Land In South Africa examines how land and agrarian reform impacts nation building, citizenship, and identity formation. The publication draws attention to the limitations of reducing land to a commodity, and how this approach perpetuates social conflict and inequality in land reform policy implementation.

The book posits an alternative policy paradigm, which discusses contested meanings of land and their relation to nation formation. It brings to the fore citizen stakeholder perspectives from former labour tenants, citizens residing in communally owned land, women subsistence farmers, peasant movements and land reform civil society groups.

The chapters investigate the diverse and contested meanings of land to elevate how South Africans perceive land justice and reform, while also including several international case studies. The publication argues that land power relations and policy debates are constitutive components of nation building. And, importantly, that land shapes essential pillars in nation formation such as citizenship, political identity, heritage, a sense of belonging and social disparities.

The issue of land rights is an ongoing and complex topic of debate for South Africans. Rights to Land comes at a time when land redistribution by government is underway. This book seeks to understand the issues around land rights and distribution of land in South Africa and proposes that new policies and processes should be developed and adopted. It further provides an analysis of what went so wrong, and warns that a new phase of restitution may ignite conflicting ethnic claims and facilitate elite capture of land and rural resources.

While there are no quick fixes, the first phase of restitution should be completed and the policy then curtailed. The book argues that land ownership and administration is important to rural democracy and that this should not be placed under the control of traditionalist intermediaries. Land restitution, initiated in 1994, was an important response to the injustices of the apartheid era. But it was intended as a limited and short-term process – initially to be completed in five years.

It may continue for decades, creating uncertainty and undermining investment into agriculture.

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.

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.

For more than five decades Walter and Albertina Sisulu were at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid. As secretary-general of the ANC, Walter was sentenced to life imprisonment with Nelson Mandela in 1964 and spent 26 years in prison until his release in 1989. While her husband and his colleagues were in jail, Albertina played a crucial role in keeping the ANC alive underground, and in the 1980s was co-President of the United Democratic Front. Their story has been one of persecution, bitter struggle and painful separation. But it is also one of patience, hope and enduring love.

Cassidy Hutchinson’s desk was mere steps from the most controversial president in recent American history. Now, she provides a riveting account of her extraordinary experiences as an idealistic young woman thrust into the middle of a national crisis, where she risked everything to tell the truth about some of the most powerful people in Washington.

Ever since a childhood visit to Washington, DC, Cassidy Hutchinson aspired to serve her country in government. Raised in a working-class family with a military background, she was the first in her immediate family to graduate from college. Despite having no ties to Washington, Hutchinson landed a vital position at the center of the Trump White House.

Her life took a dramatic turn on January 6th, 2021, when, at twenty-four, she found herself in one of the most extraordinary and unprecedented calamities in modern political history.

Hutchinson was faced with a choice between loyalty to the Trump administration or loyalty to the country by revealing what she saw and heard in the attempt to overthrow a democratic election. She bravely came forward to become the pivotal witness in the House January 6 investigations, as her testimony transfixed and stunned the nation. In her memoir, Hutchinson reveals the struggle between the pressures she confronted to toe the party line and the demands of the oath she swore to defend American democracy.

Enough reaches far beyond the typical insider political account. It’s the saga of a woman whose fierce determination helped her overcome childhood challenges to get her dream job, only to face a crisis of conscience—one that more senior White House aides tried to evade—and, in the process, find her voice and herself. This is a portrait of how the courage of one person can change the course of history.

In The Great Pretenders: Race and Class under ANC Rule, veteran political analyst Ebrahim Harvey delivers a stinging critique of the ANC. This must-read analysis reveals the complete failure of the ANC to roll back the race and class divide.

Harvey argues that a series of events – including HIV/AIDS denialism, the Marikana shootings, the Nkandla funding scandal, mass student protests, the Esidemeni tragedy, systemic corruption and state capture – are rooted in policy choices made by the ANC during negotiations and in power. This book is not just an evisceration of the ANC, however, as Harvey is able, through many interviews and patient delving into the past and present, to provide an indispensable guide to the future.

The Great Pretenders is fierce, passionate and provocative. It is certain to provoke those in power, stirring debate on not only the pernicious issue of race relations in South Africa, but on how to create the shared society promised us.

At a watershed meeting in 2000 the ANC committed itself to "the new cadre" project. A project with the aim to recruit and develop ANC members who are dedicated, selfless people with integrity. Yet twenty years later the ANC is consumed by corrupt cadres with the party clearly losing the battle against corruption and state capture.

How did this happen, and what exactly went wrong?

Political analyst Mpumelelo Mkhabela tells a fascinating story starting with Mandela, the Scorpions and Tony Yengeni all the way to Zuma and the Guptas to explain how we got here.

South Africa’s democracy is often seen as a story of bright beginnings gone astray, a pattern said to be common to Africa. The negotiated settlement of 1994, it is claimed, ended racial domination and created the foundation for a prosperous democracy – but greedy politicians betrayed the promise of a new society.

In Prisoners Of The Past, Steven Friedman astutely argues that this misreads the nature of contemporary South Africa. Building on the work of the economic historian Douglass North and the political thinker Mahmood Mamdani, Friedman shows that South African democracy’s difficulties are legacies of the pre-1994 past. The settlement which ushered in majority rule left intact core features of the apartheid economy and society. The economy continues to exclude millions from its benefits, while racial hierarchies have proved stubborn: apartheid is discredited, but the values of the pre-1948 colonial era, the period of British colonisation, still dominate. Thus South Africa’s democracy supports free elections, civil liberties and the rule of law, but also continues past patterns of exclusion and domination.

Friedman reasons that this ‘path dependence’ is not, as is often claimed, the result of constitutional compromises in 1994 that left domination untouched. This bargain was flawed because it brought not too much compromise, but too little. Compromises extended political citizenship to all but there were no similar bargains on economic and cultural change. Using the work of the radical sociologist Harold Wolpe, Friedman shows that only negotiations on a new economy and society can free South Africans from the prison of the past.

What is your stake in the upcoming 2024 election in South Africa – the most crucial election since 1994? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the outcome? As a businessperson, consumer, worker or farmer, you will be affected by the election results and the significant changes that are likely to appear in South Africa’s political economy. The 2024 election gives South Africans the opportunity to decide what the country and its political leadership will look like in the future.

Tipping Point – Turmoil Or Reform? examines some critical questions about the country’s political and socioeconomic landscape today and whether the 2024 election outcome is likely to signal more gloom or will it rather pave the way for positive and enduring reforms. Edited by prominent economist Raymond Parsons, the book comprises pieces by some of South Africa’s leading intellectuals and thought leaders, all of whom have seriously considered South Africa’s post-election future.

Among the major themes emerging from the different chapters, which will help to steer the national agenda in the months and years ahead, are: South Africa’s political prospects after 2024; the future role of coalition politics in South Africa; the dynamics between business and the economy; what South Africa’s geopolitical leanings mean for the country’s trade competitiveness; how to make local government work; need for greater community engagement and why doing business in South Africa is challenging.

Tipping Point – Turmoil Or Reform? is as absorbing as it is frank, informing readers (and, importantly, voters) about the harsh reality of where South Africa is today but also offering them hope of a much better tomorrow – which will largely depend on the critical choices they make during this watershed election year for South Africa.

Dare To Believe is a poignant narrative of resilience, courage and hope in the face of adversity. Mmusi Maimane invites readers on a journey through his personal experiences, from the hardships of Apartheid-era Soweto to the corridors of power in post-liberation South Africa.

With insights drawn from his political career and a deep commitment to justice, Maimane shares the travails of party politics, the difficult task of transforming the DA, and his vision for a South Africa where all races can live and prosper together.

This book challenges us to confront the realities of inequality and division while daring to envision a nation united in prosperity and peace. It is a call to restore democracy back to the people and a compelling articulation of Maimane's belief in the transformative power of unity and the promise of a better tomorrow.

Parcel of Death recounts the little-told life story of Onkgopotse Abram Tiro, the first South African freedom fighter the apartheid regime pursued beyond the country’s borders to assassinate with a parcel bomb.

On 29 April 1972, Tiro made one of the most consequential revolutionary addresses in South African history. Dubbed the Turfloop Testimony, Tiro’s anti-apartheid speech saw him and many of his fellow student activists expelled, igniting a series of strikes in tertiary institutions across the country. By the time he went into exile in Botswana, Tiro was president of the Southern African Student Movement (SASM), permanent organiser of the South African Student Organisation (SASO) and a leading Black Consciousness proponent, hailed by many as the ‘godfather’ of the June 1976 uprisings.

Parcel of Death uses extensive and exclusive interviews to highlight significant influences and periods in Tiro’s life, including the lessons learned from his rural upbringing in Dinokana, Zeerust, the time he spent working on a manganese mine, his role as a teacher and the impact of his faith in shaping his outlook. It is a compelling portrait of Tiro’s story and its lasting significance in South Africa’s history.

‘A biography of Onkgopotse Tiro, who was at once a catalyst and an active change agent in the South African struggle for freedom, is long overdue. For generations to come, this book will be a source of valuable information and inspiration.’ – MOSIBUDI MANGENA

Being Black In The World, one of N. Chabani Manganyi’s first publications, was written in 1973 at a time of global socio-political change and renewed resistance to the brutality of apartheid rule and the emergence of Black Consciousness in the mid-1960s.

Manganyi is one of South Africa’s most eminent intellectuals and an astute social and political observer. He has written widely on subjects relating to ethno-psychiatry, autobiography, black artists and race. In 2018 Manganyi’s memoir, Apartheid and the Making of a Black Psychologist was awarded the prestigious ASSAf (The Academy of Science of South Africa) Humanities Book Award. Publication of Being-Black-in-the-World was delayed until the young Manganyi had left the country to study at Yale University. His publishers feared that the apartheid censorship board and security forces would prohibit him from leaving the country, and perhaps even incarcerate him, for being a ‘radical revolutionary’. The book found a limited public circulation in South Africa due to this censorship and original copies were hard to come by.

This new edition is an invitation to a younger generation of citizens to engage with early decolonialising thought by an eminent South African intellectual. While the essays in this book are clearly situated in the material and social conditions of that time, they also have a timelessness that speaks to our contemporary concerns regarding black subjectivity, affectivity and corporeality, the persistence of a racial (and racist) order and the possibilities of a renewed de-colonial project. Each of these short essays can be read as self-contained reflections on what it meant to be black during the apartheid years. Manganyi is a master of understatement, and yet this does not stop him from making incisive political criticisms of black subjugation under apartheid. The essays will reward close study for anyone trying to make sense of black subjectivity and the persistence of white insensitivity to black suffering.

Ahead of its time, the ideas in this book are an exemplary demonstration of what a thoroughgoing and rigorous de-colonial critique should entail. The re-publication of this classic text is enriched by the inclusion of a foreword and annotation by respected scholars Garth Stevens and Grahame Hayes respectively, and an afterword by public intellectual Njabulo S. Ndebele.

White supremacy is on the rise in the world once again, often finding expression in acts of extreme violence by young white men.

Gavin Evans explores the roots of this ideology, traced back to the 19th century to Charles Darwin and Francis Galton’s race-based theories. He examines the spread of eugenics and the rise of Nazism and Apartheid.

Evans further investigates the 21st-century evolution of ‘Great Replacement’ ideas, their spread through alt-right forums, and their influence on young men with access to weapons. White Supremacy reveals the connections between mainstream and extremist ‘Replacement Theory’ and the ongoing promotion of race science by both far-right and establishment figures, highlighting the dangerous legacy of eugenics.

South Africa stands at the edge of a precipice. Almost thirty years after its first democratic election, poor policy and rampant corruption have left the country standing on the brink of becoming a failed state. In this thought-provoking book, Bronwyn Williams interviews a diverse group of public intellectuals, business leaders, and political mavericks to discuss tangible ways South Africa can rescue itself from itself. Through a series of illuminating conversations, a group of independent thinkers explore the root causes of South Africa’s problems and offer insightful – and radical – ways of how to solve them.

From addressing land reform and economic development to rooting out corruption and overhauling political institutions, the conversations in this book come together as a roadmap towards a better South Africa that leaves no one behind. While the challenges facing the young democracy are immense, these experts provide hope and inspiration towards productive actions we can take together to build a brighter future.

For anyone interested in understanding the complex issues facing South Africa today and how they can be addressed, Rescuing Our Republic is essential reading. It is a powerful reminder that the fate of a nation is not predetermined; that individuals, citizens and corporations still have powerful agency and that when that agency is directed towards the right ideas and actions, South Africa can still realise its full potential.

LIST OF INTERVIEWEES:

• Why nations succeed with Dr Adrian Saville
• Measuring what matters with Malcolm Ray
• The promise of Africa beyond borders with Dr Débísí Àràbà
• An antidote to the tragedy of the commons with Wandile Sihlobo
• Property is a big deal with Lars Doucet
• Democratisation of ownership with Charles Savage
• The economic importance of optimism with Bruce Whitfield
• Good neighbours with Giulietta Talevi
• The perpetual struggle for democracy with Justice Malala
• A new vision for South Africa with Songezo Zibi
• Beyond the Constitution with TK Pooe

Between 1960 and 1989 in South Africa, more than 130 people were executed for crimes that had a political motive. Who were they, what did they do, and why did they do it?

While many people have heard of Solomon Mahlangu, John Harris or even Vuyisile Mini, the vast majority of executed activists remain very much unknown, even though they paid the ultimate price for their actions.

This book tells their stories, drawing on the author’s interviews with fellow activists, the families left behind, lawyers on both sides, judges who passed sentence, warders on death row, and even functionaries tasked with informing the condemned of their impending fate.

In the process, the book sheds light on forgotten aspects of South African history, such as the actions of the PAC/Poqo in the 1960s, which resulted in dozens of executions, and people who heeded the ANC’s call to make the country ungovernable in the 1980s and who were then disowned by the organisation. The book also makes startling revelations about miscarriages of justice, defence attorneys working against their clients, and, sadly, the post-apartheid state’s neglect of those who suffered as a result of political executions.

A critical look at how Bill Gates uses his wealth and power through the Gates Foundation to advance his own agenda and erode democratic institutions in the process.

From greedy to generous, from cold to kind-hearted, from rogue to hero, Bill Gates is an extraordinarily complex public figure. Yet over the last decade, we've reduced him to a flat caricature - a sweater-wearing, avuncular, well-meaning billionaire, who is adamantly giving away all of his money through the Gates Foundation in order to improve the lives of others.

This simplistic portrait perilously ignores the political influence that Gates has acquired through his charitable work, and the controversial ways through which he utilises it. The charity internally sets a policy agenda for how to fix the world - based on one man's worldview - then imposes this vision onto the developing world by funding groups that align with it.

Combining rich storytelling and ground-breaking reporting, The Bill Gates Problem offers readers a provocative and timely counter-narrative about one of the world's most famous figures. But more than that, this book speaks to a vital political question around economic inequality and the erosion of democratic institutions - why should the super-rich be able to transform their wealth into political power, and just how far can they go?

'It is through that choice of taking a resistance road, the one less travelled, that I got to experience a liberated life.'

Patric Tariq Mellet took his first steps on this road at the tender age of 8 and by 13, he engaged in his first consequential and difficult political act. He organised a fast in his high school to protest the killing of anti-apartheid cleric, Imam Abdullah Haron in detention. The match had been lit. Arbitrarily classified as 'white' despite his heritage and family, he was ordered to join the armed forces. He refused as he could not take up arms against his own people. Instead he heeded the call of OR Tambo and joined resistance as an MK in exile.

Mellet's autobiography demonstrates a spirit of innate and unbridled resistance, in small and major ways, that liberated Cleaner's Boy from an unpromising and tragic early life to a life of influence driven by a deep understanding of identity. A freedom fighter, a mystic and always a firebrand.

South Africa is facing an extraordinary ‘polycrisis’. The dimensions of this crisis include an energy collapse; a failing rail network; weak education outcomes; an interrupted water supply; and the effects of decades of endemic corruption that have brought much of government to a halt.

But the country also has incredible assets: a wealth of sought-after minerals; an enviable Constitution that protects rights and advocates social inclusion; an advanced financial and services sector; thriving agricultural and auto industries that compete with the best in the world; a prosecution service that is rapidly rebuilding; and, most of all, strong-willed people determined to make life better through hard work, entrepreneurship and hustling.

The choice is stark: we either build on the positives and take the country forward or we will be overwhelmed by the negatives and end up as another Zimbabwe or Venezuela. We have the people, the policies and the resources. What is missing is the political will to make the difficult choices that will save South Africa from disaster.

This book takes you on a journey that ends with one of three possible future scenarios: the Good, the Bad or the Ugly. Compiled by The Brenthurst Foundation and In Transformation Initiative, and workshopped with high-powered leaders in business and politics, the scenarios have stimulated intense public interest as the country grapples with its mounting problems.

The good news is that there is a clear road towards a positive future. It will take courageous leadership and smart thinking to get there, but the ‘Good’ scenario is tantalisingly within grasp.

We live under minority rule. But who is the ruling minority?

Most of us are getting screwed over. Our world is defined by inequality, insecurity, lack of community and information overload. As the world burns, mega-corporations are reporting record profits. How are they getting away with it?

'Minority rule' is the term Ash Sarkar uses to describe the irrational fear that minorities are trying to overturn and oppress majority populations. In her eye-opening debut, she reveals how minority elites rule majorities by creating the culture wars that have taken over our politics, stoking fear and panic in our media landscape. Because despite what they'll have you believe, antiracist campaigners aren't actually silencing the 'forgotten' working class, immigrants aren't eating your pets, trans-activists aren't corrupting your children, and cancel culture isn't crushing free speech.

In Minority Rule, Sarkar exposes how a strategic misdirection of blame over who is really screwing everything up is keeping the majority divided, while the real ruling minority of hedge fund managers, press barons, landlords and corporations remain on top. And it's facilitating one of the biggest power grabs in history. Most crucially, she shows us how what we really have in common is being concealed by a deafening culture of distraction - and that the first step towards a better future is understanding what is happening now, and how we got here.

Seismic shifts in Zimbabwe's politics since the 2017 demise of Robert Mugabe have generated renewed interest in Ndabaningi Sithole, the first president of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU).

Tinashe Mushakavanhu brings this vanguard revolutionary back to center stage through a selection of his important political and literary works.

The result is an important biographical mapping of Sithole's political and intellectual contributions to the liberation of Zimbabwe.

The author of Fire and Fury delivers a breathtaking insider account of the 2024 Trump campaign—undoubtedly the wildest, most unpredictable campaign in U.S. history, including multiple criminal trials, two assassination attempts, and a sudden switch of opponents.

All or Nothing takes readers on a journey accompanying Donald Trump on his return to power as only Michael Wolff, the foremost chronicler of the Trump era, can do it. As Trump cruelly and swiftly dispatches his opponents, heaps fire and fury on the prosecutors and judges who are pursuing him, and mocks and belittles anyone in his way, including the president of the United States, this becomes not just another election but perhaps, both sides say, the last election. The stakes could not be clearer: Either the establishment destroys Donald Trump, or he destroys the establishment.

What soon emerges is a split-screen reality: On one side, a picture that could not be worse for Trump: an inescapable, perhaps mortal legal quagmire; on the other side, an entirely positive political outlook: overwhelming support within his party, ever-rising polling numbers, and lackluster opposition. Through personal access to Trump’s inner circle, Wolff details a behind-the-scenes, revealing landscape of Trumpworld and its unlikely cast of primary players as well as the candidate himself, the most successful figure in American politics since, arguably, Roosevelt, but who might easily seem to be raving mad.

Threading a needle between tragedy and farce, the fate of the nation, the liberal ideal, and democracy itself, All or Nothing paints a gobsmacking portrait of a man whose behavior is so unimaginable, so uncontrolled, so unmindful of cause and effect, that it defeats all the structures and logic of civic life. And yet here in one of the most remarkable comebacks in American political history, Trump is victorious. This is not just a story about politics: It is a vivid exposé of the demons, discord, and anarchy—the fire, fury, and future—of American life under Trump.

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019, a powerful, well-researched, fictional account exploring the trokosi tradition for the curious and the open-minded. Abeo Kata lives a comfortable, happy life in West Africa as the privileged nine-year-old daughter of a government employee and stay-at-home mother. But when the Katas' idyllic lifestyle takes a turn for the worse, Abeo's father, following his mother's advice, places the girl in a religious shrine, hoping that the sacrifice of his daughter will serve as atonement for the crimes of his ancestors. Unspeakable acts befall Abeo for the fifteen years she is enslaved within the shrine. When she is finally rescued, broken and battered, she must struggle to overcome her past, endure the revelation of family secrets, and learn to trust and love again. In the tradition of Chris Cleave's Little Bee, Praise Song for the Butterflies is a contemporary story that offers an educational, eye-opening account of the practice of ritual servitude in West Africa. Spanning decades and two continents, Praise Song for the Butterflies is an unflinching tale of the devastation that children are subject to when adults are ruled by fear and someone must pay the consequences. "Abeo is unrelenting - a fiery protagonist who sparks in every scene. Bernice L. McFadden has created yet another compelling story, this time about hope and freedom." Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun

More than just a therapeutic technique, psychoanalysis as a school of thought has redefined our ideas on sexuality, the self, morality, family, and the nature of the mind for much of the twentieth century. At its broadest, Freud's thinking on civilization and social forces provides a context in which to consider the history of political struggle among individuals and societies. This volume explores a central paradox in the evolution of psychoanalytic thought and practice and the ways in which they were used. Why and how have some authoritarian regimes utilized psychoanalytic concepts of the self to envisage a new social and political order? How did psychoanalysis provide both theoretical and practical elements to legitimize resistance to those same regimes? How can a school of thought be co-opted so deftly by different groups for different political ends? Bringing together contributions from innovative scholars of history, politics, and psychoanalysis, this volume analyzes the various outcomes of this fascinating and influential theory's development under a wide spectrum of governments that restricted political and cultural freedoms from the 1930s to the present. The regimes analyzed range from Fascist Italy, Vichy France, and Spain and Hungary under Fascism and Communism; modern Latin American dictatorships, such as Brazil and Argentina in the 1960s and 1970s; and the influence of Hoover, McCarthy, and the larger Cold War on psychoanalysis in America. A fresh addition to an enormous body of scholarship, this will be required reading for academics interested in the relationship between politics and non-political systems of thoughts and beliefs, the transnational circulation of ideas, social movements, and the intellectual and social history of psychoanalysis.