The classic, mini-epic poem of one of the greats of 20th-century South African writing.

An elegiac tale told through the lens of Zulu mythology.

A practical conversation about creating a fulfilling and contented second half, including twenty practical activities to create a new you.

Midlife uncertainty is uncomfortable. You are trying to find the door leading to a more fulfilling life, but are dragged back to the constant responsibilities of work and relationships. That door is open, but you need to search for it. This book provides insights and exercises to help you make the mental connections, and take you to the important decisions that you must confront with in this phase of your life. It is crucial that you find that door yourself. It is there, it is open. You simply need to see it.

It fills you with a gnawing concern that somehow you are missing out. Everybody else around you is living purposeful, high achievement lives, and you are wallowing in drudgery. We spend the early part of our adult lives building a career, building a family or support structures around us; we become so bound up in the boredom of day-to-day survival that when we get those things sorted during this phase, we feel let down and disappointed.

James Forson studied at the University of Cape Town and was dragged into the world of business with work experience in the mining, steel, pharmaceutical and banking industries. For the past 24 years he has been an independent management consultant working with clients across a broad range of industries and environments. In the course of his consulting practice, he has worked with a number of executives who have expressed dissatisfaction with their lives. This is where his interest in midlife renewal was awakened, as he counselled and supported his clients to live more humanly rewarding lives. He has taken the tools, methods and concepts he used and developed and has created a book to assist folks dealing with the complexity and anxiety of midlife renewal.

Mentoring nourishes others to grow and act with greater confidence. The need for mentorship is greater than ever before. However, informal mentoring has not kept up with the challenges in business. In his latest book on mentoring, Niël Steinmann, South Africa’s leading authority on mentorship suggests a structured and intentional approach to mentoring, called crucial mentoring conversations. He explains: ‘Our success in life is dictated by the quality of relationships we can build and maintain’.

Parents, teachers and leaders from any career, professional, or educational setting are now challenged to successfully navigate mentoring relationships. The book is rich with advice and will explore the various conversations crucial for mentoring relationships. You will be able to hold deeper more honest conversations that create new levels of self-awareness and opportunities for those that you mentor to transform situations and relationships around them.

It presents to the mentor practical tools to facilitate this awareness and learning in ways that enrich, challenge, inspire and enable mentees to learn about themselves and their world. When you mentor intentionally, opportunities for crucial conversations present themselves all the time - from ‘What’s my purpose?’ to navigating career challenges, to performance feedback, developing strengths and how to manage productive relationships and networks both personally and professionally.

The poems in ‘predicaments’ explore women’s responses to the constraints and consequences of choices they have made. Their responses are not much changed through the millennia of myth, history and into contemporary times.

The poet reflects on significant moments in the lives of women such as Helen of Troy, Delilah and Joan of Arc, and the predicaments they are faced with in a man’s world.

The restoration of historic homes has gained immense popularity lately. Unfortunately, there are just as many lost to demolition and unsympathetic alterations. That is not Fairview’s story though – because it was love at first sight when the Benkensteins walked through the historic Georgian house for the first time. Against all advice, they bought the 1861 property and opened the doors of their newly restored family home to guests.

But running a guesthouse is not all moonlight and roses. Philda shares honest insights into the life of the guesthouse owner. The ups and the downs. Memories, anecdotes, inspiration, the wonderful and sometimes the more difficult guests and a few tried and tested recipes. To quote Nikos Kazantzakis in Zorba the Greek. ‘Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe’. More than twenty-eight years of experience in the hospitality industry demands a story or two.

This entertaining memoir is as much about the stories of the people who call Fairview home, and home away from home, as it is about restoring a long-neglected historic dwelling and creating a plant collector’s garden. The Standers lived at Fairview from 1894
to 1974, and an account of this old house could only be complete by mentioning the lives led within the Fairview walls in those times.

How do you grow your capital while still preserving it? And how do you use investment vehicles to contribute positively to your financial freedom and a comfortable retirement? The answer is simple: financial education is the precursor to good investment decision-making.

Invest Your Way To Wealth is the guide to financial literacy. From asset classes to forex markets, the time value of money, risky and risk-free assets, cap rates, property, debt, SMMEs and angel investors, Thobelani Maphumulo explains the financial terms and concepts ordinary South Africans need to know in order to become financially savvy quickly and, ultimately, to retire financially secure.

Easy to understand, practical and informative, Invest Your Way To Wealth is essential reading for fledgling investors who need a trustworthy and accessible guide to a range of investment options that will help preserve and grow their capital before they engage expensive experts. By using the knowledge and tools provided in this book, you, too, can watch your money grow.

This book will let the reader into the world of migrant workers and how they have used their culture and heritage to reimagine and create a new socio-economic order through the production of cultural goods and services.

This is the story of Kwa Mai Mai; an economic trade zone that has captured the imagination of people who dared to dream. Kwa Mai Mai is the beginning of everything Johannesburg is meant to be, the City of Gold, a place where dreams deferred become true. The book tells a story of a people’s culture, wrapped in beautiful memories of life in villages left behind but collectively remembered by those who refuse to forget, lest they lose themselves in the concrete jungle that knows no mercy.

This is a story of how cultural memory, sacredly preserved and transported to new geographies, can serve both as cultural weapon that can be used to resist subjugation, while unleashing it as an economic weapon to turn those priceless traditions into tradeable commodities. The book narrates a story of how those who are the keepers of cultural memory can wield it as a weapon of survival and use its power to petition the entrepreneurial and creative spirits buried deep down in the souls of their true being.

The book raises an argument built on an assumption that if cultural memory can be stored and retrieved through artefacts, sites, ceremonies, myths and rituals, including texts, then Kwa Mai Mai assembles and converges these into one place and space of worship and celebration. This is a place where the hypervisibility of its bearers is always in a constant fight against being eclipsed by those who would rather pretend it did not exist – the City that created it.

The book combines both the author’s observation and interpretation gathered from ethnographic work of over four years, as well as the voices of those who reluctantly remained in this City when no other alternative presented itself, short of returning to the villages in absolute defeat.

"I wrote this book because I believe the road to financial freedom is a journey everyone can embark on. I wrote this book with you in mind. You, who perhaps have never been taught anything about how money works. You, who have been too intimidated to pick up and read a book about personal finance because you were too scared of the jargon. You, who want to #getyourmoneyright. I had you in mind when I wrote this book." – Mapalo Makhu

If you are a millennial who is trying to figure out how money works, this book is for you. With simple, relatable and sometimes amusing stories about how to manage money on a day-to-day basis, you will learn how to change your mindset about money, get out of debt and stay debt-free, invest your money and, ultimately, live your best life.

You’re Not Broke, You’re Pre-Rich will help you, the young professional, to think differently about money, while covering pertinent topics like black tax, savings, budgeting, emergency funds and financial scams, as well as estate and retirement planning (and why you should care right now!). It is the best class you never attended… in a book!

Most gardens have shady spots, but some gardens have a real shade ‘problem’. Whether it is caused by large or overhanging trees, tall buildings, or just being on the ‘wrong side of the street’, fi nding the best plants for a shady area can be challenging, particularly if the rest of your garden basks in sunshine all year round. Shade plants are not necessarily tropical, although many tropical plants thrive in shade. Some delicate leafy plants will scorch and burn in hot sun, some plants like shady conditions but not damp soil, while others grow happily in damp, boggy ground that receives minimum sunlight. Gardening in the Shade examines the different types of shade and the effect it has on plant growth.

It presents solutions to common problems such as feeding, watering and mulching shade plants, and how to deal with exacerbating factors such as wind, frost and soil type. Popular shade plants, like clivias, bromeliads, fuchsias and ferns are given special features, and a directory of species lists plants under headings like ground covers, tropical-looking perennials, and succulents.

Despite increasing visibility of same-sex relationships in South Africa, there remains a distinct lack of research and public discussion around same-sex family practices and related legislative and social issues. This new collection of essays, interviews and images seeks to address this critical information gap by both capturing recent scholarship and documenting the challenges and experiences of same-sex partnered families. By bringing together work from diverse academic and professional disciplines - as well as visual materials from two recent exhibitions - this unique collection will play a crucial role in promoting further research into LGBTI families in South Africa. Topics covered include the theory and context of LGBTI families in South Africa; the legislative framework; media representations of same-sex families; assisted reproduction technology - challenges, experiences and understandings; parenting practices; disclosure practices within families; and intimate partner violence.

For more than a century, skin lighteners have been a ubiquitous feature of global popular culture-embraced by consumers even as they were fiercely opposed by medical professionals, consumer health advocates, and antiracist thinkers and activists. In Beneath the Surface, Lynn M. Thomas constructs a transnational history of skin lighteners in South Africa and beyond. Analyzing a wide range of archival, popular culture, and oral history sources, Thomas traces the changing meanings of skin colour from precolonial times to the postcolonial present. From indigenous skinbrightening practices and the rapid spread of lighteners in South African consumer culture during the 1940s and 1950s to the growth of a billiondollar global lightener industry, Thomas shows how the use of skin lighteners and experiences of skin color have been shaped by slavery, colonialism, and segregation, as well as consumer capitalism, visual media, notions of beauty, and protest politics. In teasing out lighteners' layered history, Thomas theorises skin as a site for antiracist struggle and lighteners as a technology of visibility that both challenges and entrenches racial and gender hierarchies.

A Brief History of South Africa is an introduction to South African history from the earliest times to the Mandela Presidency.

Using both a narrative chronology and thematic chapters, the book encourages critical thinking about how history shaped South Africa. While presenting an account of colonisation and the policies of successive governments, A Brief History portrays the resistance to colonisation, segregation and apartheid, including the role of political, social and trade union movements.

A Brief History does not aim to be comprehensive, but rather provides the basic facts for the general reader. The book can also act as a study guide for both formal and non-formal adult education. Equally important, A Brief History can be used to strengthen history teaching in schools.

The book provides history teachers with the opportunity to expand their own knowledge, especially if they do not have a history qualification. Each chapter points readers to a range of further readings with a variety of historical interpretations, and provides questions for group discussion.

Help! My kind is anders! is ’n praktiese gids wat jou met ’n gereedskapkis toerus om van jou en jou kind ’n kampioenspan te maak! Om ’n tipiese kleuter groot te maak is geen grap nie. Hoe dan gemaak as jou kind ‘anders’ is? Wat as hy hiperaktief en aandagafleibaar is? Wat as jy vermoed sy’s op die outismespektrum? Hoe gemaak met lae spiertonus en ’n swak pengreep? Wat as hy ’n taalagterstand het, lispel of hakkel? En sê nou sy het nie leerprobleme nie, maar sukkel met angs?

In Help! My kind is anders! beantwoord ’n span kundiges dié en vele ander vrae waarmee ouers vandag worstel. Is terapie werklik nodig of net ’n geldmaakstorie? En waar begin ’n mens as jy dink daar is fout? In 30 boeiende gevallestudies vertel ouers en terapeute saam hul ware verhale van deursettingsvermoë en hoop. Sielkundiges, spraakterapeute, oudioloë, arbeidsterapeute, fisioterapeute, spelterapeute en ander medici deel hul kennis, ervaring en geheime.

Help! My kind is anders! is ’n praktiese gids wat jou met ’n gereedskapkis toerus om van jou en jou kind ’n kampioenspan te maak! Christien Neser is ’n skrywer en spraakterapeut wat al vir sowat 40 jaar in praktyk is.

The go-to guide for every young black entrepreneur!

The 7 Things Every Young Black Entrepreneur Should Know is a practical and inspirational guidebook aimed at empowering the next generation of young black entrepreneurs. The odds of success for any entrepreneur are poor. The odds of success for young black entrepreneurs are abysmal. The aim of this book is to assist them to improve those odds. And with South Africa’s low employment levels, there has never been a better time for young black people to set off on the road to entrepreneurship.

All the information in this book is based on the author’s decades of experience as an entrepreneur and represents a distillation of the most important lessons he’s learnt. Readers will be empowered to understand how to leverage their strengths, minimise their weaknesses, count the true cost of success, be patient, distinguish between good and bad ideas, manage risk, raise funding wisely and build shared prosperity – all from the perspective of a young black entrepreneur.

In Donkerwerk word daar gefokus op die dialektiese interafhanklikheid van alle dinge. Daar word besin oor die nietigheid van die mens teenoor die mistieke grootsheid van die heelal, maar ook op die verhouding tussen die mens en die natuur.

Tematies handel die verse oor kinderloosheid, verganklikheid, die liefde, familie, geskiedenis, musiek en oorlog. Bekendes soos Dracula, Paul Celan en Stephen Hawking word aan die hand van portretstudies verbeeld, terwyl sosiale en persoonlike onrus die spilpunt van sommige verse vorm.

KwaZulu-Natal is culturally rich, offering a wide range of writers - writing mainly in English and Zulu - who are linked through their lives and their writing to this province of South Africa. The writers include, to name just a few, Alan Paton, Roy Campbell, Lewis Nkosi, Ronnie Govender, Wilbur Smith, Daphne Rooke, Credo Mutwa and Gcina Mhlophe. And how better to understand a writer than to know about the places they are linked to? For example, who, after reading the lyrical opening sentences of Paton's famous book Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) has not wanted to see this scene in reality? There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it. A Literary Guide to KwaZulu-Natal introduces you to the regions and writers through word and image, leading you imaginatively through this beautiful province. This could include following the route a fictional character charts in a novel, visiting particular settings from a story or tracking down the places linked to a writer, whether a birthplace, home, burial site or significant setting. Literary tourists are interested in how places have influenced writing and at the same time how writing has created place. This is also a way of reflecting upon and understanding historic and contemporary identities in a changing cultural and political South African landscape.

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

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

One of the chief concerns regarding the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies is that they are owned and monopolised by advanced capitalist countries. Both between countries and within countries we find ‘the digital divide’. Most of humanity, having little or no access to widespread means of communication and access to information via the internet, will not benefit from the 4IR.

The promotion and adoption of these technologies without a plan to address this will lead to a more unequal world. The talk about people changing careers or learning new skills in the face of technologically driven job losses does not consider the differential skills and potentialities among people. Importantly, countries are told to do everything in their power not to be left behind by the 4IR. They are told that they must adopt these technologies come what may, without properly assessing country-specific and class-specific implications, threats and needs.

Is there any guarantee that agreeing to and adoption of the Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies by, say, African countries, will not have the same result – leaving them exploited and dominated by those who wield and own the new technologies?

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

Alchemie van my muse is ’n veelvlakkige debuut oor die lewe, die liefde en die lettere waarin die spel met die tradisie van die digkuns ontgin word.

Die digter besin oor digterskap en tree postmodernisties in gesprek met ander digters soos Louw, Kirsch, Boerneef, gert vlok nel, e.a. Daar word satiries gekyk na die posisie van Afrikaans. Die liefde word weerloos besing en oor besin, met nostalgie, humor en pyn. Die lewe en die onafwendbare dood word, soms tong-in-die-kies, ander kere oop-enbloot ontredderd, berym en ontrym.

With the adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement, the purpose of development is being redefined in both social and environmental terms. Despite pushback from conservative forces, change is accelerating in many sectors. To drive this transformation in ways that bring about social, environmental and economic justice at a local, national, regional and global levels, new knowledge and strong cross-regional networks capable of foregrounding different realities, needs and agendas will be essential. In fact, the power of knowledge matters today in ways that humanity has probably never experienced before, placing an emphasis on the roles of research, academics and universities.

In this collection, an international diverse collection of scholars from the southern African and Nordic regions critically review the SDGs in relation to their own areas of expertise, while placing the process of knowledge production in the spotlight. In Part I, the contributors provide a sober assessment of the obstacles that neo-liberal hegemony presents to substantive transformation. In Part Two, lessons learned from North–South research collaborations and academic exchanges are assessed in terms of their potential to offer real alternatives. In Part III, a set of case studies supply clear and nuanced analyses of the scale of the challenges faced in ensuring that no one is left behind. This accessible and absorbing collection will be of interest to anyone interested in North–South research networks and in the contemporary debates on the role of knowledge production.

The Southern African–Nordic Centre (SANORD) is a network of higher education institutions that stretches across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Universities in the southern African and Nordic regions that are not yet members are encouraged to join.

In the east end of the inner city of Johannesburg, a former textiles factory undergoes a dramatic transformation to become, over the next several years, one of the city’s foremost artists’ studios. When the sale of the building seems imminent, not only must the artists face the daunting prospect of relocation, but a remarkable chapter in the complex narrative of contemporary South African art seems about to close. Sensing the importance of this moment, Kim Gurney, herself a former tenant of the atelier, follows the stories of several of the August House denizens through some of the artworks that came to life in their studios. The result is a fascinating study of the role of the atelier and its artists in South Africa’s fractious art world, and a consideration of the relationship between art and the ever-changing city of Johannesburg.

With the eye of an urbanist, artist and resident, Kim Gurney [constructs] a compelling assemblage of individual, visual and urban narratives brilliantly illuminates the complex life of a building, August House, located in inner city Johannesburg. Her cast of characters—artists, workers, neighbours, August House and the city—lend poignant contours to the ebbs and flows of daily life,the pressures of gentrification, the ruthlessness of poverty, the radicality of the imagination and the ghosts of history.

Afrikaans developed when slaves in the Cape adapted Dutch – the language of the rulers – for their own use. Many years later Afrikaans was hijacked by some white Afrikaners as ‘their language’, but Davids proved beyond doubt that it was the descendants of the slaves, not their masters, who first wrote Afrikaans.

The focus of this book is the Arabic-Afrikaans literary tradition of the Cape Muslim community. It looks at the emergence of this tradition at the Cape of Good Hope, as well as the social vehicles through which it emerged and through which it was in use. This is done through an examination of the literature, in the form of manuscripts and publications, it generated during the first hundred years of its existence.

Importantly, the book looks at the development of the distinctive Arabic alphabet that local Arabic-Afrikaans authors used to convey accurately this community’s mother tongue.

The history of the Afrikaans language is still very little understood and discussed, and this book illuminates the extraordinary story of its beginnings, with slaves and colonisers, with Xam!, Indonesians, Malaysians, Turks and imams of all stripes. It’s a wonderfully rich story told in detail here, with verve and a keen ear for story.

Jacana Media is delighted to make available again a classic work of South African hidden history, that of the Arabic Afrikaans literary tradition. Previously published in 2010 as The Afrikaans of the Cape Muslims from 1815 to 1915, this edition carries a new introduction by Heinrich Willemse.