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.

South Africa has produced two leaders who achieved global recognition and renown in their respective eras: Jan Christiaan Smuts (Prime Minister, 1919-24 and 1939-48) and Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (President, 1994-99). The former was much celebrated for playing a significant role in reconstructing international architecture after both world wars; the latter remains globally admired for his leading part in drawing South Africa back from racial war and becoming a democracy. As a result, both have attracted multiple biographies. Today, however, whereas Mandela remains a much-admired global icon, Smuts’ reputation is much diminished, with contemporary historians citing his racism and role in constructing the foundations of apartheid South Africa.

In this controversial book, Roger Southall provides a re-evaluation of Smuts’ hugely contradictory career by proposing fascinating parallels with the life and political trajectory of Mandela. Both came to maturity as political leaders as freedom fighters – Smuts against the British and Mandela against the apartheid regime. Both played a pre-eminent in founding a new South Africa, the first made for whites at Union in 1910 and the second for all South Africans in 1994. Both aspired to be nation-builders, but while Smuts’ hoped-for South African nation was white, Mandela aspired to bring all of South Africa’s people together. Both came to stride on the international stage, albeit in very different ways and for various reasons.

Smuts’ career failed, and he was ejected from office. Mandela retired gracefully from office and continued to be lauded for his well-earned retirement, yet South Africa’s contemporary travails reveal his hopes and policies as unfulfilled. This book makes the case that we cannot fully understand Mandela without first understanding Smuts and how South Africa continues to struggle with the legacy he left behind.

South Africa’s general election of 2024 saw the African National Congress losing its majority at the national level for the first time since the arrival of democracy in 1994. To maintain its rule, President Cyril Ramaphosa led his party into a Government of National Unity (GNU) centered around a hitherto unlikely coalition with the opposition Democratic Alliance. Election 2024, South Africa: Countdown to Coalition presents the first comprehensive analysis of this historic process.

It outlines the extensive social and economic crisis that preceded the election; provides detailed analyses of the election campaigns of the political parties; highlights the dramatic rise Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe Party; places the GNU against the recent experiences of coalition formation at provincial and local level; offers comprehensive summaries of voter participation and both the national and provincial results; and discusses prospects for the GNU’s survival and its possible long-term consequences.

Written in a highly accessible style, Election 2024, South Africa is an indispensable resource for all those wanting to understand South Africa’s contemporary politics.

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.'