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.

The only account of this seminal trial, written by Nelson Mandela's defence lawyer.

On 11 July 1963, a seemingly harmless dry cleaning van drew up outside a rural farm near Johannesburg, South Africa. Within seconds, heavily armed police had burst out and arrested the entire high command of the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). Together with the already imprisoned Nelson Mandela, they were put on trial and charged with conspiring to overthrow the apartheid government by violent revolution. Their expected punishment was death.

In this compelling book, their defence attorney, Joel Joffe, gives a blow-by-blow account of the most important trial in South Africa's history, vividly portraying the characters of those involved, and exposing the astonishing bigotry and rampant discrimination faced by the accused, as well as showing their incredible courage under fire.

South Africans remember when electricity load shedding brought the country to a standstill in 2008. There was a rush on generators and property in Perth, Australia. An email from Alan Knott-Craig reminding South Africans of the upsides to living in South Africa went viral and elicited responses from thousands of South Africans - Don't Panic! was a book that captured a moment in SA history. Fast forward to 2014, and load shedding is forgotten (mostly), the country hosted the soccer world cup and survived the global recession, but now the panic feeling is settling in again. The currency is crashing, politics dominate headlines, service delivery protests are everywhere. Read the advice of Alan Knott-Craig, Alec Hogg, Max du Preez, Siya Mnyanda, Brand Pretorius and a host of others (well-known people, ordinary South Africans and international citizens drawn to South Africa) who tell us: Really, Don't Panic!

As Jacob Zuma moves into the twilight years of his presidencies of both the African National Congress (ANC) and of South Africa, this book takes stock of the Zuma-led administration and its impact on the ANC. Dominance and Decline: The ANC in the Time of Zuma combines hard-hitting arguments with astute analysis. Susan Booysen shows how the ANC has become centred on the personage of Zuma, and that its defence of his extremely flawed leadership undermines the party’s capacity to govern competently, and to protect its long term future.

Following on from her first book, The African National Congress and the Regeneration of Power (2011), Booysen delves deeper into the four faces of power that characterise the ANC. Her principal argument is that the state is failing as the president’s interests increasingly supersede those of party and state. Organisationally, the ANC has become a hegemon riven by factions, as the internal blocs battle for core positions of power and control. Meanwhile, the Zuma-controlled ANC has witnessed the implosion of the tripartite alliance and decimation of its youth, women’s and veterans’ leagues. Electorally, the leading party has been ceding ground to increasingly assertive opposition parties. And on the policy front, it is faltering through poor implementation and a regurgitation of old ideas. As Zuma’s replacements start competing and succession politics takes shape, Booysen considers whether the ANC will recover from the damage wrought under Zuma’s reign and attain its former glory. Ultimately, she believes that while the damage is irrevocable, the electorate may still reward the ANC for transcending the Zuma years.

This is a must-have reference book on the development of the modern ANC. With rigour and incisiveness, Booysen offers scholars and researchers a coherent framework for considering future patterns in the ANC and its hold on political power.

In 1889 a gold rush broke out on the Witwatersrand, changing South Africa’s history forever. More than 130 years later the mining industry is still one of the biggest drivers of the economy but this was at the expense of those who worked underground. Broke & Broken is the story of the thousands of men from South Africa and beyond its borders who paid with their lives for generations. These are men who left their homes as healthy, ambitious youngsters and returned broke, broken and bitter; victims of the shameful legacy of gold mining. The book seeks to say the names of the mineworkers who, through their sweat, blood and tears, have built this country’s economy, because their own stories and their own spirits need to be magnified. The precious stone they spent most of their lives digging brought no shine to their lives – only pain, tears and death. #SayTheirNames, remembering some of the men eaten, chewed and spat out by the gold mines: Mokete Bokako has a speech defect which was allegedly caused by complications from silicosis. He worked on South Africa’s gold mines for many years before he was retrenched. He now lives alone in poverty in Roma, Lesotho; Alloys Mncedi Msuthu of Ramafole in the Eastern Cape suffers from silicosis. He was paid R76 000 after he was declared medically incapacitated, but that money was too little to sustain him and his family and to cover medical costs. He now struggles to survive; Mthobeli Gangatha was told to ‘go home and die’ in 2001, when he was 37 years. He now owns a small grocery store in Nkunzimbini village where he comes from; Zwelendaba Mgidi was 23 years old when he left his village of Kwabhala near Flagstaff. He returned home in 2011, aged 52. He was diagnosed with silicosis in 2008, aged 48.

This book powerfully demonstrates that some of the most resourceful entrepreneurs in the South African informal economy are migrants and refugees. Yet far from being lauded, they take their life into their hands when they trade on South Africa’s “mean streets”.

The book draws attention to what they bring to their adopted country through research into previously unexamined areas of migrant entrepreneurship. Ranging from studies of how migrants have created booming agglomeration economies in Jeppe and Ivory Park in Johannesburg, to guanxi networks of Chinese entrepreneurs, to competition and cooperation among Somali shop owners, to cross-border informal traders, to the informal transport operators between South Africa and Zimbabwe, the chapters in this book reveal the positive economic contributions of migrants. These include generating employment, paying rents, providing cheaper goods to poor consumers, and supporting formal sector wholesalers and retailers. As well, Mean Streets highlights the xenophobic responses to migrant and refugee entrepreneurs and the challenges they face in running a successful business on the streets.

Mean Streets is a refreshingly rich empirical documentation of the economic prospects and possibilities for South Africa of the creativity and entrepreneurship of international migrants. It is mostly a study of missed opportunities for the South African state and government, who prefer to confront immigrants with legal obstacles and regulatory mechanisms than offer them the police, official and social protection they crave to excel as businesses.

Between 1981 and 1995, a top-secret chemical and biological warfare programme titled Project Coast was established and maintained by South Africa’s apartheid government. Under the leadership of Wouter Basson, Project Coast scientists were involved in a number of dubious activities, including the mass production of ecstasy, the development of covert assassination weapons and the manufacture of chemical poisons designed to be undetectable post-mortem.

The Dis-Eases Of Secrecy is a retrospective analysis of Project Coast and shows how South African governments (past and present) have chosen to deal with the issues of biochemical weapons and warfare. It investigates possibilities for understanding the world of politics by examining how Project Coast has been remembered – and, in some instances, forgotten – by African and international governments. Through their first-hand involvement in the investigation spanning over 20 years, the authors examine how the continuing silences, impunities and stories surrounding Project Coast are still relevant for political accountability today. Readers will engage with how what is hidden reveals, and what is revealed hides.

In this cleverly constructed book, readers are able to choose their own journey through the story. By taking on the role of investigator, readers are faced with the complexities of transitional justice, reconciliation and scientist developments that might give them a different view of South African politics in an ever-changing world order.

South African Battles describes 36 battles spread over five centuries. These are not the well-trodden battlefields of standard histories, but generally lesser-known ones. Some were of critical importance, while some were infinitely curious.

Who, for instance, has heard of the battles of Nakob, Middelpos, Mome Gorge or Mushroom Valley? Who knows about the four black women that Bartolomeu Dias brought with him on his pioneering voyage of exploration? Who knows that there was a significant battle in what is now the Kruger National Park in 1725? Who knows about the military episode where not a shot was fired but which brought South Africa into the Great War? Who knows that Germany once invaded South Africa?

Written in a light, humorous and personal style, each chapter is self-contained, like a short story. They can be read one a night, and mulled over next day with the promise of further enjoyment to come. South African Battles is an ideal bedside book, as well as an engaging travel companion.

But there is also a twist in the tale at the end. Caveat lector, or lectrix!

Jacana Media is proud to make this important book available again, now with a completely new introduction. First published by Oceanbooks, New York and Melbourne and University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg in 2001, the book was short-listed for the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award in 2002.

In the public imagination the struggle that saw the end of apartheid and the inauguration of a democratic South Africa is seen as one waged by black people who were often imprisoned or killed for their efforts. Raymond Suttner, an academic, is one of a small group of white South Africans who was imprisoned for his efforts to overthrow the apartheid regime. He was first arrested in 1975 and tortured with electric shocks because he refused to supply information to the police. He then served 8 years because of his underground activities for the African National Congress and South African Communist Party.

After his release in 1983, he returned to the struggle and was forced to go underground to evade arrest, but was re-detained in 1986 under repeatedly renewed states of emergency, for 27 months, 18 of these in solitary confinement, because whites were kept separately and all other whites apart from Suttner were released. In the last months of this detention Suttner was allowed to have a pet lovebird, which he tamed and used to keep inside his tracksuit. When he was eventually released from detention in September 1988 the bird was on his shoulder. Suttner was held under stringent house arrest conditions, imposed to impede further political activities. He, however, defied his house arrest restrictions and attended an Organisation for African Unity meeting in Harare in August 1989 and he remained out of the country for five months. Shortly after his return, when he anticipated being re-arrested, the state of emergency was lifted and the ANC and other banned organisations were unbanned. Suttner became a leading figure in the ANC and SACP.

The book describes Suttner’s experience of prison in a low-key, unromantic voice, providing the texture of prison life, but unlike most ‘struggle memoirs’ it is also intensely personal. Suttner is not averse to admitting his fears and anxieties.

The new edition contains an introduction where Suttner describes his break with the ANC and SACP. But, he argues, the reason for his rupturing this connection that had been so important to his life were the same – ethical reasons – that had led him to join. He remains convinced that what he did was right and continues to act in accordance with those convictions.

In November 1949 D.D.T. Jabavu, the South African politician and professor of African languages at Fort Hare University, set out on a four-month trip to attend the World Pacifist Meeting in India. He wrote an isiXhosa account of his journey which was published in 1951 by Lovedale Press. This new edition republishes the travelogue in the original isiXhosa, with an English translation by the late anthropologist Cecil Wele Manona.

The travelogue contains reflections on Jabavu’s social interactions during his travels, and on the conference itself, where he considered what lessons Gandhian principles might yield for South Africans engaged in struggles for freedom and dignity. His commentary on nonviolent resistance, and on the dangers of nationalism and racism, enriches the existing archive of intellectual exchanges between Africa and India from a black South African perspective.

The volume includes chapters by the editors that examine the networks of international solidarity – from post-independence India to the anti-colonial struggle in East Africa and the American civil rights movement – which Jabavu helped to strengthen, biographical sketches of Jabavu and of Manona, and an afterword that reflects on the historical and political significance of making African-language texts available to readers across Africa.

After two decades as the party of national government in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) is facing unprecedented political challenges. The national and provincial elections in May 2014 demonstrated the vulnerability of the liberation movement to defeat in the most populous and economically pivotal province, Gauteng. It has become clear that the organisational weaknesses of the ANC extend from its candidate selection and leadership election processes, to its membership systems, communications, and money-fuelled politics. As a party of government, the ANC has found itself unable to advance coherent and credible economic and development policies. It remains confused about the appropriate relationship between the state and avowedly ‘revolutionary’ liberation movement in a constitutional democracy.

Remaking The ANC examines how and why political parties like the ANC are able to adapt and survive despite facing considerable challenges to their dominant position in government. Using general theories of party change from political science, the contributors to this volume explore just how dominant parties like the ANC can defer defeat and how parties that have lost power can come back and win again.

Several chapters investigate the ANC – one of several ‘dominant parties’ that have begun to lose their shine. Other chapters look at the Chinese Communist Party; the Indian National Congress; the Workers’ Party (PT) in Brazil; the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) in Malaysia; the Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan; and Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). In conclusion, Anthony Butler sets out the key factors that reformers in the ANC should bear in mind when contemplating how to revive its fortunes.

According to the conventional wisdom, the ANC after its banning in 1960 by the apartheid government and the imprisonment of its leaders largely disappeared off the face of South Africa until public support for it revived in the wake of the Soweto Uprising of 1976. This title takes issue with that view. Drawing on substantial oral testimony, Raymond Suttner, an academic and former ANC underground worker, develops a convincing case that internally based activists, working independently of the exile organisation, were able to reconstitute networks within South Africa after the ANC had been declared illegal. He discusses the salient characteristics of their underground work and presents a fascinating investigation of the various kinds of 'heroic masculinity' that helped invigorate the ANC's clandestine life. Interesting too is his discussion of the way in which the organisation itself supplied a surrogate focus for suppressed personal emotions. In a final chapter, he explores the content of the hegemony that the ANC had established by the late 1970s, which enabled it to become the prime political beneficiary of the Soweto Uprising of black students.

The year 2008 is the deadline set by President Mbeki for the finalization of all land claims by people who were dispossessed under the apartheid and previous white governments. Although most experts agree this is an impossible deadline, it does provide a significant political moment for reflection on the ANC government's program of land restitution since the end of apartheid.
Land reform (and land restitution within that) remains a highly charged issue in South Africa, one that deserves more in-depth analysis. Drawing on her experience as Rural Land Claims Commissioner in KwaZulu-Natal from 1995 to 2000, Professor Cherryl Walker provides a multilayered account of land reform in South Africa, one that covers general critical commentary, detailed case material, and personal narrative. She explores the master narrative of loss and restoration, which has been fundamental in shaping the restitution program; offers a critical overview of the achievements of the program as a whole; and discusses what she calls the "non-programmatic limits to land reform," including urbanization, environmental constraints and the impact of HIV/AIDS.

The idea that the period of social turbulence in the nineteenth century was a consequence of the emergence of the powerful Zulu kingdom under Shaka has been written about extensively as a central episode of southern African history. Considerable dynamic debate has focused on the idea that this period – the ‘mfecane’- left much of the interior depopulated, thereby justifying white occupation. One view is that ‘the time of troubles’ owed more to the Delagoa Bay Slave trade and the demands of the labour-hungry Cape colonists than to Shaka’s empire building. But is there sufficient evidence to support the argument? The Mfecane Aftermath investigates the very nature of historical debate and examines the uncertain foundations of much of the previous historiography.

From politics, economics, and society to health and environment, this volume presents 31 diverse angles on the inequality and poverty in contemporary South Africa and places them in a global context. Designed and written as a reflection of critical issues, this study provides an emerging picture that shows the need to accelerate the pace of poverty eradication and to change the developmental trajectory of South Africa. The in-depth analyses deal with topics that include ideology and modern and traditional leadership; the role of national, provincial, and local government in poverty alleviation; development, economic growth, employment creation, and housing; the media; social cohesion; HIV and AIDS; climate change; regionalism and continental power relations; and the impact of global economics on South Africa. This accessible and fascinating research is aimed at the general interest reader as well as the specialist and is destined to become the research reference for the next decade.

A brutally honest expose, After Mandela provides a sobering portrait of a country caught between a democratic future and a political meltdown.

Recent works have focused primarily on Nelson Mandela's transcendent story. But Douglas Foster, a leading South Africa authority with early, unprecedented access to President Zuma and to the next generation in the Mandela family, traces the nation's entire post-apartheid arc, from its celebrated beginnings under "Madiba" to Thabo Mbeki's tumultuous rule to the ferocious battle between Mbeki and Jacob Zuma.

Foster tells this story, not only from the point of view of the emerging black elite, but also drawing on hundreds of rare interviews over a six-year period, from the perspectives of ordinary citizens, including an HIV-infected teenager living outside Johannesburg and a homeless orphan in Cape Town.

This is the long-awaited, revisionist account of a country whose recent history has been not just neglected but largely ignored by the West.

The metaphor of 'state capture' has dominated South Africa's political discourse in the post-Zuma presidency era. What is state capture and how does it manifest? Is it just another example of a newly independent, failed African state? And is it unique to South Africa?

The contributors in this collection try to explain the phenomenon from a variety of viewpoints and disciplines. All hold fast to the belief that the democracy that promised the country so much when apartheid ended has been significantly eroded, resulting in most citizens expressing a loss of hope for the future. Read together, the essays cumulatively show not only how state capture was enabled and who benefitted, but also how and by whom it was scrutinised and exposed in order to hold those in power accountable.

The book aims to present a scholarly and empirical understanding of how things went awry, even with various regulating bodies in place, and how to prevent state capture from happening again in the future.

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.

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.

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.

In this memoir, the first of two, Dikgang Moseneke pays homage to the many people and places that have helped to define and shape him. These influences include his ancestry; his parents; his immediate and extended family; and his education both in school and on Robben Island as a 15-year-old prisoner. These people and places played a significant role in forming his principled stance in life and his proud defiance of all forms of injustice.

Robben Island became a school not only in politics but an opportunity for dedicated studies towards a law degree that would provide the bedrock for a long and fruitful career. The book charts Moseneke’s rise as one of the country’s top legal minds, who not only helped to draft the Constitution, but for 15 years acted as a guardian of it for all South Africans.

Not only did Moseneke assist in shaping our new Constitution, he has helped to make it a living document for many South Africans over the past 15 years.

Six years after the Marikana massacre we have still seen minimal change for mine workers and mining communities. Although much has been written about how little has been done, few have looked into how, in 2012, such tragedy was even possible. Lonmin Platinum Mine and the events of 16 August are a microcosm of the mining sector and how things can go wrong when society leaves everything to government and “big business”.

Business As Usual After Marikana is a comprehensive analysis of mining in South Africa. Written by respected academics and practitioners in the field, it looks into the history, policies and business practices that brought us to this point.

Translated from the German Zum Beispiel: BASF – Uber Konzernmacht und Menschenrechte, it also examines how bigger global companies like BASF were directly or indirectly responsible, and yet nothing is done to keep them accountable.

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.

Schabir Shaik, Jackie Selebi, Tony Yengeni, "Oilgate", Jacob Zuma, Judge Hlope and the JSC, "Travelgate" – What has happened to morality in South Africa?

With this book, respected academic and community leader, Paulus Zulu, cuts right to the heart of our current malaise.

Drawing equally on Western concepts and on African traditional thought, he provides a searing indictment of the state of the nation, casting new light on corruption, incompetence and mismanagement.

This enlightening analysis makes for compelling reading.

'I believe that citizen action is vitally necessary as we come out of the heady days of post-apartheid euphoria.' Professor Jonathan Jansen has become a trusted commentator on the state of South Africa -- reminding us of our past and asking citizens to leave their comfort zones and contribute to righting the wrongs of our society. Why should we get involved? Jansen gives seven compelling reasons: If ordinary citizens do nothing, we face even greater social instability in the light of stubborn unemployment and crises in the poorest of schools. If we do nothing we become part of the narrative of hopelessness. Without our action, millions of marginalised people could be doomed. If we do nothing we fail to demonstrate to the next generation how to live full lives. We must serve to compensate for the wrongs of our shared past. We must give back once we have been able to move ahead. We must take our places in the long chain of activists who have over centuries opposed poverty, illiteracy, government and gangs to give us this tender young democracy to work with. The articles in this collection, previously published in The Times, focus on education and the social realities of South African society. Jansen by turn horrifies us, inspires us and reminds us of the power of individual action.