In the world of espionage, truth is the first victim and nothing is as it seems. Here, for the first time, South Africa’s most notorious apartheid spy, Olivia Forsyth, lays bare the story of her remarkable life. With remarkable courage and brutal honesty she attempts to set the record straight.

Olivia Forsyth was a romantic young woman in search of adventure when she joined the Security Police with visions of international derring-do. But Craig Williamson, her unit head, had other ideas. Olivia was trained to spy on students before being dispatched to Rhodes University, a supposed ‘hotbed’ of anti-apartheid radicalism. It wasn’t long before Olivia had infiltrated various student organisations, feeding vital information back to her handler.

She came to hold prominent positions on campus and, as reward, was promoted to Lieutenant. Having reached the end of her studies, Olivia set her sights on a much more ambitious – and dangerous – target: the ANC in exile. But what should have been her greatest triumph as a spy turned into disaster when the ANC threw her into Quatro, the notorious internment camp in Angola. This is a riveting story set in the final years of apartheid.

The 1930s and 40s were tumultuous decades in South Africa’s history. The economy declined sharply in the wake of the Wall Street crash, giving rise to a huge number of poor whites and the growth of a militant and aggressive Afrikaner nationalism that often took its lead from the Nazis in Germany.

A Perfect Storm reveals how the right-wing’s malevolent message moved from the margins to the centre of political life; how antisemitism seeped into mainstream political life with real and lasting consequences. Milton Shain, South Africa’s leading scholar of modern Jewish history, brings into sharp relief the ‘Jewish Problem’, detailing the rise of influential organisations such as the Grey Shirts and the New Order, which fanned the flames of antisemitism. He devotes considerable attention to the Ossewa-Brandwag, which, by 1941, constituted the largest yet mobilisation of Afrikaners.

The National Party itself contributed to the climate of hostility to Jews. It was instrumental in ensuring that only few of the Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and elsewhere were permitted as immigrants. The National Party contributed to the prevailing climate of Jew-baiting. Indeed, some of its worst offenders were accorded high office after 1948 when the National Party came to power.

It's OK to be angry about capitalism. It's OK to want something better. Bernie Sanders takes on the 1% and speaks blunt truths about a system that is fuelled by uncontrolled greed, and rigged against ordinary people. Where a handful of oligarchs have never had it so good, with more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes, and the vast majority struggle to survive. Where a decent standard of living for all seems like an impossible dream.

How can we accept an economic order that allows three billionaires to control more wealth than the bottom half of our society? How can we accept a political system that allows the super-rich to buy elections and politicians? How can we accept an energy system that rewards the fossil fuel corporations causing the climate crisis? How can we let it happen any longer? We must demand fundamental economic and political change. This is where the path forward begins.

It's OK To Be Angry About Capitalism presents a vision of what would be possible if the political revolution took place. If we would finally recognize that economic rights are human rights, and work to create a society that provides them. This isn't some utopian fantasy; this is democracy as we should know it. Is it really too much to ask?

In recent years, municipalities have had to adjust to dramatic changes in their role in a new democratised system of national, provincial and local government. They have had to accept increased responsibilities in terms of service rendering and some have found it difficult to cope with the growing demands of their communities. South African municipal government and administration clarifies the powers and functions of the local sphere of government, what services communities are entitled to, and how councillors and officials could be made accountable for non-delivery of these services, under-performance or lack of pride in the quality of work done. This second edition of South African municipal government and administration incorporates the most recent developments in this sphere of government. It describes the obligations of councils, councillors and appointed officials with regard to policy implementation, and their accountability for the delivery of high-quality services to civic society. It includes various practical examples as well as rulings of the Constitutional Court, policy statements and reports. Contents include the following: Origins and characteristics of urban areas; Functions and powers of municipal councils; Coordinating structures, composition and objectives of municipal councils; Municipal planning; Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA); Human resource administration and management; Municipal associations and related institutions; Public relations: functions and objectives. The book is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students studying municipal government and administration, as well as aspiring and serving municipal councillors.

How are we to explain the resurgence of customary chiefs in contemporary Africa? Rather than disappearing with the tide of modernity, as many expected, indigenous sovereigns are instead a rising force, often wielding substantial power and legitimacy despite major changes in the workings of the global political economy in the post–Cold War era—changes in which they are themselves deeply implicated.

This pathbreaking volume, edited by anthropologists John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, explores the reasons behind the increasingly assertive politics of custom in many corners of Africa. Chiefs come in countless guises—from university professors through cosmopolitan businessmen to subsistence farmers–but, whatever else they do, they are a critical key to understanding the tenacious hold that “traditional” authority enjoys in the late modern world.

Together the contributors explore this counterintuitive chapter in Africa’s history and, in so doing, place it within the broader world-making processes of the twenty-first century.

Sydney Kentridge carved out a reputation as South Africa’s most prominent anti-apartheid advocate – his story is entwined with the country’s emergence from racial injustice and oppression. He is the only advocate to have acted for three winners of the Nobel Peace Prize – Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Chief Albert Lutuli.

Already world-famous for his landmark cases including the Treason Trial of Nelson Mandela and the other leading members of the ANC, the inquiry into the Sharpeville massacre, and the inquest into the death of Steve Biko, he then became England’s premier advocate.

Through the great set-pieces of the legal struggle against apartheid – cases which made the headlines not just in South Africa, but across the world – this biography is a portrait of enduring moral stature.

From former New York Times reporter Nellie Bowles comes an irreverent romp through the sacred spaces of the new left.

As a Hillary voter, a New York Times reporter, and a frequent attendee at her local gay bars, Nellie Bowles fit right in with her San Francisco neighbors and friends - until she started questioning whether the progressive movement she knew and loved was actually helping people.

When her colleagues suggested that asking these questions meant she was 'on the wrong side of history,' Bowles did what any reporter worth her salt would do: she started investigating for herself. The answers she found were stranger - and funnier - than she’d expected.

In Morning After the Revolution, Bowles gives readers a front-row seat to the absurd drama of a political movement gone mad. With irreverent accounts of attending a multi-day course on 'The Toxic Trends of Whiteness,' following the social justice activists who run 'Abolitionist Entertainment, LLC,' and trying to please the New York Times's 'disinformation czar,' she deftly exposes the more comic excesses of a movement that went from a sideshow to the very centre of Western life.

Deliciously funny and painfully insightful, Morning After the Revolution is a moment of collective psychosis preserved in amber.

Whetsho-otsile Joseph (Joe) Seremane is the founding federal chair of the Democratic Alliance in South Africa. Joe’s story spans six decades and tells of a visionary who survived incarceration at Robben Island, exile to Bophuthatswana and further incarceration at Fort Glamorgan.

Joe starts out as a champion of the banned People’s Africanist Congress but gradually develops a more holistic viewpoint. He concludes that he can contribute to the new democracy by helping to swell the ranks of the opposition. Eventually, in 2002, Joe finds his way to the Democratic Alliance as their founding federal chair. Hurt and disappointment come his way as he is seen as a traitor and a coconut by erstwhile comrades and co-prisoners.

As democracy in his beloved homeland starts to shed its skin of idealism and hope, he has to grapple with grave personal loss and a compelling question: Who is the enemy really?

In his foreword Tony Leon, erstwhile leader of the DA, notes: "I commend Fly the Tattered Dream Coat, both for its deep dive into this country’s history-in-the-making and the human story it describes of one of the more significant but underappreciated fighters for South Africa’s freedom."

In this engaging and authentic record of Joe’s storied careers and background, Dr Maske recounts Joe’s presence in my life at both its happiest and saddest…

In 1978, the activist and novelist Alex La Guma (1925–1985) published A Soviet Journey, a memoir of his travels in the Soviet Union. Today it stands as one of the longest and most substantive first-hand accounts of the USSR by an African writer. La Guma’s book is consequently a rare and important document of the anti-apartheid struggle and the Cold War period, depicting the Soviet model from an African perspective and the specific meaning it held for those envisioning a future South Africa.

For many members of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party, the Soviet Union represented a political system that had achieved political and economic justice through socialism – a point of view that has since been lost with the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War. This new edition of A Soviet Journey – the first since 1978 – restores this vision to the historical record, highlighting how activist-intellectuals like La Guma looked to the Soviet Union as a paradigm of self-determination, decolonisation and postcolonial development.

The introduction by Christopher J. Lee discusses these elements of La Guma’s text, in addition to situating La Guma more broadly within the intercontinental spaces of the Black Atlantic and an emergent Third World. Presenting a more expansive view of African literature and its global intellectual engagements, A Soviet Journey will be of interest to readers of African fiction and non-fiction, South African history, postcolonial Cold War studies and radical political thought.

Alex La Guma was a South African novelist, leader of the South African Coloured People's Organisation and a defendant in the Treason Trial, whose works helped characterise the movement against the apartheid era in South Africa.

Since 1994, South Africa has had five presidents who have varied greatly in style and character, despite all coming from the same political party. How do they compare? How did they handle the crises they faced? What effect did they have on the country?

As the ANC’s next elective conference approaches and Cyril Ramaphosa seeks a second term as president, the country is reeling from the effects of state capture and the Covid-19 pandemic. Coupled with an ailing economy and record unemployment, the need for good political leadership to steer us through the morass is more urgent than ever.

It is, therefore, a perfect time to think critically about the role that presidential leadership plays in our lives and in history. To this end, The Presidents provides an honest assessment of the five post-democracy presidents – Mandela, Mbeki, Motlanthe, Zuma and Ramaphosa – examining their strongest qualities and greatest weaknesses in the context of the momentous challenges they faced.

In 1964 Bram Fischer led the defence of Nelson Mandela in the Rivonia Trial. In 1966 Fischer was himself sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa for his political activities against the policies of apartheid. Before his sentencing he had spent nine months underground, in disguise, evading a nationwide manhunt. He was South Africa's most wanted man, his cause recognised and celebrated around the world. What had brought him to these circumstances? And what led to his untimely death after nine years in prison?

This meticulous and finely crafted biography follows a fascinating journey of conscience and personal transformation. Fischer was born into one of the most prominent Afrikaner nationalist families, yet came to understand that to be a South African in the fullest sense he had to identify with all of South Africa's people. A Rhodes Scholar and distinguished lawyer, endowed with gifts of intelligence, charisma and integrity, he abandoned the temptations of power and prestige to ensure human rights and justice for all. Drawn to communism in order to solve problems of race, he offered revised versions and visions of both.

Covering more than one hundred years of South African history, this book ranges from the stories of Fischer and his wife, Molly, to the courtroom drama of South Africa's great political trials, to the political intrigue of the 1960s and beyond. It is a remarkable story, remarkably told.

Weaving the personal and public, Stephen Clingman's biography is an account of tragedy and transcendence, showing how the miracle of South Africa's transition to democracy was deeply connected to the legacy of Bram Fischer.

George Stephanopoulos, the legendary political news host and former advisor to President Clinton, recounts the history-making crises from the place where twelve presidents made their highest-pressure decisions: the White House Situation Room.

No room better defines American power and its role in the world than the White House Situation Room. And yet, none is more shrouded in secrecy and mystery. Created under President Kennedy, the Sit Room has been the epicenter of crisis management for presidents for more than six decades. Time and again, the decisions made within the Sit Room complex affect the lives of every person on this planet.

Detailing close calls made and disasters narrowly averted, THE SITUATION ROOM will take readers through dramatic turning points in a dozen presidential administrations, including:

• Incredible minute-by-minute transcripts from the Sit Room after both Presidents Kennedy and Reagan were shot
• The shocking moment when Henry Kissinger raised the military alert level to DEFCON III while President Nixon was drunk in the White House residence
• The extraordinary scene when President Carter asked for help from secret government psychics to rescue American hostages in Iran
• A vivid retelling of the harrowing hours during the 9/11 attack
• New details from Obama administration officials leading up to the raid on Osama Bin Laden
• And a first-ever account of January 6th from the staff inside the Sit Room

THE SITUATION ROOM is the definitive, past-the-security-clearance look at the room where it happened, and the people—the famous and those you've never heard of—who have made history within its walls.

Has South Africa ‘done well’ at limiting illness and deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic? Academic and political commentator, Steven Friedman, thinks not. While the country’s mainstream media believes it has, in his view the evidence tells another story. South Africa has experienced by far the most cases and deaths in Africa – at one point as many as the rest of the continent combined.

One Virus, Two Countries offers a searing analysis of government and expert scientists’ responses to the pandemic. Friedman argues that South Africa is two societies in one – a ‘First World’ which resembles Western Europe and North America, and a ‘Third World’ which looks much like the rest of Africa or South Asia. The South African state, the media and the scientific community have largely tried to deal with the virus through a ‘First World’ lens in which much of the country was either invisible or a problem – not a partner. Friedman argues this approach prevented the country from responding in a way which would have protected most citizens. This is why case numbers and deaths are so high: South Africa has done worse than the rest of Africa not despite the fact that it has a ‘more developed’ health system, but because it does.

One Virus, Two Countries is a controversial book that will rouse much needed debate about South Africa’s health and economic system in a context of serious inequality.

Mosibudi Mangena has been a life-long member of the Black Consciousness Movement, which led to his incarceration on Robben Island from 1973–8. After his release, he went into exile in 1981, spending time in Botswana and Zimbabwe, before returning to South Africa in 1994.

Triumphs & Heartaches provides fascinating insight into Mangena’s varied life, including his time as the leader of AZAPO and his service in government as the deputy minister of Education and then the minister of Science and Technology.

Mangena provides an insider’s view of life in exile as a political refugee, followed by the hardships of repatriation and the hard-won successes of democracy. He reflects eloquently on the role of Black Consciousness and its potential place in the future of South Africa, and does not flinch from exploring the disappointments of the liberation struggle and the challenges that lie ahead for the country.

The history of the South African Communist Party (SACP), formed in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and subsequently banned in 1950, has generated a very rich and fascinating literature. From its beginnings as a largely white organisation that had to adapt its Marxism-Leninism to settler colonialism and oppression of the African majority, to the days of its participation in the formation of Umkhonto weSizwe and beyond, the SACP's influence on the country has been as immense as the country's influence on it.

Follow the story of SACP leaders who were forced to flee the country and go into exile in the aftermath of the Rivonia Trial coupled with the 90 day detention act. Maloka tells of their relationship with ANC leaders and their struggles to keep the movement alive until their eventual homecoming in the early 1990s.

This volume is a revised version of The South African Communist Party in Exile, which was published by the Africa Institute of South Africa (AISA). What is covered here is the story of the SACP during the exile years until its unbanning in 1990, the 1990-94 negotiated transition, and the immediate period after the 1994 first democratic elections, which brought into being post-apartheid South Africa.

Sithole problematises the signifier X, as a marker of the dehumanization of the black subject. He argues that post-1994 South Africa retains the markers of its colonial past, and remains a territory of unfreedom for blacks. He offers a new imagination for a liberatory project through the idea of Azania as a site of true emancipation.

In Black X: Liberatory Thought in Azania, Tendayi Sithole elaborates on the problematic signifier X, a marker of the dehumanization of the black subject, and presents the struggle for Azania as a liberatory project.

Sithole argues that post-1994 South Africa retains the markers of its colonial past and remains a territory of unfreedom for blacks. He shows how the colonial contract still stands, with the land question unresolved by the new constitutional dispensation. His thesis is that being and land are indissoluble, and the denial of the centrality of land restitution is a denial of the black being. Drawing on the Black Consciousness philosophy of Steve Biko, he critiques the manner in which Marx and Marxism evade the reality of antiblack racism and landlessness as drivers of colonial conquest and ongoing forms of oppression, and emphasises existential struggle of the black subject through Mabogo P More’s African philosophy.

Sithole foregrounds these iterations under the mark X, and shows how the black subject, as a dehumanized figure, must continue to radically insist on alternative forms of being in an antiblack world, and on Azania as the true form of liberation.

Can people who live in shantytowns, shacks and favelas teach us anything about democracy? About how to govern society in a way that is inclusive, participatory and addresses popular needs? This book argues that they can.

In a study conducted in dozens of South Africa’s shack settlements, where more than 9 million people live, Trevor Ngwane finds thriving shack dwellers’ committees that govern local life, are responsive to popular needs and provide a voice for the community. These committees, called ‘amakomiti’ in the Zulu language, organise the provision of basic services such as water, sanitation, public works and crime prevention especially during settlement establishment.

Amakomiti argues that, contrary to common perception, slum dwellers are in fact an essential part of the urban population, whose political agency must be recognised and respected. In a world searching for democratic alternatives that serve the many and not the few, it is to the shantytowns, rather than the seats of political power, that we should turn.

A highly engaging introduction to the study of world politics, D'Anieri's INTERNATIONAL POLITICS: POWER AND PURPOSE IN GLOBAL AFFAIRS, 5th Edition, emphasizes that examining problems from multiple approaches can provide a better understanding.

The text uses the theme of power and purpose to examine five paradigms of international relations theory and to connect the scholarly analysis of international politics to policy problems and contemporary affairs. Its cohesive pedagogical framework presents the study of international politics as a series of intellectual puzzles and policy problems -- helping students make the connections between theory and policy, history and the present, and ideals and constraints.

Case studies of real-world events address common student deficiencies in history, policy and geography. In addition, the MindTap digital learning solution is available with this edition.

On the 14th October, 2020, Angelo Agrizzi, one of South Africa's foremost whistleblowers, leaves home at 6am to attend a routine bail court hearing at the Palm Ridge Magistrate Court. After being informed to first meet at the Brackendowns Police Station, he finds himself locked up in a military tank, under special forces guard, accompanied to court by a massive convoy of blue light brigades. He is told that this is for his own "protection".

Agrizzi is at first unperturbed – he's far more excited at the prospect that his explosive Bosasa tell-all memoir, Inside The Belly of the Beast will be going to print by lunch time. In a sinister turn of events, the court denies him bail on the unfounded basis that he poses a flight risk. Agrizzi is ferried off to notorious Sun City, Johannesburg Central Prison. On hearing the judgement broadcast across the media, his publishing house inexplicably pulls the book. And so as the wheels of (in)justice start turning, the printing press grinds to a halt. That night, alone in his filthy prison cell, now in the very clutches of those he exposed at Zondo, an attempt is made on Agrizzi's life.

Surviving The Beast exposes the highest echelons of power's involvement in dirty tricks, corruption, boardroom assassinations, lies, deceit and cover-ups. There are murders and the swopping of bodies. It is also a compelling memoir of one man's victory over death.

In this sequel to his bestseller, Inside the Belly of the Beast - The Real Bosasa Story, Agrizzi's new book explores, in bone-chilling detail, the failings of the Commission of State Capture and why so many big fish still swim free. Substantiated by irrefutable proof, medical records and key witness statements, Surviving The Beast uncovers what really happens to those who expose the powerful and corrupted.

Capitalism’s addiction to fossil fuels is heating our planet at a pace and scale never before experienced.

Extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels and accelerating feedback loops are a commonplace feature of our lives. The number of environmental refugees is increasing and several island states and low-lying countries are becoming vulnerable. Corporate-induced climate change has set us on an ecocidal path of species extinction. Governments and their international platforms such as the Paris Climate Agreement deliver too little, too late. Most states, including South Africa, continue on their carbon-intensive energy paths, with devastating results. Political leaders across the world are failing to provide systemic solutions to the climate crisis. This is the context in which we must ask ourselves: how can people and class agency change this destructive course of history?

The Climate Crisis investigates ecosocialist alternatives that are emerging. It presents the thinking of leading climate justice activists, campaigners and social movements advancing systemic alternatives and developing bottom-up, just transitions to sustain life. Through a combination of theoretical and empirical work, the authors collectively examine the challenges and opportunities inherent in the current moment.

Most importantly, it explores ways to renew historical socialism with democratic, ecosocialist alternatives to meet current challenges in South Africa and the world.

No little thorn in the flesh or irritating fly in the ointment, Zapiro just cannot be ignored.

It’s been another helluva year, and who better to make sense of it than Zapiro, political analyst, cartoonist and agent provocateur. He has the ability to knock the air out of us, to rock us back in our seats, to force us bolt upright with a 1000-watt jolt of electrifying shock. He makes us angry, he makes us laugh and he makes us think. He shines a light on the elephant in the room, presents the emperor in all his naked glory.

Impossible to brush off, he is determined to provoke a response. When all around is crumbling, when fake news and zipped lips conceal the truth, Zapiro comes to the rescue. With the dissecting eye of a surgeon, the rapier-like point of his pen exposes flimflam, and reveals with a line what lies behind the action.

The African Lion, Dr Chika Onyeani, is back and roaring. The author of the phenomenally successful Capitalist N*gger, which has sold more than 100 000 copies in South Africa alone, offers a new collection of his speeches, articles and other writings over the last fifteen years.

In Roar Of The African Lion, Dr Onyeani’s unblinking gaze and plain speaking are directed at many of the burning issues of the day. He outlines his revolutionary Spider Web Doctrine – aimed at financial self-reliance and the upliftment of black communities – and attacks the parasitic leaders whose greed has robbed the people of Africa of opportunities for advancement and development since their liberation. He is equally scornful of the failures of the African elite to influence the direction of their countries, and has trenchant comments to make about racism, xenophobia and hypocrisy in Africa, America and elsewhere.

Dr Onyeani also tackles the persistence of slavery on the continent, the West’s ambivalent attitude to aid and debt relief, rampant corruption and the ‘whiteness’ of Barack Obama. Looking to the future, he cautions Africa to be wary of China’s embrace and to pursue its own solutions to African problems.

'This century's most compelling theorist of racism and colonialism' Angela Davis 'Fanon is our contemporary ... In clear language, in words that can only have been written in the cool heat of rage, Fanon showed us the internal theatre of racism' Deborah Levy Frantz Fanon's urgent, dynamic critique of the effects of racism on the psyche is a landmark study of the black experience in a white world. Drawing on his own life and his work as a psychoanalyst to explore how colonialism's subjects internalize its prejudices, eventually emulating the 'white masks' of their oppressors, it established Fanon as a revolutionary anti-colonialist thinker. 'So hard to put down ... a brilliant, vivid and hurt mind, walking the thin line that separates effective outrage from despair' The New York Times Book Review

Written by two award-winning reporters with unprecedented access, this is the only definitive biography of George Floyd.

The murder of George Floyd sparked a fiery summer of activism and unrest all over the world in 2020, with peaceful protests sometimes erupting into violent clashes. From Shetland to Sao Paolo, from Honolulu to Hobart, people marched under the Black Lives Matter banner, decrying Floyd's death and demanding an end to racial injustice. The movement has led corporations to redouble their efforts, universities to refocus on inclusion, and government officials to examine the causes of systemic inequality.

Drawing on The Washington Post's unrivalled archives, in-depth reporting and award-winning series on Floyd, His Name Is George Floyd is a definitive biography that dives deep into the myriad ways that structural racism shaped Floyd's life and death. Telling his personal story within the context of America's troubled race history, it features fresh and exclusive reporting as well as unparalleled access to Floyd's family and the people who were closest to the man whose name has become one of the most recognized on the planet.

By zooming in for an intimate portrait of this one, emblematic life, while also pulling back to profile the institutions that shaped it, the authors deliver a powerful exploration of institutional racism and of a public reckoning of unprecedented breadth and intensity.