there is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
Patric Tariq Mellet, The Truth about Cape Slavery: The Foundations of Colonial South Africa (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2024) CAPE slavery has often been described as relatively benign, a sideshow to the main drama of South […]
EVERY Monday morning in the grounds of our local Anglican church modest food parcels are handed out. This began at a garden gate during the pandemic to help people who had lost jobs and resorted […]
Graham Coetzer, Hunting with the Hawks: Untold Stories from the Elite South African Crime-Fighting Unit (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2024) THE FAMED Scorpions, the Directorate of Special Operations which fell under the NPA and combined investigative […]
Beverley Roos-Muller, Hunting the Seven: How the Gugulethu Seven Assassins were Exposed (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2024) THE ATTEMPTED ambush of a police van in Gugulethu on 3 March 1986 resulted in the deaths of seven […]
FOR the last few years of my formal working life, I was employed in the newsroom of a medium-size, well-established paper. It was a happy experience in a non-hierarchic, team-orientated environment and a relief after […]
Roy Isacowitz and Jeremy Gordin, High Times: The Extraordinary Life of a Joburg Dope Smuggler (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2024) CHARM, charisma and confidence are worth more than any academic qualification; but they can spill over […]
Antonio Garcia and Ian van der Waag, Botha, Smuts and the First World War (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2024) MEMORIALS to generals Louis Botha and Jan Smuts have not fared well in recent years; removed or […]
THE rather crude image of a political tent with one’s adversaries outside pissing in, or alternatively inside pissing out, is attributed to US President Lyndon Johnson. In South Africa, following the 29 May elections the […]
Glenn Orsmond, Crash and Burn: A CEO’s Crazy Adventures in the SA Airline Industry (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2024) FOR nearly thirty years I was regularly told that higher education needed to follow a business model. […]
‘THE constant rolling of the vessel coupled with my intense occupation in the wheelhouse with the screen of the Gee machine soon brought me to the extremes of sea-sickness. I felt absolutely dreadful and was […]