What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens? Yuval Noah Harari challenges everything we know about being human in the perfect read for these unprecedented times.

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it: us.

In this bold and provocative book, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here and where we’re going.

‘I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who’s interested in the history and future of our species’ Bill Gates

‘Interesting and provocative… It gives you a sense of how briefly we’ve been on this Earth’ Barack Obama

This South African edition of Macroeconomics is essential reading for all students taking introductory economics modules on undergraduate courses throughout South Africa. It is also ideal for use with the macroeconomics component of MBA courses. The text contains updated case studies, set against a South African context to illustrate how the principles of economics relate to your life. The news articles are based on news events in South Africa along with questions to help you apply your knowledge and to build your understanding. This text is designed to give you the confidence and ability to think like an economist.

Can racism and intimacy co-exist? Can love and friendship form and flourish across South Africa’s imposed colour lines?

Who better to engage on the subject of hazardous liaisons than the students with whom Jonathan Jansen served over seven years as Vice Chancellor of the University of the Free State. The context is the University campus in Bloemfontein, the City of Roses, the Mississippi of South Africa. Rural, agricultural, insular, religious and conservative, this is not a place for breaking out. But over the years, Jansen observed shifts in campus life and noticed more and more openly interracial friendships and couples, and he began having conversations with these students with burning questions in mind.

Ten interracial couples tell their stories of love and friendship in their own words, with no social theories imposed on their meanings, but instead a focus on how these students experience the world of interracial relationships, and how flawed, outdated laws and customs set limits on human relationships, and the long shadow they cast on learning, living and loving on university campuses to this day.

Wilfrid Cooper was a rare man during the dark days of apartheid: an advocate whose career coincided almost perfectly with the rise and fall of the Nationalist government, intersecting eerily with that of its “architect” HF Verwoerd, and yet a man whose enlightened principles and liberal thinking saw him regularly defending those less fortunate.

His storied legal career saw him embroiled in numerous political affairs throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. He represented, among others, Verwoerd’s assassin Dimitri Tsafendas; the SWAPO Six in Swakopmund; the families of Imam Abdullah Haron, Mapetla Mohapi and Hoossen Haffajee and others who died “jumping down stairwells while in detention” or hanged by their own jeans in their cells; and Steven Biko and other activists who were arrested by the security police in the dead of night. There were also the highprofile criminal cases, including the original Kebble-style “assisted suicide” of Baron Dieter van Schauroth and the scandalous case of the Scissors Murderess Marlene Lehnberg.

Wilfrid Cooper reached the peak of his considerable legal prowess in a time when South Africans led a parallel existence, the majority downtrodden while white privilege reigned serenely in the suburbs – a time that could have easily provided him a less controversial career had he desired. And yet even as he and his gregarious wife Gertrude enjoyed wonderful and very sociable years in their Newlands home in Cape Town – an area that was itself remodelled under the Group Areas Act – he chose to walk the path less taken in the shadow of Devil’s Peak. This is his story.

On October 7, Israeli territory around the Erez border of Gaza Strip was invaded by Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades, killing over 1,000 people. In response to this, the people of Gaza have been subjected to nearly eight months of wholesale genocide. Over 36,000 civilians have been killed, an estimated million made homeless and displaced, tens of thousands injured, and an entire population traumatised. Never in living history has such an atrocity been perpetrated in plain sight of the world’s leaders and mainstream media, who have all managed to give it their complete backing. Images and video clips of hourly horrors and tragedies have spread around the world, combatted by fake news propagated not by dark conspiratorial corners on the web, but by corporate media outlets and politicians.

Baseless Israeli propaganda and deliberately-biased framing has been fed to journalists and repeated, without question, on the front pages of the world’s newspapers and in the mouths of TV pundits and politicians.

One of the few voices of Gaza to make it out into Western media has been that of writer Atef Abu Saif, whose edited diary entries have been occasionally serialised in The New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde and elsewhere. Here, the complete, unedited diaries show the journey of a man who arrived in Gaza just a few days before October 7 as a government minister and ended the period, like most other Palestinians, living in a tent in a refugee camp.

The Democratic Alliance won control of the uMngeni Municipality in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands after the local government elections in 2021. As the only DA-run municipality in KZN, uMngeni provides a template for how local government could work in a post-ANC South Africa.

Written by two leaders at the very heart of the project, Saving South Africa reveals the challenges, the triumphs and disasters the new administration has encountered along the way. It is an eye-opening exposé of how cadre deployment has helped to bring the country to its knees. It is a story of incompetent officials, political spies, gunwielding tenderpreneurs, petty theft and grand larceny.

And yet, as we follow the authors on their journey, there is always hope for a better future as the corrupt layers of local governance are gradually stripped away, revealing the responsive and caring civil service envisioned by the South African Constitution.

For many years Research at grass roots: for the social sciences and human services professions supported social sciences researchers and human services professionals with a comprehensive, local and easy-to-use research guide. The work in this updated and expanded edition continues to assist novice researchers as well as more experienced researchers, postgraduate students and academics with a range of methodological decisions required in planning, designing, executing and reporting on their research endeavours.

Although many salient features of the previous four successful editions have been retained, exciting new features have been added, including material to support lecturers who teach research courses. The unique structure of the book, consisting of different sections highlighting methodological decisions common to both the qualitative and quantitative approaches, those unique to qualitative and quantitative research and those which combine these approaches, have been developed from decades of work with postgraduate students and practitioner-researchers. New content includes a focus on the growing impetus of ethical conduct in research with human participants; debates and developments in the field of big data sets; and the latest trends in thematic and narrative inquiry, as well as contemporary data collection methods.

In rural South Africa today, there are signs that chieftaincies are resurging after having been disbanded in colonial times. Among these is the amaTshatshu of the Eastern Cape, which was dis-established in 1852 by the British, and recognised once more under the democratic ANC dispensation, in 2003.

Bawana, leader of the amaTshatshu, was the first Thembu chief to cross the Kei River, in the mid-1820s, to open up the northeastern frontier of the Cape Colony. His successors and followers fought the British in the frontier wars but were defeated. In tracing his history and that of his descendants this book explores the meaning of chieftainship in South Africa—at the time of colonial conquest, under apartheid’s Bantustans, and now, post apartheid. It illustrates not only the story of a beleaguered and dispossessed people but also the ways in which power is constructed. In addition, it is about gender and land, about belonging, identity and naming. The book unsettles accounts of chiefly authority, unpacks conflicts between royal families, municipalities and government departments, and explores the impasse created by these quarrels. It retrieves evidence that the colonial state sought to obliterate and draws the disempowered back into the process of making history.

The authors are both closely associated with the land and the people of the amaTshatshu. One is a historian, who grew up on their land, and the other is counsellor to the chief. As such, they bring their knowledge and respective skills to bear in this book. The collaboration of a black and a white author sets up a creative tension which animates the text and is a powerful element of the book.

African Accountability: What Works And What Doesn't focuses on political and social aspects to assess the current state of governance and accountability in Africa. Rather than choosing an Afro-optimistic or Afro-pessimistic approach, both of which have been prominent since the start of the 21st century, this book tries to adopt a balanced, Afro-realistic view, giving credit where it is due, while also pointing out deficient areas that need improvement.

This edited volume brings to the fore cutting edge analysis on the contemporary African governance and accountability landscape by focusing on both continental institutions (including the African Peer Review Mechanism, African Charter on Democracy Elections and Governance, and the African Union) well as domestic ones (parliaments, ombudsmen and electoral commissions).

Theories For Decolonial Social Work Practice In South Africa is a local book critically presenting social work theories that are suitable for decolonial and developmental generalist practice in the Global South. The choice of theories included in this book is informed by the lived experiences of South Africans in a multicultural, post-colonial, post-apartheid society.

The book sees the goal of social work as effecting transformation and liberation, through the implementation of the developmental approach, and by drawing on decolonial and African concepts. It supports social workers in working toward this goal by stimulating critical reflection and disrupting taken-for-granted beliefs and practices. It guides readers to work with client groups across the micro-mezzo-macro continuum in such a way that they are empowered to develop agency, thereby affirming the basic values of social justice and human dignity.

Theories For Decolonial Social Work Practice In South Africa is suitable for social work education and the in-service training of qualified social workers, child and youth care workers and community development practitioners. In addition, the book will be of interest to social work academics and researchers because of its unique decolonial and African approach to Global North theories, and its contribution to the development of Global South theories.

Born in Qqeberha in the 1990s, popular Aids activist Nozibele Mayaba’s upbringing was one of struggle and strife. She was raised by the tough hand of her mother in the confines of a strict Christian household. Nozibele strove to be the “good girl” that everyone adores to win her mother’s approval and the affection of her absent father.

She lived by the book and was steered by her faith. Hers becomes a life of firsts. She is the first person in her family to travel overseas. The first to graduate from university. It is also her first love, with his infectious smile that infected her with HIV.

This diagnosis throws her life into disarray. Fearing stigma and feeling the need to maintain her “good girl” image, she kept her status a secret. However, she soon succumbed to depression. It is in the aftermath, when she picks up the broken pieces of her life that she finds purpose in all the pain she has endured.

She went public with her story in a video that when viral and launched her onto a new path. Nozibele, who has since gotten married and recently became a mother, has made it her mission to hold open conversations about her journey living with HIV.

Told with gut wrenching honesty, Nozibele is at her most vulnerable in this brave account about what it means to live and love beyond HIV.

In April 2013 a global breaking-news story surfaced on social media and in the world press, and rapidly gathered momentum. A South African man had fallen overboard in the night during a storm in remote Indonesian waters, without anyone else on board realising. Eight hours later a frantic search was underway. The incident caught the world’s attention as readers were instantly transported into the terror of the moment – imagine being left alone, 100 kilometres out to sea in the middle of a storm, watching your friends sail into the distance… Had he been dealt a fraction more bad luck, Brett would have died immediately.

According to the experts, he should have died within 10 to 14 hours. But he chose not to die. Instead for 28-and-a-half hours Brett Archibald endured – the ocean, the elements, the creatures of the deep, and his own inner demons. Alone: The Search For Brett Archibald is the incredible but true story of what it takes to defy needle-in-a-haystack odds and survive what should have been certain death. Outdoor savvy, astonishing imagination, mental toughness, a refusal to give up hope and a canny rescuer with an unbelievable background ultimately saw him through.

Most of all this is a story of the power of the human spirit that defies rational explanation.

The End Of Whiteness aims to reveal the pathological, paranoid and bizarre consequences that the looming end of apartheid had on white culture in South Africa, and overall to show that whiteness is a deeply problematic category that needs to be deconstructed and thoughtfully considered.

This book uses contemporary media material to investigate two symptoms of this late apartheid cultural hysteria that appeared throughout the contemporary media and in popular literature during the 1980s and 1990s, showing their relation to white anxieties about social change, the potential loss of privilege and the destabilisation of the country that were imagined to be an inevitable consequence of majority rule.

The ‘Satanic panic’ revolved around the apparent threat posed by a cult of white Satanists that was never proven to exist but was nonetheless repeatedly accused of conspiracy, murder, rape, drug-dealing, cannibalism and bestiality, and blamed for the imminent destruction of white Christian civilisation in South Africa.

During the same period an unusually high number of domestic murder-suicides occurred, with parents killing themselves and their children or other family members by gunshot, fire, poison, gas, even crossbows and drownings. This so-called epidemic of family murder was treated by police, press and social scientists as a plague that specifically affected white Afrikaans families. These double monsters, both fantastic and real, helped to disembowel the clarities of whiteness even as they were born out of threats to it. Deep within its self-regarding modernity and renegotiation of identity, contemporary white South Africa still wears those scars of cultural pathology.

Advocate Thuli Madonsela has achieved in her seven years as Public Protector what few accomplish in a lifetime; her legacy and contribution cannot be over-stated. In her final days in office she compiled the explosive State Capture report and, before that, the report on President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla residence. Praised and vilified in equal measures, Madonsela has frequently found herself at centre stage in the increasingly fractious South African political scene.

No Longer Whispering To Power is about Thuli Madonsela’s tenure as Public Protector, during which the whisper grew into a cry. It is the story of the South African people’s attempt to hold power to account through the Office of the Public Protector. More significantly, this important book stands as a record of the crucial work Madonsela has done, always acting without fear or favour.

In 1990 two South African mothers were faced with an impossible choice, one that no mother should ever have to make. Should they surrender the child they had lovingly raised in order to get back the baby they had given birth to?

Megs Clinton-Parker and Sandy Dawkins chose nurture over nature, simply unable to give up their two-year-old sons who were switched at birth at an East Rand hospital. Instead they decided to try to make their strange relationship work, although they lived in different cities, 500km apart. And they decided to sue the South African state, whose negligence had altered the fates of two families forever. Robin Dawkins and Gavin Clinton-Parker grew up living each other’s lives, brothers-but-not-brothers, acutely aware that their mothers’ hearts were torn.

Unable to escape the consequences of the swap, Robin decided at the age of 15 that it was time to claim what was rightfully his, adding a further twist to this bitter saga.

It is nearly two decades since public schools in South Africa began to admit learners from all cultural and racial backgrounds, and this diversity has resulted in a need for schools to evolve with the changing circumstances as well as to maintain excellence. Teachers are faced daily with the challenge of teaching and managing learners of unfamiliar cultures, languages and backgrounds. Multicultural education introduces various models of multicultural education and provides practical, low-cost classroom strategies which teachers can implement effectively in culturally diverse schools.

Multicultural education explores concepts of diversity in society from various theoretical perspectives and discusses the implications of differences and similarities among South African learners. Practical activities at the end of each chapter allow teachers to reflect critically on their own practice, and assist educational leaders to carry out professional development in multicultural education in their schools.

Contents include the following:

• South African policy and legislation relevant to diversity issues
• Cross-cultural communication
• Teaching in the linguistically diverse classroom
• Multicultural approaches to curriculum and learning material
• Positive discipline in the culturally diverse classroom

Bush Brothers is not about special forces or heroic, secret missions. Instead, it is an intimate look at the daily life of ordinary soldiers – and the unbreakable bonds they formed under fire.

This is the story of thousands of infantry men who were deployed in the SADF, on or across the Border.

Colourful characters and wild partying are interspersed with the life-and-death choices troops were forced to make as they sacrificed life and limb, not so much for their country, but for each other.

Too much of South Africa’s history has been lost and suppressed, leaving a void for many South Africans. Sylvia Vollenhoven brings together her life and that of a long-ago ancestor, Kabbo, a respected Khoisan storyteller.

She writes of her experience as being “too black” for her coloured schoolmates, working as one of the early female journalists in the misogynistic environment of the 70s, and of the constant impact on her life of her background – including her ancestors.

Provides a comparative study of the complex governance challenges confronting city-regions in each of the BRICS countries. It traces how governance approaches emerge from the disparate intentions, actions and practices of multiple collaborating and competing actors, working in diverse contexts of political settlement and culture.

The scale and pace of urban change in the recent past has been disorienting. As individual cities evolve into complex urban agglomerations, scholars battle to find adequate vocabularies for contemporary urban processes while practitioners search for meaningful governance responses. Governing Complex City-Regions in the Twenty-first Century explores the ongoing evolution of metropolitan governance as diverse urban agents grapple with the dilemmas of collective action across multi-layered and fragmented institutions, in contexts where there are also manifold centres of influence and decision-making.

Whereas much of the existing literature is founded on the settled urban contexts of Western Europe and North America this book draws on the experiences of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The author shows that governance approaches are rarely designed but emerge, rather, from the disparate intentions, actions and practices of multiple collaborating and competing actors working within diverse contexts of political settlement and political culture. Intended for students, academics and professionals, the book does not offer packaged solutions or easy answers to the challenges of urban governance, but it does show the value of comparative study in inspiring new thought and perspectives, which could lead to improved governance practice within South African contexts.

In the spirit of Amy Poehler’s Yes Please, Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl, and Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist, a powerful collection of essays about gender, sexuality, race, beauty, Hollywood, and what it means to be a modern woman.

One month before the release of the highly anticipated film The Birth of a Nation, actress Gabrielle Union shook the world with a vulnerable and impassioned editorial in which she urged our society to have compassion for victims of sexual violence. In the wake of rape allegations made against director and actor Nate Parker, Union—a forty-four-year-old actress who launched her career with roles in iconic ’90s movies—instantly became the insightful, outspoken actress that Hollywood has been desperately awaiting. With honesty and heartbreaking wisdom, she revealed her own trauma as a victim of sexual assault: "It is for you that I am speaking. This is real. We are real."

In this moving collection of thought provoking essays infused with her unique wisdom and deep humor, Union uses that same fearlessness to tell astonishingly personal and true stories about power, color, gender, feminism, and fame. Union tackles a range of experiences, including bullying, beauty standards, and competition between women in Hollywood, growing up in white California suburbia and then spending summers with her black relatives in Nebraska, coping with crushes, puberty, and the divorce of her parents. Genuine and perceptive, Union bravely lays herself bare, uncovering a complex and courageous life of self-doubt and self-discovery with incredible poise and brutal honesty. Throughout, she compels us to be ethical and empathetic, and reminds us of the importance of confidence, self-awareness, and the power of sharing truth, laughter, and support.

A special edition matched to the curriculum requirements of Unisa.

Based on the popular Teaching Foundation Phase mathematics - A guide for South African students and teachers.

When 18 year-old Morné Harmse walked into his Krugersdorp high school, armed with a samurai sword on a Monday in 2008, he had one mission – to commit a massacre. Inspired by the Columbine high school killings, his fantasy to make people "take notice" had been brewing for more than a year. By the time his sword-slashing spree had ended, 16-year-old Jacques Pretorius was dead and three others were brutally injured.

In the aftermath of what was described as “the most barbaric act of schoolboy violence in South African history” the country was left reeling. How does an ordinary boy from a "normal" family become a brutal killer overnight? Was Morné under the influence of a satanic cult? A protégée of mastermind Devilsdorp killer, Cecilia Steyn? Did his obsession with heavy metal band Slipknot drive him over the edge? Now, 14 years later, Morné Harmse is out on controversial parole.Written in mesmerising detail, Samurai Sword Murder finally puts together the pieces of this brutal tragedy.

From 1994 to 2000, when South Africa was a young democracy, the country was stalked by a succession of brutal serial killers. Psychologist Micki Pistorius became the first profiler for the South African Police Service, playing a vital role in identifying and interrogating these killers, as well as training detectives nationally and in other countries. She broke ground with her theory on the origin of serial killers and is considered a trailblazer in her field.

Catch Me a Killer was originally released in 2003 and details the cases she worked on – from the Station Strangler and the Phoenix Cane Killer to Boetie Boer and the Saloon Killer. The book also features legendary detectives such as Piet Byleveld and Suiker Britz, as well as the FBI’s Robert Ressler.

Released alongside a major TV series based on the book, this new edition of Catch Me a Killer includes a new chapter and up-to-date information about some of the cases, such as the parole of Norman Afzal Simons in 2023. This is essential reading for all true crime aficionados.

Educational Psychology in Social Context: Ecosystemic applications in southern Africa is a tried-and-tested textbook that applies educational psychology - and, specifically, a unifying ecosystemic framework - to aid teachers and other educators to enhance the learning experience of students in a developing society. The book is relevant to both undergraduate and postgraduate study in either pre-service or in-service teacher education. It can be used for courses in educational psychology in programmes such as BEd, BEd (Hons) and PGCE, and as a handbook for teachers in the field.