As a young journalist, roped into court reporting to cover Jacob Zuma’s 2006 rape trial, Karyn Maughan could not have known that she would be reporting on Zuma’s legal woes for the next two decades – and would herself become his target. Disarmingly honest and deeply personal, this book takes a razor-sharp look at how powerful men use attacks on individuals who try to hold them accountable, as well as on the media and the courts, to undermine democracy.

Adriaan Basson says: 'Brave and brilliant. Jacob Zuma found his match in Karyn Maughan.'

A story of Mandela’s top cop, steeped in apartheid-era sabotage across local and global criminal investigations spanning decades. Add in nefarious individuals, from an informant once close to Colombia’s Pablo Escobar, to several suspected Cape Town crime kingpins, the stakes only get higher.

This is the scandal that has lacerated the South African Police Service, and implicated some of the country’s top cops and politicians. Bestselling author Caryn Dolley provides unprecedented insight into how apartheid-era policing structures lay the foundations for cop-gangster collusion and how these have endured into democracy.

With exclusive access to retired policeman André Lincoln’s life, Dolley exposes the dirty ploys that have swung South Africa’s trajectory; how street-level killings could be flashpoints of deep state proxy wars; and raises suspicions about who in Nelson Mandela’s realm backstabbed whom.

The ANC has ruled South Africa for three decades during which time the country has gone from the promise of the Rainbow Nation to disfunction and despair. In The Super Cadres, bestselling author Pieter du Toit examines this legacy from the early halcyon days through to the disappointment of the Ramaphosa presidency.

Du Toit asks key questions before coming to a critical observation and a damning conclusion:

• What was the state of the ANC when it took power?
• Was ANC failure inevitable? Did they inherit a country so stricken by apartheid that success was impossible?
• When did the first signs of misrule and corruption occur?
• How did each of the presidencies perform, from Mandela to Ramaphosa? What role did each play in the road to failure?
• What was President Cyril Ramaphosa doing to stop state capture while he was deputy president?

Du Toit concludes that at the very centre of ANC – and thus state - failure is ‘cadre deployment’ which the ANC adopted as official party policy under President Thabo Mbeki. He shows how, over time, the appointment of cadres at every level of government inevitably led to the (con)fusion of party and state, the spread of incompetence, and the dire corruption that ate into every part of the country once Jacob Zuma took over.

All the numbers on South Africa’s crisis dashboard are blinking red. The economy is failing to grow and more and more young people find themselves on the outside looking in as education falters and jobs disappear. Energy and transport are in crisis. Governance is floundering as debt mounts and government runs out of money.

Better Choices is a collection by South Africa’s top thinkers on the political economy, providing an unflinching account of the myriad challenges the country faces. The picture that emerges is of a nation on the brink of a catastrophic slide into failure unless better, if tough, policy choices are made. As stark as these problems are, their solutions are tantalisingly close at hand. The chapters in this book outline exactly the solutions – those ‘better choices’– that need to be made by leadership to alter the country’s bleak trajectory.

South Africa cannot talk its way out of trouble. Key to success is removing the sources of friction – the red tape, over-regulation and rents – that slow down investment. This is only possible if a more effective, focused government acts decisively.

Compiled by The Brenthurst Foundation, Africa’s leading think tank on economic development, Better Choices is for those who want to build a positive, inclusive future for South Africa.

After unknown saboteurs toppled a strategic pylon near Lethabo Power Station in the Free State in November 2021, almost causing the country to plunge into stage 6 load shedding, Eskom’s chief executive officer André de Ruyter declared: ‘This was clearly now an act of sabotage and I think we can call it as such.’ Who was behind this, and what is their ultimate goal?

Since his appointment in January 2020, De Ruyter has faced intense opposition from within the power utility as he attempts to clean up corruption and return the electricity company to a semblance of its former glory. He is not alone. Chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer and other trusted allies in Eskom have also come under intense fire. From forensic investigations and botched probes to accusations of racism, De Ruyter and Oberholzer have spent significant amounts of time fending off allegation after allegation. Amid this onslaught, it has become clear that their enemies will take any measures necessary to have them removed from office.

Based on exclusive interviews with De Ruyter, Oberholzer and other key figures, Sabotage is a story of conspiracy and subterfuge at South Africa’s ailing power utility, uncovering the power struggles that threaten the country’s very survival.

The scene: An Indian television journalist is drafted in to lead the setting up of a new 24/7 television news channel in South Africa. The goal: To create a world class news product. This is the story of the three months Rajesh Sundaram, along with a small team of Indian television professionals, took to launch what was to be the biggest news channel in South Africa. However, this launch was not without its wide range of challenges, catastrophes and social media entertainment.

From capricious, micro-managing owners who had a political and commercial agenda to the shocking abuse of staff and violation of laws, finally resulting in a tempestuous and very public parting of ways, Indentured is the true story behind the launch of ANN7 - better known as Gupta TV.

This is behind the scenes, disclosing a range of delicious stories about the Gupta brothers, and their relationship with Number 9. And yes; you'll be told exactly why he is called Number 9.

This extensive history of South Africa was written by some of the country’s most prominent historians such as Hermann Giliomee, Jan Visagie, David Scher and Fransjohan Pretorius.

Its broad scope includes South Africa's pre-colonial history, slavery, Afrikaner nationalism, an environmental history and an analysis of a post-apartheid South Africa.

In this updated edition, a new chapter by Jan-Jan Joubert has been added – From state capture to Covid: the decline of the ANC.

‘Dancing a tango with death’ was the daily life of the DCC – the Directorate of Covert Collection – secret agents, working in what JJ ‘Tolletjie’ Botha called ‘hostile countries’. Who were these men? Airline pilots, Belgian missionaries, German industrialists, engineers, medical doctors, high-ranking officers of enemy countries and last, but not least, people like a well-known Namibian lawyer and a famous, internationally acclaimed South African singer; people who, sometimes unwittingly, collaborated with the ‘shadow’s men’, believing they were helping friendly countries … Did the document prepared by General Pierre Steyn, the famous topsecret Steyn Report, really exist?

In this book you will find the full original document whose existence has been denied by FW de Klerk and his closest allies. Did Judge Richard Goldstone act bona fide by accepting in his final report the information given to him by Counter Intelligence and the NIS, information that, at the very end, emerged as “hearsay”? Was Judge Goldstone aware of the final objective of the tandem pair Steyn-De Klerk to decapitate the South African Defence Force?

Did the top structure of the DCC maintain close contacts with most of the Western intelligence services, and particularly the British MI6? Was any one of the hundreds of civilian and military men ‘listed’ as part of the infamous Third Force ever condemned? Was Staal Burger or Ferdi Barnard really part of the DCC or were they ‘imposed’ by the then Chief of the Army, General Kat Liebenberg? Did you know that more than half the African members of the first Mandela cabinet had been on the DCC’s payroll? Why did the Motsuenyane Commission of Enquiry have to suspend its search, and never published the list of ANC members massacred or disappeared, victims of their own comrades?

The gripping, jaw-dropping rise and fall of Sir Philip Green, the self-styled 'king of the high street'.

Sir Philip Green is no stranger to scandal. He was once hailed one of Britain's best businessmen and had prime ministers and supermodels on speed dial. But his reputation came crashing down when Oliver Shah uncovered the truth behind his doomed BHS deal.

The collapse of British Home Stores left 11,000 employees without jobs and put 20,000 people's pensions at risk. Green eventually paid £363m towards the company's £571m pension deficit, but it wasn't long before he found himself in trouble again. In October 2018, Green was named as the business figure at the heart of Britain's #MeToo scandal. With accusations of sexual and racial harassment flooding the press, and with Topshop's pension deficit rising to almost double the figure that toppled BHS, can the retail tycoon survive yet another scandal?

In Damaged Goods, Oliver Shah, the award-winning journalist who first broke the BHS story, shines a light on Green's past and his uncertain future; this is the extraordinary account of the retail magnate Sir Philip Green's fall from grace.

Veteran journalist Anton Harber brings all his investigative skills to bear on his very own profession, the media. For two years he conducted dozens of interviews with politicians, journalists, policemen and 'deep throats', before piecing together two remarkable tales.

The first is a chilling story of police death squads, rogue units and renditions, and how South Africa's leading newspaper was duped into doing the dirty work of corrupt politicians. The second starts with a broken and discarded hard drive and evolves, with many near misses, into the exposure of the depths of the Guptas' influence over the ruling party.

Harber's two tales reveal the lows and highs of journalism during an era of state capture. His book is both a disquieting exposé of how easily the media can be duped by a conniving cabal for its own selfish ends, and a celebration of brilliant investigative reporting by brave and ethical journalists.

South Africans often are deeply polarised in our perspectives of the present and the past. Our ‘ways of seeing’ are fraught with division, and we fail to understand the complexities when we do not see what lies beneath the surface.

There is no denying that the Jacob Zuma presidency took a significant toll on South Africa, exacerbating tensions and exposing the deep fractures that already exist in our society along the lines of race, class and even ethnicity. The Zuma years were marked by cases of corruption and state capture, unprecedented in their brazenness, and increased social protests – many of which were accompanied by violence – aggressive public discourse, lack of respect for reason and an often disturbing resistance to meaningful engagement.

Importantly, those years also placed enormous pressure on our democratic institutions, many of which still bear the scars, and challenged the sovereignty of the Constitution itself.

As an analyst and governance specialist at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) for twelve years, February has had a unique perch. Turning and turning is a snapshot of her IDASA years and the issues tackled, which included work on the arms deal and its corrosive impact on democratic institutions, IDASA’s party-funding campaign, which February helped lead, as well as work on accountability and transparency.

Combining analytical insight with personal observations and experience, February highlights the complex process of building a strong democratic society, and the difficulties of living in a constitutional democracy marked by soaring levels of inequality. There is a need to reflect on and learn from the country’s democratic journey if citizens are to shape our democracy effectively and to fulfill the promise of the Constitution for all South Africans.

Only Zapiro can truly capture the craziness and the seriousness of state capture and the Zuma years. WTF is the award-winning and best-selling cartoonist’s definitive, unique and superbly funny record of this rollercoaster time in our history in words and more than 400 brilliant cartoons.

Zapiro’s career has been tightly entwined with the bewildering tale of Jacob Zuma for more than 20 years. He has sharply charted his rise and his fall and everything in between, including the corrupting presence of the Guptas and the destructive cancer of state capture. On two different occasions Jacob Zuma served Zapiro with unfulfilled lawsuits totalling R22 million, claiming his dignity had been infringed, and the cartoonist has been threatened in other ways by senior political figures because of his caustic and brilliant work. Zapiro first drew a showerhead on Zuma in 2006 as a comment on his preposterous evidence during his rape trial that he took a shower after sex to reduce the chance of getting AIDS. That showerhead image stuck in the public imagination, and in Zapiro’s cartoons, and has become a nationally known symbol of the former president.

WTF is sure to be another triumph for our best-loved cartoonist.

Just as South Africans were starting to come to grips with the staggering cost of state capture, the Bosasa bombshell hit the country. This grand-scale corruption scandal cost South Africa billions of rands while the politicians involved were bought for as little as braai packs and booze.

While investigating state capture, The Zondo commission of inquiry blew the lid off the tangled web of bribery that was Bosasa. Gripping testimony before the commission about “little black books”, cash bribes and walk-in vaults held the public in thrall while a new realisation dawned: The notorious Gupta family had not been the only ones pillaging the country. In The Bosasa Billions, best-selling author James-Brent Styan and co-writer Paul Vecchiatto uncover the sordid story of how one company exploited the greed of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats to establish an extensive tender network stretching right to the top of the ANC government.

Its cast of characters include:

• Angelo Agrizzi, the whistleblower who makes new revelations to Styan about the secrets behind Bosasa’s glittering profit margins
• Vernie Petersen, the prisons boss who waged a lonely battle against the dark forces taking over his department, and
• Gavin Watson, the ultra-religious Bosasa puppet master who parlayed his family’s struggle credentials into vast wealth while leading his employees in prayer every morning.

Ultimately, however, Bosasa was not in the business of saving souls, but selling them.

Hulle lieg, bedrieg, gee voor. Hulle verdraai, verdoesel, verduister, verwoes. Geleidelik palm hulle jou vertroue in. Dan, eensklaps, is jy jou geld, status en reputasie kwyt. Só oortuigend doen hulle dit dat selfs die slimste, mees ingeligte mense ’n rat voor die oë gedraai word en eers besef wat hulle getref het nadat grootskaalse skade aangerig is en die gladdebek soos mis voor die son verdwyn het. Maar selfs swendelaars kom hulle moses teë...

Boereverneukers vertel die stories van Afrikaanses wat van ons land se grootste skelmstreke gepleeg het.

Van die karakters is minder bekend by die publiek, maar ander het byna mitiese status in die Afrikaanse psige verwerf, soos die kubuskoning Adriaan Nieuwoudt, die pynmasjienman Gervan Lubbe, die kamma-pediater André Esterhuizen, die Hertzogville-profeet David Francis en die Trustbank-rowers Derek Whitehead en Antonie van der Merwe.

Dalk het jý ook deurgeloop, maar praat tot vandag toe nie graag daaroor nie.

While a young reporter for The Washington Post in 1972, Bob Woodward teamed up with Carl Bernstein and the two did much of the original news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon. Now, Woodward brings us the inside story on president Trump.

With authoritative reporting honed through eight presidencies from Nixon to Obama, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump’s White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence.

Fear is the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published during the president’s first years in office.

Nothing in life is certain, except death and taxes – or so the expression goes. And over the past two decades South African criminals and tax dodgers have come to realise this truth the hard way.

Tax sleuth Johann van Loggerenberg was at the centre of many of SARS’ high-profile cases during his time there. As far as SARS is concerned all forms of income are subjected to tax, even if by ill-gotten means. Whether you are a drug dealer from Durban, one of the hitmen who shot Brett Kebble or soccer boss Irvin Khoza, you have to pay your dues!

Van Loggerenberg relates the riveting inside stories of the investigations into businessmen like Dave King, Billy Rautenbach, Barry Tannenbaum and his ponzi scheme, and others. Over the years he got to know all the scams and dirty tricks in the book and he explains these in plain language.

In these investigations the tax authority worked closely with the police, the NPA and the Directorate of Special Operations. However, after a few years SARS became the victim of its own success. In telling the stories of how tax evaders were caught, Van Loggerenberg also shows how the power struggle between different state departments and the phenomenon of state capture in recent years started crippling SARS.

The Guptas, arguably South Africa’s most infamous family, have dominated news headlines for many years. But the landing of a commercial airliner packed with wedding guests at Air Force Base Waterkloof in 2013 sparked the most severe onslaught of public outrage the politically connected family had endured up to that fateful day. Since then, they have become embroiled in allegations of state capture, of dishing out cabinet posts to officials who would do their bidding, and of benefiting from lucrative state contracts and dubious loans.

The Republic Of Gupta examines the various controversies surrounding the family and explores the path that took the brothers Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta from an obscure town in India to the inner circle of South African president Jacob Zuma.

This book investigates:

• What were the Guptas up to during Thabo Mbeki’s tenure as president?
• What role did they play in Zuma’s dramatic rise to power?
• How do they get senior government officials to do their bidding?
• What is it like being in the family’s employ?
• What does state capture really involve?

Unpacking these and other questions, Pieter-Louis Myburgh delves deeper than ever before into the Guptas’ business dealings and their links to prominent South African politicians, and explains how one family managed to transform an entire country into The Republic Of Gupta.

What happens when a former liberation movement turned political party loses its dominance but survives because no opposition party is able to succeed it? The trends are established: South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) is in decline. Its hegemony has been weakened, its legitimacy diluted. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s appointment suspended the ANC’s electoral decline, but it also heightened internal organisational tensions between those who would deepen its corrupt and captured status, and those who would redeem it. The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened its fragility, and the state’s inability to manage the socio-economic devastation has aggravated prior faultlines. These are the undeniable knowns of South African politics; what will evolve from this is less certain.

In her latest book Precarious Power Susan Booyen delves deep into this political terrain and its trajectory for South Africa’s future. She covers an expansive range of topics, from contradictory party politics and dissent that is veiled in order to retain electoral following, to populist policy-making and the use of soft law enforcement to ensure that angry citizens do not become further alienated. Booysen’s analysis reveals Ramaphosa to be a president who is weak and walking a tightrope between serving the needs of the organisation and those of the nation. While he rose to the challenge of being a national leader during the COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis has highlighted existing inequalities in South Africa and discontent has grown. The ANC’s power has indeed become exceedingly precarious, and this seems unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

This incisive analysis of ANC power – as party, as government, as state – will appeal not only to political scientists but to all who take a keen interest in current affairs.

The winner of the 2017 Ernest Cole Award is Daylin Paul for his project, Broken Land. The project explores the other side of power. Set in Mpumalanga, home of 46% of South Africa's arable soil, it is also the area where nine power-burning coal stations are active. Paul's work explores the direct impact of fuel-burning coal stations on the local economy, population, farming community and, more broadly, climate change. As Paul says, "These power stations, while providing electricity for an energy-desperate South Africa, also have a devastating and lasting impact on the environment and the health of local people. Mining licences granted conditionally by the South African government are meant to safeguard the ecology and allow local people to benefit from the mineral wealth of the land. But it is clear that these conditions are not being followed and that the health and economic well-being of both the land and its people are being jeopardised. Vast tracts of fertile, arable land are being ripped up, the landscape scarred with the black pits of coal mines while coal-burning power stations are one of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the world." The polluting power stations not only contribute to global climate change but, through toxic sulphur effluents, also to the poisoning of scarce water supplies for a range of communities who are dependent on these for their survival. The area has in recent years also been hit by devastating droughts. The power dynamics in the area have in recent times been drawn into the national political arena. The former Glencore coal mines, taken over by Optimum Coal Holdings Limited, a conglomerate owned by the Gupta family, are embroiled in corruption and nepotism scandals that are affecting the very highest levels of the South African government. The aim of Paul's project as he says is "to look at both the macro issues like pollution, poverty and climate change while also personalising the experience of the local people who are on the front lines of this crisis and provide us with a glimpse of what the future could be like for the country and indeed the SADC region."

She knew she might lose her job as group treasurer, yet Cynthia Stimpel decided to blow the whistle anyway. She simply could not keep quiet about an irregular deal of R256 million at South African Airways on Dudu Myeni's watch. It was not an easy decision, but 'the right one'.

Cynthia was on a pilgrimage in France when she received word that a dodgy deal between BNP Capital and SAA was signed against her strict orders. She immediately sent a whistleblowing message to National Treasury and raised the alarm in an attempt to stop the deal. Although she succeeded in saving SAA millions she paid a high price for speaking the truth; She lost her job and her reputation. Yet her battle against Myeni and her fellow state capturers at the SAA was far from over. She still had to face Myeni in court and testify against her at the Zondo Commission.

This is a very personal state capture story that shows how one brave individual helped to stop the rot.

How to Steal a City is an insider account of this intervention, which lays bare how the administration was entirely captured and bled dry by a criminal syndicate, how factional politics within the ruling party abetted that corruption, and how a comprehensive clean-up was eventually conducted.

It is written as a gripping real-life thriller, taking the reader deeper and deeper into the rotten heart of the city. As a former senior government official and local government “fixer”, Crispian Olver was no stranger to dealing with dodgy politicians and broken organisations. Yet what he found was graft that went far beyond the dodgy contracts, blatant conflicts of interest and garden-variety kickbacks he had seen before. It had evolved into a web far more sophisticated and deep rooted than he had ever imagined, involving mazes of shell companies, assassinations, criminal syndicates, and compromised local politicians. The metro was effectively controlled by a criminal network, closely allied to a dominant local ANC faction. What he found was complete state capture—a microcosm of what has been happening in South Africa’s national government.

But there was a personal price to pay. Intense political pressure and threats to his personal safety took a toll on his mental and physical health. He had to have a full-time bodyguard, and never maintained a regular routine. He eventually lost much of his political cover. Olver ultimately had to flee the city as the forces stacked against him started to wreak their revenge.

This is his story.

In October 2015, the Gupta brothers offered Mcebisi Jonas the position of minister of finance in exchange for R600 million. Then deputy minister of finance, Jonas turned down the bribe and a period of deep introspection followed for him. How did we reach this point, and what did the future hold for South Africa’s democracy and the economy?

In After Dawn, Mcebisi Jonas analyses the crisis at the heart of our current system, which places politics at the centre of policymaking and implementation at the expense of growth. In this important and authoritative book, Jonas first unpacks and analyses the current badlands of the South African economic and political landscape. In the second half, Jonas proposes a series of workable and practical solutions for transitioning South Africa into a growing, job-creating country including:

• Putting inclusive growth at the centre of economic policy;
• rapidly expanding new technological capacities and knowledge to transition to a twenty-first-century economy;
• expanding human capabilities at scale;
• path-changing trade-offs to catalyse the next phase of South Africa’s development;
• nurturing a corruption-free, high-performance state built on meritocracy and innovation; and
• changing the nature of politics.

Time is of the essence and the window of opportunity is narrowing for all South Africans to work together towards the South Africa we all imagined was possible in 1994.

When André de Ruyter took over as Eskom CEO in January 2020, he quickly realised why it was considered the toughest job in South Africa.

Aside from neglected equipment, ageing power stations and an eroded skills base, he discovered that Eskom was crippled by corruption on a staggering scale. Fake fuel oil deliveries at just one power station cost Eskom R100 million per month; kneepads retailing for R150 a pair were purchased for R80 000; billions of rands of equipment supposedly housed in the company’s storerooms was missing. Faced with police inaction, he was compelled to plunge into a world that was foreign to him – a world of spies and safe houses, of bulletproof vests and bodyguards.

In Truth to Power, De Ruyter tells the behind-the-scenes story of how he launched a private investigation that exposed at least four criminal cartels feeding off Eskom. While fighting this scourge, he had to deal with political interference, absurd regulations, non-paying municipalities, unfounded accusations of racism, wildcat strikes, sabotage and a poisoning attempt. De Ruyter takes the reader inside the boardrooms and government meetings where South Africa’s future is shaped, with ministers often pulling in conflicting directions. He explains how renewable energy is the cheapest and quickest solution to our power crisis, in spite of fierce opposition from vested coal interests.

De Ruyter candidly reflects on his three years at the power utility, his successes and failures, his reasons for leaving and his hopes for the future. As someone who worked at the highest levels of the state but is not beholden to the ruling party, he is uniquely placed to speak truth to power.

Courageous, yet contested, Bulelani Ngcuka has always stood up for what he believes in. His decision in 2003 as National Director of Public Prosecutions not to prosecute then deputy president, Jacob Zuma, is a decision he still stands by to this day.

In this sweeping biography, based on many hours of interviews with Ngcuka, author Marion Sparg uncovers the roots of his fearless activism and tells his side of the story. She goes back in time to his modest beginnings in the Eastern Cape, to his lawyering years with the formidable Griffiths Mxenge, his various periods of detention, exile, and his homecoming.

Ngcuka played a critical role in establishing the National Prosecuting Authority, the elite crime-busting unit the Scorpions, and other mechanisms to tackle the country’s crime and corruption problems. Soon he faced one of his most difficult tasks – confronting former comrades who had become involved in illegal activities.

The Sting in the Tale is a first-hand account of our most recent legal and political history. It is also an intriguing story about political manoeuvrings, bombings and hijackings, urban-terror and “whispering” campaigns, lies, murder, alleged spies, intrigue, family, and love.

When we say we want to be safe, what do we mean? Is the state capable of achieving this for us? These are important questions for anyone envisioning and building a future anywhere, but especially in South Africa. This book explores contemporary South African society through the lens of law and order, and with the goal of understanding what reform must look like going forward, in a way that is accessible to ordinary citizens who need this most. 

In South Africa, both ‘crime’ and ‘safety’ are loaded terms. Ziyanda Stuurman unpacks the complex and fraught history of policing, courts and prisons in South Africa. In her analysis of the problems nationally and in putting those problems in context with the rest of the world, she concludes that more resources won’t necessarily lead to more safety. What then, will?

Ziyanda unpacks this complex question deftly with a view of a better future for us all.