Why do so many South Africans prefer taking the law into their own hands to relying on the police? Why are those who do so often cheered or sympathised with?

Of the unprecedented 27 000 recorded murders in South Africa in 2022, at least 1 894 – or 7 per cent – were attributed to mob justice and vigilantism, more than double the number from five years before. In the first nine months of 2023, a further 1 472 mob justice deaths had already been registered.

Mob justice is nothing new, but in recent years it has taken on an undeniably desperate, furious edge. From the breathtakingly violent Zandspruit massacre in May 2021, to the killings during the July unrest two months later, to the march of Operation Dudula across the nation in 2022, vigilantism – and the condoning of it – has never before captured the zeitgeist of South Africa so sharply. What has changed in the past few years, and what does it augur for the future?

Following three recent cases of mob justice, from the hellish metropolitan townships of Gauteng to the far-flung bushveld of northern Limpopo, and drawing on extensive research and interviews, Why We Kill explores the roots, realities and consequences of South Africa’s current crisis of vigilantism.

These poems trace Nelson Mandela's journey to freedom.

The original French and Norman Strike's sensitive English translations are printed on opposite pages, interspersed with ink drawings by Nja Madhaoui.

Most serial murderers undeniably spring from abusive or neglected childhoods, and/or are potentially predisposed to various genetic, sociopathic or schizophrenic afflictions, rendering the root cause of their murderous behaviour a complex, lethal combination of factors. What is less credited, however, is the role of pathological narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) in the making of a serial killer.

Narcissistic rage, sexual narcissism, necrophilia and cannibalism are all driven by a need to control and satisfy a grandiose sense of entitlement for personal pleasure, and of those, narcissistic rage is possibly the most dangerous factor of all in the understanding of serial rape and murder. In this riveting book, the author explores the role of NPD through the lived experiences of various serial murderers and showcases the profiles of both infamous and lesser-known serial offenders from South Africa and around the world.

From the blatant, callous criminality of the likes of Jason Rohde, Dina Rodrigues and Henri van Breda to the unspeakable cruelty of serial rapists and murderers like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Kobus Geldenhuys (the Norwood killer) and Don Steenkamp (the Griekwastad murderer), this book reveals the role pathological narcissism might have played in some of the most notorious and gruesome criminal cases of our times. Just one warning: Don’t read this book at night!

After a string of police botches, Captain Ben "Bliksem" Booysen was assigned the Krugersdorp Killers' case in 2016.

Eleven people had already been brutally murdered by a group calling themselves Electus Per Deus. Booysen made headlines when he arrested the mastermind Cecilia Steyn, and her accomplices.

South Africa's own "Chuck Norris" takes the reader behind the scenes of the satanic killings, divulging new and shocking details of the crimes that have kept the nation on edge for almost a decade.

By highlighting and teasing out the mingled emotions of anxiety, disenchantment, hope and anger which characterise South Africans’ current experienced reality, Sole’s poetry questions and expands on our concerns about identity and belonging.

In so doing, the poems in Skin Rafts contemplate the relationships that exist between us on a number of seemingly discrete, but actually intertwined, fronts – the personal relationship between lovers; the wider social and political relationships between human beings; as well as the problematic and contested human relationships that are brought to bear on land, landscape and the non-human.

In this collection the reader is confronted with the circumstance that both body and society exist in a fragile dimension of uncertainty, where we all are ‘bobbing / on our raft of skin’.

It’s the summer holidays and Liwa Nile and her sister Nomfie are looking forward to having fun without worrying about school work. Although they enjoy playing with their horses Sky and Blue on the farm, they hope that their father Moya has fun plans for the family.

When the girls learn they are going to the beach for the holidays, Nomfie is excited to play on the sand, but Liwa is scared of the sharks and jellyfish in the water. They make friends on the beach, but it stops being fun when other kids start bullying them.

Will they be able to stand against the bullies so they can continue chasing sunsets on the beach?

Liwa Nile is a 6-year-old girl who lives an idyllic life on the farm with her parents, Thandi and Moya, as well as her older sister Nomfie. She enjoys playing with her horse, Sky and loves the red apples that her mom always buys when she goes to the market.

Liwa is uncomfortable when Uncle Siphiwe comes to visit. Although he smiles with the family and brings more red apples from the market, Liwa stops eating them. She becomes silent and sad because of Uncle Siphiwe’s actions.

Will she be able to let her parents know why she doesn’t want Uncle Siphiwe’s red apples?

Hy sug. “Weet jy wat dink ek? Ek dink jy moenie so hard dink en worrie oor wat Christa sê nie, en ek dink nie jy moet verliefraak van jou lysie afhaal nie.”

Sy wikkel haar net daar uit sy omhelsing los. “Wie sê dis op my lysie!”

“O, ek wéét dis op jou lysie.” Hy glimlag en dan trek hy haar weer terug in sy arms, sy arm om haar middellyf; sy bene onmiddellik weer die ene seekat oor hare. “Toe, hou nou op worrie oor nonsens. Slaap. Jy gaan jou energie moreoggend nodig kry as jy wakkerword.” Met dié druk hy sy lyf teenaan hare. Gits. Sekere dele van sy lyf is nie heeltemal so aan die slaap as wat hy dalk dink nie.

“Hmmm” grom hy in haar nek as hy ook sy lyf se reaksie voel. “Jy gaan dalk jou energie in die middel van die nag al benodig as ek sake so uitkyk!”

Vir ‘n ruk lank lê hulle so – rustig en salig – totdat Meiring die stilte onderbreek. “Mag ek vra waar jy aan jou inspirasie gekom het?”

“Met die ys en als?” vra sy.

“Ja … veral met die als.”

“O, ek het dit op YouTube gesien.”

Daar is ’n oomblik se stilte. “Jy is nie ernstig nie.”

Moet sy hom vertel van die seksghoeroe wat sy ontdek het wat videolesse aanbied oor hoe om ’n man te verlei? Nee, wat.

“Ek grap net. Jou ysidee het my geïnspireer,” sê sy.

Hy soen haar in die nek. “Dan sal ek met meer idees vorendag moet kom.”

Toe Karen se man haar vir ’n jonger weergawe los, besluit sy: Dis tyd om te waag.

’n Vriendin vertel haar van die eienaar van ’n toermaatskappy wat glo ’n bobaasverleier en uitstekende minnaar is …

Hy stem in om Karen uit haar penarie te red en gou beleef sy avonture waarvan sy voorheen net kon droom. Avonture het egter ’n manier om jou onverhoeds te betrap en jou op afdraaipaaie te neem wat jy nooit sien kom het nie.

Children develop strong brain connections and feel happy when they learn how to control their bodies, manage big overwhelming feelings and develop their thinking skills. These important skills come more easily for some than for others - which also means that there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to parenting.

Filled with stories, examples and easy to understand analogies, Raising Happy Children will help you understand what is going on inside your child's developing body and brain as well as your child's true nature and how this affects the way he thinks, feels and behaves.

You'll also find lots of fun games you can play during your day-to-day interaction - crucial in the development of your child's ability to regulate his body and develop his thinking in the midst of big, overwhelming feelings. In this book, Lizanne also gives step-by-step ways to deal with some of the most common parenting struggles,as they relate to your unique child, such as: Meltdowns; Temper tantrums; Fears, anxieties and stress.

Once you understand your unique child, you'll be ready to set appropriate boundaries and put rituals and routines in place that will guarantee a calm, happy and deeply connected family.

Frederik van Zyl Slabbert was a man on a mission, whether as an academic, opposition politician, democratic facilitator or businessman. When he famously led a delegation of leading Afrikaners to Dakar in 1987 to meet the exiled ANC, many saw it as a breakthrough moment, while others felt he had been taken in. And yet his reputation – for honesty, integrity, wit and courage – still towers above many of his contemporaries.

An academic turned politician, Slabbert brought unusual intellectual rigour to Parliament, transforming the upstart Progressive Federal Party into a force that could challenge the National Party. Disillusioned by South African society, he resigned in 1986 to explore democratic alternatives. Sidelined during the democratic transition, he continued to pursue a broad range of initiatives aimed at building democracy, empowering black South Africans and transforming the economy.

Grundlingh offers insights into this most unlikely politician, providing new perspectives on a figure who even today remains an enigma.

It’s sports season at school. Liwa and Noel are best friends and all they want is to get into the first team of their favourite sport, tennis.

Challenges arise when they can’t keep up with the other girls during practice and they start thinking that they need to lose weight.

They decide to take drastic measures to lose weight with terrible consequences.

A collection of ten witty, tightly written, upbeat short stories about people making new beginnings after significant losses (the death of their partners, home invasions, etc) set in the upmarket northern suburbs of Johannesburg, like Parkview.

It is filled with memorable characters and incidents.

Zapiro needs no introduction. His 19th annual speaks for itself.

No year would be complete without Zapiro’s annual collection of cartoons, and in this latest book of sharp-witted and well-timed cartoons, Zapiro once again proves himself a satirical genius, ensuring that no event passes by without comment … or a laugh.

Emile Joubert is sy lewe lank ’n kosgenieter.

Op sesjarige ouderdom het sy ouma se kerrie ’n groot indruk op hom gemaak en van daar af was hy ’n onkeerbare smulpaap en het kos hom betower – of dit nou die skoolmaaltye in sy kortstondige verblyf in Londen was, die honger en dors in die weermag, of die seekos wat hy uitgeduik het – Joubert se kosobessies word lewend in sy lekker skryfstyl in die oortreffende trap.

Sy kosreise strek van Londen tot Griekeland, Italië, Frankryk en die dorre landskap van Angola. Die Mars bar, fondue, baked beans, oesters en boeliebief is enkele van die kossoorte wat sy reise vergesel.

The modern classic from double Booker Prize winner J.M. Coetzee - soon to be a major film starring Mark Rylance, Robert Pattinson and Johnny Depp For decades the Magistrate has run the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement, ignoring the impending war between the barbarians and the Empire, whose servant he is. But when the interrogation experts arrive, he is jolted into sympathy with the victims and into a quixotic act of rebellion which lands him in prison, branded as an enemy of the state. Waiting for the Barbarians is an allegory of oppressor and oppressed. Not just a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times, the Magistrate is an analogue of all men living in complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.

The mind-bending new masterpiece from the award-winning and internationally best-selling South African author of The Shining Girls, Zoo City and Afterland, among other works.

Bridge's maverick scientist mother Jo is dead. Now she's examining everything Jo left behind. Which is when she finds her big secret. Is it a drug? A gateway to other worlds? Jo believed so.

Bridge is desperate to see her mother again. Will do anything, risk anything. Including search for her in those other realities. What she doesn't know is that others are after Jo's secret. And some believe anyone it touches must be destroyed.

Bridge? She just wants to find her mom ...

Page-turning and ambitious, BRIDGE is a dazzlingly inventive speculative thriller with an unforgettable cast of characters, and the work of a novelist at the height of her powers.

An award-winning historian and journalist tells the very human story of apartheid's afterlife, tracing the fates of South African insurgents, collaborators, and the security police through the tale of the clandestine photo album used to target apartheid's enemies. From the 1960s until the early 1990s, the South African security police and counterinsurgency units collected over 7,000 photographs of apartheid's enemies.

The political rogue's gallery was known as the "terrorist album," copies of which were distributed covertly to police stations throughout the country. Many who appeared in the album were targeted for surveillance. Sometimes the security police tried to turn them; sometimes the goal was elimination. All of the albums were ordered destroyed when apartheid's violent collapse began. But three copies survived the memory purge.

With full access to one of these surviving albums, award-winning South African historian and journalist, Jacob Dlamini investigates the story behind these images: their origins, how they were used, and the lives they changed. Extensive interviews with former targets and their family members testify to the brutal and often careless work of the police. Although the police certainly hunted down resisters, the terrorist album also contains mug shots of bystanders and even regime supporters.

Their inclusion is a stark reminder that apartheid's guardians were not the efficient, if morally compromised, law enforcers of legend but rather blundering agents of racial panic. With particular attentiveness to the afterlife of apartheid, Dlamini uncovers the stories of former insurgents disenchanted with today?s South Africa, former collaborators seeking forgiveness, and former security police reinventing themselves as South Africa's newest export: "security consultants" serving as mercenaries for Western nations and multinational corporations.

The Terrorist Album is a brilliant evocation of apartheid's tragic caprice, ultimate failure, and grim legacy.

Poskaarte van 'n reis is 'n keur van Jacqueline Leuvennink se rubrieke en artikels wat deur die jare in menige tydskrifte verskyn het. Jacqueline se fyn waarneming en vermoë om verwikkelde emosies en situasies in eenvoud te verwoord laat die leser opnuut verwonderd oor die skoonheid van ons wêreld.

Die skrywer nooi die leser om haar te vergesel op ver reise na interessante bestemmings en inspirerende ervarings.

Poskaarte van 'n reis is 'n unieke versameling artikels wat maklik en individueel gelees kan word vir lesers wat nie baie tyd het vir lees nie, maar steeds iets moois en voedsaam vir die siel op een slag wil lees.

’n Onderwyseres wat op volmaannagte in ’n weerwolf verander.

’n Speelding wat allerhande vreemde dinge begin aanvang.

’n Eksperiment wat jou in ’n insek laat verander.

’n Vakansieplaas waar reuse-vlermuise snags buite rondvlieg.

En ’n grillerige monsterfliek waaruit jy nie maklik ontsnap nie.

Kry jou flits uit, kruip onder die komberse in en maak gereed om lekker te ril en te gril met hierdie GROOT en GRILLERIGE versameling stories. Vir die eerste keer verskyn vyf van Jaco Jacobs se gewildste grilstories saam in een boek. Dit sluit in:

- Troetelgedrog

- Tande

- Nag van die monsters

- Nagvlerke

- Voelers

How do you feel right now? Are you aware of tension, stiffness or aching? What is your posture like? Do you feel at home in your body? Are you being treated for a condition or disease?

This book is for those who want to:

• Understand how Body stress release works;
• Find explanations for problems of unknown causes (like headaches);
• Find out about reducing pain in the lower back,neck, shoulders and knees;
• Understand how stress affects the body;
• Read about the history, development and credentials of this complementary health technique;
• Read about the experiences of others with Body stress release.

Body stress release is a gentle health technique that works in co-operation with other forms of health-care to bring hope to those with health problems. Body stress release is a technique started in Cape Town in 1987 by Gail and Ewald Meggersee, and it has now spread around the world. It has enhanced and transformed the lives of tens of thousands of people, awakening the awerness that the potential for well-being lies within each of us.

South Africa’s story is often presented as a triumph of new over old, but while formal apartheid was abolished decades ago, stark and distressing similarities persist.

Dr Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh explores the edifice of systemic racial oppression — the new apartheid — that continues to thrive, despite or even because of our democratic system.

Noni Jabavu was the first black South African woman to publish books on her life. Her memoirs Drawn in Colour and The Ochre People have been compared to Zora Neale Hurston's work.

A cosmopolitan, free-spirited woman, she returned home in 1977 and wrote a weekly column in the Daily Dispatch. 

This book is a compilation of these cheeky, insightful and hilarious columns for a younger audience of empowered women. 

On a lonely stretch of road a nameless man commits a murder.

The victim is a religious minister on his way to take up a post in a nearby town. When the murderer decides to steal the dead man’s identity, his first official duty is to bury the body, which has just been found near a disused quarry. But the head of the local police takes a close interest in the new minister’s work – watching, listening, slowly circling his prey.

In The Quarry, Damon Galgut brings the power of myth to his tender prose to create a devastating drama that builds to a climax that is almost too much to bear.

Martin Retief se hele lewe verander toe sy pa een middag stilhou om aandete te koop. Maar dan ontmoet Martin vir Drikus. Drikus wat aan ’n siekte ly en sy eie zombiefliek wil maak. Wat volg is ’n avontuur vol skouhoenders, skelms, mooi meisies, wiskunde, kammabloed en zombies.