On 10 June 1980, during a seemingly endless day of bloody fighting, 13 men of the South African Defence Force died and several more were wounded after 61 Mechanised Infantry Battalion Group attacked a vast complex of Swapo military bases in Angola.

During Operation Sceptic second lieutenant Paul Louw led his platoon in four Ratel infantry fighting vehicles to a battleground called Smokeshell. In the ensuing chaos of that day 12 national servicemen of his platoon of 44 were killed and he himself was wounded. In a separate incident during the fighting his company second-in-command was also slain. One of his troops, 18-year-old HP Ferreira, was shot through the pelvis by a 14,5 mm anti-aircraft round and also hit by AK-47 bullets.

Louw spent the night drenched in the blood and guts of his men, hunkered down with a handful of other survivors in a Ratel destroyed by an RPG 7 rocket, isolated from the rest of the South African attack force.

Blood Brothers records the dramatic events that took place in Angola that day, in the words of the survivors of the battle. It investigates the human cost of war after the last shots have been fired and follows the veterans as they return to the battleground four decades later in search of peace.

In The Truth About Cape Slavery, Patric Tariq Mellet argues that modern South Africa – its economy and politics – is shaped and established on the foundation of chattel slavery just like the United States of America.

Cape slavery, rather than minor, was a crucial feature of maritime capitalism. This then moved to become the cornerstone of the Cape’s agricultural economy.

The ANC has ruled South Africa for three decades during which time the country has gone from the promise of the Rainbow Nation to disfunction and despair. In The Super Cadres, bestselling author Pieter du Toit examines this legacy from the early halcyon days through to the disappointment of the Ramaphosa presidency.

Du Toit asks key questions before coming to a critical observation and a damning conclusion:

• What was the state of the ANC when it took power?
• Was ANC failure inevitable? Did they inherit a country so stricken by apartheid that success was impossible?
• When did the first signs of misrule and corruption occur?
• How did each of the presidencies perform, from Mandela to Ramaphosa? What role did each play in the road to failure?
• What was President Cyril Ramaphosa doing to stop state capture while he was deputy president?

Du Toit concludes that at the very centre of ANC – and thus state - failure is ‘cadre deployment’ which the ANC adopted as official party policy under President Thabo Mbeki. He shows how, over time, the appointment of cadres at every level of government inevitably led to the (con)fusion of party and state, the spread of incompetence, and the dire corruption that ate into every part of the country once Jacob Zuma took over.

‘The freezing loneliness made one wish for death,’ journalist Joyce Sikakane-Rankin said of solitary confinement. With seven other women, including Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, she was held for more than a year.

This is the story of these heroic women, their refusal to testify in the ‘Trial of Twenty-Two’ in 1969, their brutal detention and how they picked up their lives afterwards. 

In The Lie of 1652, influential blogger and history activist Mellet retells and debunks established pre­colonial and colonial land dispossession history. He provides a radically new, fresh perspective on South African history and highlights 176 years of San/Khoi colonial resistance.

Contextualising the cultural mix of the Cape, he recounts the history of forced and voluntary migration to the Cape by Africans, Indians, Southeast Asians, Europeans and the African Diaspora in a new way.

This provocative, novel perspective on 'Colouredness' also provides a highly topical new look at the burning issue of land, and how it was lost.

Wits University celebrates 100 years of academic and research excellence, innovation, and social justice in 2022. The origins of Wits lie in the South African School of Mines, which was established in Kimberley in 1896 and transferred to Johannesburg as the Transvaal Technical Institute in 1904, becoming the Transvaal University College in 1906 and renamed the South African School of Mines and Technology four years later. Full university status was granted in 1922, incorporating the College as the University of the Witwatersrand. Professor Jan H. Hofmeyr was its first Principal.

The University of the Witwatersrand occupies a special place in the hearts and minds of South Africans. Its history is inextricably linked with the development of Johannesburg, with mining and economic development, and with political and social activism across the country.

Wits University at 100: From Excavation to Innovation captures important moments of Wits’ story in celebration of the university’s centenary in 2022. It explores Wits’ origins, the space and place that it occupies in society, and its transformation as it prepares the ground for the next century. From its humble beginnings as a mining college in Johannesburg to its current position as a flourishing and inclusive university, Wits University at 100 is a story of innovation driven from the global South.

In text and image, Wits is presented as a dynamic institution that thrives because of its people, many of whom, in one way or another, have shifted the world. The experiences, achievements and insights of past and present ‘Witsies’ come alive in this glossy, full-colour book that maps the university’s vision for the future.

Safari Nation opens new lines of inquiry into the study of national parks in Africa and the rest of the world.

The Kruger National Park is South Africa’s most iconic nature reserve, renowned for its rich flora and fauna. According to Dlamini, there is another side to the park, a social history neglected by scholars and popular writers alike in which blacks (meaning Africans, coloureds and Indians) occupy centre stage. Safari Nation details the ways in which black people devoted energies to conservation and to the park over the course of the twentieth century – an engagement that transcends the stock (black) figure of the labourer and the poacher.

By exploring the complex and dynamic ways in which blacks of varying class, racial, religious and social backgrounds related to the Kruger National Park, and with the help of previously unseen archival photographs, Dlamini’s narrative also sheds new light on how and why Africa’s national parks – often derided by scholars as colonial impositions – survived the end of white rule on the continent. Relying on oral histories, photographs and archival research, Safari Nation engages both with African historiography and with ongoing debates about the ‘land question’, democracy and citizenship in South Africa.

The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale has been a source of fierce contestation and emotion for decades, but up to now little was known about the Recces’ presence and impact during this controversial battle.

In the last book of the nail-biting trilogy about 1 Recce, the award-winning author Alexander Strachan, himself an ex-Recce, reveals more on the Recces’ involvement there.

Packed with suspense, adrenaline, high drama and unforgettable accounts by ex-Recces who experienced these adventures personally.

Stellenbosch is world renowned for its wine, gorgeous scenery, and beautiful people. It’s the home of students working towards their future, successful businessmen and respected professors. But don’t let the luxury and blue mountains fool you. The sleepy town hides numerous crimes that rocked this community, the country and the world.

Over the past two decades the front pages of newspapers splashed the details of the murders of Inge Lotz, Hannah Cornelius, Susan Rohde, the Van Breda family... But this book also contains the less known victims such as Felicity Cilliers, the farm worker who’s murder was forgotten by all but her family. The victims and the murderers in this book come from all walks of life and confirms that not even Stellenbosch can escape the harsh reality of crime in South Africa.

The acclaimed author and journalist Julian Jansen third book reads like a crime novel and contains never before published information on each of the crimes.

Die Slag van Cuito Cuanavale is al dekades lank 'n bron van hewige konflik en emosie, maar tot nou toe was min bekend oor die Recces se teenwoordigheid en impak tydens dié omstrede gevegte.

In hierdie laaste boek van die spanningsvolle trilogie oor 1 Recce onthul Alexander Strachan, bekroonde skrywer en self 'n oud-Recce, meer oor die Recces se betrokkenheid daar.

Propvol spanning, adrenalien, hoogdrama en onvergeetlike vertellings deur oud-Recces wat dié ervarings eerstehands beleef het.

This book brings to life the untold story behind the release of Nelson Mandela, as revealed in previously top-secret records.

Kobie Coetsee, Minister of Justice at the time, kept an archive on ‘Prisoner 913’, on which the authors – a historian and a journalist – draw to retell the story. This is history as it actually happened, as opposed to how it has been portrayed up to now, even in writings by Mandela himself. 

Prisoner 913 sets right the historical record.

As a young underground cadre in 1980s Durban, Moe Shaik endured detention, following orders for the good of the organisation. Little did he know that this stint in the police cells would lead to his lifelong relationship with The Nightingale, a Special Branch policeman turned enemy secret agent whose files were so accurate, Oliver Tambo named them The Bible.

Shaik morphs from being a timid optometrist to leading a critical, high-tech intelligence operation, supplying information to the ANC top brass in exile and in South Africa. He becomes party to the secrets of both the state and ANC operatives.

This thrilling first-person account brings into sharp focus the role of Jacob Zuma, Shaik's brother Schabir and other players, and sheds new light on some of South Africa's most turbulent years.

This extensive history of South Africa was written by some of the country’s most prominent historians such as Hermann Giliomee, Jan Visagie, David Scher and Fransjohan Pretorius.

Its broad scope includes South Africa's pre-colonial history, slavery, Afrikaner nationalism, an environmental history and an analysis of a post-apartheid South Africa.

In this updated edition, a new chapter by Jan-Jan Joubert has been added – From state capture to Covid: the decline of the ANC.

“Dis politici wat oorlog verklaar, nie ons nie. Ons het gedoen wat ons geglo het ons moes doen en hulle [die vyand] ook . . .” – Marco Caforio, ouddienspligtige

Op 10 Junie 1980 gedurende ’n eindelose dag van bloedige gevegte onder die Angolese son is 13 lede van die Suid-Afrikaanse Weermag dood en etlike beseer toe 61 Gemeganiseerde Bataljon Groep ’n kompleks van Swapo-basisse in die suide van Angola aangeval het.

Gedurende Operasie Sceptic het tweede luitenant Paul Louw sy peleton in vier Ratels na die slagveld by die doelwit Smokeshell gelei.

In die chaos wat daardie dag gevolg het, is 12 dienspligtiges in sy peleton van 44 noodlottig gewond en hy is self ook beseer. Een van sy troepe, die 18-jarige HP Ferreira, is met ’n 14,5 mmmasjiengeweer deur sy pelvis geskiet en hy is ook deur etlike AK-47 koeëls getref. Hy het wonderbaarlik oorleef. Louw, nog met die bloed van sy manne aan sy klere, en ’n handjievol ander soldate het die aand deurgebring in ’n Ratel wat deur ’n RPG-vuurpyl getref is. Hulle was heeltemal afgesny van die res van die aanvalsgroep en het nie geweet of hulle die son sou sien opkom nie.

In Bloedbroers vertel van die oorlewendes van hul ervarings tydens die geveg. Dit werp ook lig op wat met soldate gebeur nadat die laaste skote afgevuur is en volg die veterane toe hulle vier dekades ná die operasie vir die eerste keer na die slagveld teruggekeer het.

In 1978, the activist and novelist Alex La Guma (1925–1985) published A Soviet Journey, a memoir of his travels in the Soviet Union. Today it stands as one of the longest and most substantive first-hand accounts of the USSR by an African writer. La Guma’s book is consequently a rare and important document of the anti-apartheid struggle and the Cold War period, depicting the Soviet model from an African perspective and the specific meaning it held for those envisioning a future South Africa.

For many members of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party, the Soviet Union represented a political system that had achieved political and economic justice through socialism – a point of view that has since been lost with the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. This new edition of A Soviet Journey – the first since 1978 – restores this vision to the historical record, highlighting how activist-intellectuals like La Guma looked to the Soviet Union as a paradigm of self-determination, decolonisation and postcolonial development.

The introduction by Christopher J. Lee discusses these elements of La Guma’s text, in addition to situating La Guma more broadly within the intercontinental spaces of the Black Atlantic and an emergent Third World. Presenting a more expansive view of African literature and its global intellectual engagements, A Soviet Journey will be of interest to readers of African fiction and non-fiction, South African history, postcolonial Cold War studies and radical political thought.

Alex La Guma was a South African novelist, leader of the South African Coloured People's Organisation and a defendant in the Treason Trial, whose works helped characterise the movement against the apartheid era in South Africa.

'When I’m dead, you make sure that ordinary people, ordinary rural women, must be at the forefront of my funeral. I want my rural women to be there at the forefront: people that know me well.’

With great care and meticulous research, Kally Forrest brings us the life of Lydia Komape, also known as Mam Lydia Kompe. Kally travels in Lydia’s footsteps, with family, friends, comrades and ancestors from Limpopo and Johannesburg to Cape Town where Lydia sat in Nelson Mandela’s parliament.

Her family’s shattering loss of land in the 1930s deeply impacted Lydia’s life choices. She was fiercely independent, yet bound by the collective, forceful but consultative, humorous and deeply serious.

Lydia closely identified with rural women, remarking, ‘We are so discriminated against, but we are made to work like donkeys. We do all the dirty work – you must go and plough, hoe, harvest, carry water, fetch wood, and men are just sitting drinking alcohol under the tree.’

This is a biography that will open your eyes and heart.

In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town demanded the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist, racist business magnate, from their campus. The battle cry '#RhodesMustFall' sparked an international movement calling for the decolonisation of the world's universities.

Today, as this movement grows, how will it radically transform the terms upon which universities exist? In this book, students, activists and scholars discuss the possibilities and the pitfalls of doing decolonial work in the home of the coloniser, in the heart of the establishment. Subverting curricula, enforcing diversity, and destroying old boundaries, this is a radical call for a new era of education.

Offering resources for students and academics to challenge and resist coloniality inside and outside the classroom, Decolonising the University provides the tools for radical pedagogical, disciplinary and institutional change.

Well-known television anchor and media personality Ruda Landman talks to a wide variety of South Africans about their life choices and how change has affected them.

A colourful mosaic of diverse experiences emerges as people share life stories and lessons. The book includes insights by the likes of John Kani, Ferial Haffajee, Pieter-Dirk Uys, Katlego Maboe, Gugu Zulu, Zapiro, ProVerb, Arno Carstens, Mam' Khanyi (who takes in street children and orphans), Nick Binnedell and Marc Lottering.

Revealing, sad, funny and filled with hope as well-known and ordinary people equally show how each one of us always has options and can make a difference by how we respond to what we encounter.

RW Johnson's bestselling book How Long Will South Africa Survive? was published at the height of the Zuma presidency. Since then, Cyril Ramaphosa has taken over as president and there have been some attempts to clean up government. But the brief period of 'Ramaphoria' is over and the threat to both the economy and the dream of a non-racial democracy is as real as ever.

As national elections loom, Johnson examines the state of the nation with pinpoint accuracy. On the one hand state-owned institutions are near collapse, municipalities are defunct and civil strife is rampant. On the other, Ramaphosa and his team have come up with a plan to curb corruption and create growth and prosperity.

But will it work?

Stellenbosch staan internasionaal bekend as 'n dorp van weelde en wyn, 'n plek van pragtige natuurskoon en mooi mense. Dit is die tuiste van Suid-Afrika se sake-adel, geleerde professore en studente bestem vir groot dinge.

Maar die idilliese beeld wat in reisbrosjures en op sosiale media voorgehou word, versluier 'n skadukant. Tussen die ou eikebome, blou berge en geskiedkundige wynplase broei dieselfde boosheid wat Suid-Afrika een van die lande met die hoogste moordsyfer in die wêreld maak.

Oor die afgelope twee dekades het verskeie opspraakwekkende moordsake in dié dorp koerantvoorblaaie gehaal. Inge Lotz, Hannah Cornelius, Susan Rohde, die Van Breda-gesin... Maar hierdie boek gaan ook oor Stellenbosch se minder bekende slagoffers soos dié van die plaaswerker Felicity Cilliers - 'n vrou van wie die wêreld vergeet het.

'n Uiteenlopende verskeidenheid slagoffers en moordenaars tree in die blaaie van dié boek na vore en wys dat nie eens Stellenbosch die oersondes kan vryspring nie.

A moving journey of discovery into the unexplored continent that is often our families’ past. It can be read as a reconstruction of one’s own Jewish and at the same time European-South African roots, but through these micro-histories we arrive at the events of the Second World War and the Holocaust to the level of macro-history.

Egonne Roth’s work brilliantly illustrates the complex mechanism of intergenerational, communicative memory and cultural memory (described by Jan and Aleida Assmann, among others). On a feminist level, it is also a personal history of the daughter-father relationship, leading to a kind of purification, a catharsis.

The detective-like reconstruction of the multi-ethnic segments of the family’s history has as its backdrop the arduous completion of one’s own biography from scraps of documents, accounts of the now few witnesses, secrets, and traumas hidden for decades.

A companion volume to the highly successful Field Guide to the Battlefields of South Africa, this features the pivotal sieges that characterised the Cape Frontier, Anglo-Zulu, Basotho and Anglo-Boer wars in one volume.

Accounts of 17 sieges over the last two centuries explore in detail the historical context in which they occurred, the day-to-day military actions that sustained the investments and the conditions both soldiers and civilians faced while defending their territory against a hostile force. The siege descriptions are animated by maps and a variety of information boxes and human-interest stories, gleaned from diaries, letters and eye-witness accounts, while longer features focus on the practical aspects of siege warfare, such as artillery, medicine, food, and the psychological effects of besiegement. The book also provides practical information for visitors who wish to explore these historical sites.

A fascinating read that will appeal to anyone interested in the volatile history of the country – armchair historians and travellers alike.

With its impressive tradition of left politics, South Africa was the hope of the world. At the heart of post-apartheid politics was a revolutionary nationalist ANC, the oldest Communist Party in Africa, the SACP, and one of the most militant labour union federations in the world, COSATU. Yet South Africa’s democracy-making project has gone horribly wrong.

This has been happening over three decades through deep globalisation and inordinate power given to business to prevail over everything. A criminalised market democracy, predicated on an unviable society of deepening inequality, climate disasters and eroding state capacity, is now moving further to the extreme right. These conjuncturally situated writings highlight the pushback against the neoliberal turn, Zumafication, emergent neofascism, the fraud of the National Democratic Revolution and the normalisation of the dangerous climate contradiction. This collection contributes to explaining the degeneration of national liberation politics and the polycrisis of post-apartheid democracy.

Globally and within South Africa, old left politics (revolutionary nationalist, Marxist-Leninist, Trotskyist and social democratic) has failed. The world historical defeats of Soviet socialism, social democracy and revolutionary nationalism also became South African leftism defeats. These writings, grounded in a consistent transformative intellectual praxis and against the grain of defeat, affirm the necessity of left renewal. Its praxis-centred arguments document 27 years of working with grassroots forces and the global left to reconstruct the left imaginary beyond the traditional left binary of reform versus revolution.

The experimental epistemology at work in these writings provides critical decolonial resources for a new transformative leftism politics, informed by an ethics of care, while pointing to new horizons for further elaboration.

Die afgelope halfeeu het meer as 15 000 uitgawes van Beeld verskyn met derduisende stories in woord en beeld. Regdeur hierdie 50 jaar is ’n mantra in die redaksie: “Slaan die groot storie hard.” In Beeld 50 vertel dié geliefde koerant se joernaliste hoe hulle juis dit gedoen het deur die dekades en wat hulle steeds bybly van daardie ervaring. Die boek neem die leser op ’n reis deur van die grootste nuusgebeure sedert 1974 en weerspieël die geskakeerde leefwêreld van die Afrikaanse gemeenskap in die noorde van die land.

Beeld is die Suid-Afrikaanse dagblad wat al die meeste as die mooiste aangewys is, daarvan getuig die foto’s, voorblaaie, spotprente en grafika op dié blaaie. Tog is dit nie ’n beste-voetjie-voorsit-soort boek nie, want dis in die eerste plek joernaliste wie se stemme jy hier hoor. Op die ou end is die belangrikste element die leser.

Soos Pieter du Toit in 2014 as nuusredakteur gesê het: “Ons lojaliteit lê by die briefskrywer wat ons kapittel oor ’n onbesonne hoofberig, die intekenaar wat kla oor sy nat koerant op die grasperk en die leser wat dankie sê vir die nuwe Saterdag-Beeld.”

Joe Modise (1929-2001), a Sophiatown bus driver-turned freedom fighter, was a humble man who tended to avoid the limelight. A protege of the Mandela leadership in the 1950s mass struggle, he was one of the youngest among that decade’s Treason Trial, and was a senior commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) from its inception, facing danger and privation most of his adult life. Modise served with acclaim as democratic South Africa’s first Minister of Defence and won the loyalty of his former enemy when many thought the country could be plunged into civil war or held to ransom by old-order apartheid generals. The fact that Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo selected him for key positions over five decades of exacting struggle testifies to their sustained confidence in him. This fact alone belies the impression some might have that he was an amoral warlord. As a government minister, he led a modest lifestyle and did not die a wealthy man.

This book interlinks frank and engaging interviews with family and friends, comrades­ in-arms and former adversaries. Those who knew him reveal a warm human being and provide endearing insights into who Modise really was.

As a soldier, statesman and leader, he has left behind an astonishing legacy that deserves to be widely known.