How did Einstein help create Eskom? Why can an Indonesian volcano explain the Great Trek? What do King Zwelithini and Charlemagne have in common?

These are some of the questions Johan Fourie explores in this entertaining, accessible economic history spanning everything from the human migration out of Africa 100 000 years ago to the Covid-19 pandemic. Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom is an engaging guide to complex debates about the roots and reasons for prosperity, the march of opportunity versus the crushing boot of exploitation, and why the builders of societies – rather than the burglars ¬– ultimately win out.

Join the author on this enriching journey through an African-centred history and the story of our long walk towards a brighter future.

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.

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.

On the night of 30 October 2002, eight bomb blasts tore through Soweto, leaving one woman dead and damaging vital infrastructure. The bombs were the work of a far-right white Afrikaner separatist group called the Boeremag, whose stated aim was to overthrow the ruling ANC government, rid the country of black people and reinstate a new Boer-administered republic. For months before the bombings, police had been investigating the terror group and had made several arrests. In December, after an intense cross-country manhunt, the perpetrators were finally caught. All in all, 23 men were arrested and charged with high treason after the police seized explosives, homemade pipe bombs, weapons and ammunition in arms caches hidden all over the country.

The trial began in May 2003 under tight security at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria. Over the next decade, in what became the longest and most expensive trial in the country’s history, details would emerge of a group driven by nationalism, racism, militancy and fear. The public would hear how a fanatical belief in the visions of a 19th-century Boer prophet named Siener van Rensburg culminated in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to assassinate former president Nelson Mandela and initiate a coup.

The High Treason Club is the story of the Boeremag, the investigation that brought them down and the subsequent trial, the first of its kind in democratic South Africa. Based on exclusive interviews, as well as thousands of pages of court transcripts and documentary evidence, this book elegantly unpacks a complex case and gives unprecedented insight into the various role-players and their motivations.

Eight-year-old Teko Modise didn’t mean to compete with his father, it was just that he was a soccer natural and everyone could see it. His father, in a fit of childlike jealously, kicked him out of the house, and when Teko tried to come back he kicked him out again. So little Teko made a plan. Every day he attended school as normal, and at night he slept out on the streets with other homeless children. This book is the true story of his rise to fame, to becoming ‘the General’, one of the best footballers South Africa has produced, and will allow readers to understand the story behind ‘the Curse’.

At the peak of his career the world seemed filled with Teko. His face was on every major billboard, TV advert and magazine cover in the country. Little boys from suburbs to townships everywhere were lining up at barbershops asking for The Teko haircut. With a house in Sandton and driving an Aston Martin, Modise was about to make history in the upcoming Soccer World Cup of 2010. He had gone beyond being football royalty, he became a super star. The tabloids have called him an abusive lover, a cheating ex-husband, a neglectful father and an alcoholic egotistical footballer. But beyond these headlines is a story about a boy who played his way out of poverty on talent alone.

Be inspired by this story of a young man with a resilient spirit who kept moving forward chasing his dreams, who not only survived, but made it, and made it big. The Teko Modise story is proof that anything is possible.

Op 3 Oktober 1987 het Charlie-eskadron – die ystervuis van 61 Gemeganiseerde Bataljongroep – die kritieke geveg tussen die Suid-Afrikaanse Weermag en die Angolese magte op die Lombarivier in die suide van Angola gelei. Dié boek plaas die leser in die midde van die jong dienspligtiges wat na die Grensoorlog weggevoer is om hierdie geveg te gaan voer.

Langs die Lomba het hulle te staan gekom teen ’n Angolese mag met ’n getalsoorwig en beter wapentuig. Boonop was die terrein so dig bebos dat hul sig en beweging aansienlik ingeperk is. Die SAW se taktiese doktrine het duidelik gestel dat tenks teen tenks aangewend moes word. Tog moes die dienspligtiges die Angolese tenks aanvat in pantservoertuie met minder kragtige kanonne en dun pantser wat nie veel meer as gewone geweervuur kon afweer nie. Steeds is 47 Brigade van die Angolese magte amper uitgewis tydens die geveg aan die Lomba.

Scholtz se beskrywing van hierdie David-teen-Goliath-geveg neem die leser na die hart van die aksie. Danksy onderhoude met veterane en dagboekinskrywings dra hierdie eerlike, intense hervertelling die volle drama van die geveg oor. Dit is ook ’n diep menslike verhaal oor hoe individue reageer in die aangesig van die dood en hoe die oorlog hulle nooit uit sy kloue gelaat het nie, selfs nadat hulle teruggekeer het.

An outrageous miscellany of lies, myths, untruths, fibs and fabrications that tell the woeful history of South Africa. Aimed at offending and entertaining everyone in equal measure, this will have South Africans sniggering and spluttering into their cornflakes. It will also pique their curiosity.

The lies come thick and fast, like a burst sewerage pipe. Way, way back the Europeans ‘discovered’ southern Africa and found a land that was largely uninhabited. Um, no. On the other hand, Africa was a paradise before the settlers pulled in. Not quite!

Back in the darkest of ages (the 1970s), citizens were told that there were Satanic messages if you played Beatles songs backwards. During the civil war in Angola, there were no South African troops in that country. National icon Hansie Cronje was a paragon of virtue and integrity … until he wasn’t. President Nelson Mandela told us that we, as a nation, were ‘special’.

Turns out we aren’t.

Without much fanfare Ahmed Kathrada worked alongside Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and other giants in the struggle to end racial discrimination in South Africa. He faced house arrest and many court trials related to his activism until, finally, a trial for sabotage saw him sentenced to life imprisonment alongside Mandela and six others.

Conversations with a Gentle Soul has its origins in a series of discussions between Kathrada and Sahm Venter about his opinions, encounters and experiences. Throughout his life, Kathrada has refused to hang on to negative emotions such as hatred and bitterness. Instead, he radiates contentment and the openness of a man at peace with himself. His wisdom is packaged within layers of optimism, mischievousness and humour, and he provides insights that are of value to all South Africans.

The international bestselling author returns with an exploration of one of the grandest obsessions of the twentieth century.

In the years before the Second World War, in a sleepy air force base in central Alabama, a small group of renegade pilots put forth a radical idea. What if we made bombing so accurate that wars could be fought entirely from the air? What if we could make the brutal clashes between armies on the ground a thing of the past? This book tells the story of what happened when that dream was put to the test.

The Bomber Mafia follows the stories of a reclusive Dutch genius and his homemade computer, Winston Churchill's forbidding best friend, a team of pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard, a brilliant pilot who sang vaudeville tunes to his crew, and the bomber commander, Curtis Emerson LeMay, who would order the bloodiest attack of the Second World War.

In this tale of innovation and obsession, Gladwell asks: what happens when technology and best intentions collide in the heat of war? And what is the price of progress?

At once intimate and analytical, Mandla J. Radebe has written a powerful and information-packed biography of one of the signal leaders of the 16 June 1976 generation.

The Lost Prince of the ANC is the first comprehensive enquiry into Mzala’s story, tracing his life from birth to his untimely death in 1991, at the age of 35, just after his return to South Africa. Radebe’s richly researched biography, is the story too, of the radical tradition of the liberation movement, which flourished during its underground days.

This revelatory biography of a critical thinker who had much to offer the post-apartheid South Africa, does more than fill a gap in our history: its insights open a door for the reader to imagine politics and society anew.

Why do the Japanese play rugby? How did Einstein help create Eskom? Who is the richest man in history?

Johan Fourie explores these questions and many more in this revised and expanded second edition of his bestseller ​Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom – an entertaining, accessible economic history spanning everything from the human migration out of Africa 100 000 years ago to the present. This enriching journey through an African-centred history reveals the roots and reasons for prosperity.

Why does one group flourish, but another continues to struggle? Do we have better lives than our ancestors? Fourie shows in his unique and engaging style why the builders of societies – rather than the burglars – ultimately win.

First published to international acclaim in 1996, The Seed Is Mine is a bold and innovative social history concerning the disenfranchised blacks who did so much to shape the destiny of South Africa.

After years of interviews with Kas Maine and his neighbours, employers, friends, and family – a rare triumph of collaborative courage and dedication – Charles van Onselen has recreated the entire life of a man who struggled to maintain his family in a world dedicated to enriching whites and impoverishing blacks, while South Africa was tearing them apart.

Chris Hani’s assassination in 1993 gave rise to one of South Africa’s greatest political questions: if he had survived, what impact would he have had on the ANC government?

On the 30th anniversary of his murder by right-wing fanatics, this updated version of the best-selling Hani: A Life Too Short re-evaluates his legacy and traces his life from his childhood in rural Transkei to the crisis in the ANC camps in Angola in the 1980s and the heady dawn of South Africa’s freedom.

Drawing on interviews and the recollections of those who knew him, this vividly written book provides a detailed account of the life of a hero of South Africa’s liberation, a communist party leader and Umkhonto we Sizwe chief of staff who was both an intellectual and a fighter.

In the third volume of Milton Shain’s history of antisemitism in South Africa, he traces and unpacks hostile attitudes towards Jews and irrational fantasies that accompany them in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa.

For 250 years the Bryan Rostron’s family spread across the globe, helping to expand the British Empire and paint the map red. This is a personal reckoning with that dubious legacy, echoing down to the present in South Africa.

It begins with the ‘discovery’ of Tahiti in 1767 by an ancestor, from whose log book Rostron reveals that his sailors were exchanging the ship’s nails for sex with Tahitian maidens so that HMS Dolphin began, literally, to fall apart.

After the Anglo-Boer war, having emigrated to South Africa, one grandfather became editor of the Sunday Times, voicing racist opinions, and later of the Rand Daily Mail, at that time a voice of the Randlords. Ironically, his other grandfather worked for the Communist Party and printed revolutionary pamphlets for the violent 1922 Rand Revolt. In a bizarre twist, Rostron’s father managed the 1936 South African boxing team at the Berlin Olympics, where from under his nose their star boxer was recruited by the Nazis.

Uncovering family secrets and mistaken myths, Rostron offers a unique insight into modern-day South Africa’s colonial past.

From the winner of the Telegraph Sports Book Awards Cycling Book of the Year 2018 The first Tour de France in 1903 was a colourful affair full of adventure, mishaps and audacious attempts at cheating. Its riders included characters like Maurice Garin, an Italian-born Frenchman, said to have been swapped for a round of cheese by his parents in order to smuggle him into France to clean chimneys as a teenager, Hippolyte Aucouturier with his trademark handlebar moustache, and amateurs like Jean Dargassies, a blacksmith who had never raced before. Would this ramshackle pack of cyclists draw crowds to throng France's rutted roads and cheer the first Tour heroes? Surprisingly it did, and, all thanks to a marketing ruse dreamed up to revive struggling newspaper L'Auto, cycling would never be the same again. Peter Cossins takes us through the inaugural Tour de France, painting a nuanced portrait of France in the early 1900s, to see where the greatest sporting event of all began.

In 1957 emigreer die negejarige Henk van Woerden vanaf Nederland met sy gesin na Kaapstad – leertas in die hand, mussie oor die ore, serp om die nek, glasoog in die oogkas. Eers veertig jaar later ontdek hy wat die rede was vir hierdie vertrek na Suid-Afrika: Sy pa was ’n kollaborateur in die Tweede Wêreldoorlog. Die emigrasie is die begin van ’n lewe as buitestaander en vorm later die goue draad in sy skilderye en literêre werk.

Koning Eenoog is ’n boeiende biografie van die ewig soekende emigrant Henk van Woerden (1947–2005), ’n skrywer wat nie net ’n bekroonde oeuvre agtergelaat het nie (Een mond vol glas – Alan Paton Award en die Frans Kellendonk-prys, Ultramarijn – Gouden Uil en Inktaap) maar ook die Nederlandse literatuur oor Suid-Afrika verander het.

MISTRA's publication on Whiteness Afrikaans Afrikaners: Addressing Post-Apartheid Legacies, Privileges and Burdens consists of various thought-provoking contributions made at a roundtable held in 2015 at Constitution Hill as a continuation of MISTRA’s research on nation formation and social cohesion. The publication aims to enhance the understanding of the history of whiteness in all its socio-economic manifestations as well as the architecture of power relations and privileges in democratic South Africa.

The volume comprises of contributions by former president Kgalema Motlanthe, current Deputy Minister of Cogta, Andries Nel, Mary Burton, Christi van der Westhuizen, Lynette Steenveld, Bobby Godsell, Dirk Herman (of Solidarity), Ernst Roets (of Afriforum), Xhanti Payi, Mathatha Tsedu, Pieter Duvenage, Hein Willemse, Nico Koopman, Melissa Steyn, Achille Mbembe and Mathews Phosa.

This stirring collection of essays and talks by activist and former judge Albie Sachs is the culmination of more than 25 years of thought about constitution-making and non-racialism. Following the Constitutional Court's landmark Nkandla ruling in March 2016, it serves as a powerful reminder of the tenets of the Constitution, the rule of law and the continuous struggle to uphold democratic rights and freedoms. We, The People offers an intimate insider's view of South Africa's Constitution by a writer who has been deeply entrenched in its historical journey from the depths of apartheid right up to the politically contested present.

As a second-year law student at the University of Cape Town, Sachs took part in the Defiance Campaign and went on to attend the Congress of the People in Kliptown, where the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1955. Three decades later, shortly after the bomb attack in Maputo that cost him his arm and the sight in one eye, he was called on by the Constitutional Committee of the African National Congress to co-draft (with Kader Asmal) the first outline of a Bill of Rights for a new democratic South Africa. In 1994, he was appointed by Nelson Mandela to the Constitutional Court, where he served as a judge until 2009. We, The People contains some of Sachs' most memorable public talks and writings, in which he takes us back to the broad-based popular foundations of the Constitution in the Freedom Charter. He picks up on Oliver Tambo's original vision of a non-racial future for South Africa, rather than one based on institutionalised power-sharing between the races. He explores the tension between perfectability and corruptibility, hope and mistrust, which lies at the centre of all constitutions.

Sachs discusses the enforcement of social and economic rights, and contemplates the building of the Constitutional Court in the heart of the Old Fort Prison as a mechanism for reconciling the past and the future. Subjective experience and objective analysis interact powerfully in a personalised narrative that reasserts the value of constitutionality not just for South Africans, but for people striving to advance human dignity, equality and freedom across the world today.

Jonathan Jansen is the former Vice Chancellor of the University of the Free State, with a formidable reputation for transformation and for a deep commitment to reconciliation in communities living with the heritage of apartheid. In this, Jansen’s most personal and intimate book to date, South Africa’s beloved professor contemplates the stereotypes and stigma so readily applied to Cape Flats mothers as bawdy, lusty and gap-toothed – and offers this endearing antidote as a praise song to mothers everywhere who raise families and build communities in difficult places.

As a young man, Jansen questioned how mothers managed to raise children in trying circumstances – and then realised that the answer was right in front of him in the form of Sarah Jansen, his own mother. Tracing her early life in Montagu and the consequences of apartheid’s forced removals, Jansen unpacks how strong women managed to not only keep families together, but raise them with integrity.

With his trademark delicacy, humour and frankness, Jansen follows his mother’s life story as a young nurse and mother to five children, and shows how mothers dealt with their pasts, organised their homes, made sense of politics, managed affection, communicated core values – how they led their lives. As a balance to his own recollections, Jansen has called on his sister, Naomi, to offer her own insights and memories, adding special value to this touching personal memoir.

Beyond Diplomacy covers nearly six decades of Riaan “Koedoe” Eksteen's eventful career — from being South Africa's youngest ambassador at the time, taking the helm and transforming broadcasting in South Africa, to being closely involved in Namibia's pre- and post-independence.

Events and altercations that have never before been aired or documented are now put in a new context. For example, what exactly was said in the evening calls when P.W. Botha fired Eksteen as head of the SABC and all that happened after this. His experiences and involvement in South Africa's diplomacy stretched over a period of 27 years starting way back when Verwoerd was prime minister.

During his extraordinary career he served as ambassador under John Vorster, P.W. Botha, F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela.

In January 1900, galvanised by the daring of the Boers in taking on imperial Britain, the young Russian officer Yevgeny Avgustus set off for the Transvaal to fight in the Anglo-Boer War. Like most of the foreign volunteers who flocked to the Boer cause, he ended up on the Natal front.

Avgustus and his companions joined the Krugersdorp Commando, and their experiences in the field are portrayed in vivid detail. The central part of this gripping account covers the Battle of the Tugela Heights in February 1900 and the Boers’ subsequent retreat. The immediacy of Avgustus’s writing captures his trepidation and excitement as he approaches the battlefield for the first time, as well as his experience of life on commando.

The keen eye of this foreign volunteer brings to life a turning point in South African history. Avgustus is a gifted writer, and his narrative offers both acute observation and thoughtful introspection.

A gripping portrayal of human frailty and courage in the face of mortal danger, A Russian on Commando highlights both the strange attraction and the absurdities of war.

As a young Reuters correspondent, Fred Bridgland revealed the secret invasion in 1975 of post-independence Angola by apartheid South Africa’s armed forces in support of UNITA rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi. At the time, Bidgland befriended Tito Chingunji, a guerrilla officer, before he became UNITA foreign secretary, who persuaded Bridgland to walk hundreds of kilometres across Angola to watch UNITA’s fighters go into combat.

Later Chingunji and Bridgland worked together on a sympathetic biography of the charismatic Savimbi – then the great hope of the ‘free West’. However, after the book’s publication, Chingunji told Bridgland how he and his family were under constant threat of death from Savimbi.

Bridgland started to uncover atrocities that revealed Savimbi not as the champion of his people, but as a murderous tyrant. Chingunji had risked his life to help Bridgland tell the true story of what was going on behind the scenes. When his friend went missing, Bridgland journeyed into the Angolan jungle to plead his friend’s case and he, himself, was put before a kangaroo court by an enraged Savimbi.

This is a personal account of the bond that developed between a guerrilla fighter and a journalist, and the terrifying challenges they faced as they revealed Savimbi’s true colours.

Returning to the family homestead in the Eastern Cape for the holidays, and worried that your city ways and less than perfect knowledge of Xhosa culture will get you a wagging finger in the face from ooMalume – the uncles?

No need to fret. Don’t Upset ooMalume! captures the essence of Xhosa heritage and culture, and explores different aspects of village life. It covers a range of topics, from major Xhosa life ceremonies and traditional clothing, to the significance of uronta (the rondavel) and ubuhlanti (the kraal). Not forgetting the importance of traditional food, the author describes popular dishes, edible forage and even medicinal plants.

This book was born from writer and agriculturalist Hombakazi Mercy Nqandeka’s concern that aspects of Xhosa heritage will be lost to future generations. By interweaving her guide to Xhosa culture with stories from her daily life at Mqele and Bulungula villages, and lessons taught to her by her mother and her late grandmothers, she hopes to help reconnect Xhosa people to their roots.

Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in South Africa examines the creation and implementation of South Africa's National Peace Accord and this key transitional phase in the country's history, and its implications for peace mediation and conflict resolution.

It is now 30 years since the National Peace Accord (NPA) was signed in South Africa, bringing to an end the violent struggle of the Apartheid era and signalling the transition to democracy. Signed by the ANC Alliance, the Government, the Inkatha Freedom Party and a wide range of other political and labour organizations on 14 September 1991, the parties agreed in the NPA on the common goal of a united, non-racial democratic South Africa, and provided practical means for moving towards this end: codes of conduct for political organizations and for the police, the creation of national, regional and local peace structures for conflict resolution, the investigation and prevention of violence, peace monitoring, socio-economic reconstruction and peacebuilding.

This book, written by one of those involved in the process that evolved, provides for the first time an assessment and in-depth account of this key phase of South Africa's history. The National Peace Campaign set up under the NPA mobilized the 'silent majority' and gave peace an unprecedented grassroots identity and legitimacy. The author describes the formulation of the NPA by political representatives, with Church and business facilitators, which ended the political impasse, constituted South Africa's first experience of multi-party negotiations, and made it possible for the constitutional talks (Codesa) to start.

She examines the work of the Goldstone Commission, which prefigured the TRC, as well as the role of international observers from the UN, EU, Commonwealth and OAU. Exploring the work of the peace structures set up to implement the Accord - the National Peace Committee and Secretariat, the 11 Regional Peace Committees and 263 Local Peace Committees, and over 18,000 peace monitors - Carmichael provides a uniquely detailed assessment of the NPA, the on-the-ground peacebuilding work and the essential involvement of the people at its heart.

Filling a significant gap in modern history, this book will be essential reading for scholars, students and others interested in South Africa's post-Apartheid history, as well as government agencies and NGOs involved in peacemaking globally.