It is January, 1978. Groups of nervous, dutiful white conscripts begin their National Service with Rhodesia's security forces. Ian Smith's minority regime is in its dying days and negotiations towards majority rule are already under way. For these inexperienced eighteen-year-olds, there is nothing to do but go on fighting, and hold the line while the transition happens around them. Dead Leaves is a richly textured memoir in which an ordinary troopie grapples with the unique dilemmas presented by an extraordinary period in history - the specters of inner violence and death; the pressurized arrival of manhood; and the place of conscience, friendship and beauty in the pervasive atmosphere of futile warfare.

In this, the fifth of the Africa! anthologies, Dan Wylie and Patricia Schonstein collaborated to bring together a selection of poems to reveal the beauty, grandeur and exploitation of wild and urban landscapes.

Poems are 'touched' by Africa, in the broadest sense. They focus on the environment while still engaging with emotions of love, loss and longing.

These poems will make your heart both sing and sigh.

Where are the dogs in southern African literature? The short answer is: everywhere, if you keep looking. Few texts centralise them, but they appear everywhere in the corners of people's lives: pets walking alongside, strays in the alleys, accompanying policemen, at the dog shows, outhunting, guarding gates. There are also the related canids- jackals, hyenas, wolves-making real and symbolic appearances. Dogs have always been with us, friends and foes in equal measure. This is the first collection of studies on dogs in southern African literatures. The essays range across many dogs' roles: as guides and guards, as victims and threats. They appear in thrillers and short stories. Their complex relations with colonialism and indigeneity are explored, in novels and poetry, in English as well as Shona and Afrikaans. Comparative perspectives are opened up in articles treating French and Russian parallels. This volume aims to start a serious conversation about, and acknowledgement of, the important place dogs have in our society.

Provides an examination of the social and psychological dimensions of the literary mythology of Shaka, the Zulu founder King, in a genealogy of white writers.

Elephants are in dire straits - again. They were virtually extirpated from much of Africa by European hunters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but their numbers resurged for a while in the heyday of late-colonial conservation efforts in the twentieth. Now, according to one estimate, an elephant is being killed every 15 minutes. This is at the same time that the reasons for being especially compassionate and protective towards elephants are now so well-known that they have become almost a cliche: their high intelligence, rich emotional lives including a capacity for mourning, caring matriarchal societal structures, that strangely charismatic grace. Saving elephants is one of the iconic conservation struggles of our time. As a society we must aspire to understand how and why people develop compassion - or fail to do so - and what stories we tell ourselves about animals that reveal the relationship between ourselves and animals. This book is the first study to probe the primary features, and possible effects, of some major literary genres as they pertain to elephants south of the Zambezi over three centuries: indigenous forms, early European travelogues, hunting accounts, novels, game ranger memoirs, scientists' accounts, and poems. It examines what these literatures imply about the various and diverse attitudes towards elephants, about who shows compassion towards them, in what ways and why. It is the story of a developing contestation between death and compassion, between those who kill and those who love and protect.

Informative and portable, this guide offers a brief yet lively introduction to the life and reign of Shaka Zulu, the most influential leader of South Africa's Zulu Kingdom. As it challenges the previous historiography of the early king, this account reassesses the white resources and delves into a large body of previously-neglected Zulu historical records. Revealing a complex, tough leader--who was neither illegitimate nor sexually deviant, neither mass murderer nor seamlessly successful military genius--this handbook sheds light on the existing myths surrounding Shaka and reconsiders his place in South African history.

Don Maclennan (1929-2009) was one of South Africa’s best-loved teachers and the pre-eminent poet of his generation. Though he matured as a poet only in his fifties, he produced some twenty volumes before his death. None of our poets is more penetrating without cynicism, more beautifully thoughtful, or more readable. The Collected Poems gathers some 600 poems, including all the published volumes as well as numerous poems printed in periodical magazines and hitherto unavailable in one book. It shows clearly the poet’s development towards a style of increasing spareness and lucidity of image. No poetry in the nation reveals greater passion for the mere fact of being alive or greater clarity of vision; few can match its uncompromising honesty and courage in the face of physical collapse and impending death.

Over the decades we have heard a great deal about Shaka, the most famous - or infamous - of Zulu leaders. It may come as a surprise, therefore, that we do not know when he was born, nor what he looked like, nor precisely when or why he was assassinated. In Shaka's case, even these most basic facts of any person's biography remain locked in obscurity. Meanwhile the public image, sometimes monstrous, sometimes heroic, juggernauts on - truly a 'myth of iron' that is so intriguing, so dramatic, so archetypal, and sometimes so politically useful, that few have subjected it to proper scrutiny. Myth of iron: Shaka in history is the first book-length scholarly study to be published. It lays out, as far as possible, all the available evidence - mainly hitherto under-utilised Zulu oral testimonies, supported by other documentary sources - and decides, item by item, legend by legend, what exactly we can know about Shaka's reign. The picture that emerges in this meticulously researched and absorbing 'anti-biography' is very different from the popular narrative we are used to.

Over the decades a great deal has been written about Shaka, the most famous--or infamous--of Zulu leaders. It may come as a surprise, therefore, that even the most basic facts about his life are locked in obscurity. His date of birth, what he looked like, and the circumstances of his assassination remain unknown.
Meanwhile the public image, sometimes monstrous, sometimes heroic, juggernauts on--truly a "myth of iron" that is so intriguing, so dramatic, so archetypal, and sometimes so politically useful that few have subjected it to proper scrutiny.
"Myth of Iron: Shaka in History" is the first book-length scholarly study of Shaka to be published. It lays out, as far as possible, all the available evidence--mainly hitherto underutilized Zulu oral testimonies, supported by other documentary sources--and decides, item by item, legend by legend, what exactly is known about Shaka's reign. The picture that emerges in this meticulously researched and absorbing antibiography is very different from the popular narrative.