For most of its existence, the ANC Youth League has played a powerful role in the politics of the ANC, and therefore of South Africa. This book tells the history of the ANC Youth League, from its formation in 1944 to the present day.

The book explores the radicalising role played by its early leaders, such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and O.R. Tambo; the formation of the ANC Youth and Students Section in exile, first led by Thabo Mbeki; the return from exile in the 1990s and the leadership of Peter Mokaba; the controversies around the appointment of Julius Malema and his subsequent sacking; and the absence of Youth League leadership in the #FeesMustFall movement and current South African politics. Finally, the book considers the role that the Youth League should play in the future.

This is a fascinating glimpse into a vital and volatile institution in South African politics.

This timely collection of essays analyses the crisis of journalism in contemporary South Africa at a period when the media and their role are frequently at the centre of public debate.

The transition to digital news has been messy, random and unpredictable. The spread of news via social media platforms has given rise to political propaganda and fake news. Yet media companies oust experienced journalists in favour of 'content producers'. Against this backdrop, Daniels points out the contribution of investigative journalists to exposing corruption and sees new opportunities to forge a model for the future of non-profit, public-funded journalism. She argues for the power of public interest journalism and the reflection of a diversity of voices and positions in the news.

The book addresses the gains and losses from decolonial and feminist perspectives and advocates for a radical shift in the way power is constituted by the media in the South African postcolony. With her years of experience as a newspaper journalist, Daniels writes with authority and illuminates complex issues about newsroom politics. A semi-autobiographical lens and interviews with alienated media professionals add a personal element that will appeal to a range of readers interested in the workings of the media.

The Land Is Ours tells the story of South Africa’s first black lawyers, who operated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In an age of aggressive colonial expansion, land dispossession and forced labour, these men believed in a constitutional system that respected individual rights and freedoms, and they used the law as an instrument against injustice.

The book follows the lives, ideas and careers of Henry Sylvester Williams, Alfred Mangena, Richard Msimang, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Ngcubu Poswayo and George Montsioa, who were all members of the ANC. It analyses the legal cases they took on, explores how they reconciled the law with the political upheavals of the day, and considers how they sustained their fidelity to the law when legal victories were undermined by politics.

The Land Is Ours shows that these lawyers developed the concept of a Bill of Rights, which is now an international norm. The book is particularly relevant in light of current calls to scrap the Constitution and its protections of individual rights: it clearly demonstrates that, from the beginning, the struggle for freedom was based on the idea of the rule of law.

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.

How To Steal A Country describes the vertiginous decline in political leadership in South Africa from Mandela to Zuma and its terrible consequences. Robin Renwick’s account reads in parts like a novel – a crime novel – for Sherlock Holmes old adversary, Professor Moriarty, the erstwhile Napoleon of Crime, would have been impressed by the ingenuity, audacity and sheer scale of the looting of the public purse, let alone the impunity with which it has been accomplished.

Based on Renwick’s personal experiences of the main protagonists, it describes the extraordinary influence achieved by the Gupta family for those seeking to do business with state-owned enterprises in South Africa, and the massive amounts earned by Gupta related companies from their associations with them. The ensuing scandals have engulfed Bell Pottinger, KPMG, McKinsey and other multinationals. The primary responsibility for this looting of the state however, rests squarely with President Zuma and key members of his government. But South Africa has succeeded in establishing a genuinely non-racial society full of determined and enterprising people, offering genuine hope for the future. These include independent journalists, black and white, who refuse to be silenced, and the judges, who have acted with courage and independence.

The book concludes that change will come, either by the ruling party reverting to the values of Mandela and Archbishop Tutu, or by the reckoning it otherwise will face one day.

Charles Abrahams is a world-class lawyer who sued multinationals for colluding with the apartheid government, but at twelve he was determined to become a world-famous heartsurgeon. Then a school inspector shattered his dream: coloured children from the Cape Flats 'should not aim too high'. Class Action is the story of how Charles aimed high anyway, despite a childhood that included forced removal, dire poverty and the deep sense of shame of being neither white nor a 'white coloured'. As one of eleven children in a poor family, he experienced constant hardship and family strife.

Violence was ubiquitous: his street was notorious for its gang fights, his father abused his mother at home, and schoolteachers beat darker-skinned children like him. Charles wanted a larger life, and he found it through student politics, anti-apartheid activism and reading. He studied relentlessly, finding not only formidable political weapons, but a means to delve into the damage apartheid had done to his personal identity, selfesteem, sexuality and morality. He went on to qualify as a lawyer and, after defending local gangsters, he sought to do good through human-rights and class-action law. He has since spearheaded some of South Africa’s most historic, groundbreaking lawsuits, pursuing justice for ordinary citizens whose lives were ruined by powers too profit-driven to ever think about them.

Class Action depicts a remarkable journey of resistance and healing in reaction to institutionalised greed and racism and the harm it has done to our identities, our relationships and the people of our country.

In A Man Apart Richard Steyn once again brings to life a South African icon. Louis Botha was the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, a union he did much to create in the decade after the devastation of the Anglo-Boer War. During the war Botha was a brilliant young Boer general who through his battlefield strategy won significant victories over the British in the early stages of the war. When the weight of British arms overhelmed the Boers, Botha along with Smuts did much to encourage peace between English and Afrikaner and led the country to Union in 1910 and dominion status.

Botha was a big-hearted and generous man who showed magnanimity in his dealings with all, including former enemies. He led the South African troops to victory and the capture of German South West Africa – prior to this he had to put down a revolt of pro-German Afrikaners. At the Peace of Versailles, representing South Africa, he pleaded unsuccessfully for magnanimity towards the Germans. Botha was a globally respected figure – he and Smuts effectively operated as a double act in South Africa and on the international stage before Botha’s untimely death in August 1919 at only 57. In A Man Apart this tragically short life is illuminated in full.

The Steinhoff crash wiped more than R200bn off the JSE, erased half the wealth of tycoon Christo Wiese and knocked the pension funds of millions of people.

When it was exposed as a house of cards, tales of fraudulent accounting, lavish spending and ructions in the ‘Stellenbosch mafia’ made the headlines. As regulators tally up the cost, Financial Mail editor Rob Rose reveals the real inside story behind Steinhoff. Based on interviews with key players in South Africa, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands – and documents not yet public – Steinheist reveals:

• How Bruno Steinhoff formed the company in the Communist bloc and apartheid South Africa;
• How the ‘Markus myth’ grew thanks to a ‘bit of luck’ in a 1998 takeover;
• How Jooste insiders shifted nasty liabilities off Steinhoff’s balance sheet to present a false picture of the profits;
• How Wiese was lucky to lose only R59bn and; and
• What happened behind closed boardroom doors in the frantic week before Jooste resigned.

Imagine learning from South Africa’s best of the best in their respective fields – be it business, sport, politics, entertainment or philanthropy – and having access to decades of experience in strategic planning, business and change management, human resources development, and the nitty-gritty of building a personal brand that extends to your business and everyone you employ. Look no further than the 200 pages of WIN! Inspiring Interviews with SA’s Top 20 Leaders by Jeremy Maggs.

With 30 years’ experience in journalism, marketing and public speaking, Maggs chooses the best of the best he has interviewed over the years, and succinctly captures their winning ways, business challenges, some spectacular failures and secrets of their trade to reach their ultimate goals – being winners! The book looks at attaining all brands of success – whether it be how one leader runs a multi-billion-dollar company; how another inspires masses of people to follow a trend, or how an idea can spark the innovation of a product so basic yet so integral to a community’s prosperity.

As you read the book, you will realise there are no hard and fast rules to reaching the top rung of the success ladder – there are unique twists and turns, which enrich each leader’s experience; they are faced with make-or-break split-second decisions; some get a lucky break, while others work, fail and work harder to become the cream of the crop. There is a method for each and every business owner, entrepreneur, manager or franchise owner to make their business bigger, better and a bold example of winning success.

A great deal of the revolutionary work that Charles Nqakula undertook as an ANC underground cadre and combatant of Umkhonto we Sizwe was in the Eastern Cape. This book is a well-documented and detailed recollection of those difficult and dangerous times when detention, imprisonment, torture, and even death were always imminent.

It required massive courage and heroism to be part of that array of outstanding leaders and cadres of the revolutionary movements. Readers will be convinced that Charles and his wife/partner Nosiviwe were selfless, dedicated, loyal, disciplined, and brave freedom fighters. This book is noteworthy because Charles remembers, gives due credit, and attaches names to the many comrades who participated in that heroic struggle with him and Nosiviwe. It is difficult to understand and appreciate the dialectical interconnectedness of the individual and the collective. The collective is always more important than the individual but the collective is at the same time the sum total of the individual contributions. In this book, Charles successfully portrays that delicate and complex relationship.

The People’s War describes the work undertaken by Charles and Nosiviwe in the ANC underground and MK units in a dispassionate manner without any self-praise or grandstanding. Charles also recounts how Nosiviwe nearly lost her life in an ambush carried out by Unita on an MK convoy as well as an attempted assassination outside their home in Cyrildene. In the latter chapters of the book, Charles writes about political developments and processes from 1990 up to the present time. He recounts his work as a mediator in the conflicts in Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, and Mauritania, the pain and anguish at the tragic murder of their son, Chumani Siyavuya, and comments on the debilitating challenges of factionalism, election slates, and corruption degrading the integrity, unity, reputation, values, and electoral support of the ANC.

This collection brims with the imaginative, informative and comic personal narratives of Hedley Twidle. Twidle brings a sense of lightness, play and comedy to subjects that are often dealt with in predictable or self-righteous ways.

It chronicles South Africa during the ‘second transition’ – one in which the foundations of the post-apartheid settlement are being shaken and questioned in all kinds of ways.

The presidential campaign in the USA grabbed the global imagination. It also grabbed the feminist imagination, presenting the hope that if a woman could become the president of the USA, women throughout the world would finally break through the reinforced glass ceiling. However, when it didn’t happen, the lost opportunity became the metaphorical kick in the feminist gut on a global scale. Through the subsequent misogyny, vulgarity, lewd comments, the pussy grabbing video, and the threats of the erosion of feminist activism in the trenches, worldwide a deep mourning arose from the feminist community. It was the name calling of “nasty women” that really smarted. Initial feelings of anger gave rise to empowerment of women — those who talk back to patriarchy — to embrace the label of “nasty women”.

The idea for the collection was born, cradled and nurtured between friends who wanted to create a space for writing and thinking about the marches. The group of feminists who contributed to this collection used the marches and the posters inspired by the marches as a vehicle which galvanised women into action to put pen to paper and show fervour for ongoing feminist activism.

The nexus of this beautifully written and evocatively illustrated collection is telling narratives that link very personal stories with deeply political issues. These are the stories told by nasty women who are making the personal political, who are seeking to live their lives in ways that resist and challenge patriarchy. Through their very intimate nature these are stories that speak to the creation of a different kind of social order, one based on equity, the promotion of human rights and social justice.

A secret torment for some, a proud responsibility for others, ‘black tax’ is a daily reality for thousands of black South Africans. In this thought-provoking and moving anthology, a provocative range of voices share their deeply personal stories.

With the majority of black South Africans still living in poverty today, many black middle-class households are connected to working-class or jobless homes. Some believe supporting family members is an undeniable part of African culture and question whether it should even be labelled as a kind of tax. Others point to the financial pressure it places on black students and professionals, who, as a consequence, struggle to build their own wealth. Many feel they are taking over what is essentially a government responsibility. The contributions also investigate the historical roots of black tax, the concept of the black family and the black middle class.

In giving voice to so many different perspectives, Black Tax hopes to start a dialogue on this widespread social phenomenon.

How did Einstein help create Eskom? Why can an Indonesian volcano explain the Great Trek? What do King Zwelithini and Charlemagne have in common?

These are some of the questions Johan Fourie explores in this entertaining, accessible economic history spanning everything from the human migration out of Africa 100 000 years ago to the Covid-19 pandemic. Our Long Walk to Economic Freedom is an engaging guide to complex debates about the roots and reasons for prosperity, the march of opportunity versus the crushing boot of exploitation, and why the builders of societies – rather than the burglars ¬– ultimately win out.

Join the author on this enriching journey through an African-centred history and the story of our long walk towards a brighter future.

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.

Enemy Of The People is the first definitive account of Zuma’s catastrophic misrule, offering eyewitness descriptions and cogent analysis of how South Africa was brought to its knees – and how a nation fought back.

When Jacob Zuma took over the leadership of the ANC one muggy Polokwane evening in December 2007, he inherited a country where GDP was growing by more than 6% per annum, a party enjoying the support of two-thirds of the electorate, and a unified tripartite alliance. Today, South Africa is caught in the grip of a patronage network, the economy is floundering and the ANC is staring down the barrel of a defeat at the 2019 general elections. How did we get here?

Zuma first brought to heel his party, Africa’s oldest and most revered liberation movement, subduing and isolating dissidents associated with his predecessor Thabo Mbeki. Then saw the emergence of the tenderpreneur and those attempting to capture the state, as well as a network of family, friends and business associates that has become so deeply embedded that it has, in effect, replaced many parts of government. Zuma opened up the state to industrial-scale levels of corruption, causing irreparable damage to state enterprises, institutions of democracy, and the ANC itself.

But it hasn’t all gone Zuma’s way. Former allies have peeled away. A new era of activism has arisen and outspoken civil servants have stepped forward to join a cross-section of civil society and a robust media. As a divided ANC square off for the elective conference in December, where there is everything to gain or to lose, award-winning journalists Adriaan Basson and Pieter du Toit offer a brilliant and up-to-date account of the Zuma era.

Falling Monuments, Reluctant Ruins: The Persistence of the Past in the Architecture of Apartheid interrogates how, in the era of decolonisation, post-apartheid South Africa reckons with its past in order to shape its future. Architects, historians, artists, social anthropologists and urban planners seek answers in this book to complex and unsettling questions around heritage, ruins and remembrance.

What do we do with hollow memorials and political architectural remnants? Which should remain, which forgotten, and which dismantled? Are these vacant buildings, cemeteries, statues, and derelict grounds able to serve as inspiration in the fight against enduring racism and social neglect? Should they become exemplary as spaces for restitution and justice? The contributors examine the influence of public memory, planning and activism on such anguished places of oppression, resistance and defiance. Their focus on visible markers in the landscape to interrogate our past will make readers reconsider these spaces, looking at their landscape and history anew.

Through a series of 14 empirically grounded chapters and 48 images, the contributors seek to understand how architecture contests or subverts these persistent conditions in order to promote social justice, land reclamation and urban rehabilitation. The decades following the dismantling of apartheid are surveyed in light of contemporary heritage projects, where building ruins and abandoned spaces are challenged and renegotiated across the country to become sites of protest, inspiration and anger.

This ground-breaking collection is an important resource for professionals, academics and activists working in South Africa today.

In Dockside Reading, Isabel Hofmeyr traces the relationships among print culture, colonialism, and the ocean through the institution of the British colonial Custom House.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, dockside customs officials would leaf through publications looking for obscenity, politically objectionable materials, or reprints of British copyrighted works, often dumping these condemned goods into the water. These practices, echoing other colonial imaginaries of the ocean as a space for erasing incriminating evidence of the violence of empire, informed later censorship regimes under apartheid in South Africa.

By tracking printed matter from ship to shore, Hofmeyr shows how literary institutions like copyright and censorship were shaped by colonial control of coastal waters. Set in the environmental context of the colonial port city, Dockside Reading explores how imperialism colonizes water.

Hofmeyr examines this theme through the concept of hydrocolonialism, which puts together land and sea, empire and environment.

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.

In 2020 the world found itself in a state of flux. A global pandemic disrupted the world order while the digital transformation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), with its challenges and huge potential benefits, presented a fundamental paradigm shift. How are Africa’s leaders to respond, today?

In a crisis, decisive leadership is imperative for the public good, but as we move beyond the pandemic and confront the changes of the 4IR, we must determine how we will adapt. What is clear is that leadership will have to be grounded in scientific and mathematical thinking and in good governance. It follows, then, that for South Africa to succeed as a nation in the 21st century we must be able to provide our people with an all-embracing education – not just science and technology but human and social sciences as well.

Leading in the 21st Century presents a comprehensive overview of how the world is changing and lessons we can draw from leaders, particularly in the African context. From Charlotte Maxeke and the Rain Queen Modjadji, to Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, Eric Molobi and Richard Maponya, there is much to learn from great leaders. The challenges of the 21st century are immense – from climate change to social media and the digital divide that deepens our understanding of inequality, particularly in the ‘new normal’. South Africa faces not only a shifting global context but a fraught local context of stagnant growth, rising unemployment and deep-seated inequality, worsened in 2020 by the national lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic. The 4IR offers solutions to many of our most pressing problems and we cannot afford to be left behind.

The certainty is that the 4IR has arrived. The debates lie in how we respond to it. Tshilidzi Marwala deciphers it all, while providing a framework for navigating these shifts.

“Rebels And Rage is a critically important contribution to public discussion about #FeesMustFall”–Eusebius McKaiser

Adam Habib, the most prominent and outspoken university official through the recent student protests, takes a characteristically frank view of the past three years on South Africa’s campuses in this new book. Habib charts the progress of the student protests that erupted on Wits University campus in late 2015 and raged for the better part of three years, drawing on his own intimate involvement and negotiation with the students, and also records university management and government responses to the events. He critically examines the student movement and individual student leaders who emerged under the banners #feesmustfall and #Rhodesmustfall, and debates how to achieve truly progressive social change in South Africa, on our campuses and off.

This book is both an attempt at a historical account and a thoughtful reflection on the issues the protests kicked up, from the perspective not only of a high-ranking member of university management, but also Habib as political scientist with a background as an activist during the struggle against apartheid. Habib moves between reflecting on the events of the last three years on university campuses, and reimagining the future of South African higher education.

Here is the Cape Town underworld laid bare, explored through the characters who control the protection industry, the bouncers and security at nightclubs and strip clubs.

At the centre of this turf war is Nafiz Modack, the latest kingpin to have seized control of the industry, a man often in court on various charges, including extortion. Investigative journalist Caryn Dolley has followed Modack and his predecessors for six years as power has shifted in the nightclub security industry, and she focuses on how closely connected the criminal underworld is with the police services. In this suspenseful page turner of an investigation, she writes about the overlapping of the state with the underworld, the underworld with the upperworld, and how the associated violence is not confined to specific areas of Cape Town, but is happening inside hospitals, airports, clubs and restaurants and putting residents at risk.

A book that lays bare the myth that violence and gangsterism in Cape Town is confined to the ganglands of the Cape Flats, wherever you find yourself, you’re only a hair’s breadth away from the enforcers.

In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town demanded the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist, racist business magnate, from their campus. The battle cry '#RhodesMustFall' sparked an international movement calling for the decolonisation of the world's universities.

Today, as this movement grows, how will it radically transform the terms upon which universities exist? In this book, students, activists and scholars discuss the possibilities and the pitfalls of doing decolonial work in the home of the coloniser, in the heart of the establishment. Subverting curricula, enforcing diversity, and destroying old boundaries, this is a radical call for a new era of education.

Offering resources for students and academics to challenge and resist coloniality inside and outside the classroom, Decolonising the University provides the tools for radical pedagogical, disciplinary and institutional change.

Scholars agree that a direct correlation can be made between poor governance and the emergence of extremist movements. As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres puts it: ‘I am convinced that the creation of open, equitable, inclusive and pluralist societies, based on the full respect of human rights and with economic opportunities for all, represents the most tangible and meaningful alternative to violent extremism.’ This book challenges both the efficacy and wisdom of purely militarised responses to extremist movements typified by the Global War on Terror, as well as the cursory replication of international counter-terrorism frameworks promulgated by the United Nations and European Union in Africa.

Emphasis is given to the importance of understanding local history, culture and regional geopolitics, among a variety of context-specific factors to truly understand and thereby effectively address the emergence and spread of extremisms in Africa. As such, it draws on contributions from a range of thematic and regional experts, including security-sector specialists, conflict analysts, journalists, international relations and governance specialists, political scientists, social anthropologists, psychologists and theologians, among others. A diverse range of extremist movements on the continent are examined, from radicalised religious groups to race-based organisations.

These case studies provide in-depth insight into answering why and how these movements came to be, while thematic chapters address issues pertinent to addressing them, such as public perceptions of extremism, methods of recruitment and radicalization among marginalised communities, supporting survivors of extremism and former combatants, strategic approaches to counter-terrorism and the role of governance, among others.

This is an introductory anthology and the first of its kind on this topic to be authored and published in the African continent.

Archives of Times Past explores particular sources of evidence on southern Africa's time before the colonial era. It gathers recent ideas about archives and archiving from scholars in southern Africa and elsewhere, focusing on the question: 'How do we know, or think we know, what happened in the times before European colonialism?'

Historians who specialise in researching early history have learnt to use a wide range of materials from the past as source materials. What are these materials? Where can we find them? Who made them? When? Why? What are the problems with using them?

The essays by well-known historians, archaeologists and researchers engage these questions from a range of perspectives and in illuminating ways. Written from personal experience, they capture how these experts encountered their archives of knowledge beyond the textbook. The book aims to make us think critically about where ideas about the time before the colonial era originate. It encourages us to think about why people in South Africa often refer to this 'deep history' when arguing about public affairs in the present.

The essays are written at a time when public discussion about the history of southern Africa before the colonial era is taking place more openly than at any other time in the last hundred years. They will appeal to students, academics, educationists, teachers, archivists, and heritage, museum practitioners and the general public.