When his cousin was killed in a vicious random attack, the questions Kevin Bloom had been asking as a journalist about the troubling political and social changes in this country took on a devastating personal urgency. Suddenly it felt as though South Africa was no longer the place he had grown up in or the place that felt like home. At times brutal and raw, at times tender and compassionate, Ways of staying is Bloom's critically acclaimed exploration of the violence that characterises the country he lives in, and of how South Africans adjust their lives in order to continue living here. From his cousin's murder in 2006 to the fatal shooting of historian David Rattray, and from the ANC showdown in Polokwane to the xenophobic attacks of winter 2008, Bloom takes the reader on a profoundly moving journey of the heart and mind; a journey that also finds hope in those men and women who believe that South Africa's history can be overcome to create a kinder future.

Running like a red thread through this book are the manifestations of Sino-African relations dating back many centuries. In this way, The Rise and Decline and Rise of China: Searching for an Organising Philosophy takes forward the work MISTRA conducted on the Mapungubwe society, one of the advanced states that existed in southern Africa some 800 years ago, and which enjoyed trade relations with China and other centres in the East. Mapungubwe rose and fell, long before European colonial incursions. Other states emerged in the vicinity, but they also suffered the same fate. When do southern Africa and Africa at large rise again? Are there lessons that the continent can draw from the experience of the Chinese people? If - beyond material considerations - religion, culture and ideology do play a role in the rise, decline and resurgence of a civilization, what are the similarities and contrasts between these regions? Of course, such research cannot ignore the fundamental questions: whence does the current system of social, economic and political relations in China draw its resilience, how adaptable is it, and is it sustainable? As the outcome contained in this book demonstrates, a research exercise of this kind can only be exploratory. It serves merely as a genesis to work that should find new legs. What makes this research report unique, though, is that the treatment of these issues has been undertaken primarily from an African perspective.