Free Fall recounts how and why the present education crisis has become the leading cause for black university students in South Africa. Probing deep beneath the surface of the crisis, the book reveals uncomfortable truths about colonial- and apartheid-era education, and traces the tangled web of connections between foreign and South African business interests, the apartheid government, and the role of universities in propping up a white elite and co-opting a subservient black class to their cause.

It brings to life the people and ideas that, over a century-and-a-half, have created a perfect storm for the present crisis in South African higher education. Malcolm Ray combines intellectual rigour with the intimacy of narrative non-fiction, introducing readers to the main protagonists since the end of slavery in 1834, through the rise of missionary education as an instrument of indoctrinating and subjugating black people, and into the apartheid era. Beyond apartheid, the book details how policy blunders by the democratic government since 1994 have conspired with the past to fuel South Africa’s slide into increasing economic and social disarray.

It is the story of the failure of South Africa's democratic government to deal with major fault lines fissuring higher education, and the circumstances that led to the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements. The book ends on a high note, answering the question: ‘What now?’ This book aims to be the beginning of the solution.

Any company that wants to survive in South Africa needs to comply with the final Black Economic Empowerment Codes of Good Practice released in February 2007. The introduction of the codes is the single most important change in commercial practice to affect South African business since the transition to democracy. The BEE codes are the regulations promulgated under the broad-based Black Economic Empowerment Act, 2003. The codes spell out exactly what the government requires from companies in terms of black economic empowerment. The codes treat small companies in a different way from large corporates, giving them much more scope to optimise their scores. This title not only explains all the elements, but provides strategies and tools to smaller businesses for practical implementation of the Codes in the most productive and efficient way.