Showing 1–16 of 75 results

  • 20 Battles: Searching for the South African Way of War (1913-2013)

    R330

    In 20 Battles, military historians Evert Kleynhans and David Brock Katz investigate how South Africa’s way of war evolved over a 100-year period. They track the evolution of the doctrine and structure of the South African defence forces, rediscovering historical continuity, if any, and the lessons learned in past battles and operations such as Otavifontein, Delville Wood, Southern Ethiopia, Tobruk, Chiusi, Savannah, Cassinga, Cuito Cuanavale and Boleas.

  • A Long Way Home-Migrant Worker Worlds

    R400

    A Long Way Home captures the humanity, agency and creative modes of self-expression of the millions of workers who helped to build and shape modern South Africa.

    The book spans a three-hundred-year history beginning with the exportation of slave labour from Mozambique in the eighteenth century and ending with the strikes and tensions on the platinum belt in recent years. It shows not only the age-old mobility of African migrants across the continent but also, with the growing demand for labour in the mining industry, the importation of Chinese indentured migrant workers.

    Contributions include 18 essays and over 90 artworks and photographs that traverse homesteads, chiefdoms and mining hostels, taking readers into the materiality of migrant life and its customs and traditions, including the rituals practiced by migrants in an effort to preserve connections to “home” and create a sense of “belonging”. The essays and visual materials provide multiple perspectives on the lived experience of migrant labourers and celebrate their extraordinary journeys.

    A Long Way Home was conceived during the planning of an art exhibition entitled ‘Ngezinyawo: Migrant Journeys’ at Wits Art Museum. The interdisciplinary nature of the contributions and the extraordinary collection of images selected to complement and expand on the text make this a unique collection.

  • Africa Meets Africa: The African Collection of the Museum of Ethnology Rotterdam

    R280

    This catalogue was published as the companion publication to the exhibition ‘Africa Meets Africa: The African Collection of the Museum of Ethnology Rotterdam’. The exhibition tour is sponsored by the Mondriaan Stichting.

  • African Artists: From 1882 to Now

    R1500

    Modern and Contemporary African art is at the forefront of the current curatorial and collector movement in today’s art scene. This groundbreaking new book, created in collaboration with a prestigious global advisory board, represents the most substantial appraisal of contemporary artists born or based in Africa available

  • African Textiles: Colour and Creativity Across a Continent

    R840

    The traditional, handcrafted textiles of Africa are sumptuous, intricate, and steeped in cultural significance. Region by region, African Textiles covers, as no other volume has, the handmade textiles of West, North, East, Central, and Southern Africa, outlining the range of weaving techniques, and the different types of looms, materials, and dyes that create these sumptuous works. Nor does it neglect the cultural context of African textiles, assessing the various influences of religion, culture, trade, tradition, fashion, and the changing role of women that inform their creation.

  • Art+Revolution: The life and death of Thami Mnyele

    R250
  • Beadwork, Art and the Body

    R380

    South African beadwork has a rich and diverse history and is abundantly represented in the beaded art pieces in the Wits Art Museum (WAM) collection. Some works date back to the 4th century CE but most date from the 19th to the 21st centuries. Currently numbering over 9 000 items, the three major collecting areas of classical, historical and contemporary African artworks are broad in their geographical range and deep in some local areas of specialisation.

    Paying homage to this collection, Beadwork, Art and the Body is a compilation of essays by scholars who have researched and written about the traditions, practices and aesthetic forms of beadwork in southern Africa. The book covers an expansive history of beadwork in South Africa from the 19th century to the contemporary moment. The artists and the beadwork featured range from Sotho-, Tsonga-, Xhosa- and Zulu-speakers, ending with a focus on fashion designer Laduma Ngxokolo, whose work has been inspired by Xhosa beadwork. Questions of ethnic affiliation and beadwork patterns are explored in relation to the different aesthetic forms of beadwork and its use as a marker of identity and status within and beyond communities.

     

  • Being Chris Hani’s Daughter

    R250

    When Chris Hani was assassinated in his driveway in April 1993, he left a shocked and grieving South Africa, teetering on the precipice of civil war. But to 12-year-old Lindiwe Hani, it was the love of her life, her daddy, who had been brutally ripped from her world. While the nation continued to revere her father’s legacy, for Lindiwe, being Chris Hani’s daughter became an increasingly heavy burden to bear, propelling her into a downward spiral of cocaine and alcohol addiction in a desperate attempt to avoid the pain of his brutal parting.

  • BibliOdyssey

    R240

    BibliOdyssey’s mission has been to search the dustier corners of the
    internet and retrieve these materials for our enjoyment. Thanks to the
    efforts of this singular weblog, a myriad of long-forgotten imagery has
    now resurfaced.

  • Sale!

    Breyten Breytenbach : A Monologue in Two Voices

    R150

    In this beautiful book on the work of Breyten Breytenbach, Saayman argues that writing and painting form two manifestations of one and the same creative force in Breytenbach’s ouevre.

     

  • Child Of This Soil – My Life as a Freedom Fighter

    R250

    LETLAPA MPHAHLELE, Apla Commander, is that rarest of creatures: a military man with a sensitive, seeking soul. In Child of this Soil, Mphahlele tells his story, giving us an insider’s view into the heart of the armed struggle. After a childhood marked by a questing, rebellious nature, the young Letlapa flees South Africa in search of his destiny. His exile will not end for many years, as he embarks on the turbulent, nomadic life of a guerrilla: swept from one end of Africa to the other, migrating from refugee camp to prison cell to High Command.

  • Conscience of the Human Spirit: The Life of Nelson Mandela: Tributes by Quilt Artists from South Africa and the United States

    R300

    In 2013 the world mourned the passing of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, one of its most revered champions of human rights. Mandela provided a moral compass for how we treat each other, how we lead our own lives, and how we need to continue to strive for a just, fair, nonracial, and democratic society. Artists around the world have long made quilts in tribute to Mandela and in support of and advocacy for the principles to which he was devoted. But it is for South Africans and African Americans that making quilts in tribute to Mandela has had special meaning. Conscience of the Human Spirit, which accompanies an exhibition by the same name, features quilts made after Mandela’s death?diverse and powerful pieces reflect the ways in which this remarkable man touched individual lives, changed a nation, and served as the conscience of the human spirit for individuals around the world.

    This book is a collaborative project of the Michigan State University Museum, Women of Color Quilters Network, and South African quilt artists.

  • Conversation with my elders

    R300

    This book is an important account and history of one of the oldest tribes in Southern Africa. A tribe that has been credited for giving the rise to great Kings such as Kgosi Mogopa, Sechele of Bakwena in Botswana and Moshoeshoe of the Bakwena in Lesotho.

  • Doing Hair: Art and Hair in Africa

    R170

    Catalogue of the Exhibition, Wits arts Museum, 2014 This publication accompanies an exhibition of the same title at Wits art Museum, 20 August – 2 November 2014.

  • Eyes In The Night – An Untold Zulu Story

    R300

    Nomavenda Mathiane stumbled upon her grandmother’s story well over a century after the gruelling events of the Battle of Isandlwana that formed her life. Astounded to hear how her grandmother had survived the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War between the British and Zulu nations as a young girl, Mathiane spent hours with her elder sisters reconstructing the extraordinary life of their grandmother. The result is a sweeping epic of both personal and political battles.

     

    Eyes In The Night is a young Zulu woman’s story of drama, regret, guilt and, ultimately, triumph – set against the backdrop of a Zululand changed beyond recognition.

    A true story almost lost, but for a chance remark at a family gathering.

  • Fallen Idols : Twelve Statues That Made History

    R450

    Statues are one of the most visible – and controversial – forms of historical storytelling. The stories we tell about history are vital to how we, as societies, understand our past and create our future. So whose stories do we tell? Who or what defines us? What if we don’t all agree? How is history made, and why?  FALLEN IDOLS looks at twelve statues in modern history. It looks at why they were put up; the stories they were supposed to tell; why those stories were challenged; and how they came down. History is not erased when statues are pulled down. If anything, it is made.