Hollywood on the Veld
Ted Botha, Hollywood on the Veld: When Movie Mayhem Gripped the City of Gold (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2025) RARELY can the central character of a book appear so elusive. The American Isidore William Schlesinger (IW) […]
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=Comrade & Commander
Ronnie Kasrils and Fidelis Hove (eds), Comrade & Commander: The Life and Times of Joe Modise (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2024) THE EDITORS of this book provide a summary of Joe Modise’s life and then describe it […]
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=Guilty and Proud: An MK Soldier’s Memoir of Exile, Prison and Freedom
Marion Sparg, Guilty and Proud: An MK Soldier’s Memoir of Exile, Prison and Freedom (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2024) EXTRAORDINARY and challenging circumstances raising matters of conscience can have unpredictable outcomes. Among the small group of […]
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=Available Light: Omar Badsha and the Struggle for Change in South Africa
Daniel Magaziner, Available Light: Omar Badsha and the Struggle for Change in South Africa (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2025) Daniel Magaziner, Available Light: Omar Badsha and the Struggle for Change in South Africa (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2025) ARTIST, […]
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=Election 2024 South Africa: Countdown to Coalition
Collette Schulz-Herzenberg and Roger Southall (eds), Election 2024 South Africa: Countdown to Coalition (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2024) IT was widely assumed from the start of the 2024 general and provincial election campaigns that the ANC would […]
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=Together Apart: The Story of Living in Apartheid
Xolisa Guzula and Athambile Masola, Together Apart: The Story of Living in Apartheid (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2024) NO one under 35 can have a first-hand understanding of life in apartheid South Africa. To many of today’s […]
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=The Super Cadres: ANC Misrule in the Age of Deployment
Pieter du Toit, The Super Cadres: ANC Misrule in the Age of Deployment (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2024) STATE capture nearly bankrupted South Africa. Its mechanics and perpetrators were well documented by investigative journalists and then […]
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=The Bams of Grasslands Farm: A Family History
Seán Morrow, The Bams of Grasslands Farm: A Family History (Johannesburg: Staging Post, 2024) WHAT might the course of South African history have been had the Christian African middle class of the nineteenth century been […]
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=Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators who Want to Run the World
Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators who Want to Run the World (London: Allen Lane, 2024) DICTATORS and dictatorship are hardly new: they provided much of the darkness of the twentieth century, often in extreme […]
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=Karla’s Choice: A John le Carré Novel
Nick Harkaway, Karla’s Choice: A John le Carré Novel (London: Penguin Viking, 2024) GEORGE Smiley, the anti-hero agent, appears in nine novels written by John le Carré who died in 2020. Smiley has a vast […]