A remarkable new book about a dark stain on modern South Africa – our enormous and problematic prison population – and what we can do to fix it.

"Lock them up and throw away the key!" is a cry we hear often in South Africa today. But this simplistic solution to crime simply isn’t working. As Father Babychan Arackathara, a Catholic chaplain to some of the Western Cape’s most notorious prisons, shows in this compassionate reflection on his work, even criminals have stories, and crime invariably has roots. He listens to those stories and untangles those roots on our behalf, sharing insights into the brokenness of our society and communities – and offering real, workable suggestions for fixing them.

Can we move to the ideal of hating the crime, but loving the criminal? What must we do to see that offenders are themselves victims and to engage them constructively? How do we break the cycles of addiction, trauma and crime to reach for reconciliation and transformation?

For nearly eighty years, a huge portion of coastal South Africa was closed off to the public. With many of its pits now deemed “overmined” and abandoned, American journalist Matthew Gavin Frank sets out across the infamous Diamond Coast to investigate an illicit trade that supplies a global market. Immediately, he became intrigued by the ingenious methods used in facilitating smuggling particularly, the illegal act of sneaking carrier pigeons onto mine property, affixing diamonds to their feet, and sending them into the air.

Entering Die Sperrgebiet (“The Forbidden Zone”) is like entering an eerie ghost town, but Frank is surprised by the number of people willing—even eager—to talk with him. Soon he meets Msizi, a young diamond digger, and his pigeon, Bartholomew, who helps him steal diamonds. It’s a deadly game: pigeons are shot on sight by mine security, and Msizi knows of smugglers who have disappeared because of their crimes. For this, Msizi blames “Mr. Lester,” an evil tall-tale figure of mythic proportions.

From the mining towns of Alexander Bay and Port Nolloth, through the “halfway” desert, to Kleinzee’s shores littered with shipwrecks, Frank investigates a long overlooked story. Weaving interviews with local diamond miners who raise pigeons in secret with harrowing anecdotes from former heads of security, environmental managers, and vigilante pigeon hunters, Frank reveals how these feathered bandits became outlaws in every mining town.

Interwoven throughout this obsessive quest are epic legends in which pigeons and diamonds intersect, such as that of Krishna’s famed diamond Koh-i-Noor, the Mountain of Light, and that of the Cherokee serpent Uktena. In these strange connections, where truth forever tangles with the lore of centuries past, Frank is able to contextualize the personal grief that sent him, with his wife Louisa in the passenger seat, on this enlightening journey across parched lands.

Blending elements of reportage, memoir, and incantation, Flight of the Diamond Smugglers is a rare and remarkable portrait of exploitation and greed in one of the most dangerous areas of coastal South Africa.

Hulle lieg, bedrieg, gee voor. Hulle verdraai, verdoesel, verduister, verwoes. Geleidelik palm hulle jou vertroue in. Dan, eensklaps, is jy jou geld, status en reputasie kwyt. Só oortuigend doen hulle dit dat selfs die slimste, mees ingeligte mense ’n rat voor die oë gedraai word en eers besef wat hulle getref het nadat grootskaalse skade aangerig is en die gladdebek soos mis voor die son verdwyn het. Maar selfs swendelaars kom hulle moses teë...

Boereverneukers vertel die stories van Afrikaanses wat van ons land se grootste skelmstreke gepleeg het.

Van die karakters is minder bekend by die publiek, maar ander het byna mitiese status in die Afrikaanse psige verwerf, soos die kubuskoning Adriaan Nieuwoudt, die pynmasjienman Gervan Lubbe, die kamma-pediater André Esterhuizen, die Hertzogville-profeet David Francis en die Trustbank-rowers Derek Whitehead en Antonie van der Merwe.

Dalk het jý ook deurgeloop, maar praat tot vandag toe nie graag daaroor nie.

'I was made in Coffee Bay. Right there on the beach, in the sand.'

From the opening lines, we are drawn in and engrossed by this startling memoir of a singular childhood. Suzan is adopted as a newborn in the late 1960s into a seemingly loving and welcoming family living in Pietermaritzburg. But Suzan is set on a collision course with, most particularly, her adoptive mother, and society, from her very beginning. Suzan's relationship with her mother is fraught with drama, which veers over into a level of emotional abuse and needless cruelty that is shocking.

At the age of thirteen, Suzan is sent to a place of safety as a ward of the state, effectively 'orphaning' her. From there, she spirals out of control – fighting to survive in a world of other neglected, abandoned and abused children. She becomes a 'runner', escaping at every opportunity from her various places of confinement, grabbing her schooling in snatches, living on the edges of a drug and prostitution underworld, finding love wherever she can.

Suzan’s young life was the stuff of movies, but it is her writing, in a voice that is unforgettable and true, that transforms her memories into something magical rarely matched in South African literature. A new classic.

This South African story is an invitation to enrich conversations that could lead to social transformation and social cohesion in racially polarized world.

The book implicitly acknowledges that many white people have sought to be part of the journey towards racial harmony, but in most cases, it has been done without a paradigm shift on the part of white compatriots. It has been done with very limited understanding of the black world and with many assumptions.

The author is honest and raw, without placing judgements on his childhood experiences, simply telling it like it was. There are moments of brilliant humor, one can be laughing aloud, and minutes later, are hit like a punch in the gut by something unjust that happened or was observed. The art and power of effective and excellent storytelling is on display in this book. The storytelling is masterful.

The book leaves one with a feeling of challenge, a dose of hope-filled reality -- not just reality, and not false 'peace' talk -- but a discussion of hope-filled reality.

Charles Abrahams is a world-class lawyer who sued multinationals for colluding with the apartheid government, but at twelve he was determined to become a world-famous heartsurgeon. Then a school inspector shattered his dream: coloured children from the Cape Flats 'should not aim too high'. Class Action is the story of how Charles aimed high anyway, despite a childhood that included forced removal, dire poverty and the deep sense of shame of being neither white nor a 'white coloured'. As one of eleven children in a poor family, he experienced constant hardship and family strife.

Violence was ubiquitous: his street was notorious for its gang fights, his father abused his mother at home, and schoolteachers beat darker-skinned children like him. Charles wanted a larger life, and he found it through student politics, anti-apartheid activism and reading. He studied relentlessly, finding not only formidable political weapons, but a means to delve into the damage apartheid had done to his personal identity, selfesteem, sexuality and morality. He went on to qualify as a lawyer and, after defending local gangsters, he sought to do good through human-rights and class-action law. He has since spearheaded some of South Africa’s most historic, groundbreaking lawsuits, pursuing justice for ordinary citizens whose lives were ruined by powers too profit-driven to ever think about them.

Class Action depicts a remarkable journey of resistance and healing in reaction to institutionalised greed and racism and the harm it has done to our identities, our relationships and the people of our country.

The Steinhoff crash wiped more than R200bn off the JSE, erased half the wealth of tycoon Christo Wiese and knocked the pension funds of millions of people.

When it was exposed as a house of cards, tales of fraudulent accounting, lavish spending and ructions in the ‘Stellenbosch mafia’ made the headlines. As regulators tally up the cost, Financial Mail editor Rob Rose reveals the real inside story behind Steinhoff. Based on interviews with key players in South Africa, the UK, Germany and the Netherlands – and documents not yet public – Steinheist reveals:

• How Bruno Steinhoff formed the company in the Communist bloc and apartheid South Africa;
• How the ‘Markus myth’ grew thanks to a ‘bit of luck’ in a 1998 takeover;
• How Jooste insiders shifted nasty liabilities off Steinhoff’s balance sheet to present a false picture of the profits;
• How Wiese was lucky to lose only R59bn and; and
• What happened behind closed boardroom doors in the frantic week before Jooste resigned.

Moet ek bly of emigreer? Is hier plek vir my in Suid-Afrika?

Ons moet ons besluite as morele keuses benader. Ons het dan minder keuses om te maak omdat ons al daardie selfsugtige keuses van die tafel af vee. Morele keuses organiseer ons opsies beter in verskillende kompartemente vanaf eties tot oneties, en vanaf nuttig tot nutteloos. 

Ons wil hê ons lewens moet iewers tel, daarom maak ons gedurig goeie keuses. Ons maak morele keuses - ook wanneer ons reis-en-verblyf keuses maak.

The presidential campaign in the USA grabbed the global imagination. It also grabbed the feminist imagination, presenting the hope that if a woman could become the president of the USA, women throughout the world would finally break through the reinforced glass ceiling. However, when it didn’t happen, the lost opportunity became the metaphorical kick in the feminist gut on a global scale. Through the subsequent misogyny, vulgarity, lewd comments, the pussy grabbing video, and the threats of the erosion of feminist activism in the trenches, worldwide a deep mourning arose from the feminist community. It was the name calling of “nasty women” that really smarted. Initial feelings of anger gave rise to empowerment of women — those who talk back to patriarchy — to embrace the label of “nasty women”.

The idea for the collection was born, cradled and nurtured between friends who wanted to create a space for writing and thinking about the marches. The group of feminists who contributed to this collection used the marches and the posters inspired by the marches as a vehicle which galvanised women into action to put pen to paper and show fervour for ongoing feminist activism.

The nexus of this beautifully written and evocatively illustrated collection is telling narratives that link very personal stories with deeply political issues. These are the stories told by nasty women who are making the personal political, who are seeking to live their lives in ways that resist and challenge patriarchy. Through their very intimate nature these are stories that speak to the creation of a different kind of social order, one based on equity, the promotion of human rights and social justice.

A message for today’s women – it is time for you to step into your starring role.

Being empowered is a choice; it is a daily decision that defines who we are and it is accessible to everyone. Meeting Your Power is a reminder that power is inside all of us, and that your journey to empowerment begins with you!

This is the story of two remarkable women, DJ Zinhle and Nokubonga Mbanga, who have experienced life’s ups and downs. They share the lessons learnt on their life journeys through inspirational words - words that will invoke your inner power, words that will help you return home to your essence, and words that will encourage you to return to the source of your power, the power that we are all born with.

Being an empowered woman is more than just doing, it is also about being. This book will show you how to look at power differently and will help you to unleash and harness your inner power with honest, simple and practical examples and advice. Most importantly, you will learn that your greatest empowerment project is being authentically you, every day. Prepare to meet your power and radiate your possibilities. Let’s ignite a movement of women and girls who understand the higher meaning of love for oneself and others, who appreciate and celebrate our collective growth; who nurture a solid mindset of achievement and who value creating, protecting and preserving our inner peace.

Rise and Raise!

A secret torment for some, a proud responsibility for others, ‘black tax’ is a daily reality for thousands of black South Africans. In this thought-provoking and moving anthology, a provocative range of voices share their deeply personal stories.

With the majority of black South Africans still living in poverty today, many black middle-class households are connected to working-class or jobless homes. Some believe supporting family members is an undeniable part of African culture and question whether it should even be labelled as a kind of tax. Others point to the financial pressure it places on black students and professionals, who, as a consequence, struggle to build their own wealth. Many feel they are taking over what is essentially a government responsibility. The contributions also investigate the historical roots of black tax, the concept of the black family and the black middle class.

In giving voice to so many different perspectives, Black Tax hopes to start a dialogue on this widespread social phenomenon.

Enemy Of The People is the first definitive account of Zuma’s catastrophic misrule, offering eyewitness descriptions and cogent analysis of how South Africa was brought to its knees – and how a nation fought back.

When Jacob Zuma took over the leadership of the ANC one muggy Polokwane evening in December 2007, he inherited a country where GDP was growing by more than 6% per annum, a party enjoying the support of two-thirds of the electorate, and a unified tripartite alliance. Today, South Africa is caught in the grip of a patronage network, the economy is floundering and the ANC is staring down the barrel of a defeat at the 2019 general elections. How did we get here?

Zuma first brought to heel his party, Africa’s oldest and most revered liberation movement, subduing and isolating dissidents associated with his predecessor Thabo Mbeki. Then saw the emergence of the tenderpreneur and those attempting to capture the state, as well as a network of family, friends and business associates that has become so deeply embedded that it has, in effect, replaced many parts of government. Zuma opened up the state to industrial-scale levels of corruption, causing irreparable damage to state enterprises, institutions of democracy, and the ANC itself.

But it hasn’t all gone Zuma’s way. Former allies have peeled away. A new era of activism has arisen and outspoken civil servants have stepped forward to join a cross-section of civil society and a robust media. As a divided ANC square off for the elective conference in December, where there is everything to gain or to lose, award-winning journalists Adriaan Basson and Pieter du Toit offer a brilliant and up-to-date account of the Zuma era.

Falling Monuments, Reluctant Ruins: The Persistence of the Past in the Architecture of Apartheid interrogates how, in the era of decolonisation, post-apartheid South Africa reckons with its past in order to shape its future. Architects, historians, artists, social anthropologists and urban planners seek answers in this book to complex and unsettling questions around heritage, ruins and remembrance.

What do we do with hollow memorials and political architectural remnants? Which should remain, which forgotten, and which dismantled? Are these vacant buildings, cemeteries, statues, and derelict grounds able to serve as inspiration in the fight against enduring racism and social neglect? Should they become exemplary as spaces for restitution and justice? The contributors examine the influence of public memory, planning and activism on such anguished places of oppression, resistance and defiance. Their focus on visible markers in the landscape to interrogate our past will make readers reconsider these spaces, looking at their landscape and history anew.

Through a series of 14 empirically grounded chapters and 48 images, the contributors seek to understand how architecture contests or subverts these persistent conditions in order to promote social justice, land reclamation and urban rehabilitation. The decades following the dismantling of apartheid are surveyed in light of contemporary heritage projects, where building ruins and abandoned spaces are challenged and renegotiated across the country to become sites of protest, inspiration and anger.

This ground-breaking collection is an important resource for professionals, academics and activists working in South Africa today.

In Dockside Reading, Isabel Hofmeyr traces the relationships among print culture, colonialism, and the ocean through the institution of the British colonial Custom House.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, dockside customs officials would leaf through publications looking for obscenity, politically objectionable materials, or reprints of British copyrighted works, often dumping these condemned goods into the water. These practices, echoing other colonial imaginaries of the ocean as a space for erasing incriminating evidence of the violence of empire, informed later censorship regimes under apartheid in South Africa.

By tracking printed matter from ship to shore, Hofmeyr shows how literary institutions like copyright and censorship were shaped by colonial control of coastal waters. Set in the environmental context of the colonial port city, Dockside Reading explores how imperialism colonizes water.

Hofmeyr examines this theme through the concept of hydrocolonialism, which puts together land and sea, empire and environment.

The human soul has a built-in yearning for joy and beauty and all good things. But that craving for life has taken a real beating in recent years. Between false promises of ease and comfort on one side and the sheer trauma of global disease and disasters on the other, people today are facing a shortage of peace, happiness, and strength.

In Resilient, Eldredge provides skills and tools to strengthen your heart and soul--and reveals a path toward genuine recovery and resilience provided by Jesus himself. Drawing on wisdom from Scripture and Christian tradition, and illustrated throughout with powerful, true stories of grit and survival.

Resilient will help readers:

• Recover from the trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Tap into "supernatural graces" like the river of life that God promises his people
• Learn to be patient with themselves--genuine recovery from spiritual and emotional trauma takes time and intentionality
• Create a plan, because resilience and victory aren't going to come with a swipe on your home screen
• Discover deep wells of freedom and strength through Christ who lives within us

Thriving requires a resilient soul. This book will help readers find the resilience they need when the world has gone mad--and discover in Jesus himself the strength that prevails.

“Rebels And Rage is a critically important contribution to public discussion about #FeesMustFall”–Eusebius McKaiser

Adam Habib, the most prominent and outspoken university official through the recent student protests, takes a characteristically frank view of the past three years on South Africa’s campuses in this new book. Habib charts the progress of the student protests that erupted on Wits University campus in late 2015 and raged for the better part of three years, drawing on his own intimate involvement and negotiation with the students, and also records university management and government responses to the events. He critically examines the student movement and individual student leaders who emerged under the banners #feesmustfall and #Rhodesmustfall, and debates how to achieve truly progressive social change in South Africa, on our campuses and off.

This book is both an attempt at a historical account and a thoughtful reflection on the issues the protests kicked up, from the perspective not only of a high-ranking member of university management, but also Habib as political scientist with a background as an activist during the struggle against apartheid. Habib moves between reflecting on the events of the last three years on university campuses, and reimagining the future of South African higher education.

Here is the Cape Town underworld laid bare, explored through the characters who control the protection industry, the bouncers and security at nightclubs and strip clubs.

At the centre of this turf war is Nafiz Modack, the latest kingpin to have seized control of the industry, a man often in court on various charges, including extortion. Investigative journalist Caryn Dolley has followed Modack and his predecessors for six years as power has shifted in the nightclub security industry, and she focuses on how closely connected the criminal underworld is with the police services. In this suspenseful page turner of an investigation, she writes about the overlapping of the state with the underworld, the underworld with the upperworld, and how the associated violence is not confined to specific areas of Cape Town, but is happening inside hospitals, airports, clubs and restaurants and putting residents at risk.

A book that lays bare the myth that violence and gangsterism in Cape Town is confined to the ganglands of the Cape Flats, wherever you find yourself, you’re only a hair’s breadth away from the enforcers.

When you next sit down at your local coffee shop, look around you: there may just be a professional hitman sitting at the next table. As author Mark Shaw reveals in this highly original and informative book, the ‘upper world’ sails perilously close to the underworld.

Hitmen For Hire takes the reader on a journey like no other, navigating a world of hammermen (hitmen), informers, rogue policemen, taxi bosses, gang leaders and crooked businessmen. The book examines a system in which contract killings have become the norm, looking at who arranges hits, where to find a hitman, and even what it is like to be a hitman – or woman.

Since 1994, South Africa has witnessed some spectacular underworld killings associated with various industries and sectors. Drawing on over a thousand cases, from 2000 to 2016, Shaw reveals how these murders have an outsized impact on the evolution of both legal and illegal economic activity.

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.

When South Africa’s golden girl of broadcasting, Tracy Going’s battered face was splashed across the media back in the late 1990s, the nation was shocked. South Africans had become accustomed to seeing Going, glamorous and groomed on television or hearing her resonant voice on Radio Metro and Kaya FM. Sensational headlines of a whirlwind love relationship turned horrendously violent threw the “perfect” life of the household star into disarray.

What had started off as a fairy-tale romance with a man who appeared to be everything that Going was looking for – charming, handsome and successful – had quickly descended into a violent, abusive relationship.

“As I stood before him all I could see were the lies, the disappearing for days without warning, the screaming, the threats, the terror, the hostage-holding, the keeping me up all night, the dragging me through the house by my hair, the choking, the doors locked around me, the phones disconnected, the isolation, the fear and the uncertainty.”

The rosy love cloud burst just five months after meeting her “Prince Charming” when she staggered into the local police station, bruised and battered. A short relationship became a two-and-a-half-year legal ordeal played out in the public eye. In mesmerising detail, Going takes us through the harrowing court process – a system seeped in injustice – her decline into depression, the immediate collapse of her career due to the highly public nature of her assault and the decades-long journey to undo the psychological damages in the search for safety and the reclaiming of self. The roots of violence form the backdrop of the book, tracing Going’s childhood on a plot in Brits, laced with the unpredictable violence of an alcoholic father who regularly terrorised the family with his fists of rage.

“I was ashamed of my father, the drunk. If he wasn’t throwing back the liquid in the lounge then he’d be finding comfort and consort in his cans at the golf club. With that came the uncertainty as I lay in my bed and waited for him to return. I would lie there holding my curtain tight in my small hand. I would pull the fabric down, almost straight, forming a strained sliver and I would peer into the blackness, unblinking. It seemed I was always watching and waiting. Sometimes I searched for satellites between the twinkles of light, but mostly the fear in my tummy distracted me.”

Brilliantly penned, this highly skilled debut memoir, is ultimately uplifting in the realisation that healing is a lengthy and often arduous process and that self-forgiveness and acceptance is essential in order to fully embrace life.

South Africans often are deeply polarised in our perspectives of the present and the past. Our ‘ways of seeing’ are fraught with division, and we fail to understand the complexities when we do not see what lies beneath the surface.

There is no denying that the Jacob Zuma presidency took a significant toll on South Africa, exacerbating tensions and exposing the deep fractures that already exist in our society along the lines of race, class and even ethnicity. The Zuma years were marked by cases of corruption and state capture, unprecedented in their brazenness, and increased social protests – many of which were accompanied by violence – aggressive public discourse, lack of respect for reason and an often disturbing resistance to meaningful engagement.

Importantly, those years also placed enormous pressure on our democratic institutions, many of which still bear the scars, and challenged the sovereignty of the Constitution itself.

As an analyst and governance specialist at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) for twelve years, February has had a unique perch. Turning and turning is a snapshot of her IDASA years and the issues tackled, which included work on the arms deal and its corrosive impact on democratic institutions, IDASA’s party-funding campaign, which February helped lead, as well as work on accountability and transparency.

Combining analytical insight with personal observations and experience, February highlights the complex process of building a strong democratic society, and the difficulties of living in a constitutional democracy marked by soaring levels of inequality. There is a need to reflect on and learn from the country’s democratic journey if citizens are to shape our democracy effectively and to fulfill the promise of the Constitution for all South Africans.

This searingly observant illustrated history of the women of Crossroads during the 1970s and 1980s tells a history of past and present organised resistance movements led by black women.

“I heard about the famous women of the Crossroads struggle, which resulted in Crossroads being the only African informal settlement in the 1970s to successfully resist the apartheid bulldozers… I wanted to know what happened to the women who spearheaded the struggle for Crossroads,” so says Koni Benson, the author of this graphic novel-style history, and lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the Western Cape.

Illustrated by South African political cartoonists, André and Nathan Trantraal, together with Ashley Marais, Crossroads: I Live Where I Like, joins some recent histories which are written for both children and adults alike. The candid illustration style and the deeply felt text is a testament not just to the team who produced the book, but to the remaining women of Crossroads, who wanted their stories to have the widest reach possible.

Crossroads: I Live Where I Like is a crucial exploration of a neglected part of South African history. It has all the hallmarks of a book that will be regarded as a pioneer in both form and content.

An essential guide for those dealing with the Cape Water Crisis and for general water saving in South and southern Africa, a notoriously water-scarce region.

Three provinces in South Africa have been declared national disaster zones because of drought. The way we think about water needs to change, and fast. This is especially true for those of us who have running water and flush sanitation piped into our homes. For millions of South Africans, water is already a precious resource that costs toil to collect and fuel to heat. Our middle-class expectations that water will gush steaming from our dozens of indoor taps 24/7 are going to look as bizarre to future generations as the spectacle of Cleopatra bathing in asses’ milk. Our Roman-orgy relationship with water is over.

This book will hopefully help to alleviate water panic and distress. A “can-do” compendium, it’s meant to be a guide, not prescriptive – not all solutions or tips are one-size-fits-all. Think of it as an ally in your fight to save water and part of your survival kit, along with the first-aid box; Valium for water-worriers.

As a boy in Rwanda, Pie-Pacifique Kabalira-Uwase survived war atrocities, but he had to leave home if he wanted to stay safe. Pie-Pacifique now recounts his childhood and his experiences of the genocide.

He prepares to flee and ends up in South Africa. He works as a car guard in Durban, dreaming of university. Despite obstacles, he enrols at university and receives the Mandela-Rhodes Scholarship.

In this rewarding journey of self-discovery, we witness Pie-Pacifique reach for his dreams.

Between 2013 and 2017, a team of researchers from the Human Sciences Research Council undertook a longitudinal qualitative study that tracked eighty students from eight diverse universities in South Africa and documented their experiences at these higher education institutions. Midway through the study, the student protests erupted and focused national attention on many of the stories we had already heard. In the subsequent years of the study, we also heard from students who were actively involved in these transformation struggles as well as those who sat on the side-lines.

Studying While Black is an intimate portrait of the many ways in which students in South Africa experience university, and the centrality of race and geography in their quest for education and ultimately emancipation. Students voices can be heard directly in a 45 minute documentary that accompanied this study entitled Ready or Not!: Black students’ experiences of South African universities – freely available on social media.