This is the story of Comrade September, a member of the ANC and its military wing, MK, who was abducted from his hideout in Swaziland by an apartheid death squad in August 1986 and taken across the border to South Africa, where his interrogation and torture began. It was not long before September began telling his captors about his comrades in the ANC. By talking under torture, September underwent changes that marked him for the rest of his life: from resister to collaborator, insurgent to counter-insurgent, revolutionary to counter-revolutionary and, to his former comrades, hero to traitor.

The book is about these changes and about the larger, neglected story of betrayal and collaboration in the struggle against apartheid. It seeks to understand why September made the choices he did - collaborating with his captors, turning against the ANC, and then hunting down his comrades - without excusing those choices. It looks beyond the black and-white that still dominates South Africa's political canvas, to examine the grey zones in which South Africans - combatants and non-combatants - lived.

As the book demonstrates, September's acts of betrayal form but one layer in a sedimentation of betrayals in which September himself was betrayed by the Swazi police for sure and may, in fact, have been sold out to the Swazis and the South African security police by his own comrades in the ANC. This, then, is not a morality tale in which the lines between heroes and villains are clearly drawn.

The book does not claim that the competing sides in the fight against apartheid were moral equivalents. It seeks to contribute to scholarly attempts to elaborate a denser, richer and more nuanced account of South Africa's modern political history. It does so by examining the history of political violence in South Africa; by looking at the workings of an apartheid death squad in an attempt to understand how the apartheid bureaucracy worked; and, more importantly, by studying the social, moral and political universe in which apartheid collaborators like September lived and worked.

This is not a biography - a cradle-to-grave account of September's life - even though it does, where necessary, look at his life. September was not the first resister-turned-collaborator. But he was also no ordinary collaborator. That is why his story deserves telling.

South Africa’s democracy is often seen as a story of bright beginnings gone astray, a pattern said to be common to Africa. The negotiated settlement of 1994, it is claimed, ended racial domination and created the foundation for a prosperous democracy – but greedy politicians betrayed the promise of a new society.

In Prisoners Of The Past, Steven Friedman astutely argues that this misreads the nature of contemporary South Africa. Building on the work of the economic historian Douglass North and the political thinker Mahmood Mamdani, Friedman shows that South African democracy’s difficulties are legacies of the pre-1994 past. The settlement which ushered in majority rule left intact core features of the apartheid economy and society. The economy continues to exclude millions from its benefits, while racial hierarchies have proved stubborn: apartheid is discredited, but the values of the pre-1948 colonial era, the period of British colonisation, still dominate. Thus South Africa’s democracy supports free elections, civil liberties and the rule of law, but also continues past patterns of exclusion and domination.

Friedman reasons that this ‘path dependence’ is not, as is often claimed, the result of constitutional compromises in 1994 that left domination untouched. This bargain was flawed because it brought not too much compromise, but too little. Compromises extended political citizenship to all but there were no similar bargains on economic and cultural change. Using the work of the radical sociologist Harold Wolpe, Friedman shows that only negotiations on a new economy and society can free South Africans from the prison of the past.

A provocative, original and compelling history of catastrophes and their consequences.

Disasters are by their very nature hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet the responses of a number of devloped countries to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why?

The facile answer is to blame poor leadership. While populist rulers have certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, more profund problems have been exposed by COVID-19. Only when we understand the central challenge posed by disaster in history can we see that this was also a failure of an administrative state and of economic elites that had grown myopic over much longer than just a few years. Why were so many Cassandras for so long ignored? Why did only some countries learn the right lessons from SARS and MERS? Why do appeals to 'the science' often turn out to be mere magical thinking?

Drawing from multiple disciplines, including history, economics and network science, Doom: The Politics Of Catastrophe is a global post mortem for a plague year. Drawing on preoccupations that have shaped his books for some twenty years, Niall Ferguson describes the pathologies that have done us so much damage: from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis and online schism. COVID-19 was a test failed by countries who must learn some serious lessons from history if they are to avoid the doom of irreversible decline.

Includes personal anecdotes, case examples, and vignettes with short, concise chapters making this book easy reading for the busy executive.

At this critical junction in the history of humankind, leaders that are proficient in magical thinking aren’t going to solve our problems. Creating alternative realities is not the answer. We need a very different kind of leadership―leaders who can resist the calls of regression and whose outlook is firmly based in reality. We need leaders who analyze and draw conclusions from, or use their own experiences as a development tool, face their strengths and weaknesses, and critique their own experiences in order to build new understandings.

In this very personal and entertaining book, Manfred Kets de Vries, one of the “gurus” in the field of leadership studies offers his thoughts on leadership and life, reflections written for executives and the people who deal with them. As a psychoanalyst and leadership professor let loose in the world of renowned global organizations―as a passionate educator and scholar, or just a human being at the receiving end of heart-rending emails―he examines the pitfalls of leadership and the challenges for the professionals who work with senior executives in today’s AI-focused world.

He points out why leaders can derail, and what steps they can take to prevent this from happening. Ultimately, this book encourages you to “Know yourself,” but makes no bones about the challenge it represents. Understanding our “inner theatre” will always be an uphill struggle. Kets de Vries points out why deep dives into our inner world are always fraught with many anxieties.

Included in the many subjects covered by the author are the loneliness of command, the management of disappointment, the destructive role of greed, the impact of stubbornness, the role of storytelling, the importance of wellness, and the role of corporate culture. In addition, the book addresses the important topic of how to create great teams and best places to work. Furthermore, the book touches on endings– the ending of our career and the growing realization of the inevitable ending of our life. As time grows short, Kets de Vries emphasizes that we have no time to lose in dealing with our anxieties, regrets, and the things we spend much of our life determined not to see.

Taking a deep dive into self-knowledge requires courage and support, and he is here to guide you through it.

"Warm, honest and true--A Woman Makes A Plan is full of insight as well as a good dose of humor, offering readers a lifetime of hard-won advice." --Diane Von Furstenberg The international supermodel shares personal stories and lessons learned from a life of "living dangerously--carefully"

Maye Musk is a fashionable, charming, jet-setting supermodel with a fascinating and tight-knit circle of family and friends--and is 71 years old. But things were not always so easy or glamorous--she became a single mom at 31, struggling through poverty to provide for her three children; dealt with weight issues as a plus-size model and overcame ageism in the modeling industry; and established a lifelong career as a respected dietitian, all the while starting over in eight different cities across three countries and two continents. But she made her way through it all with an indomitable spirit and a no-nonsense attitude to become a global success at what she calls the "prime of her life."

As everyone who follows her obsessively on social media knows, Maye is a fount of frank and practical advice on how the choices you make in every decade can pay off in surprising, exciting ways throughout your life. In A Woman Makes a Plan, Maye shares experiences from her life conveying hard-earned wisdom on career (the harder you work, the luckier you get), family (let the people you love go their own way), health (there is no magic pill), and adventure (make room for discovery, but always be ready for anything). You can't control all that happens in life, but you can have the life you want at any age. All you have to do is make a plan.

This is the story of a Kavango tracker who served for six years with Koevoet ('Crowbar'), the elite South African Police anti-terrorist unit, during the South West African -Angolan bush war of the '80s. Most white team leaders lasted only two years; the black trackers walked the track for years. Sisingi Kamongo tells the story of the 50 or so firefighters he was involved in; he survived five anti-personnel mine and POMZ explosions and an RPG rocket on his Casspir APC vehicle; he was wounded three times; he tells of the trackers looking for shadows on the ground, facing ambush and AP mines at every turn; he tells of the art of tracking...where dust can tell time. Kamongo's story is supported by two accounts from renowned Koevoet team leaders, Herman Grobler and Francois du Toit- a powerful collection of experiences from South Africa's most successful counter-insurgency unit. The first-ever account of the bush war by a non-white member of the South African security forces. A unique, previously untold perspective of the bush war, by an on-the-ground tracker. A powerful, harrowing read; the tension is palpable.

Exploring evolution, animal behaviour and human psychology, The Social Instinct reveals how and why cooperation has shaped and defined humankind - and what happens when it goes wrong. The first book by a brilliant evolutionary biologist, drawing on decades of research in the field.

The science of cooperation tells us not only how we got here, but also where we might end up. Cooperation explains how strands of DNA gave rise to modernday nation states. It defines our extraordinary ecological success as well as many of the most surprising features of what make us human: not only why we live in families, why we have grandmothers and why women experience the menopause, but also why we become paranoid and jealous, and why we cheat.

Nichola Raihani also introduces us to other species who, like us, live and work together. From the pied babblers of the Kalahari to the cleaner fish of the Great Barrier Reef, they happen to be some of the most fascinating and extraordinarily successful species on this planet. What do we have in common with these other species, and what is it that sets us apart?

Written at a time of global pandemic, when the challenges and importance of cooperation have never been greater, The Social Instinct is an exhilarating, farreaching and thought-provoking journey through all life on Earth, with profound insights into what makes us human and how our societies work.

The incredible true story of Louis Zamperini, now a major motion picture directed by Angelina Jolie. THE INTERNATIONAL NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER In 1943 a bomber crashes into the Pacific Ocean. Against all odds, one young lieutenant survives. Louise Zamperini had already transformed himself from child delinquent to prodigious athlete, running in the Berlin Olympics. Now he must embark on one of the Second World War's most extraordinary odysseys. Zamperini faces thousands of miles of open ocean on a failing raft. Beyond like only greater trials, in Japan's prisoner-of-war camps. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini's destiny, whether triumph or tragedy, depends on the strength of his will ... Now a major motion picture, directed by Angelina Jolie and starring Jack O' Connell.

A highly readable, dramatic story of a colourful South African journey in politics lasting over 50 years, from anti-apartheid protester to Right Honourable Lord, from Pretoria childhood to senior British Cabinet Minister.

A Pretoria Boy begins with the story of how Peter Hain’s journey came full circle when he used parliamentary privilege in 2017–18 to expose looting and money laundering, supplied with the ammunition by his ‘deep throat’ inside the Zuma State. In so doing, he put South Africa’s state capture and corruption on the front pages of the New York Times and Financial Times, which some suggest played a part in Zuma’s toppling. Going back to an anti-apartheid childhood in Pretoria in the late 1950s and early 1960s, there are vivid descriptions of his parents’ arrest, banning, harassment, helping an escaped political prisoner, the hanging of a close white family friend, and enforced exile to London in 1966 after the government prohibited his architect father from working.

It tells of how, at aged 19, Hain organised and led militant anti-Springbok demonstrations in exile in London in 1969–1970, for which he was denounced by the South African media as ‘Public Enemy Number One’. It is about how he narrowly escaped jail after a South African government-financed prosecution landed him in the Old Bailey in 1972 for conspiracy to disrupt those all-white South African sports tours and, then in 1975, how he was framed for a bank theft committed by an apartheid security agent. His return to South Africa came first on a secret mission in December 1989, then as a parliamentary observer during the 1994 elections.

The book ends with his perspective on the country’s future.

A powerful memoir about a girl from Africa whose near-death experience sparked a dream that changed the world.

When severe drought hit her village in Zimbabwe, Elizabeth, then eight, had no idea this moment of utter devastation would come to define her life’s purpose. Unable to move from hunger, she encountered a United Nations aid worker who gave her a bowl of warm porridge and saved her life. This transformative moment inspired Elizabeth to become a humanitarian, and she vowed to dedicate her life to giving back to her community, her continent, and the world.

Elizabeth has been instrumental in creating change in communities all around the world, uplifting the lives of others, just as her life was once uplifted. This memoir vividly brings to life one extraordinary woman’s story of persevering through incredible odds and finding her true calling – while delivering an important message of hope and empowerment in a time when we need it most.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB 2018 SELECTION

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2018

‘Haunting...beautifully written.’ The New York Times Book Review

‘Compelling.’ The Washington Post

‘Epic...transcendent…triumphant.’ Elle

‘It’s among Tayari’s many gifts that she can touch us soul to soul with her words.’ Oprah Winfrey

‘Tayari Jones’ vision, strength, and truth-telling voice have found a new level of artistry and power.’ Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she struggles to hold on to the love that has been her centre. When his conviction is suddenly overturned, he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.

This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward – with hope and pain – into the future.

Our nurses have witnessed the pandemic first hand, compassionately caring for patients amid war-like circumstances.

The havoc caused by the pandemic highlighted existing fault lines in the South African health system, and nurses faced shortages of staff and vital life-saving equipment. Colleagues tested positive and died. Visitors were not allowed, so nurses had to be intermediaries between patients and desperate family trying to glean information on the phone. Despite these pressures, they remained at the forefront of the fight against the deadly virus.

This book brings together deeply personal stories of caring for patients in wards and ICU, of feeling overwhelmed, and experiencing the fear of getting infected and passing Covid on to their families. There are also moving tales of personal growth and finding renewed purpose.

In Our Own Words shows the extreme resilience of nurses – even in the face of adversity. And that at the core of a ‘true’ nurse remains the commitment to the patient.

An expert on China's growing digital empire provides an urgent look at the battle to connect and control tomorrow's networks.

Its vast infrastructure projects now extend from the ocean floor to outer space, and from Africa's megacities into rural America. China is wiring the world, and, in doing so, rewriting the global order.

As things stand, the rest of the world still has a choice. But the battle for tomorrow will require America and its allies to take daring risks in uncertain political terrain. Unchecked, China will reshape global flows of data to reflect its own interests - and the lives of countless individuals enmeshed in its systems.

Taking readers on a global tour of these emerging battlefields, Jonathan E. Hillman reveals what China's digital footprint looks like on the ground, and explores the dangers of a world in which all routers lead to Beijing.

The power of structural violence is that it tries to silence us. The power of feminism is that it gives us a voice. So much of our life experience is filtered through our bodies – norms, myths, and cultural standards continue to shape the way that we and the world feel about our bodies and how we see ourselves.

Feminism says these rules are bullshit. Our bodies can be tools to conform or a way to resist. Feminism is necessary to help us learn and unlearn things about ourselves and the world we live in. Feminism is for all of us, for every single body.

This collection take us from an examination of skin and hair, to an exploration of pleasure, sex, and safety. They explore the way our bodies change, our health, and how we become who we are. They examine the way that institutions can trap us, how we can trap ourselves, and the importance of our hearts in all of this.

By the time Shana Fife is 25 she has two kids from different fathers. To the coloured people she grew up around, she is a jintoe, a jezebel, jas, a woman with mileage on the p*ssy. She is alone, she has no job and, as she is constantly reminded by her family, she is pretty much worthless and unloveable. How did she become this woman, the epitome of everything she was conditioned to strive not to be?

Unsettlingly honest and brutally blunt, Ougat is Shana Fife’s story of survival: of surviving the social conditioning of her Cape Flats community, of surviving sexual violence and depression, and of ultimately escaping a cycle of abuse. Exploring themes of sexuality, marriage and motherhood, rape, drugs and depression and cultural identity, Shana describes – with the self-deprecating humour her followers love so much – what it means to be a coloured woman, who gives coloured womanhood meaning and, ultimately, how surviving life as a coloured woman means being OK with giving a giant ‘f*ck you’ to the norm.

A powerful, fresh and disarming new voice – Shana’s writing is like nothing you’ve read before.

Former Secret Service Special Agent Evy Poumpouras shares the insights and skills from one of the oldest elite security forces in the world - to help you prepare for stressful situations, instantly read people, influence how you're perceived, and live a more fearless life.

From gruelling training to clandestine interrogation rooms, to protecting the President of the United States of America, Evy shares rare behind-the-scenes glimpses while also exploring the psychology of human behaviour and the strategies used by the best negotiators. Evy demonstrates how we can learn from these experiences to heighten our own natural instincts to detect BS, develop grit and become the most resilient and powerful version of ourselves.

Becoming Bulletproof is a timely guide to empowerment, mental strength, and overcoming fear and abuse - a guide to becoming bulletproof.

Teaching Strategies for Quality Teaching and Learning provides an introduction to nine teaching strategies that can be used in a range of educational settings, from school to higher education.

The teaching strategies presented in the book forms the foundation for quality teaching and learning, and each strategy is approached in a pragmatic way, with a focus on when, why and how the strategy can be used.

Land is a significant and controversial topic in South Africa. Addressing the land claims of those dispossessed in the past has proved to be a demanding, multidimensional process. In many respects the land restitution programme that was launched as part of the county's transition to democracy in 1994 has failed to meet expectations, with ordinary citizens, policymakers, and analysts questioning not only its progress but also its outcomes and parameters. Land, memory, reconstruction, and justice brings together a wealth of topical material and case studies by leading experts in the field who present a rich mix of perspectives from politics, sociology, geography, social anthropology, law, history and agricultural economics. The collection addresses both the material and the symbolic dimensions of land claims, in rural and urban contexts, and explores the complex intersection of issues confronting the restitution programme, from the promotion of livelihoods to questions of rights, identity and transitional justice. This valuable contribution is undoubtedly the most comprehensive treatment to date of South Africa's post-apartheid land claims process and will be essential reading for scholars and students of land reform for years to come.

Parcel of Death recounts the little-told life story of Onkgopotse Abram Tiro, the first South African freedom fighter the apartheid regime pursued beyond the country’s borders to assassinate with a parcel bomb.

On 29 April 1972, Tiro made one of the most consequential revolutionary addresses in South African history. Dubbed the Turfloop Testimony, Tiro’s anti-apartheid speech saw him and many of his fellow student activists expelled, igniting a series of strikes in tertiary institutions across the country. By the time he went into exile in Botswana, Tiro was president of the Southern African Student Movement (SASM), permanent organiser of the South African Student Organisation (SASO) and a leading Black Consciousness proponent, hailed by many as the ‘godfather’ of the June 1976 uprisings.

Parcel of Death uses extensive and exclusive interviews to highlight significant influences and periods in Tiro’s life, including the lessons learned from his rural upbringing in Dinokana, Zeerust, the time he spent working on a manganese mine, his role as a teacher and the impact of his faith in shaping his outlook. It is a compelling portrait of Tiro’s story and its lasting significance in South Africa’s history.

‘A biography of Onkgopotse Tiro, who was at once a catalyst and an active change agent in the South African struggle for freedom, is long overdue. For generations to come, this book will be a source of valuable information and inspiration.’ – MOSIBUDI MANGENA

This is a memoir about the life of an extraordinary South African poet, educator, and activist that tells a lesser-known social history of people, families, communities and places.

Poli Poli is intentional in grounding Masekela’s experiences in a social history of the country over generations. Masekela uses her life story to illustrate the features and characteristics that typified life in particular places, like Kwa-Guqa in the 1940s, Johannesburg, Alexandra Township, and Inanda Seminary School (for Coloured girls) in Mpumalanga.

This memoir is filled with intimate details about the growing pains of a childhood inhibited by strict beliefs and systems, first-hand experiences of struggle and sacrifice, violence and other forms of inhumanity and the deep scars they etch, while also telling the story of the author’s life-giving relationship with her siblings. Poli Poli is a remarkable history that speaks to issues of then and now – belonging, African identity, women’s rights, and femininity, and is written in the lyricism and transporting detail of one of the country’s greatest wordsmiths.

City Of Broken Dreams brings the global debate about the urban university to bear on the realities of South African rust-belt cities through a detailed case study of the Eastern Cape motor city of East London, a site of significant industrial job losses over the past two decades. The cultural power of the car and its associations with the endless possibilities of modernity lie at the heart of the refusal of many rust-belt motor cities to seek alternative development paths that could move them away from racially inscribed, automotive capitalism and cultures. This is no less true in East London than it is in the motor cities of Flint and Detroit in the US.

Since the end of the Second World War, universities have become increasingly urbanised, resulting in widespread concerns about the autonomy of universities as places of critical thinking and learning. Simultaneously, there is increased debate about the role universities can play in building urban economies, creating jobs and reshaping the politics and identities of cities.

In City Of Broken Dreams, author Leslie Bank embeds the reader's understanding of the university within a history of industrialisation, placing-making and city building.

In November 2019 het My Only Story, Deon Wiggett se sensasionele weeklikse podsending, SuidAfrika meegevoer in sy jag op die pedofiel wat hom as skoolseun verkrag het. Nou, in ’n Enkele verhaal, vertel hy vir die eerste keer ’n Afrikaanse storie in Afrikaans – en voltooi hy sy ontmaskering van Willem Breytenbach, die eens briljante onderwyser en latere mediabaas wat ’n donker lewe gelei het.

Deon se missie om ’n monster aan die kaak te stel, neem hom van Breytenbach se hoërskooljare by die landbouskool op Kroonstad na die beroemde Grey Kollege in Bloemfontein en die globale reus Naspers. Maar sy kruistog gaan soveel verder. Namate hy sistemiese tekortkominge by beroemde sowel as obskure skole ondersoek, onthul hy ’n kultuur van aandadigheid wat ’n ernstige gevaar vir ál Suid-Afrika se kinders inhou. In die loop van sy ondersoek na mans wat op kinders jag maak, skep Deon ’n model wat enigiemand kan gebruik om pedofiele in hul midde te identifiseer. In sy eie woorde: “Dit is aangenaam om voor te gee dat mans nie kinders verkrag nie, maar as jy eers aanvaar dat dit gebeur, word dit verrassend maklik om die roofdiere uit te ken. Wanneer jy eers ’n universele patroon met ’n spesifieke man se profiel vergelyk, kan jy die bedrog raaksien voor dit te laat is.”

’n Enkele verhaal is ’n boeiende, deurdagte en verrassend ondeunde storie van een man se vasberadenheid om sy kindertrauma te verwerk, ander te help om hul eie demone in die oë te kyk, en om ’n stukkie skoonheid terug te wen uit die jeug wat hy verloor het.

200 women from a variety of backgrounds are asked the same five questions. Their answers are inspiring human stories of success and courage, love and pain, redemption and generosity. From well-known activists, artists, and innovators to everyday women whose lives are no less exceptional for that, each woman shares her unique replies to questions like “What really matters to you?” and “What would you change in the world if you could?” Interviewees include US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, actor and human rights activist Alfre Woodard, and Nobel laureate Jodi Williams, along with those who are making a difference behind the scenes around the world, such as Marion Wright Edelman, head of the Children’s Defense Fund.

Each interview is accompanied by a photographic portrait, resulting in a volume that is compelling in word and image — and global in its scope and resonance. This landmark book is published to coincide with an immersive travelling exhibition and an interactive website, building on this remarkable, ever-evolving project. With responses ranging from uplifting to heartbreaking, these women offer gifts of empowerment and strength inviting us to bring positive change at a time when so many are fighting for basic freedom and equality.

Local interviewees include Graça Machel, Caster Semenya, Zelda la Grange, Mpho Tutu van Furth, Hlubi Mboya, Sahm Venter, Joanne Fedler, Ingrid le Roux, Gillian Slovo and Zoleka Mandela, among others.

A minimum of 10% of the project’s revenue will be distributed to organisations devoted to protecting and advancing the rights of women. Each interviewee can nominate an organisation (or themselves if they are in financial need) to receive their portion of the charitable pool or they can select the principal charitable partner, the Graça Machel Trust.

In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever.

This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn’t always see me.

As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you.

Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.

Piet Matipa is jonk, swart, gay en Afrikaans. Sy rubrieke in Beeld is baie gewild omdat dit aan ’n sonderlinge lewensuitkyk uitdrukking gee. Hy praat vanuit ’n perspektief wat jy nie sommer in Suid-Afrika kry nie. Sy siening van die wêreld is gevorm deur interessante bestemmings waar sy lewenspad aangedoen het. As skolier aan Hoërskool Waterkloof en student aan die Pukke het Piet uitgeblink. Sy skryftande is geslyp as joernalis in Beeld se misdaadkantoor en as sepieskrywer vir 7de Laan , waar hy steeds werksaam is. Nie sleg vir iemand wat in ’n kinderhuis grootgeword het nie!

Afrikaans het sy lê op ’n unieke manier in Piet se mond gekry. En vir één ding deins hy nie terug nie: dit is om sy mond verby te praat. In Dwarsklap laat Piet hom uit oor aangeleenthede wat alle Suid-Afrikaners raak. Misdaad en taxi-bestuurders is groot klippe in die skoen. Wenke oor gewigsverlies word gegee, en ook hoe om ’n ontkleedanser by ’n henneparty te kry. En oor liefdesavonture kan jy vir Piet min vertel, veral wanneer sosiale media betrokke is.

’n Hoogs vermaaklike boek wat die donkerte van die lewe in ligte skakerings laat glim.