The world is driven by ambition, dreams, expectations, wishes and desires. We all believe we are the obvious choice to be selected, noted, identified, appointed or anointed. We may think and believe we are the obvious choice in many areas of our lives, but the reality is that this is not the case.

When your boss informs you that you are not getting that role you assumed was in the bag (and you’d already informed your family and friends that it was yours – and had even bought the attire to go with it), you ask: what happened? What happened when you were bypassed for the lead role in a project? You believed in your potential and you believed that everyone in your organisation and circle saw you as the main person, the leader or the ‘go-to person’, and yet you were bypassed and someone else in your team was selected. You were the obvious choice, weren’t you? Think of the assignment you prepared, the one you believed was the perfect presentation and would earn you a distinction, and then you flunked it. Where did you go wrong?

Mike Teke’s book is about showing you that you can be the obvious choice, in business or in life, but that being the obvious choice does not simply fall from any tree. Without focus, diligence and a strong work ethic you are unlikely to succeed, no matter how much you think you’re entitled to. The Obvious Choice debunks myths and prevailing negative mindsets. And, most usefully, it provides guidelines and lessons to prepare you for the journey to leadership greatness, to become the obvious choice in whatever setting or endeavour the universe presents

This source book is loaded with ideas for using traditional scrapbooking techniques to enhance your home decor and turn ordinary everyday items into great gifts or to recycle discarded articles and found objects for further functionality. It shows you how to transform and personalise almost anything by incorporating photos and mementos combined with scrapbook paper, card stock and embellishments. Gorgeous photographs of every project in a home setting will inspire you and step-by-step instructions and photographs show you how; Fun, quirky and unusual projects; Fabulous gifts and keepsakes; Finishes range from simple and stylish to bold and over the top; Recycle tins, jars, pallet wood, frames and even shopping bags. Preserving memories in clever, creative ways, putting them on display on your walls and shelves or turning them into much appreciated gifts remain the focus. This book will soon have you look at almost any item as a possible canvas for photos and collage. From a small, photo-lined envelope to a huge display door made from pallet-wood, the more than 55 projects in the book will appeal to crafters of a wide range of skills and experience.

“Aan die einde van 12 weke se basiese opleiding moes al hierdie mans weet hoe om te skiet en baie moes bereid wees om dood te skiet.”

Anelia Heese hervertel die rou en soms skokkende stories van Suid-Afrikaanse mans wat in die 1970’s en 1980’s verplig is om weermagdiens te doen. In Diensplig praat van dié mans, baie van hulle vir die eerste keer, openhartig oor hul ervaringe. Sy gesels met die bekroonde joernalis Murray La Vita, die skrywer Deon Lamprecht, genl.maj. Roland de Vries en talle ander oor hulle ondervindings in die weermag.

Die meeste dienspligtiges was eintlik maar nog seuns toe hulle gedwing is om aan te tree en hul hare onseremonieel afgeskeer is. Hulle praat hier eerlik oor onder meer die eerste kontak, die eerste keer toe iemand ’n makker verloor het, hoe sommige “terrie-ore” versamel het, oor patrollies in die townships, en die interne stryd wat dikwels agterna gevolg het.

Anelia vra soms ongemaklike vrae om haarself en ander — veral jonger — Suid-Afrikaners te help sin maak van diensplig en die nadraai daarvan. Soos wie nou eintlik die vyand was, en wat dit beteken om jou land te dien . . .

Zamantungwa Khumalo is a rising star on the South African property scene. An award-winning media and content specialist, she is also a property entrepreneur who bought her first properties at age 27. Now, she wants other people to follow in her footsteps, climbing the property ladder on their way to building wealth and security.

All her passion and expertise is concentrated in this volume, which covers a range of topics vital to property ownership. She also includes interviews with leading property industry experts like Gil Sperling, Michelle Dickens, and Silindile Leseyane who is the chairperson of Sakhisizwe Property Stokvel.

This book is aimed at helping a wide range of people – women, young professionals, and also men who want to buy property but don’t quite know how to go about it – to take that first step.

As she says in her introduction: ‘My hope is that this book will help to make your property dreams come true.’

The indomitable Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng – affectionately known as Dr T – is passionate about making sexual health and well-being services available to all, regardless of their sexual and gender identities and their economic status.

This book is filled with the specifics of sexual anatomy and health as well as advice and facts about pleasure and sexual rights. Dr T, in her typically honest and warm way, makes the reader feel comfortable reading about topics that are not always discussed freely, providing ALL the information that demystifies sex and sexuality in a way that is entertaining and enlightening.

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

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

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

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

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

South Africa in the 1970s was a divided and increasingly traumatised country, seemingly permanently in the toils of apartheid, and with little space available for open discussion of apartheid policies or awareness of just what those policies were meaning in the lives of people. It was in this context that David Philip, a South African already involved for several years in publishing, became convinced there must be more opportunity for books with informed discussion and debate to be written and published within the country.

He persuaded his wife Marie, also with publishing experience, that they could together set up their own independent publishing company, to publish 'Books that matter for Southern Africa'- in social history, politics, literature, or whatever, good of their kind and ready to challenge mainstream apartheid thinking.

This is an anecdotal account - a memoir - of the lows and highs of a small, cheerful, underfunded but vibrant 'oppositional' publishing company, David Philip Publishers, from the year 1971 through to the birth of the new South Africa.

"This book is not an analysis of South Africa’s problems. It is an outline of what we must change to have the South Africa of our dreams. In these pages, I challenge myself and all those who are willing to take a chance to pursue a higher ideal, something bigger than any individual, a belief that we can be the stewards of our own destiny. This is a manifesto."

For millions of South Africans, the promise of democracy, a promise our Constitution attempts to set out in its preamble, will not be realised in their lifetime. Some who are yet to be born will live and die poor and marginalised because their country was not ready to provide the tools that would help them to make their lives meaningful, healthy and prosperous. This situation is no accident. While the structural conditions that created the initial inequalities are a result of colonialism and apartheid, the worsening of this condition after 2010 is the result of political negligence, incompetence and rampant corruption borne out of a deep disconnection between the political elites and the real needs of the people. South Africa is in urgent need of a comprehensive overhaul of its political and state institutions, its social structures and institutions as well as its economy and policies.

Manifesto presents a challenge to the professional class, black and white – who should know that turning the country around will take much more than good intentions – to urgently return to public life. They are key to moving South Africa towards modern democratic politics and can help to grow its economy to fit in and thrive in a rapidly evolving world. South Africa will get nowhere if the most able continue to be on the periphery of politics.

Instead, we must adopt a different mindset and take on a new generational mission to accept the responsibility of leadership so that South Africa can finally have the future it has been waiting for the ANC to deliver.

Industrial psychologist and award-winning business coach Kathi Hyde and her clients have proven that you can start over or step up, even in hard times, to build a business that achieves the results you deserve, brings out the best and allows you to live life well.

Kathi’s passion to help small businesses succeed to international standards (irrespective of where they find themselves geographically) and her love for the people who start and run them, have helped lead her clients to record success, game-changing personal growth, contentment, and real results time and again. Using vignettes of her own story as a backdrop, Kathi shares proven step-by-step strategies to help existing and new business owners achieve the same results – no matter where they are in their life or business journey.

This book considers both the business owner and the business. Part One prepares readers mentally and emotionally to overcome their setbacks and take on the mantle of being a business owner. It also helps them work out the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of starting or growing their business. Part Two provides the practical business skills and know-how to build a profitable, resilient and rewarding business that delivers.

Based on sound business principles and practices, and packed with wisdom, anecdotes, strategies, practical examples, motivation, and the insight and experience gained from Kathi’s more than 30-year involvement with business across a range of industries in developed and developing countries, Peace By Piece is a coach-come-business-school in a book. It’ll help readers create peace from the pieces and guide them in laying the foundations of a fulfilling business that serves them and those they love and serve.

How do Muslims fit into South Africa’s well-known narrative of colonialism, apartheid and postapartheid?

South Africa is infamous for apartheid, but the country’s foundation was laid by 176 years of slavery from 1658 to 1834, which formed a crucible of war, genocide and systemic sexual violence that continues to haunt the country today. Enslaved people from East Africa, India and South East Asia, many of whom were Muslim, would eventually constitute the majority of the population of the Cape Colony, the first of the colonial territories that would eventually form South Africa.

Drawing on an extensive popular and official archive, Regarding Muslims analyses the role of Muslims from South Africa’s founding moments to the contemporary period and points to the resonance of these discussions beyond South Africa. It argues that the 350-year archive of images documenting the presence of Muslims in South Africa is central to understanding the formation of concepts of race, sexuality and belonging.

In contrast to the themes of extremism and alienation that dominate Western portrayals of Muslims, Regarding Muslims explores an extensive repertoire of picturesque Muslim figures in South African popular culture, which oscillates with more disquieting images that occasionally burst into prominence during moments of crisis. This pattern is illustrated through analyses of etymology, popular culture, visual art, jokes, bodily practices, oral narratives and literature. The book ends with the complex vision of Islam conveyed in the postapartheid period.

There has been a lot of furore in the United States about Critical Race Theory (CRT). Opponents to it claim that it has saturated society at different levels, including the alleged indoctrination of school children and the poisoning of the media and public life. The assertion is that it is divisive and racist towards white people. It is sometimes referred to derisively in the shorthand ‘woke’. This panic has now reached our shores. Critical whiteness studies is an offshoot of CRT that Thandiwe Ntshinga believes is desperately needed in South Africa.

She pokes holes in the belief that leaving whiteness undisturbed for analysis creates justice and normalcy. Instead, she says perpetually studying every other identity can only create the assumption that they are perpetually the problem. By design.

The title of this book comes from one of the first comments she received on Tiktok when discussing her findings and research.

In hierdie versamelbundel is daar ‘n groep uiteenlopende mense gevra om elk ‘n onafhanklike essay te skryf na aanleiding van ‘n Bybelteks.

Daar is skrywers, ekonome, musikante, akademici en joernaliste. Die enigste voorwaardes was dat dit persone moet wees wat nie meer kerklik betrokke en/ of ‘n dominee of teoloog is nie. Baie essays is bloot verhale, vertellings, reise of verduidelikings wat met ‘n teks verbind kan word.

Ons almal is medereisigers in hierdie verbygaande wêreldse bestel. Kom ons luister met ‘n oop gemoed na mekaar. Dán staan ons ‘n kans om te verstaan, te begryp, eerder as om te oordeel.

Van die bekende en bekroonde skrywers wat deelneem aan hierdie projek is onder andere Jurie van den Heever, Annelie Botes, Dana Snyman, Pik Botha, Heinz Modler, Lizette Rabe, Dawie Roodt, Rachelle Greeff, Piet Croukamp, Joan Hambidge, Koos Kombuis, Karin Brynard, Jean Oosthuizen, Christine Barkhuizen Le Roux, Lina Spies, Valda Jansen, Valiant Swart, Nathan Trantraal, Churchil Naude, Riku Lätti en Luke Alfred.

The Billionaire Career is an allegory of risk, playing to your strengths and discovering yourself to become successful in business.

It tells the story of Dan, a man who wants more from his job and his life. He yearns to start his own business, and for the freedom and control that being his own boss would give him but he is faced with numerous challenges – for one thing, how to start a business with next to no money.

But everything changes one day when he’s faced with a choice at work.

When it comes to making great decisions, the way you think about things is usually a lot more influential than what you actually think.

If you ever hired a person who ‘looks the part’, dated someone who ‘gives you a good feeling’, voted for the party that ‘speaks the most sense’ or got into an investment that ‘cannot be missed’, only to realise you made a horrible mistake, you might have wondered how you ever talked yourself into it. Yet, even with the bruises you’ve earned, you’re currently likely to make exactly the same decision, the next time around.

The beliefs that guide your ideas and the instincts that drive your actions, are all informed by your unconscious biases (and literally every single one of us has them), which irrationally tell us one thing is good, and another is bad; one thing is absolutely true and another is utterly false; and make you act less smartly than you actually are. But the good news is you can learn to see them, to manage them and ultimately to overcome them.

In Don’t Believe Everything You Think, Colin J Browne, the author of How to Build a Happy Sandpit, shows you how biases work, why they matter, and how to reframe your thinking to make well-founded decisions about life and work, relationships and investing, and much else in between, to vastly improve your chances of success.

Foreword by topselling author, Gerard Labuschagne.

A criminal's fate is often sealed by what is found on the autopsy table and Dr Hestelle van Staden has been crucial in the conviction of numerous criminals. As one of South Africa’s leading forensic pathologists, she has conducted over 7 000 autopsies. She has seen the worst South Africa has to offer and has been a voice to numerous murder victims.

In Blood Has a Voice, she walks us through nine of her most compelling cases, cases that stand out from among the many autopsies she has conducted. There is the tragic story of baby Letitia Meyer, whose mother alleged she fell from her pram; the unexplained death of a young mother during labour; and the case of the musician Lucky Dube, who was shot and killed . . .

Blood Has a Voice gives a rare glimpse into the investigation of death and the quiet heroism behind the unsung work of forensic pathologists.

The SA Décor and Design Buyers Guide is celebrating its 25th anniversary of showcasing the industry with a rather stylish return in the printed version that has made it such a household name as the go-to resource for décor, design and interior sector professionals and for lovers of all things chic.

Due to popular demand from the industry, the new printed version of the Buyers Guide has launched and it has been an absolute labour of love, says Marcia Margolius, well-known designer and decorator and author of the award-winning blog, “Marcia loves it”, on the SA Décor and Design website. “With our new look Buyer’s Guide, we have transformed the way buyers connect with the finest suppliers and service providers in the industry”.

“This guide goes beyond highlighting suppliers; it’s a celebration of the talent and creativity that comes to life behind the scenes. Readers can immerse themselves in captivating projects and brands through vibrant full-colour photographs that showcase true artistry and craftmanship”.

The result is a spectacular and comprehensive 504-page tome, a feast for the eyes with full page spreads, showcasing the crème de la crème of highend suppliers and retailers. The new user-friendly system of icons allows the reader to quickly identify the products available along with a convenient QR code for scanning to connect directly with suppliers.

Locard’s Exchange Principle underpins all forensic science and holds that the perpetrator of a crime will bring something to the crime scene and leave with something from it.

Forensic experts use this principle daily to catch murderers and assailants. In Risking Life for Death, South African forensic pathologist Ryan Blumenthal offers a master class in this singular forensic technique based on real-life case studies. With more than twenty years’ experience in the field, Blumenthal explains how to look for clues and traces, and how what he does not find at autopsy is often more important than what he does find. In other words, the absence of evidence can sometimes be of greater value than the presence of evidence.

His account also highlights the dangers forensic pathologists are exposed to daily. As they try to unravel the puzzle of someone’s death, forensic pathologists often face life-threatening infections, toxic gases and the hazards associated with high-profile cases – in effect, risking their life to solve someone else’s death.

An understanding of Locard’s Exchange Principle can help you become a medical detective in your own life, can help you be a happier person and can even provide you with a better philosophy for growing older, Blumenthal argues.

We all know South Africa has problems; we read about them in the newspapers, we see them on the streets and many people experience them in their daily lives. Fortunately, many of these problems can be solved using innovation and science. Innovation takes a look at inventions - developed in South Africa by South Africans - to address issues in the areas of healthcare, energy, environment and industry. Some of these inventions, such as a tea bag created to filter water for communities in rural areas, can save lives; others, such as a unique way to beneficiate titanium, could spell a new era of industry in the country.

The book is broken down into sections on environment, health, energy, industry and education, and in each of those parts are examples of South African innovations, from a satellite system to map fires to the concept of sterilising mosquitoes to stop the spread of malaria.

These have been developed by numerous organisations and institutions and showcase South Africa's excellence.

Building a healthy lifestyle can be daunting, especially with the level of confusion that exists about health and wellness. As low-carb high-fat diets have increased in popularity, a wealth of information has proliferated on the internet and in print media. The problem is knowing what works, and differentiating between sound advice and opportunistic entrepreneurs whose primary aim is to monetize ‘solutions’.

In 2017, Hendrik Marais founded Keto Lifestyle South Africa with the aim of providing the information needed to build a healthy, sustainable lifestyle based on the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting. He believes that while nutrition is important, a healthy lifestyle must find the right balance between sleep, stress management, exercise and nutrition. By making keto accessible and approachable, Marais has inspired thousands of people to adopt simple, healthy eating habits and stick to them.

Living the Ultimate Keto Lifestyle incorporates a comprehensive introduction that sets out his principles and practices for following a keto diet, and explains how to achieve your weight-loss goals. This is followed by a selection of delicious, healthy recipes, as well as sample meal plans and ideas for effortless entertaining.

A revolution is taking place in the great marketplaces of the informal sector and it contains an unquantified scale and power as an economic engine and a way of life for the majority of our low income populations. The KasiNomic Revolution may still be a murmur in the streets, a grassroots economic groundswell, but it is the future of African economic activity.

Kasi is the South African term for the township – a teeming conurbation of homes and businesses, entertainment venues and social meeting places. GG Alcock uses the term KasiNomics to describe the informal sectors of Africa, whether they are in the township, a rural marketplace, at a taxi rank or on a pavement in the shadow of skyscrapers. Brought up in a rural Zulu community, GG has learnt and shares the lessons of African culture, language, stick fighting, lifestyle and tribal politics, along with shared poverty and community, which have prepared him for accessing the great informal marketplaces of Africa. He is uniquely placed to uncover the extraordinary stories of kasi businesses which not only survive but excel, revealing a revolutionary entrepreneurship which is mostly invisible to the formal sector.

KasiNomic Revolution is a story of kasi entrepreneurs on one side and, on the other, of great corporate successes and failures in the informal community. KasiNomic Revolution is at once a business book, and at the same time a deeply human book about the people and lives of rural and urban informal societies.

KasiNomic Revolution is about the lessons of marketing, distribution, culture and modernity in an informal African world.

The Dating Playbook is a sobering, matter-of-fact guide to navigating the dating scene, or mjolo as it is colloquially called. Known as the Peaceful One on TikTok, popular dating coach Dudu Nhlabathi-Madonsela is no stranger to teaching people how to win at mjolo and at love. Dudu’s teachings include advice on online dating etiquette, practical flirting and seduction techniques, as well as tips for measuring your progress.

She also explains how location, politics, socioeconomic issues and upbringing inform who and how we date. With an emphasis on understanding yourself first and being honest about what you want at various stages of your life, Dudu helps readers face the harsh realities of modern-day dating and shows them how to find their footing in the dating scene. In an era where you can be exposed to anything from a hobosexual to a high-value narcissist, she can safely say your mother’s advice just won’t do.

Whether you are dating or in a relationship, Dudu’s considered advice will show you the way.

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

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

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

This is a joke book – a collection of real conversations I’ve had with my offspring, or that they’ve had with me, mostly against my will. I started keeping records for my own entertainment when they began to talk properly.

Two-year-old: What’s that?
Me: My nipple.
Two-year-old: Is it dead?

I regretted teaching them to speak once pre-adolescence and Covid lockdowns arrived – life phases with equivalent survival strategies and effects.

Nine-year-old: Good news! While you were in your meeting, I finished your puzzle!
Me: …
Nine-year-old: I could see it was too hard for you.

Thirteen-year-old: I don’t like boys.
Me: Okay.
Thirteen-year-old: I like cats.
Me: Okay!
Thirteen-year-old: So … not your daughter, then.

I hope it never ends. Life is a set-up, and parenting is the punchline. As my mother once said, ‘I hope one day you have children. And then we’ll see who’s laughing.’

A refreshing new book on mushrooms and other fungi in South Africa, covering 200 species - more than any mushroom book in the region to date. Text covers each species' distribution (both regionally and worldwide), description, typical habitat, edibility and toxicity. Magnificent photographs accompany each species, making this both a practical guide and a beautiful book. It will be welcomed by all mushroom enthusiasts, and by nature-lovers in general.

’n Versameling van 100 gedigte oor verlies en vertroosting deur van Afrikaans se bekendste digters.

Dis oor verse die dood, rou, afskeid, verganklikheid en menswees.

Die lewe is ‘n asem lank is die ideale geskenk aan iemand wat ’n geliefde vir altyd moes groet ̶ veral wanneer ’n mens nie die woorde kan vind om te troos nie.