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.

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.

Jana Marx, bekende joernalis soos gesien in Devildorp bestudeer die fenomeen van kultusse.

Sy beantwoord vrae soos:

• watter antieke kultusse daar was
• wat die verskil tussen 'n kerk, 'n sekte, die okkulte en 'n kultus is
• watter tipe mens word in 'n kultus ingetrek
• watter kenmerke word in 'n kultusleier gevind?

Kultusse word in verskillende onderafdelings ingedeel: moord- en gedagtebeheerkultusse, korporatiewe kultusse, sekskultusse en politieke kultusse. Jana bekyk bekende plaaslike en internasionele kultusse binne elkeen van hierdie afdelings. Sy verwys ook na die BITE-model van Dr Steve Hassen sodat gewone mense kan uitwerk of geliefdes in 'n kultus vasgekeer is. Daar is 'n hoofstuk met riglyne oor wat om te doen as jou geliefde in 'n kultus is.

Jy kan alles oor kultusse wat jy nog altyd wou geweet het in hierdie boek vind.

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.

Nozibele grew up in a small family in PE. She had a strict Christan mother who raised her to be a good girl. She lived up to her mother’s expectation until she was diagnosed with HIV.

At the time she had only had one sexual partner, her long-term boyfriend. But he was a serial cheater and verbally abusive, and their relationship ended soon after she confronted him. Fearing stigma and needing to maintain her “good girl” image she kept her HIV status a secret. Young, isolated, and facing an existential crisis, she quickly fell into depression. And so began the fight of her life, a journey to find herself, accept herself and fulfil her purpose.

Six years later she came out to the world and her life changed in ways she never could imagine.

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.

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.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Becoming by Michelle Obama.

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America - the first African-American to serve in that role - she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations - and whose story inspires us to do the same.

In 2021, Johannes Radebe became the first male dancer to perform in heels in Strictly Come Dancing history. Wearing black patent leather boots, Johannes danced with a red 'Pose' fan to a rendition of Blondie's Rapture. That year, Johannes was also part of only the second same-sex pair on the show, dancing with Great British Bake-Off winner, John Whaite and though the response from the UK public was overwhelmingly positive, Johannes still faced abuse that highlighted the continuing fight against homophobia and racism.

For Johannes this instantly iconic dance was about more than just a tribute to voguing: it was Johanne's coming out. After that performance, Johannes flew home to South Africa to see his mum and had a conversation about his sexuality - the first they ever had.

In this uplifting memoir that's about overcoming struggles and finding joy, Johannes will explore his upbringing in South Africa, his struggles with bullying and with shame about his sexuality. He will also write about the safety he always felt in the dance studio and, now, in the Strictly Come Dancing family where he feels he has finally found his tribe.

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.

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.

Notes on Grief is an exquisite work of meditation, remembrance, and hope, written in the wake of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s beloved father’s death in the summer of 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, and kept Adichie and her family members separated from one another, her father succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure.

Expanding on her original New Yorker piece, Adichie shares how this loss shook her to her core. She writes about being one of the millions of people grieving this year; about the familial and cultural dimensions of grief and also about the loneliness and anger that are unavoidable in it. With signature precision of language, and glittering, devastating detail on the page—and never without touches of rich, honest humor—Adichie weaves together her own experience of her father’s death with threads of his life story, from his remarkable survival during the Biafran war, through a long career as a statistics professor, into the days of the pandemic in which he’d stay connected with his children and grandchildren over video chat from the family home in Abba, Nigeria.

In the compact format of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, Adichie delivers a gem of a book—a book that fundamentally connects us to one another as it probes one of the most universal human experiences. Notes on Grief is a book for this moment—a work readers will treasure and share now more than ever—and yet will prove durable and timeless, an indispensable addition to Adichie’s canon.

On a freezing winter’s night, a few hours before dawn on 12 May 1969, security police stormed the Soweto home of Winnie Mandela and detained her in the presence of her two young daughters, then aged eight and ten. Rounded up in a group of other anti-apartheid activists under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act, designed for the security police to hold and interrogate people for as long as they wanted, she was taken away. This was the start for Winnie Mandela of a 491-day period of detention and two trials. Forty-one years after her release on 14 September 1970, Greta Soggot, the widow of David Soggot, one of Winnie Mandela’s advocates during the 1969/1970 trials, handed her a stack of papers that included a journal and notes that she had written in detention. 491 Days: Prisoner number 1323/69 shares with the world Winnie Mandela’s moving and compelling journal as well as some of the letters written between affected parties at the time. Readers gain insight into the brutality she experienced, her depths of despair as well as her resilience and defiance under extreme pressure.

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.

The most significant nonfiction writings of Zoë Wicomb, one of South Africa’s leading authors and intellectuals, are collected here for the first time in a single volume.

This compilation features critical essays on the works of such prominent South African writers as Bessie Head, Nadine Gordimer, Njabulo Ndebele, and J.M. Coetzee, as well as writings on gender politics, race, identity, visual art, sexuality and a wide range of other cultural and political topics. Also included are a reflection on Nelson Mandela and a revealing interview with Wicomb.

In these essays, written between 1990 and 2013, Wicomb offers insight on her nation’s history, policies, and people. In a world in which nationalist rhetoric is on the rise and diversity and pluralism are the declared enemies of right-wing populist movements, her essays speak powerfully to a wide range of international issues.

"Hollis's writing is beautifully blunt, and she humbly thanks her fans for her success. Her actionable ideas and captivating voice will encourage women to believe in themselves." - Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

"I believe we can change the world. But first, we've got to stop living in fear of being judged for who we are."

Rachel Hollis has seen it too often: women not living into their full potential. They feel a tugging on their hearts for something more, but they're afraid of embarrassment, of falling short of perfection, of not being enough.

In Girl, Stop Apologizing, #1 New York Times bestselling author and founder of a multimillion-dollar media company, Rachel Hollis sounds a wake-up call. She knows that many women have been taught to define themselves in light of other people--whether as wife, mother, daughter, or employee--instead of learning how to own who they are and what they want. With a challenge to women everywhere to stop talking themselves out of their dreams, Hollis identifies the excuses to let go of, the behaviors to adopt, and the skills to acquire on the path to growth, confidence, and believing in yourself.

A Manifesto For Social Change is the third of a three-volume series that started seven years ago investigating the causes of our country’s – and the continent’s – development obstacles.

Architects of Poverty: Why African Capitalism Needs Changing (2009) set out to explain what role African elites played in creating and promoting their fellow Africans’ misery. Advocates for Change: How to Overcome Africa’s Challenges (2011) set out to show that there were short-term to medium-term solutions to many of Africa’s and South Africa’s problems, from agriculture to healthcare, if only the powers that be would take note. And now, more than 20 years after the advent of democracy, we have A Manifesto For Social Change: How To Save South Africa, the conclusion in the ‘trilogy’.

This book started its life as Gridlocked, but through the process of research undertaken by Moeletsi and Nobantu it has evolved into a different project, a manifesto that identifies some of South Africa’s key problems and what is required to change the country’s downward trajectory.

Writing a Wider War presents a dramatically new interpretation of the role of Boer women in the conflict and profoundly changes how we look at the making of Afrikaner nationalism. African experiences of the war are also examined, highlighting racial subjugation in the context of colonial war and black participation, and showcasing important new research by African historians. The collection includes a reassessment of British imperialism and probing essays on J. A. Hobson; the masculinist nature of life on commando among Boer soldiers; Anglo-Jewry; secularism; health and medicine; nursing, women, and disease in the concentration camps; and the rivalry between British politicians and generals. An examination of the importance of the South African War in contemporary British political economy, and the part played by imperial propaganda, rounds off a thoroughly groundbreaking reinterpretation of this formative event in South Africa's history.

Everything you need to know about race (but were afraid to ask), previously published in 2015 as Black Brain, White Brain: Is Intelligence Skin Deep?.

In academic journals and on internet message boards, certain scientists and thinkers are laying siege to one of the great taboos. Could it be, they ask, that racism has a rational basis in science? These ideas are no longer limited to the fringe: race-based studies of intelligence have been discussed by thinkers such as Steven Pinker, Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson. If true, it would provide an intellectual foundation for so many of the attitudes that characterise the right wing, justifying inequality and discrimination. Gavin Evans tackles the nature vs nurture debate head-on, examining the latest studies on how intelligence develops and laying out new discoveries in genetics, palaeontology, archaeology and anthropology to unearth the truth about our shared past.

In doing so, Skin Deep demolishes the pernicious myth that our race is our destiny, and instead reveals what really makes us who we are.

A gripping true story of bravery and sacrifice by a young woman whose escape from Saudi Arabia captivated the world.

In early 2019, after more than a year of careful planning, Rahaf Mohammed boarded a plane and finally escaped from Saudi Arabia. If caught, she was sure she would be killed, like other rebel women who had tried to flee her country’s oppressive regime. But the eighteen-year-old only made it as far as Bangkok before her passport was taken away. It was a trick, and soon she found herself trapped, barricaded in a hotel room.

As men pounded on her door, the teenager decided to reach out to the world on Twitter – and the world answered. Her account gained forty-five thousand followers overnight and offered her a vital lifeline. This was Rahaf’s chance at a new life, the one she had dreamed of.

Now Rahaf tells her remarkable story for the first time and reveals the dystopian reality of what life is like for women within Saudi Arabia. From the guardianship system, which places unmarried women under the full control of their male relatives, to the secretive online underground network of Saudi runaways plotting their escape, Rebel is a gripping memoir of resistance and bravery by a woman determined to tell the truth about life in the closed kingdom.

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 is the updated 11th edition of the South African classic textbook, Primary Clinical Care Manual, which has been updated in every respect to meet the educational requirements of current nursing students.

Changes made to the Department of Health Standard Treatment Guidelines and Essential Medicines List, and in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, are included in the manual and, as ever, the book has all the current information needed by students for primary health care in South Africa.

Several chapters have been extensively rewritten and updated:

• The upper airways, with a detailed new section on COVID-19 protocols
• Hypertension, with a new section on postnatal patient management
• HIV and AIDs patients
• Contraception
• Epilepsy
• The Skin
• Joints
• Mental Health

Numerous medicine and dosage changes have been made in accordance with Department of Health (DOH) recommendations.

This edition includes the 2018 edition of the Department of Health Primary Care Standard Treatment Guidelines (STGs) and Essential Medicines List (EML). It also includes information obtained from the Hospital Level STGs and EML.

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.

First published in 1967, Ernest Cole’s House of Bondage has been lauded as one of the most significant photobooks of the twentieth century, revealing the horrors of apartheid to the world for the first time and influencing generations of photographers around the globe.

Reissued for contemporary audiences, this edition adds a chapter of unpublished work found in a recently resurfaced cache of negatives and recontextualizes this pivotal book for our time.

Cole, a Black South African man, photographed the underbelly of apartheid in the 1950s and ’60s, often at great personal risk. He methodically captured the myriad forms of violence embedded in everyday life for the Black majority under the apartheid system—picturing its miners, its police, its hospitals, its schools. In 1966, Cole fled South Africa and smuggled out his negatives; House of Bondage was published the following year with his writings and first-person account.

This edition retains the powerful story of the original while adding new perspectives on Cole’s life and the legacy of House of Bondage. It also features an added chapter—compiled and titled “Black Ingenuity” by Cole—of never-before-seen photographs of Black creative expression and cultural activity taking place under apartheid.

Made available again nearly fifty-five years later, House of Bondage remains a visually powerful and politically incisive document of the apartheid era.

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.