Beyond Fear is the testimony of Ebrahim Ebrahim, a revolutionary amongst revolutionaries, whose poignant and inspirational account of his years spent dedicated to bringing down the apartheid state is told in ways we have not heard.

As one of the founding members of Umkhonto we Sizwe, he played a central role in directing the sabotage campaign of the early 1960s. Convicted for this, Ebrahim arrived on Robben Island in 1964, where for over 15 years he played a leadership role in the creation of the ‘University of Robben Island’, the university of revolutionary ideology. Soon after his release, Ebrahim became the head of the ANC’s Political Military Committee in Swaziland, and as such, his life was under constant threat. He was abducted in December 1986 by apartheid agents and taken to South Africa to be tortured at John Vorster Square. He was charged with high treason and sentenced to a further 20 years, which would be his second stint on the Island. Ebrahim was, however, released in February 1991.

Beyond Fear also tells the story of his post-1994 life, where he travelled the world doing international conflict resolution work. He later served as South Africa’s deputy minister of foreign affairs. His great love story began at the age of 63 when he met his beloved Shannon Ebrahim with whom he had two children, who were, as he says his ‘greatest teachers’. Ebrahim Ebrahim passed away on 6 December 2021, having become one of South Africa’s most loved heroes.

As National Director of Public Prosecutions from 2005 until 2007, Advocate Vusi Pikoli pursued criminal charges against the current President of South Africa Jacob Zuma and the convicted former National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi. It was his dogged determination to bring the country's top cop to account that ultimately saw Pikoli removed from office and a public inquiry into his suspension held. My Second Initiation traces Pikoli's journey from his first graduation to manhood in the hills of the Eastern Cape, to his second in the corridors of power in government. Pikoli has a deeply ingrained loyalty to the Constitution of the country and a keenly developed sense of justice, cultivated on the politically aware streets and rugby fields of New Brighton township. He recounts how he fled with his ANC unit into exile and spent fourteen years away from his home and his family, suffering the loss of a child and a man he considered a brother.

Imbokodo: Women Who Shape Us is a groundbreaking series of books which introduces you to the powerful stories of South African women who have all made their mark and cleared a path for women and girls. These books recognise, acknowledge and honour our heroines and elders from the past and the present. South African women are silent no more on the roles that we have played in advancing our lives as artists, storytellers, writers, politicians and educationists. The title 'Imbokodo' was been chosen as it is a Zulu word that means "rock" and is often used in the saying 'Wathint' Abafazi, Wathint' Imbokodo!', which means "You Strike a Women, You Strike a Rock!" These books were made possible with the support of Biblionef and funding from the National Arts Council. In 10 Extraordinary Leaders, Activists & Protesters you will read about women who fought against colonialism and oppression. Here are the stories of women heroes through history, whose stories are connected because of a shared passion for equality and justice.

Imbokodo: Women Who Shape Us is a groundbreaking series of books which introduces you to the powerful stories of South African women who have all made their mark and cleared a path for women and girls. These books recognise, acknowledge and honour our heroines and elders from the past and the present. South African women are silent no more on the roles that we have played in advancing our lives as artists, storytellers, writers, politicians and educationists. The title 'Imbokodo' was been chosen as it is a Zulu word that means "rock" and is often used in the saying 'Wathint' Abafazi, Wathint' Imbokodo!', which means "You Strike a Women, You Strike a Rock!" These books were made possible with the support of Biblionef and funding from the National Arts Council. In 10 Curious Inventors, Healers & Creators you will read about the women who shape our world through education, science and maths. You will read about women who became teachers, nurses, social workers, scientists and community workers, overcame obstacles and through their work fought for social change.

Jan Smuts, one of the most infamous South Africans of the twentieth century remains a controversial figure. Was he one of the outstanding statesmen of his time or was he perhaps a traitor of Afrikaner interests and possibly a racist? Today there are still strong opinions on Smuts’s role.

Like Paul Kruger at the end of the nineteenth century, and Nelson Mandela as the twentieth century drew to a close, it was Jan Smuts who stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries in the first half of the twentieth century; he was a leader of extraordinary stature and his statesmanship is recognised internationally. And yet, the NP and ANC governments have downplayed his contributions for decades, because it did not endorse their Afrikaner and black nationalist versions of South African history. A reappraisal of Smuts will fill a gap in the literature on the history of South Africa in the first half of the twentieth century. Many of the biographies and other works on Smuts appeared during his lifetime or soon after his death. Today, a few generations later, we have a better perspective on his contributions within the historical context of his time. New evidence continues to come to light, making it possible to reach a more informed opinion on questions about Smuts, issues which previously could not be answered conclusively.

The purpose of the book, written almost three generations after his death, is to recall and re-evaluate Smuts’s contributions in various fields and in this way introduce him to the younger generation. It is important that Smuts be judged in the context of his particular time and circumstances. As far as his outlook on war and peace, civilisation, race and class differences, the capitalist system and South Africa’s place in the wider world are concerned, Smuts was certainly a product of his time. It would be unfair to measure him and his contemporaries against today’s norms and values. To do justice to him, his supporters, as well as his opponents and critics, due consideration should be accorded to how they lived, thought and reasoned in that era.

This is the story of a brave warrior and “a formidable tactician, a masterly politician and a brilliant orator”; a Xhosa Nkosi who destroyed a British Navy troopship that threatened to annihilate his nation in 1852; the story of how the attack was carried out by a few African black Xhosa people.

This is the story of a lone abalone diver who spent scores of hours investigating the wreck of HMS ‘Birkenhead’ between 1958 and 1988. This is the story how the irrefutable evidence of sabotage was found. This is the story of Britain´s mindless invasion into Xhosaland.

This is the lamentable story how one of the bravest African Royals was buried in a pauper´s hole on Robben Island; a disrespect and disgust to the Xhosa Kingdom in general and the amaRharhabe in particular.

Spanning nearly 100 years, Faith & Defiance: The Life of Sally Motlana tells the story of one of South Africa’s most eminent women activists and community builders - Sally Bampifeletseng (Maunye) Motlana.

Born of humble roots in the old village of Moremela near Pilgrims Rest in the then-Transvaal, Sally grew into a fierce activist and voice of the oppressed who answered the call when she saw all that needed to be done in the struggle for freedom and a democratic South Africa. As a toddler, Sally moved to Johannesburg with her mother, where they joined her father and lived first in Vrededorp and then Sophiatown. Educated at St Cyprian’s School, she was taken under the wing of esteemed Anglican missionary Father Trevor Huddleston.

Profoundly influenced by her religious upbringing, she developed a passionate protectiveness of the poor – especially women and children– and an unquenchable thirst for justice that never diminished during her numerous detentions and harassment by the Security Police. Instead of a straight biography, author Mukoni Ratshitenga has skilfully crafted a riveting account of a woman and her country, rich with vignettes and fascinating encounters of great historical significance.

One of the many encounters in the book tells how during his hiding from the police for seventeen months before his arrest in 1962, Nelson Mandela, visited Sally at her Dube home and what transpired thereafter. Another tells how during one of her spells of detention in 1978 at Jeppe Police station, she came across two Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) combatants who had been detained there after they had been deployed from Tanzania. Fearing that they would be killed, she hatched and executed a daring plan for their escape - all whilst being detained herself.

The book contains many accounts of Sally’s fearlessness in the face of apartheid police harassment and brutality. It highlights how her commitment to the struggle for liberation and her deep Christian faith reinforced each other. Faith & Defiance: The Life of Sally Motlana is a record of both the brutality of apartheid and colonialism and the determination of one woman to fight it and through her story, the story of millions.

This is the life story of a South African political detainee who underwent 104 days of solitary confinement under Section 29 of the draconian apartheid-era Terrorism Act before being brought to trial with 13 other political activists in what became known as the "Yengeni Trial".

Gertrude Fester begins her story with her childhood and young adult life in Cape Town until she becomes politically active in the city's progressive women's organisation before focusing on her above-ground and underground work for the liberation struggle that led to her detention in the second half of the 1980s.

It is in her depictions of her recollections of the daily experiences of solitary confinement and use of poetry written during this period that Gertrude takes the reader through the physically and emotionally draining experience of solitary confinement in apartheid South Africa during the height of repression and resistance.

This book is an account of Paul O'Sullivan's role in helping to not only nail South Africa's most powerful policeman, but also the world's top cop. It is based on thousands of pages of emails, statements, affidavits, letters, press reports, court records and transcripts as well as interviews with O'Sullivan himself. This version provides a perspective from his point of view as a key player in the saga. While O'Sullivan's name consistently appears in almost every key breaking story around the Selebi matter, his role, for whatever reason, has been played down.

The Jackie Selebi story, and the satellite narratives that orbited it, is a truly remarkable chronicle that requires commitment and stamina to grasp fully. There is so much detail, so much subterfuge, lying, dishonesty and cover-up by Selebi and his cronies that it is extremely challenging and almost impossible to pick out one comprehensive, linear thread. The drama played itself out in different layers and strata of South African society, sometimes simultaneously and often in an apparently unrelated fashion. The characters that populate the saga, apart from Jackie Selebi, include the then president of the country, his political rival, myriad crooked, corrupt businessmen, a gallery of rotten, very senior rogue cops, a phalanx of undercover intelligence operatives, two- bit hired guns, scrap metal dealers, drug and human traffickers, international criminal syndicates and a cast of thousands of common-or-garden-variety petty thugs and criminals.

"Sounds like a movie," say most of those who have asked about this project. Yes, but what is startling and disturbing is that this is no fairy-tale. Those of us who have become accustomed to the commodification of crime as "entertainment" in popular television series have this need to make sense of it by blurring fiction with chilling reality.

Paul O'Sullivan is no suave James Bond in a tuxedo, equipped with special equipment, downing his martini surrounded by a bevy of women. When dealing with criminals he can be abrasive, brusque and uncompromising. But who wouldn't be in a world that is populated with real thugs and dangerous killers, people who kill, maim and disrupt law and order and destabilise the country? These are sociopaths and psychopaths who do not care how much harm they cause as they go about their "business". So, what drove or drives O'Sullivan? Revenge? A thirst for justice? It's simple really. Paul O'Sullivan hates criminals and low-lifes like dogs hate flies. His long career in international law enforcement has equipped him with the intellectual and physical tools to deal with the most canny and violent of criminals.

He enjoys hunting them down and, like the radioactive bite that imbues Spiderman with special powers, criminals provide O'Sullivan with an energy and a stamina that seems to grow in proportion to the challenges they present him. His work, he says, is far from done. He is presently attempting to ensure that Czech-born fugitive, Radovan Krejcir, is extradited to his home country to face numerous charges.

In 2016 South African film audiences were mesmerised by the film Noem My Skollie, which was written by - and based on the life of - John W. Fredericks. In this book Fredericks tells the full story on which the film was based.

Growing up in a dusty township on the Cape Flats, Fredericks formed a gang with his friends, and at the age of seventeen he was arrested for robbery and sentenced to two years in Pollsmoor prison. There the number gangs vied to initiate him into their ranks, but he resisted their advances, offering instead to help them push their time by telling stories. And so he became the prison ‘cinema’, drawing on his storytelling abilities and cementing his ambition to become a writer.

Life after prison became a nightmare when he was arrested for a murder he hadn’t committed, his childhood friends were sentenced to die on the gallows, and a gang boss tried to kill him. Slowly he turned his life around, getting a job and building a family, but society kept judging him as a gangster. Struggling to deal with his past, he turned to storytelling again, and painstakingly learnt the art of scriptwriting. The result was Noem My Skollie, which was watched by almost 90 000 people and won numerous awards.

Written in a powerful and authentic voice, Skollie is a gripping memoir of life on the Cape Flats, of prison and gangs, and of one man’s struggle to survive all this by telling stories.

The intimate and personal story behind the man who tried to kill Verwoerd but didn’t succeed.

“The raucous wail of sirens pierced the quiet Saturday afternoon, making me drop my book and rush outside to see what drama was taking place. A fleet of cars, their sirens screaming, roared along Oxford Road two hundred yards from our house. I stood on the lawn wondering what on earth it was because sirens were rarely heard near our home. I went back inside; the commotion was over. But within half an hour our telephone started ringing non-stop . . .”

9 April 1960 was the day that changed Susie Cazenove’s life – the day her father, David Pratt, shot the Prime Minister of South Africa, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd. Verwoerd, commonly known as the architect of apartheid, didn’t die, but Pratt’s family lived with the legacy of his action.

A chance encounter with the late David Rattray of Fugitive’s Drift led Cazenove to revisit the memories of that terrible day. With Rattray’s encouragement she put pen to paper to describe the extraordinary events of that day and its consequences. Part family memoir, part ode to the settlement of Johannesburg, Cazenove skilfully weaves her family history and the mood in South Africa in the 1950s and 60s as a background to what may have led her father, a farmer and gentle man, to commit a treasonous act.

Goeiemôre, mnr Mandela vertel die uitsonderlike verhaal van hoe Zelda la Grange se lewe, oortuigings en vooroordele omvergewerp word deur die grootste staatsman van ons tyd.

Dit volg die ongelooflike lewenspad van ’n verskrikte tikster in haar vroeë twintigs wat gekies word as Nelson Mandela se lojaalste steunpilaar en haar loopbaan daaraan wy om reisgenoot en versorger te word van die man wat sy ‘Khulu’ noem.

Hierdie boek wentel om liefde en tweede kanse. Dit sal jou lewe raak en jou laat glo elkeen van ons, ongeag wie ons is en wat ons gedoen het, het die mag om te verander.

In this book you will see over 50 photos of memorable moments of the sporting Madiba, as well as sport stars paying tribute to Madiba after his death.

Featured sports stars include: Tiger Woods, David Beckham, John Smit, Gary Player, Graeme Smith, Lucas Radebe, Bryan Habana, Francois Pienaar, Ernie Els, Sir Alex Ferguson, Cristiano Ronaldo, Baby Jake Matala, Lennox Lewis, Muhammad Ali and many more.

This insider's account of the workings of Umkhonto weSizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, during the underground years, is a modern-day story of intrigue and cunning in the fight against apartheid. The author, Ronnie Kasrils, begins by describing his involvement with the South African Communist Party and the underground resistance within South Africa in the 1950s and early 1960s. Following the arrests of Mandela and other ANC leaders, he fled into hiding overseas, became one of the key commanders of Umkhonto weSizwe and was responsible for setting up training camps in Tanzania, Cuba and elsewhere. Kasrils became notorious as the "Red Pimpernel" as he slipped in and out of South Africa in a plethora of disguises to run secret missions, narrowly escaping arrest and detention in several close shaves with security forces. After the legalising of the ANC and SACP, he returned to Johannesburg to take up a position on the National Executive Committee. The story culminates with the disastrous march on Bisho in the Ciskei homelands in September 1992, when police opened fire on the crowd that Kasrils was leading and a massacre ensued.

As the Mangaung Conference draws closer, many people have been asking the question, who is Kgalema Motlanthe – what is his background, and what does he stand for?

Ebrahim Harvey presents a superb account of a man characterised by his reticence. Harvey provides a rare and thorough insight into this most private and yet among the most powerful of men in South Africa. We learn about Motlanthe’s ancestral family and political awakenings as he discovers the ANC. From here we come to understand the importance of his time on Robben Island and the friendships and alliances he formed there, which would later define his political career.

In 1997 he succeeded Cyril Ramaphosa as ANC Secretary General and the mark of this reserved but often courageously independent politician was beginning to be noticed. Just over 10 years later, Motlanthe had risen to become the third President of the Republic of South Africa, though under exceptional circumstances.

It was Gwede Mantashe who said that it was a measure of the man that he could allow a strong critic of the ANC to write his biography. With impeccable timing and a real sense of history, this book for the first time allows the public to get to know and understand Motlanthe.

This biography contains wide-ranging interviews with Kgalema, his family, his friends and comrades at Cosatu, NUM, the SACP, the ANC and government. It also includes interviews with leading figures in other political organisations, civil society, academia and the media.

Unsparing in its scope, detailed in its revelations and with a rigorously critical analysis, this book will reveal not only the complex politician but also the very human nature of the man.

Patriots & Parasites, completed just days before Smuts’s unexpected death in 2016, is her account of the momentous period known as the Transition Era, through the lens of her 25-year career as a key opposition MP and a respected legislator.

With ambitious breadth and rare insight, she examines:

• The arduous but exhilarating work of writing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
• The great experiment in catharsis that was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
• The reinvigoration of racial polarisation under the Mbeki administration, and the slow burn of resentment that is coming to a head among the next generation (as manifested in the #RhodesMustFall campaign)
• The entrenchment of cronyism under Zuma, and the fight to protect the crucial balance of accountability enshrined in the freedom of the media and the independence of the judiciary

An updated new edition of the original publication issued by the ANC Elections Committee to honour the legacy of Comrade Oliver Tambo, late president and national chairman of the African National Congress.

This little book provides an overview of his life and generous contributions during the struggle for a new South Africa.

Written in an engaging style by esteemed historian Luli Callinicos, this `mini-biography' is accessible to all ages.

Maqoma was the most renowned Xhosa chief of South Africa’s 19th century Cape-Xhosa Wars and arguably one of Africa’s greatest resistance leaders of the colonial period. He was a man of considerable intellect and eloquence, striving to maintain traditional social structures and the power of the Xhosa royalty in the face of colonial depredations and dispossession.

When accommodation and diplomacy failed, Maqoma led Xhosa forces in three separate wars against the British-ruled Cape Colony. Evidence suggests that Maqoma made covert attempts to undermine the Nongqawuse Cattle Killing prophecies of 1856-57 which brought devastation on the Xhosa nation. Imprisoned on Robben Island for 12 years, Maqoma was paroled in 1869. When he attempted to resettle on his stolen land, however, he was re-banished to the infamous island prison, where he died under mysterious circumstances in 1873. And yet his name lives on.

In vivid prose the author records the life of a leader of exrtaordinary tenacity, flexibility, political and martial skills, who tragically became the victim of colonial domination.

Jacana Media is proud to make this important book available again, now with a completely new introduction. First published by Oceanbooks, New York and Melbourne and University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg in 2001, the book was short-listed for the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award in 2002.

In the public imagination the struggle that saw the end of apartheid and the inauguration of a democratic South Africa is seen as one waged by black people who were often imprisoned or killed for their efforts. Raymond Suttner, an academic, is one of a small group of white South Africans who was imprisoned for his efforts to overthrow the apartheid regime. He was first arrested in 1975 and tortured with electric shocks because he refused to supply information to the police. He then served 8 years because of his underground activities for the African National Congress and South African Communist Party.

After his release in 1983, he returned to the struggle and was forced to go underground to evade arrest, but was re-detained in 1986 under repeatedly renewed states of emergency, for 27 months, 18 of these in solitary confinement, because whites were kept separately and all other whites apart from Suttner were released. In the last months of this detention Suttner was allowed to have a pet lovebird, which he tamed and used to keep inside his tracksuit. When he was eventually released from detention in September 1988 the bird was on his shoulder. Suttner was held under stringent house arrest conditions, imposed to impede further political activities. He, however, defied his house arrest restrictions and attended an Organisation for African Unity meeting in Harare in August 1989 and he remained out of the country for five months. Shortly after his return, when he anticipated being re-arrested, the state of emergency was lifted and the ANC and other banned organisations were unbanned. Suttner became a leading figure in the ANC and SACP.

The book describes Suttner’s experience of prison in a low-key, unromantic voice, providing the texture of prison life, but unlike most ‘struggle memoirs’ it is also intensely personal. Suttner is not averse to admitting his fears and anxieties.

The new edition contains an introduction where Suttner describes his break with the ANC and SACP. But, he argues, the reason for his rupturing this connection that had been so important to his life were the same – ethical reasons – that had led him to join. He remains convinced that what he did was right and continues to act in accordance with those convictions.

The head of a business empire, Harry Oppenheimer played an influential role in twentieth century South Africa, a role that is celebrated by some and condemned by others.

This book investigates Oppenheimer’s political thinking, drawing from his speeches over the years. It looks at his views on liberalism, apartheid, socialism, sanctions, trade unions, education, geopolitics, the press and the legacy of Cecil John Rhodes.

Van sy eerste dag as nasionale dienspligtige was Francois Verster in die sop weens sy ingebore rebelsheid. Hy vertel op skreeusnaakse wyse van sy basiese opleiding en lewe as troeponderwyser op Omega.

Hierdie geensins verromantiseerde storie bied ’n vars hoek op die Grensoorloggenre en ’n blik op hoe Afrikanermans die nuwe Suid-Afrika beleef.

This important book brings together the previously unpublished letters of three women, Lilian Ngoyi, Bessie Head and Dora Taylor. While Ngoyi, Head and the lesser-known Taylor each made vital and perhaps under-appreciated contributions to the southern African struggle, these letters record their ordinary, domestic lives as well as touching on the socio-political struggles which they conducted from within their homes.

Bessie Head was a writer of novels, short stories and social history, and towards the end of her life was celebrated internationally. Dora Taylor, a white woman who was an early member of the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), was also a writer, but her longer work, was not published until after her death and she is still not a widely known public figure. Lilian Ngoyi was an ANC leader and one of the organisers of the 1956 Women’s March to the Union Buildings in Pretoria and she was repeatedly arrested for her involvement in trade union and political matters.

Each woman writes to one trusted friend or relative. Ngoyi, Head and Taylor did not know each other but are linked by their political sympathies, their comparable vocations and practices, and by the fact that each had to endure her own version of exile as a result of her activities. These letters record all three writers’ joys and sorrows as they struggled to live principled lives in adversity. As well as giving access to the thoughts of three remarkable women letter-writers, this timely book presents letters as literary artefacts, not just sources of information and opinion. It invites readers to taste the intriguing and sometimes disturbing pleasures of reading personal letters.

In the first three months of 1976, during his imprisonment on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela wrote the bulk of his autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom". This was an illegal act, and the manuscript had to be smuggled out by fellow prisoner Mac Maharaj on his release that year. Maharaj used the opportunity to ask Mandela and other political prisoners to write essays about South Africa's political future. These were smuggled out with Mandela's autobiography, and are published, 25 years later, in this book.
These essays provide a "snapshot" of the thinking of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and other prominent Robben Island prisoners before the 1976 Soweto uprising changed the face of politics in South Africa. As such they provide an insight into our history. Each essay is preceded by a biographical introduction and a sketch of the author specially commissioned for this volume.

When Daniel is tasked with writing the biography of his grandfather, Jules Browde - one of South Africa’s most celebrated advocates - he gets straight to work. But the task that at first seems so simple comes to overwhelm him.

The troubled progress of Daniel’s book stands in sharp contrast to the clear-edged tales his grandfather tells him. Spanning almost a century, these gripping stories compellingly conjure other worlds: the streets of 1920s Yeoville, the battlefields of the Second World War, the courtrooms of apartheid South Africa.

The Relatively Public Life Of Jules Browde is more than the portrait of an unusual South African life, it is the moving tale of a complex and tender relationship between grandfather and grandson, and an exploration of how we are made and unmade in the stories we tell about our lives.

The richly anecdotal story of an extraordinary life – when baby Mamphela was born to teacher parents in the rural village of Kranspoort, few would have predicted that she would become not only a medical doctor, but an international leader and the founder of not one but two new political movements. As a young woman, Mamphela was instrumental in creating the ideology of Black Consciousness with her partner, Steve Biko. As an accomplished and well-off businesswoman who had reached the pinnacle of success, this year she felt compelled to start Agang SA , to provide South African voters with an alternative to the inept and increasingly corrupt ANC.

In this very readable autobiography, Mamphela Ramphele vividly describes her rural childhood, her extended family, her first loves and losses – after the death of her firstborn, she nearly lost her and Steve’s baby after his death by torture – and her subsequent successes in both politics and business.

She exposes what went on behind the scenes in the run-up to the launch of Agang SA, discusses her relationship with a number of prominent South Africans, including Helen Zille, and she shares her vision for a future South Africa of which we can all be proud.