Some human events simply don’t tire with time, and what Denis Worrall did a couple of decades ago has a deep relevance for our own times. This is the story of his political career and his momentous decision to resign as SA ambassador in London and return home to the rough-and-tumble of politics.

He took on a Nationalist government in the Helderberg constituency, regarded as unwinnable, but Denis lost by a mere 39 votes out of over 18,000. The Independent Factor, Denis’ memoir, tells this story in exciting and intimate detail.

He offers his view on the crisis in our politics today and the challenges facing Cyril Ramaphosa, and suggest what the DA can do to help him.

In 2013, former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden leaked secret documents revealing that state agencies like the NSA had spied on the communications of millions of innocent citizens. International outrage resulted, but the Snowden documents revealed only the tip of the surveillance iceberg. Apart from insisting on their rights to tap into communications, more and more states are placing citizens under surveillance, tracking their movements and transactions with public and private institutions. The state is becoming like a one-way mirror, where it can see more of what its citizens do and say, while citizens see less and less of what the state does, owing to high levels of secrecy around surveillance.

In this book, Jane Duncan assesses the relevance of Snowden’s revelations for South Africa. In doing so she questions the extent to which South Africa is becoming a surveillance society governed by a surveillance state. Duncan challenges members of civil society to be concerned about and to act on the ever-expanding surveillance capacities of the South African state. Is surveillance used for the democratic purpose of making people safer, or is it being used for the repressive purpose of social control, especially of those considered to be politically threatening to ruling interests? She explores the forms of collective action needed to ensure that unaccountable surveillance does not take place and examines what does and does not work when it comes to developing organised responses.

This book is aimed at South African citizens, academics as well as the general reader, who care about our democracy and the direction it is taking.

As National Director of Public Prosecutions from 2005 until 2007, Advocate Vusi Pikoli pursued criminal charges against the current President of South Africa Jacob Zuma and the convicted former National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi. It was his dogged determination to bring the country's top cop to account that ultimately saw Pikoli removed from office and a public inquiry into his suspension held. My Second Initiation traces Pikoli's journey from his first graduation to manhood in the hills of the Eastern Cape, to his second in the corridors of power in government. Pikoli has a deeply ingrained loyalty to the Constitution of the country and a keenly developed sense of justice, cultivated on the politically aware streets and rugby fields of New Brighton township. He recounts how he fled with his ANC unit into exile and spent fourteen years away from his home and his family, suffering the loss of a child and a man he considered a brother.

The stories, blogs and poetry in this anthology explores the stark divides that exist in our communities and our country, South Africa.

Written by a range of writers – from published authors to talented school students – these powerful narratives give voice to those who are poor and discriminated against, and are threaded through with hope and resistance.

In Executive Salaries In South Africa: Who Should Have a Say on Pay?, the 2012 executive pay packages of 50 of South Africa’s largest and most influential listed companies are examined.

A 2006 study by Crotty and Bonorchis revealed that, on average, the CEOs got paid more than R15 million a year – more than 700 times the minimum wage in certain industries. The authors predicted that without government intervention, executive packages would continue to sky-rocket. Unfortunately these predictions have come true, despite employment equity measures and changes to corporate governance requirements in King III. The average cash and benefits package of the 50 CEOs studied in 2012 came to almost R13.1 million and once the gains on the vesting and exercise of share options is included, this average rises steeply to almost R49 million.

South Africa’s widening income inequality and its history of racism, poverty and social unrest demand that something more be done to reverse this trend. But what will it take for companies to rein in excessive executive salaries? In Executive Salaries In South Africa we consider these questions:

• How do you strengthen the shareholder’s say on pay to ensure that the board of directors responsible for setting pay take into account multiple stakeholder interests?
• Should the courts, the Department of Labour, employees, the tax man or the remaining 99% of society have a say on what the 1% are being paid?
• How do you modify corporate governance standards, the tax code and labour legislation to achieve these goals?
• How do we turn shareholders into activists and empower the workforce?
• Is change only possible if a more fundamental shift in attitudes is achieved?

This book addresses these pressing issues and considers possible mechanisms to rein in excessive executive pay. Without these interventions, South Africa will continue on a path of instability and unrest, while the rich get richer and the poor become poorer.

Trying to decide who to vote for in South Africa can be extremely difficult. A black and white issue for some, but shaded with grey for many.

Much has been written about the ANC, their past, their future, their strengths and their shortcomings, but what about the official opposition? Could the DA be a political home for you? Eusebius McKaiser explores this question from a variety of angles – what do the DA get right? What do they get wrong? Is black discomfort with the DA a matter of policy or maybe a question of tone? Do the DA really “get” what worries their critics?

Read Could I Vote DA? and make up your own mind.

In this jaw-dropping classic of prison escape literature (originally poublished in 1987 and now a major movie starring Daniel Radcliffe), Tim Jenkin tells of how he, Stephen Lee and Alexander Moumbaris, using a series of hand-made wooden keys, got through nine locked doors inside Pretoria Central, taking them to Mozambique and finally to London.

This fast-paced thriller begins with Jenkin’s Cape Town childhood and the growth of his political awareness, his university days and his friendship with Stephen Lee. Both men left South Africa after university for London to join the African National Congress. Jenkin and Lee, after training in London, became expert pamphlet bombers in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and it was after several successful years of raising awareness about apartheid and the ANC that they were caught and eventually sentenced to 12 years in jail. It is after Lee’s father visits his son in prison, bringing him a copy of another escape classic, Papillon, that Jenkin begins to seriously form an escape plan. Months and months of planning, testing, failing, testing again and lucky breaks meant that, finally, the escape was on.

The recently late Denis Goldberg was a friend and supporter of the men, and kept a warder busy as they began their escape. Apart from locking the doors behind them, they never looked back…

In 2001, in Unfinished Business: South Africa, Apartheid and Truth, Dumisa Ntsebeza and Terry Bell complained that 'like so much of South Africa's recent brutal history, we shall probably never know exactly how many people were banished and what happened to all of them'. Saleem Badat's The Forgotten People: Political Banishment under Apartheid answers many questions about banishment and shines a bright and welcome light on a largely hidden and unknown aspect of our indeed 'brutal history'. It shows how apartheid's political opponents from rural areas were condemned to the living hell of banishment: a weapon used to expel rural opponents to distant and often arid and desolate places for unlimited periods. These rural opponents were plucked from their families and communities and cast, in the late Helen Joseph's words, 'into the most abandoned parts of the country, there to live, perhaps to die, to suffer and starve, or to stretch out a survival by poorly paid labour, if and when they could get it'. They were strangers in strange areas who could not speak the local language, and often had little in common with the locals and even less in common with those under whose surveillance they fell. This is the first study of an important but hitherto neglected group of opponents of apartheid set in a global, historical and comparative perspective. It looks at the reasons why people were banished, their lives in banishment and the efforts of a remarkable group of activists, led by Helen Joseph, to assist them. Indeed, this book originated in a promise made by the author to Helen Joseph, who had undertaken an epic journey in 1962 to visit all those banished across the length and breadth of South Africa. The work is illustrated with stunning photographs by Ernest Cole, Peter Magubane and others.

Originally formed in order to lend support to the FNLA and UNITA in the Angolan war, 32 Battalion quickly gained the reputation of being an unconventional, secretive, yet highly effective group.

Written by a man who was intimately involved with the unit and served as its Regimental Sergeant Major for two years, the book aims to explode the myths surrounding the legendary 32 and set the record straight. It records how and why 32 Battalion was formed, explores its unique identity forged by the men who fought in it, details the many operations in which they participated, and concludes with its eventual disbandment at the dawn of a new South Africa.

What they did, and how they did it, would earn this controversial group official recognition as the best fighting unit in the South African Army since World War II. This book’s unembellished, factual reporting will fill a big gap in the highly popular military genre.

South Africa's pioneer and foremost thinker and voice on Black Economic Advancement, Phinda Mzwakhe Madi, is back with a bang. His first book, Affirmative Action in Corporate South Africa, triggered the first wave of Affirmative Action programmes in the country. His follow up book, Black Economic Empowerment in the New South Africa, led to the formation of the BEE Commission and eventually the creation of the country's policy and codes of good practice. Now his third book in the trilogy, BEE 20 years later - The Baby and the Bathwater, evaluates progress so far and startles with its fresh perspective on the way forward.

Twenty years after the introduction of BEE, Madi’s view is that the time for follow-up and reflection has come. Clear trends and lessons can now be discerned and learned from. He contends that there is an unfortunate narrative that is gaining currency in South Africa generally and the corporate world in particular, as well as numerous sections of civil society, that BEE has been nothing but a smoke and mirrors initiative towards oligarchy, hence his chosen title: BEE 20 years later - The Baby and The Bathwater.

He believes that, having been the first black author to have written on this subject, he has a unique view of the evolution of the process. As a black entrepreneur himself and a director of various top listed companies with a total combined turnover of more than R90bn, he not only has a conceptual and academic understanding of the subject matter, but also has an insider’s view and experience.

As the title suggests, there is now a tendency to want to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. His book argues that we need to make a very clear distinction between the bouncing baby and the (at times) dirty bathwater. The book analyses both the bouncing baby and the unfortunate dirt and grime that covers the bathwater. It makes a very frank, clinical and yet balanced argument on how this distinction needs to be made, as well as why and how we should all ensure that the baby both survives and thrives going forward, whilst getting rid of the ugly side of BEE - the dirty bathwater. But more importantly, he examines how to restore the credibility of this process so that it truly and genuinely moves away from just being seen as the enrichment of the few and lives true to its promise: the economic empowerment of the many.

Featuring conversations with prominent Entrepreneurs, Business People and Thought Leaders: Herman Mashaba; Peter Vundla; Richard Maponya; Gaby Magomola; Thami Mazwai; Leon Louw; Joe Hlongwane; Vusi Thembekwayo; Sandile Zungu; Koko Khumalo; Mandla Malinga; Themba Dlamini; Lawrence Mavundla; Khanyi Kweyama.

After working closely with the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation in shaping and writing his memoir, author Hassen Ebrahim and Jacana Media are proud to publish this important record of a life that was spent in service to South Africa.

Writes Mac Maharaj in his foreword in the book: “Hassen Ebrahim is one of those many seldom heard of foot soldiers of the 1976 generation who joined the underground and was linked to the ANC structures operating from Botswana. He has been at the coalface of so many facets of South Africa’s march to freedom. He was there during the times when involvement in the struggle against apartheid carried the risk of death; he was involved in our negotiated transition to democracy; he was the chief executive of the elected Constitutional Assembly which wrote and adopted our Constitution; thereafter and until 2007 he served in the Department of Justice.”

From Marabastad to Mogadishu: The Journey of an ANC Soldier chronicles an all-too familiar story of those unsung cadres from the struggle we’ve forgotten to honour for their sacrifices. Those foot soldiers do not feature in our collective memory, they do not find themselves or their stories recorded in the pages of history books, and they are not remembered for their selfless acts of bravery.

The bravery and sacrifice of the ordinary teenager who dropped out of school, the cadre who risked life and limb, and the freedom fighter who exiled himself or herself to countries far and wide must be given a chance to live on book pages, find expression on film reels and all other mediums of historic memory collection.

From Marabastad to Mogadishu: The Journey of an ANC Soldier signals the resolve by the author, his peers, Jacana Media and support organisations such as the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation to bring the ordinary cadre’s story to the fore, to acknowledge his or her sacrifices, and to recognise their contribution to South Africa’s democracy.

So much has been said about Marikana since the tragedy of 16 August 2012 where 34 miners were shot dead by police. South Africans are divided, with many supporting the miners and others supporting the police. The news and the images of the massacre made headlines around the globe for weeks. What the world didn’t take into account was who and what it took to bring that news from the small town of Rustenburg to the world.

Reporting from the Frontline by Gia Nicolaides is about personal experiences describing incidents behind the scenes from the main action. While most journalists spent weeks covering the unfolding events at Marikana, many didn’t have the opportunity to tell their own stories. A large group of journalists, producers and television presenters gathered at the North West Platinum Mine when several deaths were reported and the violence broke out. While the nation and the world focused on what was happening on the ground, no one asked how the media dealt with this tragedy. As with any good movie, critics want to know what it took to create it.

These stories will take you to the production centre of Marikana where the journalists watched, listened and interviewed in order to weave the stories together. The way Marikana was told to the world is quite different to what happened to the journalists who covered it. Their stories will show a completely different perspective.

The general elections of 2014 marked the twentieth anniversary of South Africa's democratic journey. They also reflected the tumultuous political events of recent years.

Although the governing ANC won a fifth successive victory, it faced significant challenges at the polls. Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters highlighted the growing threat to the ANC of an emerging class-based politics, while support for the Democratic Alliance continued to expand.

This book analyses the party campaigns and the election results, and asks whether the elections have strengthened the quality of and prospects for democracy in South Africa.

In 2008 is Suid-Afrika tot in sy fondamente geskud deur die omstrede Reitz-video-voorval aan die Universiteit van die Vrystaat. In dié video onderwerp vier wit mansstudente vyf swart werkers aan sogenaamde keuringstoetse vir koshuisplasing. Na videobeelde van hoe die werkers kos moes eet waarin daar klaarblyklik geürineer is, het rassespanning op die kampus opgevlam en stemme van protes wêreldwyd opgeklink.

Om die situasie te help beredder, het die universiteit vir Rudi Buys as versoeningskonsultant gewerf, waarna hy as studentedekaan aangestel is. Buys se werk by die universiteit sou uiteindelik simbolies word van ’n feller konflik in Suid-Afrika – tussen versoening en ’n dreigende rassestryd, ou en nuwe denkwyses, hoop en wanhoop.

Hierdie boek fokus op “tussenin-wees”. Die verhale van vier studenteleiers uit daardie onstuimige tydperk, asook die ingrypings wat onderneem is, word belig. Vir Buys was die proses by Kovsies ook ’n geleentheid om van sy eie Afrikaner-verlede sin te maak. Die gebeure by die universiteit illustreer dat Afrikaners, in hulle strewe om hul eie verlede met ’n toekoms in die land te versoen, oor die potensiaal beskik om ware brugbouers te wees en medeargitekte te word van ’n nierassige toekoms.

Brugbouers bied waardevolle lesse vir elkeen wat ernstig is oor aktiewe burgerskap en sinvolle transformasie in Suid-Afrika.

Racist Culture offers an anti-essentialist and non-reductionist account of racialized discourse and racist expression. Goldberg demonstrates that racial thinking is a function of the transforming categories and conceptions of social subjectivity throughout modernity. He shows that rascisms are often not aberrant or irrational but consistent with prevailing social conceptions, particularly of the reasonable and the normal.

He shows too how this process is being extended and renewed by categories dominant in present day social sciences: "the West"; "the underclass"; and "the primitive". This normalization of racism reflected in the West mirrors South Africa an its use and conception of space.

Goldberg concludes with an extended argument for a pragmatic, antiracist practice.

The policy of scorched earth followed by the British forces during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, as well as the concentration camps in which the Boer women and children were placed, led to bitter memories and trauma that haunted Afrikaners and other inhabitants of South Africa alike for many years. In this newly revised edition a group of eminent historians take a fresh and sober look, with the perspective brought about by a hundred years, at this most controversial aspect of the war.

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.

Patriots & Parasites, completed just days before Smuts’s unexpected death in 2016, is her account of the momentous period known as the Transition Era, through the lens of her 25-year career as a key opposition MP and a respected legislator.

With ambitious breadth and rare insight, she examines:

• The arduous but exhilarating work of writing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
• The great experiment in catharsis that was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
• The reinvigoration of racial polarisation under the Mbeki administration, and the slow burn of resentment that is coming to a head among the next generation (as manifested in the #RhodesMustFall campaign)
• The entrenchment of cronyism under Zuma, and the fight to protect the crucial balance of accountability enshrined in the freedom of the media and the independence of the judiciary

The inspiration for this book was a Summer School on State, Governance and Development presented by distinguished academics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Written by young African scholars, the chapters here focus on state, governance and development in Africa as seen from the authors’ vantage points and positions in different sectors of society.

The book opens with three forewords by eminent African scholars including Ben Turok, Johan Burger and Mohamed Halfani. The chapters that follow examine rent-seeking, patronage, neopatrimonialism and bad governance. They engage with statehood, state-building and statecraft and challenge the mainstream opinions of donors, funders, development banks, international non-governmental organisations and development organisations. They include the role of China in Africa, Kenya’s changing demographics, state accountability in South Africa’s dominant party system, Somalia’s prospects for state-building, urban development and routine violence, and resource mobilisation.

At a time in which core institutions are being tested -- the market, the rule of law, democracy, civil society and representative democracy – this book offers a much-needed multi- and inter-disciplinary perspective, and a different narrative on what is unfolding, while also exposing dynamics that are often overlooked.

‘Wathint’ Abafazi, Wathint’ Imbokodo’ – You strike the women, you strike the rock.

From the construction of gender under apartheid South Africa, to the impact of the pass laws, this book examines how history has shaped the conditions of women today. The book contributes to and extends the narrative of gender issues beyond the women’s march of 1956, and highlights and celebrates the important ways in which women have organised and continue to work around these socio-economic issues.

Hoekom kry die DA nie steun onder swart Suid-Afrikaners nie? Is hulle gedoem om ’n wit party te bly? Wat doen die DA dan verkeerd? Kan hulle droom van groter steun in 2014?

Eusebius McKaiser is bekend daarvoor dat hy geen doekies omdraai nie. In hierdie vermaaklike, ietwat voor-op-die-wa en soms tong-in-die-kies boek, bekyk Eusebius die DA van naderby. Staan hulle hoegenaamd ’n kans in die verkiesing hierdie jaar?

Die boek is geskryf in Eusebius se kenmerkende leesbare en hoogs amusante styl. Sy argumente word aangevul deur kleurryke anekdotes en lewendige, soms onthullende vertelling uit sy eie ervaring.

Of jy hom nou bewonder of verafsku, g’n Suid-Afrikaner word koud gelaat deur Eusebius se skerp, soms aspris, insigte nie.

"It is a gruesome tale - how we have moved so rapidly from the era of hope to the bleak landscape ushered in by Zuma's ascent to power …"

Yet Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, acclaimed author and international expert on reconciliation, wants to rekindle our hope.

As a clinical psychologist who has worked for the TRC, in Rwanda and with Holocaust survivors, she offers unique perspectives on healing the wounded South African nation. In this selection of her best local and international writing, she explores our unfinished business, Afrikaner rage, the politics of revenge, why apologies are not enough and how Zuma has corrupted the soul of South Africa.

Gobodo-Madikizela offers a lucid and compelling argument that it is only in facing up to our painful past that we can find hope - and a meaningful future.

Mandela's Kinsmen is the first study of the fraught relationships between the ANC and their relatives inside apartheid's first 'tribal' Bantustan.

Timothy Gibbs reinterprets the complex connections between nationalist elites and the chieftaincies, and overlapping ideologies of national and ethnic belonging. In South Africa, like the rest of the continent, the chieftaincies had often been well-springs of African leadership in the early 20th century, producing leaders such as Nelson Mandela, who hailed from the 'Native Reserves' of rural Transkei. But then the apartheid government turned South Africa's chieftaincies into self-governing, tribal Bantustans in order to shatter African nationalism, starting with Transkei in 1963.

Drawing on a wealth of first-hand accounts and untapped archives, Mandela's Kinsmen offers a vividly human account of how the Bantustan era ruptured rural society. Nevertheless, Gibbs uncovers the social and political institutions and net- works that connected the nationalist leadership on Robben Island and in exile to their kinsmen inside the Transkei. Even at the climax of the apartheid era - when interlocking nationalist insurgencies spiralled into ethnically based civil wars across South Africa and the southern African region - elite connections still straddled Bantustan divides.

These relationships would shape the apartheid endgame and forge the post-apartheid policy.

As a photojournalist, Feni spends a lot of time photographing service delivery strikes and protest in the townships. Often the images that make it into the newspapers are only of the looting and burnings. Renting a backyard room in an informal settlement, Feni was troubled by this kind of portrayal of the lack of service delivery and the life of the marginalised.

As he says, “I live at the back of an RDP house in Mfuleni on the Cape Flats. I experience issues like poor sanitation, access to clean water and the flooding first hand”. Photographing the lack of sanitation was not pleasant for him, but he did not want a photographer from outside the community telling their stories while he watched on. “That too would be a Drain on Our Dignity and that’s what inspired this project”.

A Drain On Our Dignity echoes the ground-breaking images produced by Ernest Cole in the early 1960s, showing black life under apartheid. It is a sensitive and honest look at what lack of services is, what it does to a community and what it does to a people.

Without the screaming, fighting or burning – these captivating images compel the reader to look at what is happening in the Cape Town townships.

From a young age Albie Sachs played a prominent part in the struggle for justice in South Africa. As a result he was detained in solitary confinement, tortured by sleep deprivation and eventually blown up by a car bomb which cost him his right arm and the sight of an eye. His experiences provoked an outpouring of creative thought on the role of law as a protector of human dignity in the modern world, and a lifelong commitment to seeing a new era of justice established in South Africa.
After playing an important role in drafting South Africa's post-apartheid Constitution, he was appointed by Nelson Mandela to be a member of the country's first Constitutional Court. Over the course of his fifteen year term on the Court he has grappled with the major issues confronting modern South Africa, and the challenges posed to the fledgling democracy as it sought to overcome the injustices of the apartheid regime.
As his term on the Court approaches its end, Sachs here conveys in intimate fashion what it has been like to be a judge in these unique circumstances, how his extraordinary life has influenced his approach to the cases before him, and his views on the nature of justice and its achievement through law.
The book provides unique access to an insider's perspective on modern South Africa, and a rare glimpse into the working of a judicial mind. By juxtaposing life experiences and extracts from judgments, Sachs enables the reader to see the complex and surprising ways in which legal culture transforms subjective experience into objectively reasoned decisions. With rare candour he tells of the difficulties he has when preparing a judgment, of how every judgment is a lie. Rejecting purely formal notions of the judicial role he shows how both reason and passion (concern for protecting human dignity) are required for law to work in the service of justice.