Towards socialist democracy is written for those engaged in struggles against capitalism around the world. It examines the history of the struggle for socialism in the twentieth century, and draws on the lessons of the bureaucratic usurpation of the Russian workers' revolution, and of the revolutions that put a bureaucracy in power in China, Cuba and other countries. Outlining the conditions of wealth and poverty in the world economy today, and looking briefly at recent uprisings in Latin America, it argues that socialism is still a necessity, which can only be achieved through nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy, under workers' control and management, on an international scale. It explores the history of the battle for national and social liberation in South Africa, from the 1920s through the 1980s, critically examining the policies of the leadership of the South African Communist Party. Finally, it reviews the economic record of the ANC government since 1994 and stresses the need for a mass workers' party in South Africa to take up the struggle for national (and international) social justice and socialism.

The struggle for the Eastern Cape 1800-1854: Subjugation and the roots of South African democracy reconstructs our understanding of a period that has been given little attention in the historical narratives of South African democracy. It is a narrative of the land struggles of the Xhosa and other indigenous populations against subjugation by the British ruled Cape Colony in the first half of the 19th century. The book also examines an important turning point in South African history: the introduction of a non-racial franchise in 1854 which represented the roots of democracy in this country. By the end of the 19th century this franchise had nurtured generations of African voters, amongst them the founders of the 20th century African nationalists who fought for democracy against white minority rule.

The Gordonia region of the Northern Cape province has received relatively little attention from historians. In Hidden Histories of Gordonia: Land dispossession and resistance in the Northern Cape, 1800-1990, Martin Legassick explores aspects of the generally unknown 'brown' and 'black' history of the region. Emphasising the lives of ordinary people, his writing is also in part an exercise in 'applied history' - historical writing with a direct application to people's lives in the present. Tracing the indigenous history of Gordonia as well as the northward movement of Basters and whites from the western Cape through Bushmanland to the Orange River, the book presents accounts of family histories, episodes of indigenous resistance to colonisation, and studies of the ultimate imposition of racial segregation and land dispossession on the inhabitants of the region. A recurrent theme is the question of identity and how the extreme ethnic fluidity and social mixing apparent in earlier times crystallised in the colonial period into racial identities, until with final conquest came imposed racial classification.