“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.

When the Soweto uprisings of June 1976 took place, Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, the author of this book, was a 14-year-old pupil at Phefeni Junior Secondary School. With his classmates, he was among the active participants in the protest action against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.

Contrary to the generally accepted views, both that the uprisings were ‘spontaneous’ and that there were bigger political players and student organisations behind the uprisings, Sifiso’s book shows that this was not the case. Using newspaper articles, interviews with former fellow pupils and through his own personal account, Sifiso provides us with a ‘counter-memory’ of the momentous events of that time.

This is an updated version of the book first published by Ravan Press in 1998. New material has been added, including an introduction to the new edition, as well as two new chapters analysing the historiography of the uprisings as well as reflecting on memory and commemoration as social, cultural and historical projects.

At just 17, Fatima Meer threw herself into resisting racism, her first public act of defiance in a long and pioneering political life. Despite assassination attempts, she persevered on the courageous path she had chosen.

In this intimate memoir, Fatima Meer shares her story of growing up and of love, joy, longing and loss. As Meer open-heartedly reflects on her regrets as well as her triumphs, an enchanting tale emerges of a rebellious, revolutionary woman who never shied away from the truth.

Morris Isaacson High School (MIHS) is widely known as the epicentre of the 1976 Soweto uprising. However, its legacy extends far beyond this event. This insightful book explores the rich, untold story of the school, revealing its profound impact on secondary education in Soweto.

While the 1976 uprising cemented MIHS’s place in history, Clive Glaser argues that its true significance lies in its unwavering commitment to quality education during a tumultuous period. Located in the heart of Soweto, MIHS faced immense challenges – poverty, a repressive education system (Bantu Education) and political unrest. Yet, it defied the odds, nurturing generations of successful professionals throughout the 1960s and 1970s. How did MIHS flourish under Bantu Education, and why did its performance not reach its full potential in the democratic era? By examining the interplay between dedicated leadership, a strong alumni network and shifting socio-economic realities, the book provides some compelling answers.

This book is not just about MIHS; it is a testament to the enduring power of education in the fight for social justice. MIHS’s story serves as an inspiration, demonstrating the transformative potential of education, even under the most challenging circumstances.

It’s 1976 in South Africa. Written from the points of view of four young people living in Johannesburg and its black township, Soweto – Zanele, a black female student organiser, Mina, of South Asian background working at her father’s shop, Jack, an Oxford-bound white student, and Thabo, a tsotsi – this book explores the roots of the Soweto Uprising and the edifice of apartheid in a South Africa about to explode.

In the black township of Soweto, Zanele, who also works as a nightclub singer, is plotting against the apartheid government. The police can’t know. Her mother and sister can’t know. No one can know. On the affluent white side of town, Jack Craven plans to spend the last days of his break before university burning miles on his beat-up Mustang, and crashing other people’s parties. Their chance meeting changes everything.

Already a chain of events are in motion: a failed plot, a murdered teacher, a powerful police agent with a vendetta, and a secret network of students across the township. The students will rise. And there will be violence when morning comes.

Introducing readers to a remarkable young literary talent, When Morning Comes offers an impeccably researched and vivid snapshot of South African society on the eve of the uprising that changed it forever.

The Soweto Student Uprising of 1976 was a decisive moment in the struggle against apartheid. It marked the expansion of political activism to a new generation of young activists, but beyond that it inscribed the role that young people of subsequent generations could play in their country's future.

Since that momentous time, students have held a special place in the collective imaginary of South African history. Drawing on research and writing by leading scholars and prominent activists, Students Must Rise takes Soweto '76 as its pivot point, but looks at student and youth activism in South Africa more broadly by considering what happened before and beyond the Soweto moment. Early chapters assess the impact of the anti-pass campaigns of the 1950s, of political ideologies like Black Consciousness as well as of religion and culture in fostering political consciousness and organisation among youth and students in townships and rural areas. Later chapters explore the wide-reaching impact of June 16th itself for student organisation over the next two decades across the country. Two final chapters consider contemporary student-based political movements, including #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall, and historically root these in the long and rich tradition of student activism in South Africa.

2016 marks the 40th anniversary of the 1976 June 16th uprisings. This book rethinks the conventional narrative of youth and student activism in South Africa by placing that most famous of moments - the 1976 students' uprising in Soweto - in a deeper historical and geographic context.

"We came out demonstrating on a cold, wintry morning. But the authorities wouldn't have it. They set police dogs on us. They panel-beat us with batons. They sprayed us with teargas. They came out shooting. Army tanks roared down the streets like angry hippos. The contest was too uneven. We retreated in panic, leaving the ground strewn with casualties from both sides. We couldn't match them stone to bullet."

This important historical novel, first published in 1982 and later banned by the apartheid regime, is now available for literature study at school. It tells, with piercing authenticity, the story of the 1976 Soweto uprising.

Mzamane has created a set of characters whose courage, humour and imperfections fi ll the pages of this book and carry the reader forward on the rising tide of resistance. The novel is accompanied by notes and classroom activities.

The 1976 Soweto uprising represented a real turning point in South Africa's history. Even to contemporaries it seemed to mark the beginning of the end of apartheid. It also brought into the political equation the role of youth, who were to play a vital role in the township revolts of the 1980s.

What commenced as a peaceful and coordinated demonstration rapidly turned into a violent protest when police opened fire on students. Orlando West, the centre of the confrontation on the day, was transformed into a space of political contestation. For the first time, students claimed the streets and schools as their own. Soweto parents were shocked by these events, revealing an important generational divide. Thereafter, forging student and parent unity became a central objective of the liberation movement.

This short history brings alive the sequence of events and delves into the significance the uprising had on South African politics.

This revisionary account of the Soweto Uprising of June 1976 and the decade preceding it transforms our understanding of what led to this crucial flashpoint of South Africa's history. Brown argues that far from there being "quiescence" following the Sharpeville Massacre and the suppression of African opposition movements, during which they went underground, this period was marked by experiments in resistance and attempts to develop new forms of politics that prepared the ground for the Uprising.

Students at South Africa's segregated universities began to re-organise themselves as a political force; new ideas about race reinvigorated political thought; debates around confrontation shaped the development of new forms of protest. The protest then began to move off university campuses and onto the streets: through the independent actions of workers in Durban, and attempts by students to link their struggles with a broader agenda.

These actions made protest public once again, and helped establish the patterns of popular action and state response that would come to shape the events in Soweto on 16 June 1976.

Shortly after the giant bronze statue of Cecil John Rhodes came down at the University of Cape Town, student protestors called for the decolonisation of universities. It was a word hardly heard in South Africa's struggle lexicon and many asked: What exactly is decolonisation? This book brings together some of the most innovative thinking on curriculum theory to address this important question.

In the process, several critical questions are raised:

• Is decolonisation simply a slogan for addressing other pressing concerns on campuses and in society?
• What is the colonial legacy with respect to curricula and can it be undone?
• How is the project of curricula decolonisation similar to or different from the quest for post-colonial knowledge, indigenous knowledge or a critical theory of knowledge?
• What does decolonisation mean in a digital age where relationships between knowledge and power are shifting?

Strong conceptual analyses are combined with case studies of attempts to `do decolonisation' in settings as diverse as South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania and Mauritius. This comparative perspective enables reasonable judgments to be made about the prospects for institutional take-up within the curriculum of century-old universities. Decolonisation in Universities is essential reading for undergraduate teaching, postgraduate research and advanced scholarship in the field of curriculum studies.

In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town demanded the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist, racist business magnate, from their campus. The battle cry '#RhodesMustFall' sparked an international movement calling for the decolonisation of the world's universities.

Today, as this movement grows, how will it radically transform the terms upon which universities exist? In this book, students, activists and scholars discuss the possibilities and the pitfalls of doing decolonial work in the home of the coloniser, in the heart of the establishment. Subverting curricula, enforcing diversity, and destroying old boundaries, this is a radical call for a new era of education.

Offering resources for students and academics to challenge and resist coloniality inside and outside the classroom, Decolonising the University provides the tools for radical pedagogical, disciplinary and institutional change.

On 19 October 1991, Malaika Lesego Samora Mahlatsi was born at the Meadowlands community clinic, one year and eight months after Mandela's release from prison. The Nationalist Party was still in power, but everyone knew that its grip on political power would draw to an inevitable end sooner rather than later. Memoirs of a born free is a journey back through the life of Malaika Wa Azania as she recounts the experience of growing up through the end of apartheid and South Africa's transition into a democratic nation. She was not born during the times of constitutionalised apartheid but is still a product of an epoch of systematic individualised apartheid. Her story is not a reflection of freedom; it is an epitome of the ongoing struggle for liberation and emancipation from mental slavery. The struggle of the generations before that of the born frees was a struggle for political freedom and democracy and was the foundation for revolution and reform but not the ultimate goal. Malaika contests the notion of the born-free generation when it is a generation that was born in the midst of a struggle for economic freedom and the quest for the realisation of the objectives of the African Renaissance. Now 22 years into a democratic dispensation, Malaika describes her life as having been a struggle to understand the "rainbow nation" and to salvage from it something that renders her free. She did not find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that she was told about as a child. She has, however, through the Thabo Mbeki Foundation, found reason to believe in the capacity of the people to escape the nervous conditions that define Black life. She continues to serve the African Youth Coalition with dedication as believes today, without a shadow of doubt, that another Africa is possible. "Democracy is impossible without political freedom, but political freedom is not the ultimate objective of the revolutionary struggle. The ultimate objective is economic freedom; the liberation of the masses of our people from the clutches of economic bondage. But our people remain in chains, so what about this generation which has the mission of freeing them from those chains is "free"? What about us is reflective of a "born-free generation", when our generation is born during a time of the struggle for economic freedom and the quest for the realisation of the objectives of the African Renaissance agenda?" - Malaika Wa Azania.

Breaking a Rainbow, Building a Nation covers the university protests that took place in 2015–2016, better known as the #FeesMustFall protests. Rekgotsofetse (Kgotsi) gives us his first-hand account of what happened prior to the protests and what led to the events of October 2015 at the various university campuses and nationally.

This is a four-part retelling of what happened on the ground amongst the students, first at #RhodesMustFall, then moving to the university responses and management and what ultimately led to #FeesMustFall nationwide. Chikane then looks at student politics now and how they are different from 1976, specifically the fact that the protests were being led by so-called coconuts, who are part of the black elite.

The book poses the provocative question, can coconuts be trusted with the revolution?

Drawing on the wide-ranging artistic experience gained in his years of acting and writing for theatre, Sol first ventured into poetry in 1977. Here he found he could more intensely express the thoughts and feelings garnered from his acute sense of observation.

People, their interaction with the environment and the socio-political and cultural times, the pains and hopes of a generation and the multi-facetted world of an evolving Johannesburg are the inspiration of his deeply-felt poems and ballads. Ordinary activities, every-day occurrences, a chance conversation overheard between two street-cleaners, the brutal death of a young political activist at the hands of security police, observations on the crime, violence and morals of naked Soweto - all are evoked in haunting, nostalgic and sometimes ironic reminiscences which recreate a period slowly fading from memory.

He turns a blistering spotlight on some incidents, encapsulated in a few, searing words. Others he treats with tenderness, understanding and an empathy which resounds within the reader's own emotions. Life at its most basic is counterbalanced by deep philosophic probings. There are unspoken challenges to question and to act as did the young people of those chaotic '70s.

We Are No Longer At Ease is a collection of personal articles, essays, speeches and poetry mainly from voices of young people who were part of the student-led protest movement known as #FeesMustFall which began in 2015. It tells the journey of a youth that participated in a movement that redefined politics in post-apartheid South Africa and is the evidence of a “born free” generation telling their own story and leading discourse as well as action on transforming South Africa.

The collection includes works by the young student leaders turned academic and public commentators such as David Maimela, Thapelo Tselapedi and Sisonke Msimang; student newspaper journalists that were covering the protests like Natasha Ndlebe; public writing commentators with aims to inform and teach the broader South African society about the aspects of the movement like Yamkela Spengane and Rofhiwa Maneta; lecturers who were assisting the students articulate and find clarity in the way they shaped and voiced their ideas such as Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni and then of course others were foot soldiers on the ground leading students through the police brutality of rubber bullets and pepper spray like Loverlyn Nwandeyi, Ntokozo Qwabe and Ramabina Mahapa.

The Detainees’ Parents Support Committee (DPSC) was started in 1981 in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was set up by the parents, spouses and families of activists who were detained and had no recourse to legal intervention. Many in this movement had not been politically involved.

Members of the DPSC stood on street corners with placards calling for the release of their children. They organised food, clothing and legal representation for detainees across the country, and they supported the detainees’ families. DPSC activists marched, petitioned, argued, wrote and protested for the release of all detainees. They made public the brutal operations of the security establishment.

The DPSC helped to draw international attention to the atrocities being perpetuated against children – some as young as nine – by the apartheid state. And the evidence amassed by the DPSC helped to lay some of the groundwork for South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

The Knock On The Door tells the story of the DPSC and of how the anti-detention movement became part of the mass uprising that brought down apartheid. It is an inspiring account of ordinary people coming together to stand up against racism and the abuse of power.