Taking in the years of the pandemic, McMillan’s poetry takes us on a trip through his life and imagination, his hopes, observations and dreams. It’s never less than an interesting journey. He is an accessible, humorous and tender writer. He is one of Scotland’s best.

McMillan's Galloway, a witty and irreverent look at contemporary Dumfries and Galloway, provides a suitably individualistic snapshot of a place which operated for so long as an independent entity completely separate from its neighbours, Scotland and England. McMillan takes us on a rollicking tour from the Mull of Galloway to Langholm, through land once shrouded in myth and populated by warriors, emigrants, fairies and liars, rooting out the truth and the fiction and frequently confusing them.

Born in Pondoland in 1917, Oliver Tambo cut his political teeth in the ANC Youth League. This book traces his role as a leader of the legal ANC through the Defiance Campaign, the Congress of the People and the Treason Trial, and his evolution from militant ‘Africanism’ towards acceptance of the idea of the ANC as open to people of different racial groups and political persuasions. The book also traces his role from the aftermath of Sharpeville in 1960 as, for 30 years, the pre-eminent leader of the ANC in exile in London, Tanzania and Zambia. It shows how, placing himself at the political centre of the organisation, he held the ANC together through great difficulties, managing its relations with African states and great powers, and steering it towards the negotiated end of apartheid. The book analyses the sources of Tambo’s strength as a leader, emphasizing his integrity and commitment to democracy, and the importance to him of religion, music and family.

Jack Simons: Teacher, Scholar, Comrade is a pocket biography informed by personal knowledge of its subject, and firsthand experience of the ANC in exile in Zambia, as well as by research in the archives and interviews. Born in 1907, Jack Simons was one of the leading left-wing intellectuals – and one of the greatest teachers – in 20thcentury South Africa. As a lecturer in African Studies at the University of Cape Town from 1937 until he was prevented from teaching by the government in 1964, and thereafter through his lectures and writings in exile, he had a profound effect on the thinking of generations of white and black students and on the liberation movement as a whole. As Albie Sachs wrote in an obituary in The Guardian (1995), ‘It is not just the way he influenced so many individuals. It was the impact he had on the culture of a people. The new South African Constitution requires that the values of an open and democratic society should be nurtured. Simons fought all his life both for openness and democracy. His intellectual rigour, the honesty of his person, the sweep of his information, the humanity of his vision and interactiveness and the vitality of his ideas, imprinted themselves on the generation that fought hardest for liberty and made the most direct contribution to achieving the new constitutional order.’

Chris Hani is one of the most iconic black leaders in South Africa's recent history. His assassination in 1993 by far-right wingers threatened to upset the negotiations process and required Mandela's televised address to the nation to calm tempers. This short biography brings out his role in MK and in the politics of the early 1990s, and is written by a distinguished historian who met Hani in exile in Lusaka.

The Conversation of Sheep is a book by, for, and about sheep. For those who live in the country sheep are strange punctuation marks in life, chewing insouciantly in the background while folk are born, work, live and die below the great and sundering sky. Some of these poems feature sheep as bucolic extras in the film of life, others delve deep into the secret nature and personalities of sheep themselves. Hugh McMillan is an award winning poet and Michael Robertson, whose photographs also populate this book, is a shepherd who lives in the same village.

An omnibus collection of concise and up-to-date biographies of four influential figures from modern African history. Chris Hani, by Hugh Macmillan Chris Hani was one of the most highly respected leaders of the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party, and uMkhonto we Sizwe. His assassination in 1993 threatened to upset the country's transition to democracy and prompted an intervention by Nelson Mandela that ultimately accelerated apartheid's demise. Wangari Maathai, by Tabitha Kanogo This concise biography tells the story of Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner who devoted her life to campaigning for environmental conservation, sustainable development, democracy, human rights, gender equality, and the eradication of poverty. Josie Mpama/Palmer: Get Up and Get Moving, by Robert R. Edgar Highly critical of the patriarchal attitudes that hindered Black women's political activism, South Africa's Josie Mpama/Palmer was an outspoken advocate for women's social and political equality, a member of the Communist Party of South Africa, and an antiapartheid activist. Ken Saro-Wiwa, by Roy Doron and Toyin Falola A penetrating, accessible portrait of the Nigerian activist whose execution galvanized the world. Ken Saro-Wiwa became a martyr and symbolized modern Africans' struggle against military dictatorship, corporate power, and environmental exploitation.

This handy, concise biography describes the life and intellectual contribution of Max Gluckman (1911-75) who was one the most significant social anthropologists of the twentieth century. Max Gluckman was the founder in the 1950s of the Manchester School of Social Anthropology. He did fieldwork among the Zulu of South Africa in the 1930s and the Lozi of Northern Rhodesia/Zambia in the 1940s. This book describes in detail his academic career and the lasting influence of his Analysis of A Social Situation in Modern Zululand (1940-42) and of his two large monographs on the legal system of the Lozi. From the Introduction: Max Gluckman was the most influential of a group of social anthropologists who emerged from South Africa during the 1930s into what was essentially a new academic discipline. His description and analysis of events in real time implied a rejection of contemporary social anthropological practice, of the ‘ethnographic present’, and of hypothetical or conjectural reconstructions and an acceptance of the need to study ‘primitive’ societies in the context of the modern world.

On 8 January 2012 the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, the oldest African nationalist organisation on the continent, celebrated its one hundredth anniversary. This historic event has generated significant public debate within both the ANC and South African society at large. There is no better time to critically reflect on the ANC's historical trajectory and struggle against colonialism and apartheid than in its centennial year. One Hundred Years of the ANC is a collection of new work by renowned South African and international scholars. Covering a broad chronological and geographical spectrum and using a diverse range of sources, the contributors build upon but also extend the historiography of the ANC by tapping into marginal spaces in ANC history. By moving away from the celebratory mode that has characterised much of the contemporary discussions on the centenary, the contributors suggest that the relationship between the histories of earlier struggles and the present needs to be rethought in more complex terms. Collectively, the book chapters challenge hegemonic narratives that have become an established part of South Africa's national discourse since 1994. By opening up debate around controversial or obscured aspects of the ANC's century-long history, One hundred years of the ANC sets out an agenda for future research. The book is directed at a wide readership with an interest in understanding the historical roots of South Africa's current politics will find this volume informative. This book is based on a selection of papers presented at the One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Liberation Histories and Democracy Today Conference held at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg from 20-23 September 2011.

This work represents the definitive account of the Jewish community in central Africa. It tells the story of the coming of the first Jews to the area in the late 19th century, the heyday of the Jewish community in the mid-20th century, and its decline since Zambian independence. Dealing primarily with the Jewish traders in Zambia who flourished in the face of both anti-semitism and their own acute social dislocation, Macmillan explores a number of interrelated topics: the colonial office discussions about Jewish immigration in the 1930s, the attempts to settle refugees in Africa by both pro- and anti-semites, Jewish religious life in the region, and the remarkable cultural and professional role played by the Jewish settlers. Setting these issues in the context of a general history of southern and central Africa, this book constitutes a major contribution to our understanding of the economic history of the entire region. It will be of interest to both historians of Africa and anyone concerned with economic development, identity and immigrant communities.

Heliopolis is Hugh McMillan's sixth collection of poetry. The poems range from his kitchen table to Greece, St Petersburg and Mars. He finds the universal in the purely local and the local in the universal. Where people live, breath, hope and suffer that's where his poetry is, as legacy, dream and testament.

This biography shows how Black political leader Chris Hani's life and death were pivotal to ending apartheid and to establishing a democratic government in South Africa. Chris Hani is one of the most iconic figures in South Africa's history, as a leader within the African National Congress (ANC) and as chief of staff of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC. His assassination in 1993 by a far-right militant threatened negotiations to end apartheid and install a democratic government. Serious tensions followed the assassination, leading Nelson Mandela to address the nation in an effort to avert further violence: Tonight I am reaching out to every single South African, black and white, from the very depths of my being. A white man, full of prejudice and hate, came to our country and committed a deed so foul that our whole nation now teeters on the brink of disaster. A white woman, of Afrikaner origin, risked her life so that we may know, and bring to justice, this assassin. The cold-blooded murder of Chris Hani has sent shock waves throughout the country and the world... Now is the time for all South Africans to stand together against those who, from any quarter, wish to destroy what Chris Hani gave his life for: the freedom of all of us. Hugh Macmillan's concise biography details Hani's important role in shaping twentieth-century South African history.