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.

Multidisciplinary scholars showcase their search for decolonial strategies from within their disciplinary focus, covering ideas such as the different layers at which colonialism operates, strategies for a decolonisation that does not recolonise, and the importance of preserving and publishing in indigenous languages.

Decolonisation explores questions of justice, injustice and inhumanity that have geographically and intellectually shaped the course of history through overlapping colonial, decolonial and postcolonial eras. This multidisciplinary collection uses the lenses of history, philosophy, literature and education to examine aspects of colonialism and decolonisation, and their revolutionary and evolutionary manifestations which, contributors argue, occurred simultaneously in the historical and epistemological record. The problems that come into focus have a kaleidoscopic effect on how we come to understand fraught issues, from the ‘invention’ of blacks, to the formulation of the ideology of trusteeship and the obligations to ‘lower civilisations’.

Decolonisation brings together an internationally renowned group of scholars to showcase their search for decolonial strategies within their disciplinary focus, covering ideas such as the different layers at which colonialism operates, strategies for a decolonisation that does not recolonise, and the importance of preserving and publishing in indigenous languages.

This is a much-needed book for students and scholars in the field of decolonisation, history, philosophy and pedagogy. The introductory chapter offers a clear and concise primer to this complex subject, covering colonialism, imperialism, decoloniality, and the various actors involved.

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.

The remarkable story of a woman's journey out of Auschwitz to find her family, told to her son for the very first time.

As a reporter, Jacques Peretti has spent his life investigating important stories. But there was one story, heard in scattered fragments throughout his childhood, that he never thought to investigate. The story of how his mother survived Auschwitz.

In the few last months of the War, thirteen-year-old Alina Peretti, along with her mother and sister, was one of thirteen thousand non-Jewish Poles sent to Auschwitz, in the wake of the Warsaw Uprising. Her experiences there, which she rarely discussed, cast a shadow over the rest of her life.

Now ninety, Alina has been diagnosed with dementia. Together, mother and son begin a race against time to record her memories and preserve her family's story. For the first time, Alina recalls her experiences as a child during the Second World War, the horrors that she witnessed in Auschwitz and the miraculous story of how she survived a firing squad.

Along the way, Jacques learns long-hidden secrets about his mother's family; his mysterious grandfather who lived a double-life, his grandmother who read tarot cards in a Soviet labour camp, and his aunt and uncles, whose fate he never knew. He also gains an understanding of his mother through retracing her past, learning more about the woman who would never let him call her 'Mum'.

Although hailed, alongside Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, as one of the ANC’s holy trinity, Walter Sisulu has remained a relatively neglected figure in the historiography of the struggle for liberation in South Africa. Modest and unassuming, Sisulu was always content to stay in the background in a way that has belied his importance. This nuanced and highly original biography of Walter Sisulu, drafted by political historian Tom Lodge before his untimely death, provides a powerful corrective.

Lodge pronounces Walter an exceptional organiser, the most influential planner of the ANC’s mass campaigning during the 1950s, a principled but undoctrinaire communist, and alongside Mandela an advocate of the necessity of armed struggle. He also served as the careful navigator of the ambiguous relationship between the ANC and Umkhontho we Sizwe, and Lodge details how Sisulu’s exceptional grasp of this enabled him to confound the prosecution when he later played a lead role as a defendant in the Rivonia trial. Sentenced to life imprisonment with his fellow trialists, Walter’s became a calming influence amidst the divisive ideological debates which took place on Robben Island, as well as a constant source of strength and support to Mandela. Then, after his release from jail – ahead of Mandela – in 1989, he again demonstrated his prowess as the chief organiser of the ANC as it re-established itself prior to the 1994 elections.

In this powerful account of his life, completed by Roger Southall, Lodge provides the detailed analysis of his commitment and contribution to South African freedom that Walter Sisulu deserves.

Internationally-renowned historian Hermann Giliomee has himself been intimately involved in the unfolding drama of South Africa’s history, as participant at the Dakar talks with the ANC, as outspoken commentator for the English press, and as leading thinker on the Afrikaners. Giliomee’s lucidity and original insights make this more than just his own story. It is also a gripping narrative, filled with anecdotes and revealing inner workings of the Afrikaner establishment.

By the late 1880s, after more than two centuries of European presence at the Cape, only seven routes led up Table Mountain. Thousands had climbed to the summit, the majority via the gash in the face of the mountain known as Platteklip Gorge, yet vast tracts remained unexplored. Only with the advent of mountaineering in the early 1890s did climbers begin a systematic exploration in their quest for new routes.

Lines of Least Resistance tells the story of Table Mountain through its hiking and scrambling routes. Drawing on his intimate knowledge of the mountain, Riaan Vorster pays tribute to the early pioneers by examining their routes, clearing the sands of time from those which have slipped into oblivion. No two routes are alike; each possesses unique qualities that reveal something of the mountain’s character.

Written from a personal as well as historical perspective, the book takes the reader on a journey of discovery along the highways and byways of Table Mountain.

Never have seven people been so hunted. By assassins. By journalists and lawyers in search of the truth and then TRC investigators wanting justice for the victims’ families.

In 1986, seven young men were shot and killed by police in Gugulethu in Cape Town. The nation was told they were a ‘terrorist’ MK cell. An inquest followed, then a dramatic trial in 1987 and another inquest in 1989. Finally, the fact that Eugene de Kock’s Vlakplaas unit plotted and drove the operation was revealed at the Truth and Reconciliation ten years after the murders but Vlakplaas’s real agenda remained shrouded in mystery.

Hunting the Seven tells the story of the hunt for the truth of the Gugulethu Seven in cinematic style. It took a decade to get to the bottom of the killings.

Sifting through the evidence and original interviews with those involved, Roos-Muller reveals that it was Vlakplaas’s only operation in the Western Cape and an elaborate state-sanctioned snuff movie designed to keep the money rolling into the death squad’s slush fund.

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.

Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) nations have become a strong engine of South-South Cooperation. The most significant outcome of the emergence of BRICS is the shift they have brought to the balance of power in global affairs. The past decade has steadily accelerated commercial and strategic engagements between BRICS and Africa. The BRICS countries constitute Africa’s largest trading partners and new investors. BRICS has nourished Africa’s economic emergence and elevated the continent’s contemporary global positioning. This book seeks to determine the potential of BRICS-Africa cooperation in promoting African development.

Some of the critical issues in this book include the following: a) What will be the impact of intra-BRICS and BRICS–Africa cooperation and partnerships, mainly through the New Industrial Revolution, financial technologies, infrastructure, economic growth and development in health; b) Determine the relevance of the BRICS New Development Bank in the post-COVID era; c) Examine the governance and accountability mechanisms required to entrench BRICS governance cooperation with the continent, and e) Determine strategies that address gender developmental disparities and inequalities in BRICS and Africa.

This book consists of five sections, preceded by an introduction and later at the end of the chapters, a conclusion. The five mentioned sections respond to the 2020 12th BRICS Summit, ‘Global Stability, Shared Security, and Innovative Growth thematic thrusts.

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.

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.

Operation Biting was one of the most thrilling British commando raids of World War II, and probably the most successful. In February 1942 RAF intelligence was baffled by a newly-identified radar network on the coast of Nazi-occupied Europe, codenamed Würzburg. The brilliant scientist Dr RV Jones proposed an assault to capture key components. The nearest accessible enemy set stood upon a steep cliff at Bruneval in Normandy. Winston Churchill enthused, as did Lord Louis Mountbatten, chief of Combined Operations. A company of the newly-formed Airborne Forces was committed to the operation, which took place on the night of 27/28 February. Amid heavy snow 120 men landed, some of whom were misdropped almost two miles from their objective. They nonetheless launched the assault, dismantled the German radar, and after three nail-biting hours in France and a fierce battle with Wehrmacht defenders, escaped in the nick of time by landing-craft across stormy seas to Portsmouth.

Max Hastings recounts this cliffhanging tale in a wealth of previously unchronicled detail. He portrays its remarkable personalities: the ‘boffin’ RV Jones; the peacock Mountbatten; the troubled husband of Daphne Du Maurier, Gen. ’Boy’ Browning, who commanded the Airborne Division; ‘Colonel Remy’, the French secret agent whose men reconnoitered Bruneval at mortal risk; Major John Frost, who led the paras into action; Charlie Cox, the little RAF technician who stripped the Würzburg and became an unexpected hero; Wing-Commander Charles Pickard, a legendary bomber pilot who led the drop squadron. Seldom have so many fascinating personalities been brought together to fulfil a mission that became a front-page triumph in a season of British defeats.

Recounted in Hastings’ familiar best-selling blend of top-down and bottom-up action detail, Operation Biting tells a story that has become almost forgotten yet deserves to rank among the epic tales of courage and daring that took place in the greatest conflict in history.

When Love Kills is the tale of hip hop star, AKA. whose life unravelled when he embarked on a relationship with 21 year-old Anele Tembe.

When she "fell" to her death from the 10th storey of the Pepper Club in April, 2021, after a long night of heated arguing, details would emerge that they'd been caught up in a whirlwind of toxic obsession, alleged substance abuse and violence. Less then two years later AKA was assassinated in what looked like a hit to avenge her death.

This is their tragic story.

Luise White brings the force of her historical insight to bear on the many war memoirs published by white soldiers who fought for Rhodesia during the 1964–1979 Zimbabwean liberation struggle.

In the memoirs of white soldiers fighting to defend white minority rule in Africa long after other countries were independent, the author finds a robust and contentious conversation about race, difference, and the war itself. These are writings by men who were ambivalent conscripts, generally aware of the futility of their fight—not brutal pawns flawlessly executing the orders and parroting the rhetoric of a racist regime. Moreover, most of these men insisted that the most important aspects of fighting a guerrilla war—tracking and hunting, knowledge of the land and of the ways of African society—were learned from black playmates in idealized rural childhoods.

In these memoirs, African guerrillas never lost their association with the wild, even as white soldiers boasted of bringing Africans into the intimate spaces of regiment and regime.

In 1913, a secretive American millionaire, who lived on the top floor of the famous Carlton Hotel, had a crazy idea: to make movies in Johannesburg. And not just any movies but the biggest in the world, huge spectacles with elaborate sets, thousands of extras and epic story lines.

Isidore Schlesinger – better known as ‘IW’ – built a studio on a farm called Killarney, where he set out to challenge a place in America that was in its infancy: Hollywood.

The glamour, gossip and high drama of IW’s studio fit perfectly into a city experiencing an intoxicating golden age. There was as much action on the movie sets as there was on screen: from political intrigue and the clashing of massive egos to public outbursts, fiery judicial inquiries, disaster and death.

Behind this mad enterprise was a maverick, a tycoon, a recluse, a friend of the famed and the connected. IW could have held his own in California but he chose as his base the City of Gold. This is the never-been-told-before story of the rise and fall of the strangest and most unique movie empire ever.

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.

A stunning anthology of great stories of war and peace collected and edited by Max Hastings.

Soldiers is a very personal gathering of sparkling, gripping tales by many writers, about men and women who have borne arms, reflecting bestselling historian Max Hastings's lifetime of studying war. It rings the changes through the centuries, between the heroic, tragic and comic; the famous and the humble. The nearly 350 stories illustrate vividly what it is like to fight in wars, to live and die as a warrior, from Greek and Roman times through to recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here you will meet Jewish heroes of the Bible, Rome's captain of the gate, Queen Boudicca, Joan of Arc, Cromwell, Wellington, Napoleon's marshals, Ulysses S. Grant, George S. Patton and the modern SAS. There are tales of great writers who served in uniform including Cobbett and Tolstoy, Edward Gibbon and Siegfried Sassoon, Marcel Proust and Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell and George MacDonald Fraser. Here are also stories of the female 'abosi' fighters of Dahomey and heroic ambulance drivers of World War I, together with the new-age women soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The stories reflect a change of mood towards warfare through the ages: though nations and movements continue to inflict terrible violence upon each other, most of humankind has retreated from the old notion of war as a sport or pastime, to acknowledge it as the supreme tragedy. This is a book to inspire in turn fascination, excitement, horror, amazement, occasionally laughter.

Max Hastings mingles respect for the courage of those who fight with compassion for those who become their victims, above all civilians, and especially in the twenty-first century, which some are already calling 'the Post-Heroic Age'.

In some settings, such as Ireland, contiguous Catholic and Protestant states are often not conducive to good relations or neighbourliness. In colonial and imperial southern Africa, formal inter-state arrangements took place at the expense of a third party - subjected African peoples.

Three Wise Monkeys explores some of the contradictions, silences and oversights, and working misunderstandings that arise when an emerging Anglophone, Protestant, industrial and urbanising state - South Africa - develops side by side with Mozambique - a Lusophone, Catholic, commercial, rural colony.

In three volumes, Charles van Onselen examines the intertwined relations between South Africa and Portugal's chronically weak east coast colony, as expressed through the migrant labour system, the tourist trade, the rise and fall of LM Radio and the extraordinary tale of the Lourenço Marques Lottery. These areas constituted zones of cross-cultural, transnational interaction that both states were reluctant to acknowledge formally, choosing instead to 'see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil' for much of the 20th century.

Three Wise Monkeys presents a startling new way of viewing the entangled, often hidden, economic, political and social dynamics that informed the rise of 20th-century South Africa, often at the expense of neighbouring Mozambique.

The volumes are:

• Volume 1: The Makings Of An African Economic Tragedy - Mozambique, circa 1500-1960
• Volume 2: Through The Turnstiles Of The Mind - White South Africans and the Freedoms Of Mozambique, circa 194-1975
• Volume 3: The Quest For Wealth Without Work - The Lourenco Marques Lottery, Protestant Panics and the South African White Working Classes , circa 1890-9165

#FeesMustFall, the student revolt that began in October 2015, was an uprising against lack of access to, and financial exclusion from, higher education in South Africa. More broadly, it radically questioned the socio-political dispensation resulting from the 1994 social pact between big business, the ruling elite and the liberation movement.

The 2015 revolt links to national and international youth struggles of the recent past and is informed by Black Consciousness politics and social movements of the international Left. Yet, its objectives are more complex than those of earlier struggles. The student movement has challenged the hierarchical, top-down leadership system of university management and it’s ‘double speak’ of professing to act in workers’ and students’ interests yet enforce a regressive system for control and governance. University managements, while one one level amenable to change, have also co-opted students into their ranks to create co-responsibility for the highly bureaucratised university financial aid that stand in the way of their social revolution.

This book maps the contours of student discontent a year after the start of the #FeesMustFall revolt. Student voices dissect coloniality, improper compromises by the founders of democratic South Africa, feminism, worker rights and meaningful education. In-depth assessments by prominent scholars reflect on the complexities of student activism, its impact on national and university governance, and offer provocative analyses of the power of the revolt.

“We thank you for the inspiration and strength

That you have given to Madiba,

Enabling him, over so many years, to draw out the best in others,

rousing us always, by word and example,

to seek the highest good for every child of this nation.”

So prayed Archbishop Thabo Makgoba with Nelson Mandela in his home in 2009 at the request of Graca Machel. This marked the start of an unusual relationship between southern Africa’s Anglican leader and Mandela in his quietening years. Join Makgoba in his journey towards faith, from his boyhood in Alex as the son of a ZCC pastor to Bishopscourt and praying with Mandela. He shares his feelings about his pastoral approach to the world icon, and how they influenced his thinking on ministering to church and nation in the current era. What did praying with those nearest and dearest to Mandela mean? What was his spirituality? In trying to answer these questions, Makgoba opens a window on South Africa’s spiritual make-up and life.

Their love story was one of the greatest of our times.

Ruth Williams was a middle-class Londoner who loved ballroom dancing and ice skating when she met Seretse Khama. He was chief designate of the most powerful tribe in Bechuanaland, today Botswana, on the borders of apartheid South Africa. Their union sparked outrage, fear and anger. Ruth’s father barred her from their family home, she was hounded by the global media and shunned by white people in Seretse’s village of Serowe. The couple was humiliated, tricked and eventually exiled to England. But, despite all these tribulations, their love triumphed over the politics and prejudice of the time.

This is the story Ruth Khama told well-known journalist and author Sue Grant-Marshall ‒ the story of an extraordinary woman, who had the courage of her convictions in marrying the man she loved and accepting his country and people as her own.

Allegations of treason, real or imagined, always rankle. So much more when a life and death struggle of a nation is perceived to be at stake. Yet treason is common in warfare and accusations of sedition abound in any war.

While this book focuses specifically on the intricacies of alleged Afrikaner treason during a particularly volatile period, the analysis is also informed by an awareness of treason in the wider context.

Take one over-the-top, bolshie, city-slicker Indian woman. One reticent and reserved white husband. And their three children. Add them all to a far-flung village in the South African countryside where mixed-race families are somewhat of a rarity, and you get front-row seats to a lifestyle that is both delightful and, at times, decidedly discombobulating.

Told with huge dollops of that quirky, sometimes perplexing Indian lingo that is unique to South Africans of Indian origin, garnished with hilarity and introspection, The Village Indian is a journey of the self and an authentic celebration of identity, culture and food, and that confusing, chaotic thing it is to sometimes be South African. From run-ins with deadly snakes, to raising chickens, to sprinklings of small-town skullduggery, scores settling, attempted coup d’états and scamming other villagers – you will get all the tea to titillate.

And in a small town, far, far away – meshugas aside – there is the magic of humanity and community.

The Village Indian is a tale for all South Africans.

From the editor in chief of Variety and author of the New York Times bestseller "Ladies Who Punch", the never-fully-told, behind-the-scenes story of Donald Trump and The Apprentice, the long-running reality series that catapulted him to the White House.

Here for the first time is the definitive untold story of Donald Trump’s years as a reality TV star. Trump himself admits he might not have been president without The Apprentice. Now, just as he uncovered the chaos inside the daytime favorite The View in his bestselling "Ladies Who Punch", Ramin Setoodeh chronicles Trump’s dramatic tenure as New York’s ultimate boss in the boardroom, a mirage created by Survivor producer Mark Burnett and NBC boss Jeff Zucker.

With unprecedented access, including hours of interviews with Trump, his boardroom advisers George Ross and Carolyn Kepcher, Eric Trump, and some of the most memorable contestants, and writing with flair and authority, Setoodeh shares all the untold tales from this legendary show that has left its mark on popular culture, shaped the legend of its star, and ultimately changed American history.