This book collates nearly 300 prison letters to and from Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, inspirational political leader and first President of the Pan-Africanist Congress. These letters are testimony to the desolate conditions of his imprisonment and to his unbending commitment to the cause of African liberation.
First published in 1964, Indaba, My Children is an internationally acclaimed collection of African folk tales that chart the story of African tribal life since the time of the Phoenicians. It is these stories that have shaped Africa as we know it.
A collection of thought-provoking and moving essays on Robert Sobukwe, commissioned and edited by his biographer and friend Benjamin Pogrund. Sobukwe was a lecturer, lawyer, founding member and first president of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), and Robben Island prisoner.
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela is the amazing story of a true hero of our times; his famous biography has been specially adapted for children in a beautiful illustrated picture book format. Discover how a little boy whose father called him “troublemaker” grew up to fight apartheid, become South Africa’s first black president and campaign for freedom and justice throughout the world.
Quite Footsteps explores moral themes relating to political and social change in South Africa. An obscene clamour that the poet sees as eviscerating our country’s humanity becomes the catalyst for an excoriating attack on a time that “renders everything as matters of abuse”, and a passionate demand that we find in ourselves – for ourselves, and in honour of the spirits of the dead – the capacity for the humane. This major work by one of South Africa’s poets will trouble every conscience, even as it revives our faltering hope for a healed nation.
Adam Habib, the most prominent and outspoken university official through the recent student protests, takes a characteristically frank view of the past three years on South Africa’s campuses in this new book. This book is both an attempt at a historical account and a thoughtful reflection on the issues the protests kicked up, from the perspective not only of a high-ranking member of university management, but also Habib as political scientist with a background as an activist during the struggle against apartheid.
“I had five paternal uncles, four in South Africa and one in India. For some reason, each uncle had a son named Ebrahim. What a stupid idea. It made me feel like a sausage from a boerewors factory.”
President Cyril Ramaphosa, Nelson Mandela’s preferred successor, faces new problems and new choices since he won his own electoral mandate in May 2019. In the next five years, South Africa will be changed radically by the climate crisis, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, economic stagnation and political unrest among some of its southern African neighbours, and the rising African influence of Russia and China while the West is distracted by the insurgent populism of US President Donald Trump and Brexit.
Traces and Tracks: A Thirty Year Journey with the San documents the history and life of the San in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. It depicts Paul Weinberg’s intimate perspective on the lives of modern-day San over the past 30 years.
Beiles is probably most famous for helping Burroughs get Naked Lunchpublished at Olympia through Girodias, at a time when Burroughs was really strung out on paregoric and/or heroin. His most famous work in print is probably as one of the four contributors (Beiles, Burroughs, Corso & Gysin) of the now legendary cut-up compilation, Minutes to Go, published in 1960.
The SASO/BPC trial which took place from October 1974 until December 21st 1974 played an intrinsic role in the surge of Black Consciousness thought. An ideology founded by Stephen Bantu Biko, which wished to relay the unspoken strength and spirit of the African people.
The anticipated follow-up to Way Up Way Out, this boisterous tale includes the author’s satirical witticisms on serving time in jail and fishing for shad off the rocks at Patty’s Groyne, in South Africa.
Controversial, principled, plain-spoken – Tony Leon, leader of the opposition for thirteen years, is all that and more. Destined from early life as the son of a High Court Judge to make a major impact as an ironclad liberal,
The biography of a politician who played a profound role in the history of the African National Congress, this account follows Kader Asmal from his beginnings as the son of a small-town shopkeeper in Natal through his exile in the UK and his rise to Cabinet minister under Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki.
The book is printed in a sepia tint that integrates the feel of the old photos, recipes, machines, furniture, houses, events, places and characters that populate this interesting book. To look into these scenes is to have that time travel experience where eyes watch you from years gone by and places live again as they did before they fell into the faded collections of photographs and anecdotes that wove them into history.
In 1986 ‘Comrade September’, a charismatic ANC operative and popular MK commander, was abducted from Swaziland by the apartheid security police and taken across the border. After torture and interrogation, September was ‘turned’ and before long the police had extracted enough information to hunt down and kill some of his former comrades.