Rosie Motene's story is about a young girl born to the Bafokeng nation during the apartheid era in South Africa.

At the time, Rosie’s mother worked for a white Jewish family in Johannesburg who offered to raise the child as one of their own. This generous gesture by the family created many opportunities for Rosie but also a trail of sacrifices for her parents. As she grew, Rosie struggled to find her true identity.

She had access to the best of everything but as a black girl she floundered without her own culture or language. This book describes Rosie’s journey through her fog of alienation to the belated dawning of herself discovery as an African.

Glossy is a story of more than a magazine. It is a story of passion and power, dizzying fortune and out-of-this-world fashion, of ingenuity and opportunism, frivolity and malice. This is the definitive story of Vogue.

Vogue magazine started, like so many great things do, in the spare room of someone's house. But unlike other such makeshift projects that flare up then fizzle away, Vogue burnt itself onto our cultural consciousness.

Today, 128 years later, Vogue spans 22 countries, has an international print readership upwards of 12 million and nets over 67 million monthly online users. Uncontested market leader for a century, it is one of the most recognisable brands in the world and a multi-million dollar money-making machine. It is not just a fashion magazine, it is the establishment. But what - and more importantly who - made Vogue such an enduring success?

Glossy will answer this question and more by tracing the previously untold history of the magazine, from its inception as a New York gossip rag, to the sleek, corporate behemoth we know now. This will be a biography of Vogue in every sense of the word, taking the reader through three centuries, two world wars, plunging failures and blinding successes, as it charts the story of the magazine and those who ran it.

National Book Club Conference ‘Book of the Year’ Award Winner!

From her more than three hundred appearances for film and television, stage and cabaret, performing comedy or drama, as an unforgettable lead or a scene stealing supporting character, Jenifer Lewis has established herself as one of the most respected, admired, talented, and versatile entertainers working today. This “Mega Diva” and costar of the hit sitcom black-ish bares her soul in this touching and poignant—and at times side-splittingly hilarious—memoir of a Midwestern girl with a dream, whose journey took her from poverty to the big screen, and along the way earned her many accolades.

With candor and warmth, Jenifer Lewis reveals the heart of a woman who lives life to the fullest. This multitalented “force of nature” landed her first Broadway role within eleven days of her graduation from college and later earned the title “Reigning Queen of High-Camp Cabaret.” In the audaciously honest voice that her fans adore, Jenifer describes her transition to Hollywood, with guest roles on hits like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Friends. Her movie Jackie’s Back! became a cult favorite, and as the “Mama” to characters portrayed by Whitney Houston, Tupac Shakur, Taraji P. Henson, and many more, Jenifer cemented her status as the “Mother of Black Hollywood.”

When an undiagnosed mental illness stymies Jenifer’s career, culminating in a breakdown while filming The Temptations, her quest for wholeness becomes a harrowing and inspiring tale, including revelations of bipolar disorder and sex addiction.

Written with no-holds-barred honesty and illustrated with more than forty color photographs, this gripping memoir is filled with insights gained through a unique life that offers a universal message: “Love yourself so that love will not be a stranger when it comes.”

Across three decades of democracy, South Africa has seen an outpouring of longform, narrative journalism and creative nonfiction – genres in which some of the country’s finest writers have tried to make sense of a complex and changing society. This brand new, one-of-a-kind anthology collects some of the best nonfiction published since the end of apartheid, carefully selected and introduced by editors Sean Christie and Hedley Twidle.

From the underworld of zama-zama goldminers to the tragicomic closure of a Cape Town Zoo, from stick fighting to punk rock, game lodges to fruit farms, cricket pitches to mermaids, The Interpreters: South Africa’s New Nonfiction assembles a range of true stories that are often more far-fetched, and more compelling, than any fiction.

Creative nonfiction in South Africa has often been found at the margins of our media – in zines, journals, now defunct magazines and personal blogs. It is a kind of writing that has, in general, not made much financial sense – more a medium for those obsessed with pursuing a single story over months or years. In The Interpreters, the editors have combed through 30 years of post-apartheid writing to produce a collection that combines preeminent names with lesser known but no less immersive and powerful works of nonfiction – voices that deserve to be read and that represent fresh interpretations of a nation’s history.

Featuring J. M. Coetzee • Kimon de Greef • William Dicey • Alexandra Dodd • Madeleine Fullard • Mark Gevisser • Anna Hartford • Anton Harber • Michiel Heyns • Anton Kannemeyer • Bongani Kona • Rustum Kozain • Antjie Krog • Alastair Laird • Adrian Leftwich • Lidudumalingani • Bongani Madondo • Rian Malan • Zanele Mji • Mogorosi Motshumi • Nosisi Mpolweni • Julie Nxadi • Njabulo Ndebele • Lindokuhle Nkosi • Sean O’Toole • Kopano Ratele • Warren Raysdorf • Srila Roy • Lin Sampson • Kwanele Sosibo • Jonny Steinberg • Niren Tolsi • Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon • Roger Young • Percy Zvomuya

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.

Dr Abdullah Abdurahman (1872–1940) was the first person of colour ever to be elected to political office in South Africa. He represented some of the poorest people in Cape Town on the City Council and then the Provincial Council. First winning a seat in 1904, he was to serve the city for 36 years. Beloved by the people of District Six, for whom he fought so hard, Dr Abdurahman is a forgotten giant of the fight for justice.

The grandson of slaves, he trained as a doctor in Scotland, returning to the Cape with a Scottish wife. Nellie and he were powerful partners – and their daughter, Cissie Gool, was among the most important political figures of her generation. Dr Abdurahman led the African Political Organisation – the leading coloured party of this period. He was a friend and ally of key political figures of his time: Sol Plaatje, Walter Rubusana, Mahatma Gandhi and W.P. Schreiner. He was a leading advocate of black unity, working tirelessly to resist the onslaught of white racism.

The doctor was among the most internationally admired South Africans of his generation, arguing his case on delegations to London and India. He led South African Indians to Delhi, confronted the Viceroy and made a memorable address to the Indian National Congress. At his death in 1940 Cape Town ground to a halt as the entire community paid their respects.

Drawing on previously undiscovered material, this biography lifts Dr Abdurahman from the obscurity into which he has so unjustly sunk – explaining his life against the background of the difficult times in which he lived.

Martina Dahlmanns, the daughter of parents who grew up in the shadow of post-war Germany, an adoptive mother of children who are black, and a member of a dialogue group of black and white women, urgently questions the very depths of what it means to be white in South Africa today. Her deeply personal memoir is unsettling because of what it reveals simultaneously about the enduring impact of inherited privilege and the repercussions of disadvantage

Her book is unsettling, precisely because of what it reveals simultaneously about the enduring impact of inherited privilege and the repercussions of disadvantage. But it is Dahlmanns’ dialogue with Tumi Jonas—whose own reflections appear in the last section of the book—that reveals so much of what’s possible, yet potentially destructive, in relationships between black and white South Africans today.

Set amid the civil rights movement, this is the true story of NASA's African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America's space program.

Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as 'Human Computers', calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts, these 'coloured computers' used pencil and paper to write the equations that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.

Moving from World War II through NASA's golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the women's rights movement, 'Hidden Figures' interweaves a rich history of mankind's greatest adventure with the intimate stories of five courageous women whose work forever changed the world.

The post-school education and training system in South Africa has been the focus of much attention since the establishment of the Department of Higher Education and Training in 2009. In the context of deepening inequality, poverty and unemployment, the need for a humanising, liberating and critical approach to learning and pedagogy in post-school education is becoming urgent. The rural and urban voices that speak in this book tell us that the current system is out of touch with the ways in which they are making a life.

Learning for Living challenges policy makers, researchers, educators and civil society organisations to think critically about the relationship between post-school education and the world of work, and about how to transform the post-school system to better serve the needs and interests of rural and urban communities. It issues a call to action, and proposes key principles to inform an alternative vision of post-school learning.

With prose like jazz – thrilling, mysterious, playful – Oyama Mabandla excavates the values that created a steady flow of pioneering South Africans under impossible conditions.

Can these values, maligned in 1994, be recaptured and set South Africa on its best trajectory?

The Hawks, South Africa’s elite crime-fighting force, have put scores of our worst criminals behind bars. In this book, investigative journalist Graham Coetzer offers us a rare glimpse into the secretive world of this top police unit.

While exposing the deviousness of South Africa’s dangerous criminals, Hunting with the Hawks is also an ode to the hard work and dedication of the best of our police service.

What is it like to be born dirt-poor in South Africa? Clinton Chauke knows, having been raised alongside his two sisters in a remote village bordering the Kruger National Park and a squatter camp outside Pretoria. Clinton is a young village boy when awareness dawns of how poor his family really is: there’s no theft in the village because there’s absolutely nothing to steal. But fire destroys the family hut, and they decide to move back to the city. There he is forced to confront the rough-and-tumble of urban life as a ‘bumpkin’.

He is Venda, whereas most of his classmates speak Zulu or Tswana and he has to face their ridicule while trying to pick up two or more languages as fast as possible. With great self-awareness, Clinton negotiates the pitfalls and lifelines of a young life: crime and drugs, football, religion, friendship, school, circumcision and, ultimately, becoming a man. Throughout it all, he displays determination as well as a self-deprecating humour that will keep you turning the pages till the end.

Clinton’s story is one that will give you hope that even in a sea of poverty there are those that refuse to give up and, ultimately, succeed.

Why do these large financial institutions with hundreds of billions on their books fail out of the blue? What role do central banks play in these dramatic failures? How can the global financial system be reformed to be more resilient, and what path should South Africa take?

In a world where banks are perceived as unshakeable fortresses, there is a worrying truth that lies just beneath the surface: banks are far more fragile and fail more frequently than we choose to believe.

In the US alone, more than 560 banks have failed since the turn of the century. In South Africa, the collapse of Saambou in 2002 sparked the A2 Banking Crisis, which saw half the country’s banks deregistered in the aftermath. In 2023, the high-profile failures of Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic Bank, Signature Bank and Credit Suisse dominated global headlines and set off waves of panic across the international banking landscape.

What happens when death becomes the ultimate marker of one’s commitment to one’s freedom? What happens when the opposite of freedom is not unfreedom but death, not slavery but mortality? How are we to think of the right to life when a political demand for dignity and honor might be more important than life itself?

Dying for Freedom explores these questions by drawing on archival evidence from South Africa to show how death and conflicting notions of sacrifice dominated the struggle for political equality in that country. This political investment in death as a marker of commitment to the anti-apartheid struggle encouraged a masculinist style of politics in which the fight for freedom was seen and understood by many activists as a struggle literally for manhood. This investment generated a notion of political sacrifice so absolute that anything less than death was rendered suspect. More importantly, it resulted in a hierarchy of death whereby some deaths were more important than others, and where some deaths could be mourned and others not.

This highly original account of the necropolitics of the liberation struggle will be of interest to students and scholars throughout the humanities and social sciences and to anyone interested in South Africa.

This close media study considers how, squeezed in the moral vice of past and present, Afrikaners look in a mirror that reflects only a beautiful people.

It is an image of upstanding, hard-working citizens. To hold on to that image requires blinkers, sleights of hand and contortion. Above all, it requires an inversion of the liberation narrative in which the wretched of South Africa are the historical oppressors, besieged in their language, their homes, their jobs.

They are the new `grievables', an identity that requires intricate moral manoeuvres, and elision as much of the past as of transformation.