In 2016 South African film audiences were mesmerised by the film Noem My Skollie, which was written by - and based on the life of - John W. Fredericks. In this book Fredericks tells the full story on which the film was based.

Growing up in a dusty township on the Cape Flats, Fredericks formed a gang with his friends, and at the age of seventeen he was arrested for robbery and sentenced to two years in Pollsmoor prison. There the number gangs vied to initiate him into their ranks, but he resisted their advances, offering instead to help them push their time by telling stories. And so he became the prison ‘cinema’, drawing on his storytelling abilities and cementing his ambition to become a writer.

Life after prison became a nightmare when he was arrested for a murder he hadn’t committed, his childhood friends were sentenced to die on the gallows, and a gang boss tried to kill him. Slowly he turned his life around, getting a job and building a family, but society kept judging him as a gangster. Struggling to deal with his past, he turned to storytelling again, and painstakingly learnt the art of scriptwriting. The result was Noem My Skollie, which was watched by almost 90 000 people and won numerous awards.

Written in a powerful and authentic voice, Skollie is a gripping memoir of life on the Cape Flats, of prison and gangs, and of one man’s struggle to survive all this by telling stories.

Steve Henry was born in 1967 in the sleepy little city of East London on the East Coast of South Africa, the youngest in a family of five children and brought up in a home filled with love and laughter. As a teenager in the mid-80s, fresh out of high school, he is conscripted into the South African Defence Force where he goes through the hardships and humour of infantry training. Innocent youngsters from all over the country are moulded into efficient killing machines and turned into platoons of mechanized infantry.

The author takes you blow by blow through some of the biggest and bloodiest battles fought on the African continent since World War II, during Operation Moduler. He takes you inside his “Metal Mother”, a Ratel infantry fighting vehicle, deep into Angola and describes the feeling of utter helplessness as he faces off against Soviet main battle tanks in his lightly armed and armoured Ratel.

Loved ones back in the “States” have no idea of the scope and violence of the war in Angola and are kept in the dark as to the extent of South Africa’s involvement, often told that their son, brother or father has been killed “on the Border”, little knowing that he died hundreds of kilometres inside Angola.

In the space of a week, the intense high of battle contrasts starkly with suddenly being back in Civvy Street where nobody knows or cares about what he’s just been through.

After working closely with the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation in shaping and writing his memoir, author Hassen Ebrahim and Jacana Media are proud to publish this important record of a life that was spent in service to South Africa.

Writes Mac Maharaj in his foreword in the book: “Hassen Ebrahim is one of those many seldom heard of foot soldiers of the 1976 generation who joined the underground and was linked to the ANC structures operating from Botswana. He has been at the coalface of so many facets of South Africa’s march to freedom. He was there during the times when involvement in the struggle against apartheid carried the risk of death; he was involved in our negotiated transition to democracy; he was the chief executive of the elected Constitutional Assembly which wrote and adopted our Constitution; thereafter and until 2007 he served in the Department of Justice.”

From Marabastad to Mogadishu: The Journey of an ANC Soldier chronicles an all-too familiar story of those unsung cadres from the struggle we’ve forgotten to honour for their sacrifices. Those foot soldiers do not feature in our collective memory, they do not find themselves or their stories recorded in the pages of history books, and they are not remembered for their selfless acts of bravery.

The bravery and sacrifice of the ordinary teenager who dropped out of school, the cadre who risked life and limb, and the freedom fighter who exiled himself or herself to countries far and wide must be given a chance to live on book pages, find expression on film reels and all other mediums of historic memory collection.

From Marabastad to Mogadishu: The Journey of an ANC Soldier signals the resolve by the author, his peers, Jacana Media and support organisations such as the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation to bring the ordinary cadre’s story to the fore, to acknowledge his or her sacrifices, and to recognise their contribution to South Africa’s democracy.

This important book brings together the previously unpublished letters of three women, Lilian Ngoyi, Bessie Head and Dora Taylor. While Ngoyi, Head and the lesser-known Taylor each made vital and perhaps under-appreciated contributions to the southern African struggle, these letters record their ordinary, domestic lives as well as touching on the socio-political struggles which they conducted from within their homes.

Bessie Head was a writer of novels, short stories and social history, and towards the end of her life was celebrated internationally. Dora Taylor, a white woman who was an early member of the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), was also a writer, but her longer work, was not published until after her death and she is still not a widely known public figure. Lilian Ngoyi was an ANC leader and one of the organisers of the 1956 Women’s March to the Union Buildings in Pretoria and she was repeatedly arrested for her involvement in trade union and political matters.

Each woman writes to one trusted friend or relative. Ngoyi, Head and Taylor did not know each other but are linked by their political sympathies, their comparable vocations and practices, and by the fact that each had to endure her own version of exile as a result of her activities. These letters record all three writers’ joys and sorrows as they struggled to live principled lives in adversity. As well as giving access to the thoughts of three remarkable women letter-writers, this timely book presents letters as literary artefacts, not just sources of information and opinion. It invites readers to taste the intriguing and sometimes disturbing pleasures of reading personal letters.

Unrecognised, ignored and forgotten. The Forgotten Scientist: The Story of Saul Sithole is the untold story of a pioneering black scientist who made a great contribution to the fields of anthropology and ornithology in South Africa. Saul Sithole was so committed to his craft that even the weight of apartheid did not stop him from giving 62 years of his life to the scientific world of birds and fossils. Saul never received the official recognition he deserved - until now. This book validates his contribution, sharing his life's work and laying out a story that will inspire future generations of scientists. This book would not have been possible without the support of Biblionef and funding from the National Heritage Council.

The richly anecdotal story of an extraordinary life – when baby Mamphela was born to teacher parents in the rural village of Kranspoort, few would have predicted that she would become not only a medical doctor, but an international leader and the founder of not one but two new political movements. As a young woman, Mamphela was instrumental in creating the ideology of Black Consciousness with her partner, Steve Biko. As an accomplished and well-off businesswoman who had reached the pinnacle of success, this year she felt compelled to start Agang SA , to provide South African voters with an alternative to the inept and increasingly corrupt ANC.

In this very readable autobiography, Mamphela Ramphele vividly describes her rural childhood, her extended family, her first loves and losses – after the death of her firstborn, she nearly lost her and Steve’s baby after his death by torture – and her subsequent successes in both politics and business.

She exposes what went on behind the scenes in the run-up to the launch of Agang SA, discusses her relationship with a number of prominent South Africans, including Helen Zille, and she shares her vision for a future South Africa of which we can all be proud.

Patriots & Parasites, completed just days before Smuts’s unexpected death in 2016, is her account of the momentous period known as the Transition Era, through the lens of her 25-year career as a key opposition MP and a respected legislator.

With ambitious breadth and rare insight, she examines:

• The arduous but exhilarating work of writing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
• The great experiment in catharsis that was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
• The reinvigoration of racial polarisation under the Mbeki administration, and the slow burn of resentment that is coming to a head among the next generation (as manifested in the #RhodesMustFall campaign)
• The entrenchment of cronyism under Zuma, and the fight to protect the crucial balance of accountability enshrined in the freedom of the media and the independence of the judiciary

Unrecognised, ignored and forgotten. The Forgotten Scientist: The Story of Saul Sithole is the untold story of a pioneering black scientist who made a great contribution to the fields of anthropology and ornithology in South Africa. Saul Sithole was so committed to his craft that even the weight of apartheid did not stop him from giving 62 years of his life to the scientific world of birds and fossils. Saul never received the official recognition he deserved - until now. This book validates his contribution, sharing his life's work and laying out a story that will inspire future generations of scientists. This book would not have been possible without the support of Biblionef and funding from the National Heritage Council.

Unrecognised, ignored and forgotten. The Forgotten Scientist: The Story of Saul Sithole is the untold story of a pioneering black scientist who made a great contribution to the fields of anthropology and ornithology in South Africa. Saul Sithole was so committed to his craft that even the weight of apartheid did not stop him from giving 62 years of his life to the scientific world of birds and fossils. Saul never received the official recognition he deserved - until now. This book validates his contribution, sharing his life's work and laying out a story that will inspire future generations of scientists. This book would not have been possible without the support of Biblionef and funding from the National Heritage Council.

Inside African Anthropology offers an incisive biography of the life and work of South Africa's foremost social anthropologist, Monica Hunter Wilson. By exploring her main fieldwork and intellectual projects in southern Africa between the 1920s and 1960s through a massive personal archive, the book offers insights into the personal and intellectual life of a leading African anthropologist.

Beginning with her origins in the remote Eastern Cape, the authors follow Wilson to Cambridge University and back into the field among the Mpondo of South Africa, where her studies resulted in her 1936 book Reaction to Conquest. Her fieldwork focus then shifted to Tanzania, where she teamed up with her husband, Godfrey Wilson. She later returned to South Africa to begin her teaching career at Fort Hare University and record her Tanzanian research. In the 1960s, Wilson embarked on a new urban ethnography with a young South African anthropologist, Archie Mafeje, one of the many black scholars she trained.

This study also provides a meticulously researched exploration of the indispensible contributions of African research assistants and co-researchers to the production of this famous woman scholar's cultural knowledge about mid-twentieth century Africa.

In his memoir, Jaki Seroke shares the joys and the sorrows of his life, starting with his childhood in Alex, where he is born as ‘a poor mother’s son’. He recalls the political battles among the various Africanist groupings, his incarceration on the Island and his later work at Skotaville Press, as publisher and poet.

After 1994, having decided that parliamentary politics were not for him, he joined the corporate sector and committed to a new kind of struggle.

Like so many of her generation, Lwando Xaso came of age alongside the beginnings and growth of South Africa’s constitutional democracy. Her journey into adulthood was a radically different one from that of earlier generations, marked by hope that changing perceptions would usher in a new and free society.

Made in South Africa – A Black Woman’s Stories of Rage, Resistance and Progress is a vibrant collection of essays in which Lwando examines with incisive clarity some of the events that have shaped her experience of South Africa – a country with huge potential but weighed down by persistent racism and inequality, cultural appropriation, sexism and corruption, all legacies of a complicated history.

As a young lawyer intent on climbing the corporate ladder, Lwando’s life’s direction was changed by a personal experience of the oppressive capacity of a supposedly democratic government when it unjustly fired a close family friend and mentor from a senior government position. She found herself on his legal team and the turmoil the case created within her led her to further her studies in constitutional law, and to pick up her pen and share with a wider audience her views of what was happening in her beloved country.

Her outlook was further shaped by her experience of clerking at the Constitutional Court for Justice Edwin Cameron, which deepened her respect for the South African Constitution, and what it really means for a resilient people to strive continually to live up to its moral and legal standards.

Lwando’s writing reflects her unflinching resolve to live according to the precepts of our groundbreaking Constitution and offers a challenge to all South Africans to believe in and achieve ‘the improbable’.

Vir 45 jaar het Freek Robinson die grootste nuusgebeure in die ou én nuwe Suid-Afrika eerstehands beleef. As TV-joernalis en nuusanker was hy ’n gereelde besoeker in miljoene Suid-Afrikaners se huise.

In sy memoires deel Freek dit wat hy agter die skerms beleef het.

Dié boek verweef die lewe en loopbaan van een van ons land se mees gerespekteerde en geliefde joernaliste en gee ’n besonderse blik op die ingrypende nuusomwentelinge in ons onlangse geskiedenis.

In the first three months of 1976, during his imprisonment on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela wrote the bulk of his autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom". This was an illegal act, and the manuscript had to be smuggled out by fellow prisoner Mac Maharaj on his release that year. Maharaj used the opportunity to ask Mandela and other political prisoners to write essays about South Africa's political future. These were smuggled out with Mandela's autobiography, and are published, 25 years later, in this book.
These essays provide a "snapshot" of the thinking of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and other prominent Robben Island prisoners before the 1976 Soweto uprising changed the face of politics in South Africa. As such they provide an insight into our history. Each essay is preceded by a biographical introduction and a sketch of the author specially commissioned for this volume.

Yusuf Daniels brings this book to life with some epic stories from falling in love for the first time, parading in his orange Speedo on Clifton Beach to travelling the world as a flight attendant, experiencing life like you have never seen before.

"We are all different and we all have been through many experiences in life. Some good and some not so good. What I have discovered is that this journey which is filled with laughter, tears, regrets, mistakes, and multiple chapters in our life, prepares us for later in life. If all of this didn’t happen to me, I would not have finished my second book. If you told me this just over a year ago, that I would be releasing my second book, I would have told you that you are crazy. It is our legacy and we need to leave it behind so it can be told by our great grandchildren one day. Don’t be scared to tell your story, don’t be scared to write it the way you feel it should be written. You don’t need a degree to be able to write your stories. Just look at me. There is no ONE way of writing, as we are all individuals and all unique. Don’t listen to the naysayers as they are just there to stall your growth and take you with them on their negative path. Stay positive, be true to yourself and just be you, because there’s only one of you. So, make the best of you and keep on LIVING LEKKA."

This book lifts the veil on what it’s like to cross a chasm in South Africa - from newspaper editor opposing apartheid repression to adviser in the Presidency and government in democracy.

It is the personal story of Tony Heard, former Editor of the Cape Times, moving from journalist to spin-doctor, consultant, speechwriter and other official business.

His new career covers a decade in the Presidency as a special adviser (2000-2010), and a dozen years in 3 government ministries/departments. In all, he serves governance for 22 years (June 1994 to June 2016), most of the first quarter century of his country’s freedom.

Once, chef Brett Ladds was given a cigar by Fidel Castro, he talked weightlifting with Swazi king Mswati III and his cooking made Quincy Jones sing. For many years he also served Nelson Mandela many cups of rooibos tea and made him his favourite meals.

Ladds was the executive chef of the SA government and manager of the presidential guesthouse at Bryntirion Estate in Pretoria from 1994-1999 where he served both Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. It was a naive and star-struck 21-year-old Ladds who started working at the guesthouse in the months before the first democratic election. During this time he was always in the background when struggle stalwarts like Steve Tshwete, Joe Modise and Dullah Omar met Mandela to discuss the future of the country.

This heart-warming book tells of a young man’s coming of age at a turning point in our history. His stories about meeting kings and queens, presidents, rock stars and even the pope are laced with his unique, self-deprecating sense of humour. Of Queen Elizabeth he says it felt like speaking to his gran. “I asked myself, how does all that power fit into this lovely, caring lady?” Of Robert Mugabe: “He never moaned about a thing.”

Then there are the Russian diplomats and their drinking habits and the Saudi-Arabian sheik who had 8 television sets installed in his room and bought 20 blankets at R5000 each for his stay.

It’s a book to make you laugh and cry. And Madiba’s favourite champagne? Pêche Royale . . .

When the Cradock Four's Fort Calata was murdered by agents of the apartheid state in 1985, his son Lukhanyo was only three years old. Thirty-one years later Lukhanyo, now a journalist, becomes one of the SABC Eight when he defies Hlaudi Motsoeneng's reign of censorship at the public broadcaster by writing an open letter that declares: "my father didn't die for this".

Now, with his wife Abigail, Lukhanyo brings to life the father he never knew and investigates the mystery that surrounds his death despite two high-profile inquests.

Join them in a poignant and inspiring journey into the history of a remarkable family that traces the struggle against apartheid beginning with Fort's grandfather, Rivonia trialist and ANC Secretary-General Rev James Calata.

What kind of president will Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma be if she is chosen at the ANC’s December 2017 congress? She has been fairly media-averse and hasn’t granted many interviews in the past few years, but taking a closer look at her history does provide some clues about the kind of leader she is.

In this book, journalist Carien du Plessis looks at Dlamini-Zuma’s early years, education and involvement in the struggle; her role as a cabinet minister under all four presidents of democratic South Africa; and her achievements as African Union Commission chairperson.

The book considers her feminism and political philosophy; tracks her presidential ambitions and campaigning; and explores how her personal relationship with one of her most important backers, President Jacob Zuma, will influence her leadership.

Meet the rebels, artists, troublemakers, athletes, dancing queens and freedom fighters that shaped our past – and are changing our future.

An A To Z Of Amazing South African Women tells the stories of 26 trailblazing South African women through accessible stories and illustrations that are as bright and bold as the women they depict. From Fatima Meer to Caster Semenya, Natalie du Toit to Dope St Jude, this is a book about women who ask too many questions, who defy injustice, who refuse to take no for an answer. It is a celebration of the courage and determination of the activists, scientists and storytellers who have gone before us – as well as a recognition of the everyday heroism of ordinary South African woman doing extraordinary things.

The book takes its inspiration from the worldwide bestseller An A To Z Of Rad American Women and is the work of writer Ambre Nicolson and illustrator Jaxon Hsu, a husband and wife team based in Cape Town.

The head of a business empire, Harry Oppenheimer played an influential role in twentieth century South Africa, a role that is celebrated by some and condemned by others.

This book investigates Oppenheimer’s political thinking, drawing from his speeches over the years. It looks at his views on liberalism, apartheid, socialism, sanctions, trade unions, education, geopolitics, the press and the legacy of Cecil John Rhodes.

When Daniel is tasked with writing the biography of his grandfather, Jules Browde - one of South Africa’s most celebrated advocates - he gets straight to work. But the task that at first seems so simple comes to overwhelm him.

The troubled progress of Daniel’s book stands in sharp contrast to the clear-edged tales his grandfather tells him. Spanning almost a century, these gripping stories compellingly conjure other worlds: the streets of 1920s Yeoville, the battlefields of the Second World War, the courtrooms of apartheid South Africa.

The Relatively Public Life Of Jules Browde is more than the portrait of an unusual South African life, it is the moving tale of a complex and tender relationship between grandfather and grandson, and an exploration of how we are made and unmade in the stories we tell about our lives.

Allister Sparks joined his first newspaper at age 17 and was pitched headlong into the vortex of South Africa’s stormy politics. The Sword And The Pen is the story of how as a journalist he observed, chronicled and participated in his country’s unfolding drama for more than 66 years, covering events from the premiership of DF Malan to the presidency of Jacob Zuma, witnessing at close range the rise and fall of apartheid and the rise and crisis of the new South Africa.

In trenchant prose, Sparks has written a remarkable account of both a life lived to its full as well as the surrounding narrative of South Africa from the birth of apartheid, the rise of political opposition, the dawn of democracy, right through to the crisis we are experiencing today.

Van sy eerste dag as nasionale dienspligtige was Francois Verster in die sop weens sy ingebore rebelsheid. Hy vertel op skreeusnaakse wyse van sy basiese opleiding en lewe as troeponderwyser op Omega.

Hierdie geensins verromantiseerde storie bied ’n vars hoek op die Grensoorloggenre en ’n blik op hoe Afrikanermans die nuwe Suid-Afrika beleef.

Unrecognised, ignored and forgotten.

The Forgotten Scientist: The Story of Saul Sithole is the untold story of a pioneering black scientist who made a great contribution to the fields of anthropology and ornithology in South Africa. Saul Sithole was so committed to his craft that even the weight of apartheid did not stop him from giving 62 years of his life to the scientific world of birds and fossils. Saul never received the official recognition he deserved – until now.

This book validates his contribution, sharing his life’s work and laying out a story that will inspire future generations of scientists.