There is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
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 […]
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 […]
Karyn Maughan, I Will Not Be Silenced (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2024) BETWEEN 2023 and 2024, the international press freedom monitoring organisation Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) downgraded South Africa’s rating from 25 to 38 among 180 […]
T.J. Strydom, Capitec: Stalking Giants (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2024) THE LIBERATION of the majority of South Africans after 1990 has all too often been seen in terms of the vote. This was always going to […]
Jonathan Jansen, Breaking Bread: A Memoir (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2024) This is the story of a transformational journey from exclusive fundamentalist religion to international inclusivity and a broad-minded approach to higher education. Jonathan Jansen’s parents […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]