick Insider - A Struggle For Union Independence In A Time Of National Liberation (Paperback): Johnny Copelyn Maverick Insider - A Struggle For Union Independence In A Time Of National Liberation (Paperback)
Johnny Copelyn 1
R280 R219 Discovery Miles 2 190 Save R61 (22%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

In 1973 the trade union movement was both racially and regionally divided. It virtually excluded African workers, and in many cases unions were led by cautious and paternalistic leaders, long schooled in avoiding confrontation with either the state or employers. Then widespread strikes erupted in Durban where hundreds of thousands of workers downed tools in support of wage demands. It was a militant explosion unprecedented since the apartheid government had crushed and outlawed mass demonstrations against segregation and 'whites-only' rule. And it provided the impetus for the next decade and a half of trade union organisation, which succeeded in uniting workers on a largely non-racial basis, dominated by the slogan 'one industry one union'.

Maverick Insider is an anecdotal, insider's account of the transformation during this period in the textile, clothing and leather worker sectors. It focuses on the outlooks of leadership groups in different parts of that industry and their efforts to influence the nature of the amalgamation of six unions to form the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers' Union (SACTWU), one of the three largest unions of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). It traces the interaction between union leadership and both political parties and community organisations dedicated to making the country ungovernable, as well as those who were determined to stamp out such calls. It details struggles to unite workers across political divides in the same union organisation and to assert an independent working-class point of view in a period of growing African nationalism. It details the traumatic events on the road to the so-called peaceful miracle that created a rainbow nation but left 22 000 South Africans dead in the process.

And it is the story of a team of people who set out to change the world and formed an unshakeable bond in the process.

First People - The Lost History Of The Khoisan (Paperback): Andrew Smith First People - The Lost History Of The Khoisan (Paperback)
Andrew Smith 1
R265 R212 Discovery Miles 2 120 Save R53 (20%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

First people communities are the groups of huntergatherers and herders, representing the oldest human lineages in Africa, who migrated from as far as East Africa to settle across southern Africa, in what is now Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. These groups, known today as the Khoisan, are represented by the Bushmen (or San) and the Khoe (plural Khoekhoen).

In First People, archaeologist Andrew Smith examines what we know about southern Africa’s earliest inhabitants, drawing on evidence from excavations, rock art, the observations of colonial-era travellers, linguistics, the study of the human genome and the latest academic research.

Richly illustrated, First People is an invaluable and accessible work that reaches from the Middle and Late Stone Age to recent times, and explores how the Khoisan were pushed to the margins of history and society. Smith, who is an expert on the history and prehistory of the Khoisan, paints a knowledgeable and fascinating portrait of their land occupation, migration, survival strategies and cultural practices.

Betting On A Darkie - Lifting The Corporate Game (Paperback): Mteto Nyati Betting On A Darkie - Lifting The Corporate Game (Paperback)
Mteto Nyati 2
R335 R288 Discovery Miles 2 880 Save R47 (14%) Ships in 4 - 8 working days

Mteto Nyati knew as a schoolboy in Mthatha, working at his mother’s store, that he wanted to fix and build things. After completing his studies at Natal University, he turned down a Rhodes scholarship and headed for Jo'burg to take up a position at Afrox. He was the only black engineer and the advice he received was ‘don’t mess up’. 

He didn’t and today is one of South Africa’s top CEOs. This is his inspirational story. 

Year Of Fire, Year Of Ash - The Soweto Revolt: Roots Of A Revolution (Paperback): Baruch Hirson Year Of Fire, Year Of Ash - The Soweto Revolt: Roots Of A Revolution (Paperback)
Baruch Hirson
R290 R227 Discovery Miles 2 270 Save R63 (22%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

Some thirty-five years after its original publication, Year of Fire, Year of Ash still stands as one of the leading accounts of the 1976-77 Soweto Revolt, one of the most significant acts of resistance in the history of the anti-apartheid movement.

Authored by a South African activist and scholar who was intimately involved in the movement, the book provides an unparalleled insight into the origins and events of the uprising, from its antecedents in the early 1970s to its role in galvanizing the global struggle against apartheid. Crucially, the book overturned much of the conventional logic around the uprising, by showing that it was not simply a student protest, but a revolt by the wider black working class.

As South Africa experiences a new wave of popular revolt, and as new forms of black consciousness come to the fore in movements around the world, Hirson's book provides a timely reminder of the continued significance of the Soweto revolt to struggles against oppression today.

The Blinded City - Ten Years In Inner-City Johannesburg (Paperback): Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon The Blinded City - Ten Years In Inner-City Johannesburg (Paperback)
Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon 1
R330 R284 Discovery Miles 2 840 Save R46 (14%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

Amid evictions, raids, killings, the drug trade, and fire, inner-city Johannesburg residents seek safety and a home. A grandmother struggles to keep her granddaughter as she is torn away from her. A mother seeks healing in the wake of her son’s murder. And displaced by a city’s drive for urban regeneration, a group of blind migrants try to carve out an existence.

The Blinded City recounts the history of inner-city Johannesburg from 2010 to 2019, primarily from the perspectives of the unlawful occupiers of spaces known as hijacked buildings, bad buildings or dark buildings. Tens of thousands of residents, both South African and foreign national, live in these buildings in dire conditions. This book tells the story of these sites, and the court cases around them, ones that strike at the centre of who has the right to occupy the city.

In February 2010, while Johannesburg prepared for the FIFA World Cup, the South Gauteng High Court ordered the eviction of the unlawful occupiers of an abandoned carpet factory on Saratoga Avenue and that the city’s Metropolitan Municipality provide temporary emergency accommodation for the evicted. The case, which became known as Blue Moonlight and went to the Constitutional Court, catalysed a decade of struggles over housing and eviction in Johannesburg.

The Blinded City chronicles this case, among others, and the aftermath – a tumultuous period in the city characterised by recurrent dispossessions, police and immigration operations, outbursts of xenophobic violence, and political and legal change. All through the decade, there is the backdrop of successive mayors and their attempts to ‘clean up’ the city, and the struggles of residents and urban housing activists for homes and a better life.

The interwoven narratives present a compelling mosaic of life in post-apartheid Johannesburg, one of the globe’s most infamous and vital cities.

The State Of Africa - A History Of The Continent Since Independence (Paperback, Updated Edition): Martin Meredith The State Of Africa - A History Of The Continent Since Independence (Paperback, Updated Edition)
Martin Meredith
R365 Discovery Miles 3 650 Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Africa is forever on our TV screens, but the bad-news stories massively outweigh the good. Ever since the process of decolonisation began in the mid-1950s, and arguably before, the continent has appeared to be stuck in a process of irreversible decline.

How did we get here? What, if anything, is to be done?

Fully revised and updated and weaving together the key stories and characters of the last sixty years into a stunningly compelling and coherent narrative, Martin Meredith has produced the definitive history of how European ideas of how to organise 10 000 different ethnic groups has led to what British prime minister Tony Blair described as the ‘scar on the conscience of the world’.

Authoritative, provocative, and consistently fascinating, this is the seminal book on one of the most important issues facing the West today

Nelson Mandela - Portrait Of An Extraordinary Man (Paperback): Richard Stengel Nelson Mandela - Portrait Of An Extraordinary Man (Paperback)
Richard Stengel 1
R388 R314 Discovery Miles 3 140 Save R74 (19%) Ships in 9 - 15 working days

Previously published as Mandela's Way Written by the co-author of international bestseller Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela: Portrait of an Extraordinary Man presents fifteen powerful lessons on life and leadership based on the life and work of Nelson Mandela (1918 - 2013), whose fight against apartheid in South Africa has become an enduring example of resistance against injustice and oppression. A recipient of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, Mandela is a man who truly changed the course of world history and is arguably the most inspirational figure of the past century. Stengel spent almost three years with Mandela working on his bestselling autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, and through that process became a close friend. Written with the blessing of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, to which the author will donate a percentage of his royalties, Nelson Mandela: Portrait of an Extraordinary Man is an inspirational book of wisdom that will encourage people of all ages to look within themselves to improve their lives, to reconsider the things they take for granted, and to think about the legacy they leave behind.

For The People - A Small Town's Struggle For Freedom Against Apartheid (Paperback): Anelia Schutte For The People - A Small Town's Struggle For Freedom Against Apartheid (Paperback)
Anelia Schutte
R309 R293 Discovery Miles 2 930 Save R16 (5%) Ships in 12 - 17 working days

Anelia Schutte grew up in Knysna – a beautiful town on the coast of South Africa, centred around a picturesque lagoon and popular with tourists. But there was another side to Knysna that those tourists never saw. In the hills surrounding the town with its exclusively white population lay the townships and squatter camps where the coloured and black people were forced to live.

Most white children would never go to the other side of the hill, but Anelia did. Her earliest memories are of being the only white girl at a crèche for black children that her mother, Owéna, set up in the 1980s as a social worker serving the black community. Thirty years on, Anelia, now living in London, yearns to find out more about her mother’s work, and to understand the political unrest that clouded South Africa at the time. She returns to Knysna to find the truth about the town she grew up in, from the stories and memories of the people who were there.

For The People is an exploration of apartheid South Africa through the eyes of Owéna – a white woman who worked tirelessly for the black people of Knysna and found herself swept up in their struggle. They called her Nobantu: ‘for the people'.

The Inheritors - An Intimate Portrait Of A Brave And Bewildered Nation (Paperback): Eve Fairbanks The Inheritors - An Intimate Portrait Of A Brave And Bewildered Nation (Paperback)
Eve Fairbanks
R320 R256 Discovery Miles 2 560 Save R64 (20%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

A dozen years in the making, The Inheritors weaves together the stories of three ordinary South Africans over five tumultuous decades in a sweeping and exquisite look at what really happens when a country resolves to end white supremacy.

Dipuo grew up on the south side of a mine dump that segregated Johannesburg’s black townships from the white-only city. Some nights, she hiked to the top. To a South African teenager in the 1980s—even an anti-apartheid activist like Dipuo—the divide that separated her from the glittering lights on the other side appeared eternal. But in 1994, the world’s last explicit racial segregationist regime collapsed to make way for something unprecedented.

With penetrating psychological insight, intimate reporting, and bewitching prose, The Inheritors tells the story of a country in the throes of a great reckoning. Through the lives of Dipuo, her daughter Malaika, and Christo—one of the last white South Africans drafted to fight for the apartheid regime—award-winning journalist Eve Fairbanks probes what happens when people once locked into certain kinds of power relations find their status shifting. Observing subtle truths about race and power that extend well beyond national borders, she explores questions that preoccupy so many of us today: How can we let go of our pasts, as individuals and as countries? How should historical debts be paid? And how can a person live an honorable life in a society that—for better or worse—they no longer recognize?

Seven Votes - How WWII Changed South Africa Forever (Paperback): Richard Steyn Seven Votes - How WWII Changed South Africa Forever (Paperback)
Richard Steyn 1
R300 R240 Discovery Miles 2 400 Save R60 (20%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

If a mere seven more MPs had voted with Prime Minister JBM Hertzog in favour of neutrality, South Africa’s history would have been quite different.

Parliament’s narrow decision to go to war in 1939 led to a seismic upheaval throughout the 1940s: black people streamed in their thousands from rural areas to the cities in search of jobs; volunteers of all races answered the call to go ‘up north’ to fight; and opponents of the Smuts government actively hindered the war effort by attacking soldiers and committing acts of sabotage. World War Two upended South Africa’s politics, ruining attempts to forge white unity and galvanising opposition to segregation among African, Indian and coloured communities. It also sparked debates among nationalists, socialists, liberals and communists such as the country had never previously experienced.

As Richard Steyn recounts so compellingly in 7 Votes, the war’s unforeseen consequence was the boost it gave to nationalism, both Afrikaner and African, that went on to transform the country in the second half of the 20th century. The book brings to life an extraordinary cast of characters, including wartime leader Jan Smuts, DF Malan and his National Party colleagues, African nationalists from Anton Lembede and AB Xuma to Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela, the influential Indian activists Yusuf Dadoo and Monty Naicker, and many others.

Congo Diary - Episodes Of The Revolutionary War In The Congo (Paperback): Ernesto "Che" Guevara Congo Diary - Episodes Of The Revolutionary War In The Congo (Paperback)
Ernesto "Che" Guevara; Foreword by Aleida Guevara
R265 R207 Discovery Miles 2 070 Save R58 (22%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

In April 1965, Che Guevara set out clandestinely from Havana to Congo to head a force of some 150 veteran Cuban soldiers to assist the Congolese Patrice Lumumba Battalion, four years after the assassination of the democratically elected socialist president of Congo, Patrice Lumumba. Because this diary deals with what Che admits was a “failure”, he examines every painful detail about what went wrong in order to draw constructive lessons for planned future guerrilla movements.

Unique among his books, Congo Diary gives us Che’s brutal honesty and his story-telling ability as he recounts this fascinating episode of guerrilla warfare unblinkingly and without sugar coating or jargon.

Considered by some to be Che’s best book, it is also one of the few that he had a chance to edit for publication after writing it.

The Poisoners - On South Africa's Toxic Past (Paperback): Imraan Coovadia The Poisoners - On South Africa's Toxic Past (Paperback)
Imraan Coovadia
R300 R240 Discovery Miles 2 400 Save R60 (20%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

The Poisoners is a history of four devastating chapters in the making of the region, seen through the disturbing use of toxins and accusations of poisoning circulated by soldiers, spies, and politicians in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Imraan Coovadia’s fascinating new book exposes the secret use of poisons and diseases in the Rhodesian bush war and independent Zimbabwe, and the apparent connection to the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States; the enquiry into the chemical and biological warfare programme in South Africa known as Project Coast, discovered through the arrest and failed prosecution of Dr Wouter Basson; the use of toxic compounds such as Virodene to treat patients at the height of the Aids epidemic in South Africa, and the insistence of the government that proven therapies like Nevirapine, which could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, were in fact poisons; and the history of poisoning and accusations of poisoning in the modern history of the African National Congress, from its guerrilla camps in Angola to Jacob Zuma’s suggestion that his fourth wife collaborated with a foreign intelligence agency to have him murdered.

But The Poisoners is not merely a book of history. It is also a meditation, by a most perceptive commentator, on the meaning of race, on the unhappy history of black and white in southern Africa, and on the nature of good and evil.

People's War - New Light On The Struggle For South Africa (Paperback, Revised Edition): Anthea Jeffery People's War - New Light On The Struggle For South Africa (Paperback, Revised Edition)
Anthea Jeffery 1
R320 R256 Discovery Miles 2 560 Save R64 (20%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

Twenty-five years have passed since South Africans were being shot, hacked or burned to death in political conflict. The memory of the trauma has faded where some 20 500 people were killed between 1984 and 1994. Conventional wisdom claims that they died at the hands of a state-backed Third Force. The more accurate explanation is that they died as a result of the people’s war the ANC unleashed.

After the people’s war began in September 1984, intimidation and political killings rapidly accelerated. At the same time, a remarkably effective propaganda campaign put the blame for violence on the National Party government and its alleged Inkatha surrogate. Sympathy for the ANC soared, while its rivals suffered crippling losses in credibility and support. By 1993 the ANC was able to dominate the negotiating process, as well as to control the militarily undefeated police and army and bend them to its will. By May 1994 it had trounced its rivals and taken over government. Many books have been written on South Africa's political transition, but none deals adequately with the people's war. This book does. It shows the extraordinary success of the people’s war in giving the ANC a virtual monopoly on power, as well as the great cost at which this was done. Apart from the terror and killings it sparked, the people’s war set in motion forces that cannot easily be tamed. Contemporary South Africa and the problems it confronts cannot be fully understood without a knowledge of the scars and damaging legacy of the people’s war.

For this new edition of her seminal work, Anthea Jeffery has revised and abridged her book. She has also included a brief overview of the ANC’s National Democratic Revolution, for which the people’s war was intended to prepare the way. Since 1994, the NDR has incrementally been implemented in many different spheres. It is also now being speeded up in its current and more ‘radical’ phase.

The Boer Invasion Of The Zulu Kingdom - 1837-1840 (Paperback): John Laband The Boer Invasion Of The Zulu Kingdom - 1837-1840 (Paperback)
John Laband
R290 R232 Discovery Miles 2 320 Save R58 (20%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

The battle of Blood River, or Ncome, on 16 December 1838 has long been regarded as a critical moment in the history of South Africa. It is the culminating victory by the land-hungry Boers who had migrated out of the British-ruled Cape and invaded the Zulu kingdom in 1837.

Many Afrikaners long acclaimed their triumph as the God-given justification for their subsequent dominion over Africans. By contrast, Africans celebrate the war with pride for its significance in their valiant struggle against colonial aggression.

In this telling of the Boer invasion, John Laband deals even-handedly with the warring sides in the conflict, explaining both victory and defeat in the many battles that marked the war. Crucially, he takes the Zulu evidence into full account to present the less familiar Zulu perspective and to explain the decisions taken by the Zulu leaders, as they grappled with the existential threat of the Boer invasion.

The protagonists are placed in the context of a subcontinent experiencing a time of turmoil in the early nineteenth century. A time that saw the displacement of populations and migrations, the emergence of new, warlike African kingdoms such as that of the amaZulu, and the inexorable and violent advance of colonial settlement and rule.

Memory Against Forgetting - A Photographic Journey Through South Africa?s History 1946-2010 (Hardcover): Ranjith Kally Memory Against Forgetting - A Photographic Journey Through South Africa’s History 1946-2010 (Hardcover)
Ranjith Kally
R350 R273 Discovery Miles 2 730 Save R77 (22%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

Renowned South African photographer Ranjith Kally captured iconic scenes throughout his career, such as his portrait Umkumbane, which has come to symbolise the shimmering jazz age of African townships in the 1950s.

When Miriam Makeba returned to Maseru, Lesotho, for a concert for black South Africans at the height of apartheid, Ranjith, too ventured to Lesotho and returned home with a remarkable image of an exiled singer poised between joy and heartbreak. And in a series of unflinching portraits, he documented with probity the horror of the forced removals in Natal.

As one of our country’s most prolific photojournalists, Ranjith’s pictures provide us with a glimpse into the tensions of the past and the events that shaped our future.

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