Africa has received $1.2 trillion in development assistance since 1990. Even though donors have spent more than $1 000 per person over these 30 years, the average income of sub-Saharan Africans has increased by just $350. The continent has very little to show for this money, some of which has been consumed by the donors themselves, much of it by local governments and elites. There must be a better way to address the poverty pandemic.

Expensive Poverty is focused on answering the trillion-dollar question: why have decades of spending had such a small impact on improving the lives of the poor? Whatever the area of aid expenditure – humanitarian, governance, military, development – the overall intention should be the same: to try to reach the point that aid is no longer necessary.

Expensive Poverty lays out how to get there.

This book reads like a war-time thriller.

We hear for the first time from internationalists who secretly worked for the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK), in the struggle to liberate South Africa from apartheid rule. They acted as couriers, provided safe houses in the neighbouring states and within South Africa, helped infiltrate combatants across borders, and smuggled tonnes of weapons into the country in the most creative of ways. Driven by a spirit of international solidarity, they were prepared to take huge risks and face danger which dogged them at every turn. At least three were captured and served long terms of imprisonment, while others were arrested and, following international pressure, deported. They reveal what motivated them as volunteers, not mercenaries, who gained nothing for their endeavours save for the self-esteem in serving a just cause.

Against such clandestine involvement, the book includes contributions from key role players in the international Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) and its public mobilisation to isolate the apartheid regime. These include worldwide campaigns like Stop the Sports Tours, boycotting South African products, and black American solidarity.

The Cuban, East German and Russian contributions outline those countries’ support for the ANC and MK. The public, global AAM campaigns provide the dimension from which internationalists who secretly served MK emerged.

This is an invaluable historic resource, explaining in highly readable style the significance of international solidarity for today’s youth in challenging times.

When we say we want to be safe, what do we mean? Is the state capable of achieving this for us? These are important questions for anyone envisioning and building a future anywhere, but especially in South Africa. This book explores contemporary South African society through the lens of law and order, and with the goal of understanding what reform must look like going forward, in a way that is accessible to ordinary citizens who need this most. 

In South Africa, both ‘crime’ and ‘safety’ are loaded terms. Ziyanda Stuurman unpacks the complex and fraught history of policing, courts and prisons in South Africa. In her analysis of the problems nationally and in putting those problems in context with the rest of the world, she concludes that more resources won’t necessarily lead to more safety. What then, will?

Ziyanda unpacks this complex question deftly with a view of a better future for us all.

In this powerful collection of interviews, Noam Chomsky exposes the problems of our world today, as we stand in this period of monumental change, preparing for a more hopeful tomorrow.

"For the left, elections are a brief interlude in a life of real politics, a moment to ask whether it's worth taking time off to vote . . . Then back to work. The work will be to move forward to construct the better world that is within reach."

He sheds light into the phenomenon of right-wing populism, and exposes the catastrophic nature and impact of authoritarian policies on people, the environment and the planet as a whole. He captures the dynamics of the brutal class warfare launched by the masters of capital to maintain and even enhance the features of a dog-eat-dog society. And he celebrates the recent unprecedented mobilizations of millions of people internationally against neoliberal capitalism, racism and police violence.

We stand at a precipice and we must fight to pull the world back from it.

Township Economy provides a unique insight into township informal business and entrepreneurship. It is set in the post-apartheid period, in the third decade of Africa’s democracy and draws on evidence collected from 2010-2018 in 10 township sites, nine in South Africa and one in Namibia. The book focuses on micro-enterprises, the business strategies of township entrepreneurs and the impact of autonomous informal economic activities on urban life.

The book is unique in approach and content. It looks at spatial influences at various gradients, from the city-wide level, to objects, to invisible infrastructure. The analysis examines the influence of power as a tool to dominate and control and thus constraint inclusive opportunities.

This captivating book will be of interest academic researchers, university students and specialists in business studies, urbanism, politics and socio-economic development.

The book selects some past events and experiences, national and international, and wonders what lessons were missed, learnt, or are yet to be learnt from them.

Tragedies happen again and again because we fail to learn from the past. The past is rich with valuable lessons – rich pickings. The reader is taken back into the past in search of some of those lessons, many of which, regrettably, we failed – and continue failing – to learn. As we dig into the past for those rich pickings, there will be moments to laugh, cry or even weep; but that is exactly how lessons are learnt in life.

Other similar incidents learnt from, both abroad and at home, relate to the author’s own experiences in South Africa, including as a Judge who heard amnesty applications as a member of the Amnesty Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The book hopes to show that capacity for evil is not peculiar to any nation or race; it also discusses the dangers of tribalism.

The chapter ‘Beyond the Frontiers’ takes the reader into the rest of Africa. A lot is revealed, including divisions the author witnessed – while serving as an AU judge based in Tanzania – within the AU along the languages of, ironically, colonial masters; also referenced is the sorry state of human rights in Africa. Have we seized the opportunity to learn all the valuable lessons which that great teacher, ‘The Past’, offered?

The author leaves it to readers to make their own final judgement after reading the book as to whether, at the individual and collective levels, we have learnt those lessons and taken them to heart for the good of our individual and collective destiny.

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.

From Morgan Housel, bestselling author of The Psychology of Money, stories about what people have always done, and will always do.

Everyone wants to see the future. Few are good at it. From business to economics, politics to social trends, we’re just not very good at predicting what happens next. According to Morgan Housel, this is because we focus too much on what we think will change and not enough on what we know will stay the same.

If you traveled in time to 500 years ago or 500 years from now, you would be astounded at how much technology and medicine has changed. The geopolitical order would make no sense to you. The language and dialect may be completely foreign. But you’d notice people falling for greed and fear just like they do in our current world. You’d see people persuaded by risk, jealousy, and tribal affiliations in ways that are familiar to you. You’d see overconfidence and short-sightedness that reminds you of people's behavior today. You’d find people seeking the secret to a happy life and trying to find certainty when none exists in ways that are so relatable.

When transported to an unfamiliar world, you’d spend a few minutes watching people behave and say, “Ah. I’ve seen this before. Same as ever.”

History is filled with surprises no one could have seen coming. But if we learn to see what doesn’t change, we can be more confident in our choices, no matter what the future brings.

Contesting one’s place remains central to confronting the lingering impact of colonisation and apartheid, emerging as it does out of the intermingling of our environments, histories, languages and experiences. In this volume, architects, anthropologists, artists, urban planners, activists and historians examine the ways in which people are rethinking, repurposing and reusing colonial and apartheid architecture and infrastructure. They seek to engage with ways in which history, art and architecture practices contest and subvert these protracted conditions in terms of social justice, development, conservation, heritage, land reclamation and urban renewal.

The focus is on colonial environments in different parts of South Africa and Africa to understand the history of disputed places and responses of remembrance, communal consideration, revival and conflict. In recent years, public awareness of the physical and environmental reminders of this past has been sharpened by sporadic campaigns and ongoing disputes around land, gentrification, repatriation and heritage. Globally, there has been a wave of public outcry and contestation about the place of racist names and statues in public spaces, litigation over abandoned and toxic sites, with calls for removal and restitution as an integral part of decolonisation. And there has been recognition of the lived experiences, knowledge and activities through which people and communities build their heritage.

In this context, questions about the place of colonial and apartheid planning and architecture and their past acquire salience and urgency in the present.

The comprehensive sequel to the best seller Great Trek Uncut. This well researched, hard hitting and detailed account of our history covers the period of 1852 through to 1918 and highlights milestone events which affected all the different people of this country from the time of the four independent states through Union and beyond.

Wonderful stories illustrate some of the complexities of our society and show how difficult it was, and is, to mould a homogenous society out of our diverse cultures and people. Throughout the theme of the title re-occurs “It's our land you want”, as the struggle for land, cattle and power characterizes every conflict in our history.

Whilst charting the unfolding history, wonderful stories make the book difficult to put down. Stories which include Nongquase and the decimation of the Xhosa Nation; One President - two Countries; “Daar Kom die Alabama”; Moshesh and the Basuto Wars, The discovery of diamonds, The First South African War, the discovery of gold, the Jameson Raid; the Griqua Trek, the second South African War, the Bambatha Rebellion, the birth of the African National Congress and Nationalist Party, the Boer Rebellion, World War 1 including the Mendi and Delville Wood and many vivid stories which make this not only a comprehensive history book, but and entertaining and easy to read story which brings the people and events to life.

'This century's most compelling theorist of racism and colonialism' Angela Davis 'Fanon is our contemporary ... In clear language, in words that can only have been written in the cool heat of rage, Fanon showed us the internal theatre of racism' Deborah Levy Frantz Fanon's urgent, dynamic critique of the effects of racism on the psyche is a landmark study of the black experience in a white world. Drawing on his own life and his work as a psychoanalyst to explore how colonialism's subjects internalize its prejudices, eventually emulating the 'white masks' of their oppressors, it established Fanon as a revolutionary anti-colonialist thinker. 'So hard to put down ... a brilliant, vivid and hurt mind, walking the thin line that separates effective outrage from despair' The New York Times Book Review

The greatest gift we can give to our children, and the future South Africa, is our own healing.

South Africa may have moved beyond apartheid, but not beyond racial polarisation. Virtually every problem we face in this country is touched by our legacy of systemic racism and the psychological trauma it has caused to people of all races.

Racial healing is not a new, woke, talk shop. It is also not a ‘how-to guide’ for do-gooders. On the contrary, racial healing requires diverse people of all ages to embrace the unique and challenging complexity of racial diversity and to forge a human bridge between multiple opposing truths that can peacefully co-exist.

Only a sober admission of this complexity can help us to heal from the open, festering wound of ongoing racism which has left South Africa with the unenviable distinction of being the most unequal country in the world. A wound not necessarily unique to South Africa, but indeed also the reason behind the violent conflict seen around the world.

Ian Fuhr and co-author Nina de Klerk have created a powerful examination of the deep-rooted causes of continuing racial polarisation in South Africa and suggest a road map for the journey towards racial healing. The book is enhanced by influential collaborators who share their authentic and often emotive perspectives on racial healing.

The Human Bridge is an ambitious but achievable vision of the future. If people are willing to familiarise themselves with each other’s life experiences, own up to their own fears and racial biases, and engage in authentic dialogue, South Africans may once again become an example to the rest of the world.

WITH ESSAYS FROM: Bonang Mohale; Carin Dean; Jonathan Jansen; Leon Wessels; Loretta Feris; Lukhanyo Calata; Max du Preez; Mbali Baduza; Padhma Moodley; Roelf Meyer and Sylvester Chauke.

Although Tijuana has historically been one of the primary crossing points between Mexico and the United States for undocumented migrants, representations of the city primarily focus on its reputation for sex, drugs, and crime, excluding its significance in the international migration dynamic. In Border Lives, Sergio Chavez moves beyond Tijuana's infamous image to tell the story of a diverse group of individuals who live in Tijuana and use both sides of the border as a resource to construct their livelihoods. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, Chavez explores the complex and often contradictory ways in which the border shapes the lives of border crossers. Due to the precarious nature of access to the border, some were only able to use the border as a resource in the past, while others continue to seek ways to access the border in the future. Yet for all of these border crossers-past, present, and future-the border itself plays a significant role not only in their livelihood strategies, but also their lifestyles. The border shapes respondents' knowledge and relationships, controls their time, and allows them to convert U.S. wages into a Mexican standard of living without losing the social and cultural comforts of Tijuana as their home. Beyond mere ethnography, this book provides empirical grounding to theories of how the border shapes human action, offering a substantial contribution to migration and labor theory.

The city is a paradoxical space, in theory belonging to everyone, in practice inaccessible to people who cannot afford the high price of urban real estate. Within these urban spaces are public and social goods including roads, policing, transit, public education, and culture, all of which have been created through multiple hands and generations, but that are effectively only for the use of those able to acquire private property. Why should this be the case? As Margaret Kohn argues, when people lose access to the urban commons, they are dispossessed of something to which they have a rightful claim - the right to the city. Political theory has much to say about individual rights, equality, and redistribution, but it has largely ignored the city. In response, Kohn turns to a mostly forgotten political theory called solidarism to interpret the city as a form of common-wealth. In this view, the city is a concentration of value created by past generations and current residents: streets, squares, community centers, schools and local churches. Although the legal title to these mixed spaces includes a patchwork of corporate, private, and public ownership, if we think of the spaces as the common-wealth of many actors, the creation of a new framework of value becomes possible. Through its novel mix of political and urban theory, The Death and Life of the Urban Commonwealth proposes a productive way to rethink struggles over gentrification, public housing, transit, and public space.

Over the past several decades, postmodernist and postcolonial challenges to traditional theories and methods have revolutionized the social sciences. The discipline of religious studies, however, has been relatively slow to confront these developments, continuing to rely heavily on textual methods and a framework that privileges belief over practice, doctrine over performance, text over context, and inner emotion over public ritual. Recently, however, developments in social theory have begun to transform the study of religion. In this book, Manuel Vasquez maps out the dynamics of this paradigm shift, exploring systematically the epistemological and methodological challenges contemporary social theory poses for traditional approaches to religious studies. Offering a panoramic view of key debates on identity, culture, and society across the social sciences, he assesses the impact of these debates on the study of religion, offering specific examples of how they are shaping the study of particular religious traditions. He concludes by proposing a robust yet flexible materialist approach to the study of religion that will be capable of addressing the increasing complexity of religious life.

Granting Justice takes issue with the characterisation of the South African state as “developmental”. The crucial aspect of care is missing from the practice for this to be the case. Thus, while the grants address the immediate survival needs of many South Africans, social justice requires quite a different approach, an approach of care that would grant agency and dignity to recipients.

Tessa Hochfeld adopts a highly personal narrative style of writing that reflects the ethical standpoint that she took during her research. Telling a story is what makes her writing so strong and distinguishes it in the development literature.

The book falls into the fields of development studies, and social welfare and social development. The following are possible keywords: social justice; gender justice; care; social development; poverty; social protection; southern welfare; family strengthening; developmental social work.

There has been considerable controversy and debate in South Africa (and elsewhere) in recent years over an apparent crisis of the family, including appeals for a return to "traditional" family values. To promote a better understanding of this supposed crisis, Family Matters draws on public opinion data to explore the diverse realities of contemporary family life in South Africa and support appropriate policy responses.

Understanding and explaining the causes and consequences of social change has been an important concern of social theorists throughout the history of sociology. This wide ranging text focuses on a rich and diverse body of theoretical work, from Adam Smith and Comte to Lyotard and Baudrillard, in order to demonstrate the relevance of both classical and contemporary social theory to the wider social world and to show that, while social theory may not deliver all the answers we might like, it does improve the quality of the questions we can ask about how social change comes about, what its effects are and where it is leading us.

A bright portrait of modern Africa that pushes back against harmful stereotypes to tell a more comprehensive story.

You already know these stereotypes. So often Africa is depicted simplistically as an arid red landscape of famines and safaris, uniquely plagued by poverty and strife.

In this funny and insightful book, Dipo Faloyin offers a much-needed corrective. He examines each country's colonial heritage, and explores a wide range of subjects, from chronicling urban life in Lagos and the lively West African rivalry over who makes the best Jollof rice, to the story of democracy in seven dictatorships and the dangers of stereotypes in popular culture.

By turns intimate and political, Africa Is Not A Country brings the story of the continent towards reality, celebrating the energy and fabric of its different cultures and communities in a way that has never been done before.

Arguably sociology's first classic and one of Durkheim's major works, The Division of Labour in Society studies the nature of social solidarity, exploring the ties that bind one person to the next so as to hold society together in conditions of modernity. In this revised and updated second edition, leading Durkheim scholar Steven Lukes' new introduction builds upon Lewis Coser's original - which places the work in its intellectual and historical context and pinpoints its central ideas and arguments - by focusing on the text's significance for how we ought to think sociologically about some central problems that face us today. For example: What does this text have to tell us about modernity and individualism? In what ways does it offer a distinctive critique of the ills of capitalism? With helpful introductions and learning features this remains an indispensable companion for students of sociology. A refreshed translation of one of the key works in the sociological canon, this new edition carefully guides students through the text, critically engaging with Durkheim's writing while clearly explaining his original argument. Additional material and a new introduction by Steven Lukes make this essential reading for scholars and students alike.

From the Great Game to the present, an international cultural and political biography of one of our most evocative, compelling, and poorly understood narratives of history. The Silk Road is rapidly becoming one of the key geocultural and geostrategic concepts of the twenty-first century. Yet, for much of the twentieth century the Silk Road received little attention, overshadowed by nationalism and its invented pasts, and a world dominated by conflict and Cold War standoffs. In The Silk Road, Tim Winter reveals the different paths this history of connected cultures took towards global fame, a century after the first evidence of contact between China and Europe was unearthed. He also reveals how this remarkably popular depiction of the past took hold as a platform for geopolitical ambition, a celebration of peace and cosmopolitan harmony, and created dreams of exploration and grand adventure. Winter further explores themes that reappear today as China seeks to revive the Silk Roads for the twenty-first century. Known across the globe, the Silk Road is a concept fit for the modern world, and yet its significance and origins remain poorly understood and are the subject of much confusion. Pathbreaking in its analysis, this book presents an entirely new reading of this increasingly important concept, one that is likely to remain at the center of world affairs for decades to come.

This important text introduces students to both feminism and other social and political theories via an examination of the inter-relationship between different feminist positions and key contemporary debates. The book takes each debate in turn, outlines the main themes, discusses different feminist responses and evaluates the implications for real-life political and social issues. This user-friendly structure effectively redraws the map of contemporary feminist thought, offering a fresh and succinct summary of an extensive range of material and graphically demonstrating the ongoing relevance and value of a feminist perspective.

First published in 2001, Achille Mbembe's landmark book, On the postcolony, continues to renew our understanding of power and subjectivity in Africa. This edition has been updated with a foreword by professor of African literature, Isabel Hofmeyr, and a preface by the author. In a series of provocative essays, Mbembe contests die hard Africanist and nativist perspectives as well as some of the key assumptions of postcolonial theory. Through his provocation, the `banality of power', Mbembe reinterprets the meanings of death, utopia and the divine libido as part of the new theoretical perspectives he offers on the constitution of power in Africa. He works with the complex registers of bodily subjectivity - violence, wonder and laughter - to contest categories of oppression and resistance, autonomy and subjection, and state and civil society that marked the social theory of the late twentieth century. On the postcolony, like Frantz Fanon's Black skins, white masks, will remain a text of profound importance in the discourse of anticolonial and anti-imperial struggles.

Criticality has attained the status of a buzz-word within academia, in particular, within the social sciences. Nowadays, every research project brazenly shouts its critical credentials from the roof-top. But what exactly is this sought-after, chimerical entity? Who is critical and who is performing criticality in order to keep up with the Joneses? Is criticality a perspective, a discursive practice, an ideology, an activity or as one student of mine once sneeringly put it, 'just a teenage temper tantrum'? Can it be formally taught or is it a series of life-events that has to be experienced? It is the argument of the present work that there are different varieties of criticality being taught, studied and practiced. The most radical, and therefore subversive, form aims to synthesise academic and everyday knowledge in a praxis aimed at emancipation. In this day and age, emancipation cannot be anything other than going beyond global capitalism and its numerous anti-working class, sexist, racist, disabilist, superstitious, alienating and homophobic tendencies. An introductory essay discusses different forms of criticality before it is demonstrated in topics ranging from psychotherapy to sociology of sport, sexuality, cinema, history and politics. The texts chosen for this anthology do not merely critique various aspects of capitalism- they aim to pose alternatives beyond it.