This is a trilogy of Deneys Reitz's three compelling works: Commando, Trekking On and No Outspan. Since publication in 1999, it has become an outstanding seller in its own right.

It provides the reader with a lively, personal account of South African affairs from the Jameson Raid in 1895 to the start of World War II, when the author was Deputy Prime Minister of South Africa. It is also the story of a compulsive adventurer, nature lover and, of course, celebrated daredevil during the Anglo-Boer War who, in the words of Thomas Packenham, 'had the uncanny knack of living through war as though leafing through pages of an adventure story'.

Truly, this knack persisted for the rest of the author's life; and Adrift On The Open Veld gives the reader a gripping insight into southern African affairs through the eyes of a remarkable man who ended his career as South African High Commissioner in London.

The Jacana series of pocket guides is meant for those who are looking for a brief but lively introduction to a wide range of relevant topics of South African history, politics and biography. Written by some of the leading experts in their fields, the individual volumes are informative and accessible, inexpensive yet well produced, slim enough to put in your pocket and carry with you to read.

Steve Biko is often seen as the charismatic leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, who played a useful stopgap role in South African politics in the late 1960s and 1970s. This biography of Biko shows, on the contrary, just how fundamental he was to the transformation of South Africa in the second half of the 20th century – and just how relevant he remains today.

Nine days that set the course of a nation...

Johannesburg, Easter weekend, 1993. Nelson Mandela has been free for three years and is in slow-moving power-sharing talks with President FW de Klerk when a white supremacist shoots Mandela’s popular young heir apparent, Chris Hani, in the hope of igniting an all-out civil war. Will he succeed in plunging South Africa into chaos, safeguarding apartheid for perhaps years to come? Or can Mandela and de Klerk overcome their differences and mutual suspicion and calm their followers, plotting a way forward?

In The Plot to Save South Africa, acclaimed South African journalist Justice Malala recounts the riveting story of the next nine days – never before told in full – revealing rarely seen sides of both Mandela and de Klerk, the fascinating behind-the-scenes debates within each of their parties over whether to pursue peace or war, and their increasingly desperate attempts to restrain their supporters despite mounting popular frustrations.

Flitting between the points of view of over a dozen characters on all sides of the conflict, Justice Malala offers an illuminating look at successful leadership in action… and a terrifying reminder of just how close a country we think of today as a model for racial reconciliation came to civil war.

Julius Malema, South Africa’s eminent new socialist, was sworn in as a member of parliament on 21 May 2014, days after his political party – the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – won more than one million votes in its first elections and secured twenty-five seats in the national assembly. It marked a new chapter in Malema’s political career but it was also a crude awakening for the Cape Town parliament: the portly rebel and his EFF colleagues marched into the chamber wearing bright red workers’ overalls and their signature red berets as they promised to take the interests of the poor to the floor of parliament. Populism in drag or simply Malema at his best? It is still too early to say.

Love him or loathe him, Malema is undeniably one of the most controversial politicians of modern-day South Africa, if not a radical product of more than one hundred years of struggle politics.

Following on from the success of the bestselling An Inconvenient Youth, which traced Malema’s early, poverty-stricken years in Limpopo to his political awakenings in the ANC, the party he called home until he was ousted in 2012, this revised edition charts the early days of the EFF and looks at how the party secured its first votes in 2014.

South Africa’s democracy is in trouble. The present situation is, in objective terms, a house divided; a house that is tottering on rotten foundations. Despite the more general advances that have been made under the ANC’s rule since 1994, power has not only remained in the hands of a small minority but has increasingly been exercised in service to capital. The ANC has become the key political vehicle – in party and state form as well as application – of corporate capital: domestic and international, black and white, local and national, and constitutive of a range of different fractions. As a result, ‘transformation’ has largely taken the form of acceptance of, combined with incorporation into, the capitalist ‘house’, now minus its formal apartheid frame.

What has happened in South Africa over the last 22 years is the corporatisation of liberation, the political and economic commodification of the ANC and societal development. Those in positions of leadership and power within the ANC have allowed themselves to be lured by the siren calls of power and money, to be sucked in by the prize of ‘capturing’ institutional sites of power, to be seduced by the egoism and lifestyles of the capitalist elite.

This book tells that ‘story’ by offering a critical, fact-based and actively informed holistic analysis of the ANC in power, as a means to: better explain and understand the ANC and its politics as well as South Africa’s post-1994 trajectory; contribute to renewed discussion and debate about power and democracy; and help identify possible sign-posts to reclaim revolutionary, universalist and humanist values as part of the individual and collective struggle for the systemic change South Africa’s democracy needs.

South Africa is a rapidly urbanising society. Over 60% of the population lives in urban areas and this will rise to more than 70% by 2030. However, it is also a society with a long history of labour migration, rural home-making and urban economic and residential insecurity. Thus, while the formal institutional systems of migrant labour and the hated pass laws were dismantled after apartheid, a large portion of the South African population remains double-rooted in the sense that they have an urban place of residence and access to a rural homestead to which they periodically return and often eventually retire. This reality, which continues to have profound impacts on social cohesion, family life, gender relations, household investment, settlement dynamic and political identity formation, is the main focus of this book.

Migrant Labour after Apartheid focuses on internal migrants and migration, rather than cross border migration into South Africa. It cautions against a linear narrative of change and urban transition.

The book is divided into two parts. The first half investigates urbanisation processes from the perspective of internal migration. Several of the chapters make use of recently available survey data collected in a national longitudinal study to describe patterns and trends in labour migration, the economic returns to migration, and the links between the migration of adults and the often-ignored migration of children. The last three chapters of this section shine a spotlight on conditions of migrant workers in destination areas by focusing on Marikana and mining on the platinum belt. The second half of the book explores the double rootedness of migrants through the lens of the rural hinterland from which migration often occurs. The chapters here focus on the Eastern Cape as a case study of a region from which (particularly longer-distance) labour migration has been very common.

The contributions describe the limited opportunities for livelihood strategies in the countryside, which encourage outmigration, but also note the accelerated rates of household investment, especially in the built environment in the former homelands.

The politics of black education has long been a key issue in southern African studies, but despite rich debates on the racial and class dimensions of schooling, historians have neglected their distinctive gendered dynamics. "A World of Their Own" is the first book to explore the meanings of black women's education in the making of modern South Africa. Its lens is a social history of the first high school for black South African women, Inanda Seminary, from its 1869 founding outside of Durban through the recent past.

Employing diverse archival and oral historical sources, Meghan Healy-Clancy reveals how educated black South African women developed a tradition of social leadership, by both working within and pushing at the boundaries of state power. She demonstrates that although colonial and apartheid governance marginalized women politically, it also valorized the social contributions of small cohorts of educated black women. This made space for growing numbers of black women to pursue careers as teachers and health workers over the course of the twentieth century. After the student uprisings of 1976, as young black men increasingly rejected formal education for exile and street politics, young black women increasingly stayed in school and cultivated an alternative form of student politics. Inanda Seminary students' experiences vividly show how their academic achievements challenged the narrow conceptions of black women's social roles harbored by both officials and black male activists. By the transition to democracy in the early 1990s, black women outnumbered black men at every level of education--introducing both new opportunities for women and gendered conflicts that remain acute today.

This book asks how governments in Africa can use evidence to improve their policies and programmes, and ultimately, to achieve positive change for their citizens.

Looking at different evidence sources across a range of contexts, the book brings policy makers and researchers together to uncover what does and doesn't work and why. Case studies are drawn from five countries and the ECOWAS (west African) region, and a range of sectors from education, wildlife, sanitation, through to government procurement processes. The book is supported by a range of policy briefs and videos intended to be both practical and critically rigorous. It uses evidence sources such as evaluations, research synthesis and citizen engagement to show how these cases succeeded in informing policy and practice.

The voices of policy makers are key to the book, ensuring that the examples deployed are useful to practitioners and researchers alike. This innovative book will be perfect for policy makers, practitioners in government and civil society, and researchers and academics with an interest in how evidence can be used to support policy making in Africa.

From 1952 to 1981, South Africa's apartheid government ran a school for the training of African art teachers at Indaleni, in what is today KwaZulu-Natal. The Art Of Life In South Africa is about the students, teachers, art, ideas, and politics that led to the school's founding, and which circulated during the years of its existence at a remote former mission station. It is a story of creativity, beauty, and community in twentieth-century South Africa.

Daniel Magaziner radically reframes apartheid-era South African history. Against the dominant narrative of apartheid oppression and black resistance, this book focuses instead on a small group's efforts to fashion more fulfilling lives through the ironic medium of an apartheid-era school.

Lushly illustrated with almost 100 images, this book gives us fully formed lives and remarkable insights into life under segregation and apartheid.

The early 2000s were still a time of optimism and exuberance in newly democratic South Africa. Transformations were afoot, and there was a courageous desire for change, even with the stark realities of HIV and AIDS-related illnesses looming. At the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban in 2000, Nkosi Johnson, aged 11, took the stage to give an impassioned speech emphasizing the importance of young people in responding to the AIDS pandemic. His call heralded an explosion of youth-focused initiatives, including the project that started this book. In My life follows the paths of a group of racially diverse young AIDS activists from Khayelitsha and Atlantis, first brought together as part of an educational HIV-prevention programme in Cape Town in 2002.

Over the next twenty years, we follow their inspiring and harrowing journeys, as they move from hopeful and passionate teen activists, through the tragedies and triumphs of transitioning to adulthood. With candour, they tell stories of hardships and loss, mental health issues, grief and violence, but also of personal transformations, love, friendship, artistic achievements, community connection and thrilling social justice wins. Connected to each other, and to their communities, their stories provide a glimpse into the long tale of activism and of educational work, forever asking the question: what difference does it make.

As the early post-apartheid enthusiasm and activism transformed and changed, stories have been a place where one could find solace and refuge, or find ways to be connected again. The stories in In My Life reflect the shifting times and context in South Africa, the transformation of the country and the complicated life stories of everyday life in the cracks of those who are artists, writers, creators, activists, researchers, teachers and many other things in between and beyond.

At the opening of South Africa's first democratic parliament in 1994, newly elected president Nelson Mandela issued a clarion call to an unlikely group: white Afrikaans women, who during apartheid occupied the ambivalent position of being both oppressor and oppressed. He conjured the memory of poet Ingrid Jonker as `both an Afrikaner and an African' who `instructs that our endeavours must be about the liberation of the woman, the emancipation of the man and the liberty of the child'. More than two decades later, the question is: how have white Afrikaans-speaking women responded to the liberating possibilities of constitutional democracy?

With Afrikaner nationalism in disrepair, and official apartheid in demise, have they re-imagined themselves in opposition to colonial ideas of race, gender, sexuality and class?

Sitting Pretty explores this postapartheid identity through the concepts of ordentlikheid, as an ethnic form of respectability, and the volksmoeder, or mother of the nation, as enduring icon. Issues of intersectionality, space, emotion and masculinity are also investigated.

The African National Congress (ANC) has established itself as Africa's most famous liberation movement. The year 2012 is an important year in the history of the African National Congress' organisational, political and ideological development and growth. It marks 100 years of the ANC's existence; a milestone that has prompted partisans to a century of unparalleled achievement in the struggle against colonialism and racial discrimination and the year of the 53rd National Conference in Mangaung.

It is, though, a liberation whose critics have painted a less-flattering portrait of the historical ANC, as a communist puppet, a moribund dinosaur, or an elitist political parasite. For such sceptics, the ANC -- now in government for two decades -- has betrayed South Africans rather than liberated them. The politics of the ANC, and those of the country it governs, are today tumultuous. South Africans endure deep inequality and unemployment, violent community protests, murders of foreign residents, major policy blunders, an AIDS crisis, and deepening corruption. Inside the ANC there are episodes of open rebellion against the leadership, conflicts over the character of a post-liberation movement, and debilitating battles for succession to the movement's presidency.

The Idea of the ANC explores how ANC intellectuals and leaders interpret the historical project of their movement. It investigates three interlocked ideas: a conception of power, a responsibility for promoting unity, and a commitment to human liberation. It explores how these notions have shaped South African politics in the past, and how they will inform ANC leaders' responses to the challenges of the future.

The Unlikely Mr Rogue is the story of the quiet man behind the so-called ‘rogue unit’ at SARS, who has become a lightning rod for so many in politics today.

It takes the reader on a journey – Ivan’s growing up in Merebank, KZN, his politicisation, his friendship with Pravin Gordhan and his running of Operation Vula from Lusaka, reporting to Oliver Tambo. In some ways, the setting up of SARS was Operation Vula revisited. Many of the same operatives were now working for a higher purpose. And this higher purpose, of providing the money to reduce inequality in the state, was a daily mantra for Gordhan, Pillay and others. They really believed in it.

Groenink tells of the early 1990s in Lusaka, of their falling in love, of the insecurity in coming back to the country, and the times when Ivan was in charge of stationery in the bowels of Shell House. This is the story of a good man, an unlikely man, a quiet man, determined to use SARS to fund the post-liberation nation-building, and his downfall at the hands of his enemies and a scurrilous Sunday Times.

Robben Island best known as the place where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for eighteen years has been a place of harshness and brutality; its history steeped in the suffering of those banished there. Yet it has also become a universal symbol of hope, forgiveness, and triumph.With a storyteller s sensibility, combined with rigorous research, Charlene Smith charts the evolution of the Island s political and social history, from mail station, place of exile, and military defence post to maximum security prison and World Heritage Site.Fully revised, this new edition of "Robben Island" provides absorbing accounts of daring escapes, maritime disasters, lepers ostracized from mainland society, the fates of the great Xhosa chiefs of the nineteenth century, and the unique bonds of friendship and compassion forged among the political prisoners confined on the Island during the apartheid era.Today Robben Island is recognized for both its environmental riches and its cultural significance. More than just a geographical location or a tourist attraction, it is an enduring tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. Sobering and uplifting, Robben Island is an essential read for anyone interested in South Africa s turbulent journey to democracy and the people who made it possible."

Zapiro needs no introduction. His 19th annual speaks for itself.

No year would be complete without Zapiro’s annual collection of cartoons, and in this latest book of sharp-witted and well-timed cartoons, Zapiro once again proves himself a satirical genius, ensuring that no event passes by without comment … or a laugh.

Fight for Democracy is a penetrating and critical scrutiny of the ANC’s treatment of the print media since the inception of democracy in 1994. In this book, Glenda Daniels does not hide behind a veil of detachment, but instead makes a passionate argument for the view that newspapers and journalists play a significant role in the deepening of democratic principles.

Daniels’ study goes to the heart of current debates and asks why the ANC, given its stated commitment to the democratic objectives of the Constitution, is so ambivalent about the freedom of the media. What would be the consequences of a revised media policy on democracy in South Africa, and at what cost to freedom of expression? Daniels examines the pattern of paranoia that has crept into public discourse about the media and the ANC, and the conflictual relationship between the two. She argues that the ANC’s understanding of democracy, transformation and development entails (amongst other things) the rallying of the nation behind its leadership as the premier liberation movement and democratically elected representative of the majority while morally coercing black journalists and professionals into loyalty. Daniels challenges the dominant ANC view that journalists are against transformation and that they take instruction from the owners of the media houses; in short that they are ‘enemies of the people’.

Fight for Democracy is a timely publication in the context of the impending clampdown on media freedom and the twin threats of the Protection of State Information Bill (Secrecy Bill) and the Media Appeals Tribunal, both of which signify closures in South Africa’s democracy.

Written in a polemical style, this is a work of activism that will be essential reading for the informed public as well as those working in Journalism and Media Studies. It should interest all democrats, members of political organisations as well as academics and Right2Know activists, locally and internationally.

This book examines the root causes of unauthorised, fraudulent and allegedly unlawful deductions from the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa)-branded bank accounts into which monthly welfare grants were paid for South Africa's poorest citizens.

South Africa has one of the largest social assistance systems in the world. Today, the livelihoods of millions of poor people, particularly those living in rural and peri urban areas, are dependent on it and it has been lauded as one of the important achievements of the post-apartheid government. However for seven years, from 2012 when Sassa awarded the tender to Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) for country-wide distribution of social grants, this welfare system came under attack. This was during the Zuma presidency and was carried out with the alleged complicity of government officials and the Minister of Social Development at the time, Bathabile Dlamini, who now faces perjury charges for her role in the social grant crisis. This is however not another grim state capture tale. In this case the targeted social grant beneficiaries stood their ground. Supported by civil society organisations, they mobilised behind the Black Sash's Hands Off Our Grants (Hoog) campaign to reclaim their constitutional right to social security.

This is a valuable book because it enables us to understand how vulnerable people - poor, inadequately informed, even illiterate people - were able to defend themselves against exploitation and malpractice. This book is a story of dedication, determination and ultimately victory. However, it also reminds the reader of the need for ongoing monitoring of the use and distribution of state resources, accountability from political leadership, and advocacy around improved public service delivery for those who need it.

In August 1993, Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl was killed in Cape Town by a group of black teenagers incited by an upsurge in 'anti-white' sloganeering. She died just a few metres away from Sindiwe Magona's house. One of the boys held responsible for the killing was her neighbour's son. Mother To Mother takes the form of an epistle to Amy Biehl's mother.

Sindiwe Magona imagines how easily it might have been her own son caught up in the violence of that day. She writes about their lives in a colonised society that not only allowed, but also perpetuated violence against women and impoverished black South Africans.

The result is not an apology for murder, but an exquisitely written exploration of the lives of ordinary people in the apartheid years.

South African Governance will help the student understand the conceptual and contextual frameworks essential for establishing a sound foundation for South African governance, and allows the student to acquire knowledge of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. The book builds on theory by discussing the current state of governance and providing potential future perspectives. It concludes by integrating theory, contexts and institutions with current realities. It does this by discussing governance from policy to implementation, and giving the student practical applications of South African governance. South African Governance is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in public administration courses at universities. It is also a useful reference tool for government officials and practitioners.

A riveting memoir of the Great War from a uniquely African perspective.

The author helped suppress a rebellion in South Africa, defeat German West Africa, fight in German East Africa, and fight in France, where he commanded a Scottish battalion at the end of the war.

King George V told the author in later years that he kept this book at his bedside in Windsor Castle.

South Africa’s Suspended Revolution engages with the country’s transition into democracy and its prospects for inclusive development. It is an antidote to many descriptive and voluntarist explanations in which leaders and other actors are treated as unfettered agents whose choices and behaviour are merely the result of their own abilities or follies. In contrast, Adam Habib explains the story of how South Africa arrived at this point by locating these actors in context. He tries to understand the institutional constraints within which they operated, why they made the choices they did, and what the consequences are. The book also explores what other policy options and behavioural choices may have been available, and why these were forsaken for the ones that were eventually adopted.

In essence, the book is about how South Africa got to its present state of affairs, what the country’s current challenges are, and how these could be transcended. It is deeply historical in the sense of understanding what possibilities may have existed in one moment, but not another. The narrative recognises that societies evolve and as a result the potential for political and socioeconomic advances themselves change.

This then is a story of the dynamic interplay between actors and context, how the latter can constrain and condition the former, but also how individuals and institutions can, with imagination, act against the grain of their location and historical moment, thereby transforming the possibilities and, through them, society itself.

Adam Habib is Vice-chancellor and Principal of the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He has held academic appointments at the University of Durban-Westville, the University of KwaZulu-Natal (where he was founding director of the Centre for Civil Society), the University of Johannesburg and the Human Sciences Research Council. Habib is widely recognised as one of the more authoritative commentators on South Africa’s democracy and its prospects for inclusive development.

15 April 2016 marked 20 years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings began. The TRC was set up to give an opportunity for perpetrators of human rights transgressions to come clean about the atrocities that happened during those evil days of apartheid. Sadly, only half of the truth came to the fore. Many families still do not know what happened to their loved ones.

There are few people better placed than Mary Burton to write about the TRC, having been one of its Commissioners. Burton’s pocket book provides an informed account from the inside of the process and workings of the TRC and a measured and balanced assessment of its outcomes and significance.

Even at the time of its existence, the TRC came in for criticism from a variety of quarters: both the African National Congress and ex-President FW de Klerk took legal action to challenge or prevent the publication of the Commission’s report; however, the Commission also fulfilled a vital and important role in the transition from apartheid to democracy, and it has become a model for other countries wishing to undertake similar journeys to deal with past atrocities and come to some kind of national resolution, reconciliation or closure.

In the face of the continuing national tragedy of the inequality, poverty and unemployment which have triggered rising working-class discontent around the country, the ANC announced a 'second phase' of the 'national democratic revolution' to deal with the challenges. Ironically, the ANC post-Mangaung has resolved to preserve the core tenets of the minerals-energy-financial complex that defined racial capitalism - while at the same time ratcheting up the revolutionary rhetoric to keep the working class and marginalised onside. If the 'first phase' was a tragedy of the unmet expectations of the majority, is the 'second phase' likely to be a farce? The chapters in this volume are written by experts in their fields and address issues of politics, power and social class; economy, ecology and labour; public policy and social practice; and South Africa beyond its borders. They examine some of these challenges, and indicate that they are as much about the defective content of policies as their poor implementation. The third volume of the New South African Review continues the series by providing in-depth analyses of the key issues facing the country today.

Mandela: His Essential Life chronicles the life and legacy of one of the twentieth century's most influential and admired statesmen.

Charting his development from remote rural roots to city lawyer, freedom fighter, and then political leader, Peter Hain takes an in-depth look at Mandela's rise through the ranks of the African National Congress (ANC) and subsequent 27 years imprisonment on Robben Island, as increasingly vocal protests against the injustices of Apartheid brought his struggle against overwhelming prejudice and oppression to the eyes of the world. This book encompasses Mandela's inauguration as South Africa's first democratically elected president, his "retirement" campaigns for human rights, a solution to AIDS and poverty. It goes on to chronicle his later years and death.

Throughout, the humanity and compassion of this extraordinary world leader shine through. The author concludes with a critical analysis of his and the ANC's achievements, its leadership's subsequent slide into corruption, and whether under new direction South Africa can reclaim the values and legacy of Mandela, and the 'rainbow nation' he created and led to such global acclaim.

Drawing on an extensive array of sources – written, oral and visual – this richly illustrated volume provides a rounded social, intellectual, educational, cultural and political history of one of Africa’s foremost universities during the first phase of apartheid.

It puts a spotlight on its leaders, lecturers and learners, but its wide focus takes in many other dimensions of this heterogeneous institution’s history too – teaching and research, social, cultural and sporting life and its chequered relationship with the apartheid state, ranging from formal opposition and protest and students’ growing defiance culminating in the sit-in of 1968, to ambivalence and willing collaboration. All of these it weaves together into a many-sided whole to produce an elegant, accessible and nuanced study of the operation of UCT as apartheid began to be imposed on South Africa.

Howard Phillips gives us a pioneering and definitive history of the period. And one which will occupy pride of place on the bookshelves of the academics and the thousands of alumni who helped shape this history and the many ordinary Capetonians touched by Varsity.