Their love story was one of the greatest of our times.

Ruth Williams was a middle-class Londoner who loved ballroom dancing and ice skating when she met Seretse Khama. He was chief designate of the most powerful tribe in Bechuanaland, today Botswana, on the borders of apartheid South Africa. Their union sparked outrage, fear and anger. Ruth’s father barred her from their family home, she was hounded by the global media and shunned by white people in Seretse’s village of Serowe. The couple was humiliated, tricked and eventually exiled to England. But, despite all these tribulations, their love triumphed over the politics and prejudice of the time.

This is the story Ruth Khama told well-known journalist and author Sue Grant-Marshall ‒ the story of an extraordinary woman, who had the courage of her convictions in marrying the man she loved and accepting his country and people as her own.

The story of a ‘rogue unit’ operating within the South African Revenue Service (SARS) became entrenched in the public mind following a succession of sensational reports published by the Sunday Times in 2014. The unit, the reports claimed, had carried out a series of illegal spook operations: they had spied on President Jacob Zuma, run a brothel, illegally bought spyware and entered into unlawful tax settlements.

In a plot of Machiavellian proportions, head of the elite crime-busting unit Johann van Loggerenberg and many of SARS’s top management were forced to resign. Van Loggerenberg’s select team of investigators, with their impeccable track record of busting high-level financial fraudsters and nailing tax criminals, lost not only their careers but also their reputations. Now, in this extraordinary account, they finally get to put the record straight and the rumours to rest: there was no ‘rogue unit’. The public had been deceived, seemingly by powers conspiring to capture SARS for their own ends.

Shooting down the allegations he has faced one by one, Van Loggerenberg tells the story of what really happened inside SARS, revealing details of some of the unit’s actual investigations.

When Johan Booysen hears that the new Provincial Police Chief takes backhanders from a Durban businessman, he decides to give her the benefit of the doubt. But the evidence becomes impossible to ignore and he soon gets dragged down the corridors of power and politics into a web of intrigue, deceit and betrayal that, at times, he has trouble making sense of.

Only when he is arrested, handcuffed and tossed into a cell does Booysen realise just how ruthless those opposed to him are – an opposition he comes to call the ‘cabal’ – and whom he believes have more blood on their hands than the so-called Cato Manor Death Squad with which he is closely associated.

Blood On Their Hands traces Johan Booysen’s life and career – from patrolling the streets of Amanzimtoti in the 1970s to his rise in 2010 to major general and head of KZN’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation unit, the Hawks. But his tenure is short-lived. When Booysen decides to take on those so determined to be rid of him, each legal battle he wins is met by hostility and further efforts to shut him out of the of the criminal justice system. But capitulating is not in his DNA…

Morris Isaacson High School (MIHS) is widely known as the epicentre of the 1976 Soweto uprising. However, its legacy extends far beyond this event. This insightful book explores the rich, untold story of the school, revealing its profound impact on secondary education in Soweto.

While the 1976 uprising cemented MIHS’s place in history, Clive Glaser argues that its true significance lies in its unwavering commitment to quality education during a tumultuous period. Located in the heart of Soweto, MIHS faced immense challenges – poverty, a repressive education system (Bantu Education) and political unrest. Yet, it defied the odds, nurturing generations of successful professionals throughout the 1960s and 1970s. How did MIHS flourish under Bantu Education, and why did its performance not reach its full potential in the democratic era? By examining the interplay between dedicated leadership, a strong alumni network and shifting socio-economic realities, the book provides some compelling answers.

This book is not just about MIHS; it is a testament to the enduring power of education in the fight for social justice. MIHS’s story serves as an inspiration, demonstrating the transformative potential of education, even under the most challenging circumstances.

No little thorn in the flesh or irritating fly in the ointment, Zapiro just cannot be ignored. It’s been one helluva year.

We’ve held our breath thinking Zuma may resign. We’ve seen Juju re-booted and Zille tweeted out. We’ve seen Trump’s megalomania, Bell Pottinger‘s spin and Pravin’s fightback, cadres captured and Cabinet’s relocation to Saxonwold Shebeen. GuptaLeaks threaten to drown us and as the flood rises the rodents scatter. And who better to make sense of this 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 shines a light on the elephant in the room, presents the emperor in all his naked glory. When all around is crumbling, when fake news and zipped lips conceal the truth, Zapiro comes to the rescue.

Ek blaai vinnig deur hierdie bladsye. Ouma se politieke spore is besaai met duwweltjies. ’n Deel van my wil-wil die swart dagboek toemaak. ’n Ander deel skop vas: Hoe eerlik is jy in jou poging om oupa Hendrik te verstaan?

Ná jare van versoeningswerk tussen eertydse vyande in Ierland keer Wilhelm Verwoerd terug na Suid-Afrika. Hy wil vrede maak met sy eie familie en sy geskiedenis. In die Verwoerd-strandhuis, Blaas ’n Bietjie, waar hy sit en skryf, hang ’n gesinsfoto waarop sy oupa, HF Verwoerd, hom as baba teer vashou. Hoe versoen hy dié menslike oupa met die gehate onderdrukker wat in die stories van sy swart bure en kennisse na vore kom, mense wat as kinders in die strate gedans het toe sy oupa vermoor is?

In sy soektog na begrip kom Wilhelm op ouma Betsie Verwoerd se private dagboeke af en voer hy soms ongemaklike gesprekke met mense wat sy van as vloekwoord onthou. So ontvou ’n geskakeerde blik op wat dit beteken om vandag met integriteit in Suid-Afrika te leef.

“Diepsinnig … Wilhelm Verwoerd ondersoek die veelkantigheid van verantwoording in families in hierdie belangrike en menslike memoir.” – Martie Retief Meiring

After state capture, South Africa is f*cked and not in a good place. The system is down so how do we reboot?

We aren’t the first country to find itself in a difficult spot so we can ask ourselves why have some countries been successful and others not so much? How can South Africa pick itself up to become a thriving state? Roy Havemann answers these questions in this engaging, accessible book and argues that right now we need to focus on six basics: Eskom, Education, the Environment, Exports, Equality and Ethics.

It’s time to stop raking over the coals of who is to blame for our problems and focus on the future, looking at how other countries have overcome challenges similar to ours and how we can practically implement a set of policies that will get South Africa back on track.

Africa's leading producer of electricity, Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd, is also a vertically integrated monopoly, owned by the South African state. This national champion was shaken in 2008, when it was obliged to introduce 'load shedding', or rolling blackouts, and again in late 2014. Trying to understand how and why one of the iconic pillars of South African state capitalism is now in distress, the authors of this book argue that the so-called electricity crisis is in fact a public monopoly crisis.

Moving beyond technical aspects, they explore the relationship between state power and Eskom before, during and after apartheid. From this perspective, they suggest that the current technical and financial troubles of this public utility are illustrative of the weakening of its technopolitical regime, of how national institutions have governed Eskom's technological development, and of the pursuit of political goals in the production of electrical power. Without a clear industrial strategy during the 2000s, Eskom became a powerful tool of Broad-Black Economic Empowerment as well as a neopatrimonial system which generates profits captured by the ruling party. As a result, crisis in Eskom shakes the whole political edifice. Inefficient and its finances increasingly under scrutiny, this state-owned enterprise's existence as a monopolistic public utility is regularly a subject of debate.

The authors discuss the ambivalent role of Eskom in the national energy transition policy and whether solutions point in the direction of de-integrating this public monopoly and allowing its current technopolitical regime to enter a planned or natural decline.

The apartheid security juggernaut met its Battle of Stalingrad in the townships of Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage in 1985 and 1986. This is the blazing story of how the people’s resistance – in the church, in the civic structures, underground – fought that war.

Up until these insurrections, the brutal force of the apartheid state successfully crushed all attempts at revolt. Yet in the townships of Port Elizabeth, where they threw everything they had at the uprisings, the people stood and fought, and fought and stood.

Riordan, a human rights activist during the years of high apartheid, draws a line connecting the story of Thozamile Botha, the Zwide and KwaZakhele Residents’ Associations and the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Association (PEBCO) of 1979, the subsequent demise of PEBCO, and the February 1990 unbanning of the ANC and the movement at large.

What had happened in the intervening ten years to effect this once unimaginable change? Apartheid’s Stalingrad tells us what had happened.

Priscilla Jana is a legendary figure in South African revolutionary politics. As an Indian woman who had experienced racial oppression first-hand, she decided to use her degree in law to fight for the rights of her fellow people and do all she could to bring down the Apartheid state - who saw her as a very real threat. At one time she represented every single political prisoner on Robben Island, including both the late Nelson Mandela and his wife Winnie. Priscilla spent her days in court, fighting human rights case after human rights case, but it was at night when her real work was done. As part of an underground cell, she fought tirelessly to bring down the hated government. This activism, however, came at a price. One of South Africa's infamous 'banned persons', for five years Priscilla was unable to take part in any political activities, enter any place where a large number of people were gathered, and had her movements severely restricted. Worse, her own home was attacked with petrol bombs on multiple occasions. Undeterred, Priscilla Jana continued her work, even adopting the baby daughter of a client imprisoned on Robben Island, bringing here up, educating her, and providing a loving home. Finally, upon Mandela's release and the political revolution of her beloved country, Priscilla's work was rewarded, as she was elected as a member of South Africa's first democratic parliament. Later, she was to become an ambassador to both The Netherlands and Ireland. Now retired and living in Cape Town, Priscilla still works and waits for her most fervent desire: the true healing and unification of South Africa.

“There were three other people present, or five, depending on whom one chooses to include. Five, let’s say, the men divided from the women according to the timeworn tradition… The ceremony lasted precisely thirty minutes, as had been agreed on well in advance, not a second longer. One of the people present announced the end in a voice as blunt as it was relieved.”

What kind of bar mitzvah lasts no more than thirty minutes? Which five people could have been in attendance, and where could such a ceremony –– if there really was a ceremony –– have taken place under these circumstances? This book has echoes of a detective trail and as Denis Hirson gradually reveals the answers, he explores the wider ancestral and political strands of his story.

We are reminded of what the world might have looked like to a thirteen-year-old boy in the Johannesburg of the 1960s. This perspective is, thanks to his daughter, set against that same boy’s adult understanding of what had happened. This is a breathtaking account of the author being confronted by his own past.

In Rule Of Law, Glynnis Breytenbach reflects back on her career as a prosecutor, including specific cases she has tried, and on her life to provide a fascinating commentary on the importance of the independence of judicial institutions and the precariousness of this independence.

Her current challenges are directly linked to how outspoken she is and how she continues to campaign fiercely for the rule of law in this country.

Capture, massive deception and devastating human consequences still felt today… Legal journalist Dianne Hawker delves deep to retell the full Aurora story.

In October 2009, Aurora Empowerment Systems – a black-owned, politically connected business – made a bid to rescue the liquidated Pamodzi Gold mines.

Former President Jacob Zuma's nephew, Khulubuse Zuma, his lawyer Michael Hulley and former president Nelson Mandela’s grandson Zondwa Mandela, were listed as directors of Aurora. On paper the company looked almost too good to be true – promising to turn the mines into a new business that would offer stellar benefits to workers, while also expanding into Africa. Soon after the acquisition, the first cracks appeared. More than 5 000 workers and suppliers, who depended on their employment to keep themselves and their families alive, went unpaid. Over the next few years, Aurora-managed mines were stripped of assets, as illicit payments went to the families of the “connected”, while workers starved.

Despite a litany of evidence of Aurora’s dishonesty, to this day little has been done to bring the perpetrators to book.

Facing internal rebellion and the threat posed by German troops on South Africa’s borders, Prime Minister Louis Botha and his deputy, Jan Smuts, led the Union Defence Force during the First World War. This first-of-a-kind volume investigates the wartime roles of these two legendary yet divisive historical figures.

Both men commanded in the field. The army they commanded gained resilience, experience and battle-hardiness, adapting to the conditions of the campaigns and the demands of the tasks. South Africa’s campaigns were complex and divergent, starting with the invasion of neighbouring German South West Africa, moving to East Africa, Egypt, Palestine and the devasting fighting at Delville Wood in France.

Behind Botha’s charming façade and Smuts’s stoic machine, were two very human, imperfect men. Together they provide a wonderful lens through which to examine the potent forces of the early 20th -century world and the country they hoped to forge. Myopic compatriots had constrained their plans, but it was the outbreak of war in 1914 that offered the most significant opportunities and brought the most adverse challenges.

They fought insurmountable odds and achieved great victories, at home and abroad, but also made startling errors and, ultimately, in classical fashion risked being crushed by the weight of the world they tried to create.

Cops and Robbers: we think we know how to tell the good guys from the bad, but when it comes to Cape Town’s crime scene, things are anything but clear cut. Controlled by gangs, fuelled by drugs and policed by cops that, all too often, get caught on the wrong side of the action.

Among the Cape Town cops who have consistently claimed that colleagues are trying to pin crimes on them are Major General Andre Lincoln (former head of a national police unit mandated by Nelson Mandela), Major General Jeremy Vearey (known as SA’s top gang buster) and Lieutenant Colonel Charl Kinnear (who was investigating some of the country's most brutal underworld crimes when he was assassinated in September 2020). Colleagues and suspects alike pointed to all three as colluding with criminals. Who is telling the truth?

Journalist Caryn Dolley has tracked this tangled trail, following the corruption breadcrumbs, sifting through court documents, laying fact upon fact and exposing the depths and breadth of systemic corruption that was set in place during apartheid and has only become more entrenched during the first decades of our democracy. She has traced the rot from cops to underworld to politicians and back, exposing duplicitous networks that have for decades ensnared South Africa in an expanding cycle of organised crime and cop claim crossfire. At the centre of this crisis is the mounting collateral: the victims of Cape Town’s manufactured killing fields.

To The Wolves tells the true life story of how South Africa’s underworld came to be, what continues to fuel it today and how the deception and lies go all the way to the top...

Forgiveness Redefined is Candice Mama’s honest and healing story. It tells how she found ways to deal with the death of her father, Glenack Masilo Mama, and to forgive the notorious apartheid assassin Eugene de Kock, the man responsible for his brutal murder. We follow Candice’s journey of discovering how her father died, how this affected her and how she battled the demons of depression before the age of sixteen. But most importantly, we follow her journey towards beating the odds and rising above her heartbreaks.

Candice Mama is today still under the age of 30, but has been named as one of Vogue Paris’ most inspiring women alongside glittering names such as Michelle Obama. She has taken backstage selfies with music crooner Seal and travels all over the world to talk about her journey. This bubbly, inspiring young author tells how she shed some of the worst layers of grief and became an inspiration for others. We learn about her perplexing, unconventional childhood, her search for identity, and the beautiful bond she formed, posthumously, with a father she never had the opportunity to get to know in person. She also tells, in her own words, about the life-changing encounter between her family and her father’s killer.

Candice tenderly opens up about the result of the trauma of her father’s death on her entire family, and meeting her mother for the first time at the age of four. She tells about the confusing, yet fascinating, dynamics that later unfolded as she discovered pieces of herself, rediscovered relationships with her own family and came to forgiveness and understanding.

This book serves as inspiration for other young – and older – people to look at their own stories through different lenses. Candice’s experiences are not unique, and she offers healing thoughts to others who suffered similar trauma by sharing the details of her own story. Forgiveness Redefined is a touching, personal story by a young woman who learned too early about pain, loss and rejection – but who also learned how to overcome those burdens and live joyfully.

An urgent and passionately argued call to action, The Unaccountables skilfully profiles the large corporations and private individuals who are all implicated in economic crime but have never been held to account. This book will anger many, who will now be able to put names and faces to those behind some of South Africa’s biggest corruption scandals, from apartheid to state capture.

Crucially, The Unaccountables focuses on 38 profiles detailing evidence of impunity and suggesting actions in each instance that could ensure accountability. Remember, South Africa is a wealthy country. The 2022 Africa Wealth Report estimates total private wealth in South Africa to be over $651 billion, more than R10 trillion. South Africa is home to more than twice as many high-net-worth individuals than any other African country. But these acts of violence, for that is what they are, by powerful individuals and corporations have driven millions into poverty.

In The Unaccountables, we meet them all, apartheid and war profiteers, the state capture profiteers, those who have profited from welfare, we meet the bankers and their banks who got away with laundering and profiteering, the auditors, complicit in economic crimes and, unsurprisingly, the bad cops. This book is led by research, data and years of investigation and, as such, is the most persuasive book to have been written about corruption in South Africa.

One of the editors, Hennie van Vuuren, is the author of the runaway international bestseller, Apartheid Guns and Money.

We have a lot to be positive about in South Africa. With all our problems, it’s easy to feel bleak. But hold those thoughts, because Legends might be just the tonic you need to drive off the gloom. This book tells the stories of a dozen remarkable people – some well known, others largely forgotten – who changed Mzansi for the better.

Most South Africans are proud of Nelson Mandela – and rightly so. His life was truly astounding, but he’s by no means the only person who should inspire us. There’s King Moshoeshoe, whose humanity and diplomatic strategies put him head and shoulders above his contemporaries, both European and African. And John Fairbairn, who brought non-racial democracy to the Cape in 1854. Olive Schreiner was a bestselling international author who fought racism, corruption and chauvinism. And Gandhi spent twenty years here inventing a system of protest that would bring an empire to its knees.

Legends also celebrates Eugène Marais’s startling contributions to literature and natural history (despite a lifelong morphine addiction); Sol Plaatje’s wit, intelligence and tenacity in the face of racial zealots; Cissie Gool’s lifetime fighting for justice and exposing bigots; and Sailor Malan’s battles against fascists in the skies of Europe and on the streets of South Africa. And then there’s Miriam Makeba, who began her life in prison and ended it as an international singing sensation; Steve Biko, who shifted the minds of an entire generation; and Thuli Madonsela (the book’s only living legend), who gracefully felled the most powerful man in the land.

Engagingly written and meticulously researched, Legends reminds South Africans that we have a helluva lot to be proud of.

The Misery Merchants is a hard-hitting exposé of G4S, the company running one of South Africa’s private prisons in Mangaung. Hopkins presents up-close encounters with the gangs who run the prisons, and a unique insight into the minds of the men on the torture squad, who doused inmates with water before electrocuting them, and in some cases, strapped down ‘unruly’ prisoners and forced anti-psychotic medicines into their systems.

In the Free State of Ace Magashule, both the gangs and the prison bosses competed to run Mangaung Prison, one of South Africa’s few private prisons. Torture and forced medication were the order of the day. Hopkins, a seasoned journalist, has interviewed over 100 prisoners and many prison warders in order to understand what makes this prison so dysfunctional. Her insights and revelations will astonish you.

This book follows several characters who were held in or worked at the prison. L. is a prison gang general and an advocate for prisoners’ rights. He smuggled information on assaults, injections and corruption out of the prison for the author. Dan is a prison guard and a shop steward for the union. He led the workforce during two strikes and paid for it with his job and union membership. Setlai is a Department of Correctional Services official who blew the whistle on the abuse at Mangaung Prison in 2009. His reports were ignored and he was punished for speaking out. He was criminally charged and moved to another DCS post. Shakes is a member of the Emergency Security Team (EST) also known as the Ninjas. He engaged in torture and abuse but now feels ‘what we did was wrong’.

G4S is the largest security company in the world, and has its claws deep in SA’s government and private companies. Drive down any street and you’ll find a G4S van collecting or delivering money.

In this multi-billion rand corruption memoir, former Bosasa C.O.O and whistleblower, Angelo Agrizzi rips open the can of worms, exposing two decades of untold greed, politicking, corruption, bribery and deep state capture.

Inside the Belly of The Beast is a detailed confession, exposing the intimate fraudulent workings of a company, under the cult-like leadership of Gavin Watson. Agrizzi is one of few people with a first-hand account of what really happened behind the closed doors of Bosasa.

Decolonising the Human examines the ongoing project of constituting ‘the human’ in light of the durability of coloniality and the persistence of multiple oppressions

The ‘human’ emerges as a deeply political category, historically constructed as a scarce existential resource. Once weaponised, it allows for the social, political and economic elevation of those who are centred within its magic circle, and the degradation, marginalisation and immiseration of those excluded as the different and inferior Other, the less than human.

Speaking from Africa, a key site where the category of the human has been used throughout European modernity to control, exclude and deny equality of being, the contributors use decoloniality as a potent theoretical and philosophical tool, gesturing towards a liberated, pluriversal world where human difference will be recognised as a gift, not used to police the boundaries of the human. Here is a transdisciplinary critical exploration of a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and decolonial studies.

“We make a big mistake to consider Bain simply another foreign company that extracted economic rents. I believe its involvement in bringing South Africa to its knees through state capture was much more insidious.”

When Bain & Company partner Athol Williams reported his employer in October 2019 for withholding information on their complicity in state capture, he had no idea how far-reaching Bain’s collusion had been. Who would have suspected a prestigious global management consulting firm of misusing its business expertise and lending its reputation to the most profound attack on South Africa’s democracy?

Drawing on his testimony before the Zondo Commission, Williams here reveals the full extent of what Bain did not want the public to know. Not only did Bain withhold information and witnesses from the authorities; they also attempted to buy Williams’s silence and block his Zondo testimony.

Deep Collusion uncovers the inner workings of state capture design. Williams takes the reader into the evidence that reveals the after-hours, behind-closed-doors planning meetings that took place at Zuma’s residences – who was present and what was discussed. While this book exposes greed and corporate corruption and lifts the lid on foreign profiteering and the weakening of South Africa’s public institutions, it also highlights the lonely burden of the whistleblower and the great personal cost of telling the truth in the face of overwhelming pressure.

Born in the old Transvaal town of Schweizer Reneke, Essop Pahad started on a path of political activism from his parents' flat in Becker Street, Ferreirastown, where an all-welcome policy prevailed and visionaries of the Congress alliance, such as Yusuf Dadoo, Walter Sisulu, O.R.Tambo, Nelson Mandela and Ahmed Kathrada were regular visitors. His parents instilled in the family strong anti-racist principles and a genuine concern for all human beings regardless of race, class or religion.

A graduate of the 'Congress School' in Johannesburg, Essop's growing commitment to social justice was nurtured by teachers who were among the struggle's most eminent leaders. An executive member of the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress, Essop was banned in 1964 and went into exile in the UK where he was recruited into the South African Communist Party (SACP). In 1973 he studied at the Lenin Party School in Moscow and then worked in Prague representing the SACP on the editorial board of the World Marxist Review for a decade.

During this time he was sent by the ANC for military training with Umkhonto we Sizwe in Angola, which he was unable to complete as he contracted malaria. Essop returned to South Africa in 1990, where he played a central role in shaping our new democracy.

A Life Committed is the memoir of a revolutionary whose diverse experiences with other progressive people and movements, local and international, enabled him to deepen his understanding of how to better face the challenges confronting South Africa, Africa and the world. The book is spiced with anecdotes from his impressive memory archive and lightened by his mischievous sense of humour. Profiles of his mentors and friends from liberation movements and workers' parties provide insight into the extent of the fierce integrity,compassion and humanity of the author.

In the past decade, hundreds of thousands of women from poorer countries have braved treacherous journeys to richer countries to work as poorly paid domestic workers. In From servants to workers, Shireen Ally asks whether the low wages and poor working conditions so characteristic of migrant domestic work can truly be resolved by means of the extension of citizenship rights. Following South Africa's 'miraculous' transition to democracy, more than a million poor black women who had endured a despotic organization of paid domestic work under apartheid became the beneficiaries of one of the world's most impressive and extensive efforts to formalize and modernise paid domestic work through state regulation. Ally explores the political implications of paid domestic work as an intimate form of labour. From Servants to workers integrates sociological insights with the often-heartbreaking life histories of female domestic workers in South Africa and provides rich detail of the streets, homes, and churches of Johannesburg where these women work, live, and socialise.

Coloured as an ethnicity and racial demographic is intertwined in the creation of the South Africa we have today. Yet often, Coloured communities are disdained as people with no clear heritage or culture — ‘not being black enough or white enough.’

Coloured challenges this notion and presents a different angle to that narrative.

It delves into the history of Coloured people as descendants of indigenous Africans and a people whose identity was shaped by colonisation, slavery, and the racial political hierarchy it created. Although rooted in a difficult history, this book is also about the culture that Coloured communities have created for themselves through food, music, and shared lived experiences in communities such as Eldorado Park, Eersterus, and Wentworth. Coloured culture is an act of defiance and resilience.

Coloured is a reflection on, and celebration of Coloured identities as lived experiences. It is a call to Coloured communities to reclaim their identity and an invitation to understand the history and place of Coloured people in the making of South Africa’s future