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.

This narrative aims to show how after its conquest, the Zulu kingdom was destroyed by the imperial policies of divide and rule, and how the Colenso family, especially the Bishop's eldest daughter, Harriette, took the lead in resisting colonial exploitation and imperial domination.This powerful and passionate narrative completes the story Jeff Guy began in his earlier books " The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom" and "The Heretic."

Amagama Enkululeko - Words For Freedom: Writing Life Under Apartheid is an anthology of short fiction, poetry, narrative journalism and extracts from novels and memoirs which frames local literature as a lens through which to engage with South Africa’s past. The collection was put together and edited by Equal Education.

With a foreword by Zakes Mda, and a mixture of famous and seemingly forgotten struggle writers, this anthology of poetry and prose opens a window onto the ways ordinary, everyday life was shaped by the forces of history.

The Anglo-Zulu War was a defining episode in British imperial history, and it is still a subject of intense interest. The Zulu victory at Isandlwana, the heroic British defence of Rorke's Drift and the eventual British triumph are among the most closely researched events of the colonial era.

In this historical companion, Ian Knight, one of the foremost authorities on the war and the Zulu kingdom, provides an essential reference guide to a short, bloody campaign that had an enduring impact on the history of Britain and southern Africa. He gives succinct summaries of the issues, events, armies and individuals involved.

His work is an invaluable resource for anyone who is interested in the history of the period, in the operations of the British army in southern Africa, and in the Zulu kingdom.

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.

In S.A. Politics Unspun, premier SA political commentator Stephen Grootes cuts through the incomprehensible political spin and media coverage out there to provide an accessible, attractive, easy-to-read road map to South African politics.

The entries are short and punchy, covering the basic structures of South African politics (Constitution, Parliament, Presidency, Cabinet etc), the major parties and players (from Aaron Motsoaledi to Helen Zille and Jacob Zuma) and the critical controversies that define our current political landscape (Nkandla, the Arms Deal, the Secrecy Bill and on). Key elements are the (even-handed) predictions for our political future and the patented Stephen Grootes Power Ratios, which rate our leading politicians by the power they wield and the moral authority they enjoy.

With innovative colour design to back up Grootes’s entertaining opinion and insight, this is the must-have political read in the run-up to National Elections 2014.

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.

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.

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.

‘There is no room for sentimentality in politics and I am in no mood to put a rosy gloss on where we are now.’ – Ben Turok

With My Head above the Parapet is a record of Ben Turok’s experience as a participant in the political life of this country since 1994. It is also an insightful account of the ANC’s decline and current malaise, told by an insider intent on holding his party to its historical mission of liberating South Africa from poverty, inequality and discrimination.

This book is written as an attempt to understand what psycho-historical factors played a dominant role and undoubtly contributed to Afrikaners creating apartheid in 1948.

The main factors are humiliation by the British, and unprocessed grief due to the Anglo-Boer War when the women and children were put into British concentration camps, leaving the survivors with a deep fear of survival as a people, in a country where they were far outnumbered by black people. The book follows their tracks from 1795 till 1948.

The book is not about apartheid, it's about what determined it's creation in 1948 from a psychological perspective. It's a psycho-historical study.

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.

Vlamgat, literally 'flaming hole' in Afrikaans, was the nickname the South African Air Force (SAAF) gave to the Mirage F1, its formidable frontline jet fighter during South Africa's long 'border wars' in South West Africa (Namibia) and Angola from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. Battling Soviet MiG-21s over African skies, the Vlammies, the Mirage pilots as they were affectionately known, acquitted themselves with distinction and honour. Vlamgat is a gripping account of these pilots and their deeds of bravery; their experiences are authentically related with accuracy, humour and pathos - by the author, himself a Vlammie. As Willem Hechter, former Chief of the SAAF, says: "Vlamgat deserves a place of pride in the long history of this, the second oldest air force in the world."

The State of the nation 2016 volume uses multiple research lenses to analyse the dynamic interface of power and authority structures that characterises the state and South African society as a dynamic constitutional democracy. The volume projects these dynamics in the context of heightening contestations around structural economic, social and political problems such as unemployment, inequality, poverty and land redistribution. Is the state indeed in charge of the country’s economy and development and to what extent is the government able to effectively drive its publicly pronounced developmental state agenda? When does `leading’ become `controlling’? What are the roles of the private sector and civil society in development? To whom is the state accountable and how is it held accountable? What are the definitive signs that the South African state has been hollowed out in the interests of a market-led economy rather than functioning as a developmental or capable state? From the state’s point of view, which external role players, forces and powers are preventing the state administration and agencies from fully achieving its goals? In the context of such constraints, a range of changing dynamics—financial, constitutional, political and economic—and with a focus on the lingering remnants of the apartheid state —State of the nation 2016 analyses South Africa and how power impacts on mandates, accountability and contestations in the South African state by asking: Who is in charge?

Notions of land and agrarian reform are now well entrenched in post-apartheid South Africa. But what this reform actually means for everyday life is not clearly understood, nor the way it will impact on the political economy. In the Shadow of Policy explores the interface between the policy of land and agrarian reform and its implementation; and between the decisions of policy 'experts' and actual livelihood experiences in the fields and homesteads of land reform projects. Starting with an overview of the socio-historical context in which land and agrarian reform policy has evolved in South Africa, the volume presents empirical case studies of land reform projects in the Northern, Western and Eastern Cape provinces. These draw on multiple voices from various sectors and provide a rich source of material and critical reflections to inform future policy and research agendas. In the Shadow of Policy will be a key reference tool for those working in the area of development studies and land policy, and for civil society groups and NGOs involved in land restitution.

Is South Africa going to make it? Are we going to become a shining example of a modern society, a proud member of the world's leading countries? Are we going to be OK? Are we already OK? Or are our worst fears going to become reality? That despite being geographically and culturally one of the most amazing countries in the world, we're going one way, straight down, all the way? Are we becoming a failed state?

That's the question South Africans ask themselves now and then. And that's the question J.P. Landman would like to answer in this book. He wants to answer the question simply but compellingly. He doesn't want his answer to be a thumb-suck or a knee-jerk reaction. Nor does he want to be an optimist or a pessimist. He wants to be a realist. As an economist, that's what he am. He lets the facts speak. He would like to give you long-term, good, solid facts. An informed view. He calls it the Long view.

He bases it on the stuff that transcends the daily drama we see on TV and in the newspapers. It's information that you can hold on to. Something that gives you a proper understanding of the realities of South Africa. Next time you're standing around a braai or sitting around a dinner table and some okie starts gaaning aan about the latest drama, you don't need to go into a tailspin yourself. Give him five facts. Then carry on making the most of your meal. And this country.

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.

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.

Sol Plaatje is one of South Africa's most important political and literary figures. A pioneer in the history of the black press, he was one of the founders of the African National Congress, a leading spokesman for black opinion throughout his life, and the author of three well-known books: Mafikeng Diary, Native Life in South Africa, and his historical novel, Mhudi. These books are not Plaatje's only claim to fame.

In the course of a prolific career he wrote letters to the press, newspaper articles and editorials, pamphlets, political speeches, evidence to government commissions of enquiry, unpublished autobiographical writings, and many personal letters. Together they provide both an engaging personal record and a very readable - and revealing - commentary on South African social and political affairs during the era of segregation, from 1899 through to Plaatje's tragically early death in 1932. What he wrote has a unique historical importance, all the more meaningful from the perspective of a democratic South Africa.

Brian Willan has assembled and edited this fascinating collection from a variety of disparate and often obscure sources, making a comprehensive selection of Plaatje's writings available to a wider audience.

Over 60 million children of primary-school age, mostly in Africa and Asia, are not in school. More then 250 million are in school but are not experiencing meaningful learning.

In South Africa, school is compulsory for children aged seven to 15, where they are expected to learn core skills – reading, writing and arithmetic – and improve their chances of future employment. But for some, schools are places of persistent failure, of humiliation, of boredom and lack of progress.

Finding Place and Keeping Pace: Exploring meaningful and equitable learning in South African schools is about getting access to and completing a full cycle of good-quality basic education. The contributors span a range of methodologies that include policy analysis, classroom observation and learner assessment, bringing together a rich set of studies that explore a pattern of exclusion from meaningful learning by South African schoolchildren. In particular, they look at schoolchildren who attend school regularly, but are not learning due to inadequate facilities, indifferent teachers and socio-economic factors. They are at risk of either dropping out or leaving school with limited resources.

Within the country, access to schooling remains uneven across and within provinces, and between different communities, with poverty, race and location being major factors. Physical access is just the first hurdle – once through the school gates it is expected that children will be provided with knowledge and values that will allow them to function in the economic and social life of the country. However, this is not the general case – children may be at school but without accessing education.

The authors identify several patterns of exclusion, including different forms of marginalisation, age-inappropriate enrolments, and the fact that school choice, voice and quality remain restricted. They also make policy recommendations, which include improving the quality of teachers and teaching, enhancing parental and community involvement, and clarifying the Language-in-Education policy.

More than twelve years have passed since deadly xenophobic attacks swept unexpectedly through South Africa’s townships and informal settlements. The wave of violence left more than 60 people dead, hundreds injured and tens of thousands displaced from their homes and having to find refuge in makeshift refugee camps, community halls and police stations.

Now in 2021, xenophobia continues to rise. South African social media timelines are frequently punctuated with inflammatory language steeped in hatred. New episodes of violence are referred to as “cleaning” and refugees and migrants are called “cockroaches”. This is translating into real life violence: migrants were attacked in Durban as recently as this month.

[BR]OTHER is a visual record of this violence over the past twelve years. The foreword, written by former Constitutional Court Judge Justice Edwin Cameron, is accompanied by critical texts by Achille Mbembe, Joao Silva, Justice Malala, Koketso Moeti and others.

In documenting these events, the book aims to draw attention to the dangers that lie in hatred, intolerance and indifference. It is an urgent call to action. We must not ignore the warning signs.

Endorsement In this study on the evolution of the ANC in Nelson Mandela Bay (centred around the city of Port Elizabeth), Mcebisi Ndletyana presents a cogent analysis of how a liberation movement is impacted upon by transition into political office. The reader is taken into the interplay among issues such as pedestrian efforts to meet popular aspirations, organisational inertia and the impact of personalities. Beyond 'the what' and 'the how', this book uniquely delves into the reasons behind the ignominious decline of the ANC in a region historically endowed with an excellent corps of cadres. If 'sins of incumbency' may sound cliched, this book brings it to life through an analysis of the greed of a political leadership without scruples and the rapacious impact of procurement-based capitalist class formation. The rot originates in ANC structures - akin to suicidal conduct, even after electoral defeat. Ndletyana's canvass may be local; but the lessons are universal. The book is as much about the past as it is about future. -Joel Netshitenzhe, Executive Director and Board Vice-Chairperson of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) South Africa's governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), has undergone dramatic changes over the last thirty years. Historically a hotbed of political activism, Port Elizabeth is an illuminating site. In 2016, observers greeted with shock the ANC's loss of the city, one of its crown jewels and a party stronghold. Yet, as this book shows through its analysis of power and politics in Port Elizabeth, the party's political decline was authored by its own hand. This book studies the ANC at a local level over a 28-year period and informs what is now playing out at a national level. The book traces four stages that characterise the party's post-1990 life in Port Elizabeth: rebuilding; ascension to political office; political decline; and adaptation to new contexts where its power was lost or is under threat. Ironically, the efforts to rebuild the ANC post-unbanning lie at the root of the decline, because they were misdirected. Buoyed to office by their party's heroic stature, the book shows how some party leaders in Port Elizabeth abused power for financial gain. A generally weak regulatory environment allowed abuse to become endemic. Service delivery failed, and corrosion of moral leadership set in. As the party failed to stem the morass, internal democracy gave way to a strongman syndrome and the party deteriorated into an instrument that provided access to, and dispensed, patronage. Stunningly, electoral loss did not trigger reforms. As the ANC battled to re-make itself outside of government, some leaders even recruited the underworld to settle contests and secure access to patronage. Port Elizabeth did not see a 'new dawn'. This evidence-based book is an enthralling account of how the ANC rebuilt itself into a governing organisation, but failed to cohere into an institution of democracy, becoming instead an amalgam of competing factions for patronage. Readers will judge how much Port Elizabeth is a microcosm of the entire ANC.

Hierdie boek is verpligte leesstof vir alle Suid-Afrikaners wat op soek is na oplossings vir die probleme wat ons demokrasie in die gesig staar. Adam Habib bied ’n oorspronklike analise van die politieke en ekonomiese oorgang in die postapartheidera deur die institusionele beperkinge en die magsbalanse wat ’n rol speel in die Suid-Afrikaanse politieke arena, bloot te lê.

Habib pak dilemmas aan soos die dienslewerings- en verantwoordbaarheidskrisis, die skuiwe in ekonomiese beleid, die rol van die burgerlike samelewing en die lewensvatbaarheid van ’n sosiale verdrag, en ondersoek so die faktore wat politieke en beleidsuitkomste beïnvloed. Dit sluit die mag en hefboomkrag van politieke partye, die sakesektor, buitelandse beleggers, vakunies, organisasies in die burgerlike samelewing asook globale mag en instellings in. Hy glo dat individue en instellings met ’n bietjie verbeelding, kan optree téén die grein van ’n gegewe historiese oomblik en die gemeenskap in sy geheel verander.

South Africa’s Suspended Revolution: Hopes and Prospects het in 2013 verskyn. Rewolusie op Ys: Suid-Afrika se Vooruitsigte is ’n verkorte en vertaalde weergawe van die oorspronklike Engelse uitgawe en dien as ’n ideale inleiding vir enigeen wat geïnteresseerd is in Suid-Afrika se vooruitsigte.

While disappointment with South Africa's land reform program is widespread, the discussions as to why and in what way tend to be too general or shallow to be either fully convincing or useful. "Land Reform and Livelihoods" seeks to sharpen our understanding of how land reform does or does not work. In doing so, it helps us appreciate to what extent land reform is contributing to poverty reduction, and to what extent it might contribute to reduce poverty even more if we approached it differently.

South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994 heralded the end of more than forty years of apartheid. The Government of National Unity started the process of bringing together this deeply divided society principally through the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

However, interest in – and responsibility for - the reconciliation project first embodied through the TRC appears to have diminished over more than two decades of democracy. The narrow mandate of the Commission itself has been retrospectively criticised, and at face value it would seem that deep divisions persist: the chasm between rich and poor gapes wider than ever before; the public is polarised over questions of restitution and memorialisation; and incidents of racialised violence and hate speech continue.

This edited volume uses a decade of public opinion survey data to answer these key questions about the extent of progress in South African reconciliation. Leading social scientists analyse longitudinal data derived from the South African Reconciliation Barometer Survey (SARB) – conducted annually by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation since 2003 as well as interrogate and reach critical conclusions on the state of reconciliation, including in the areas of economic transformation, race relations and social contact, political participation, national identity formation and transitional justice. Their findings both confirm and disrupt theory on reconciliation and social change, and point to critical new directions in thinking and policy implementation.