There is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
Hestelle van Staden, Blood has a Voice: Stories from the Autopsy Table (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2023) SHE describes herself as a normal middle-aged, suburban woman; but her profession would be regarded by many as highly […]
Max Price, Statues and Storms: Leading Through Change (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2023) THERE’S a song in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance that has the refrain ‘A policeman’s lot is not a happy one …’ […]
Faeeza Ballim, Eskom: Power, Politics and the (Post) Apartheid State (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2023) FOR many years a joke has gone the rounds. Satan is visiting South Africa and is sitting at a bar. ‘And who,’ […]
Joel B. Pollak, Rhoda: A Biography: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order!’ (Johannesburg: UJ Press, 2023) CONTRARIAN is the word Joel Pollak chooses to best describe the complex Rhoda Kadalie. Her life moved from […]
Salim S. Abdool Karim, Standing up for Science: A Voice of Reason: South Africa’s Chief Covid-19 Adviser at the Frontlines of the Pandemic (Johannesburg: Macmillan, 2023) OUR first authoritative assessment of the Covid-19 pandemic, autobiography, […]
Paul Holden, Zondo at your Fingertips (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2023) STATE capture amounted to treason: not only did it involve massive theft of national resources, but the deliberate subversion of the South African constitution and the […]
Niel Joubert, Whitey: The Rise and Rule of the Shoprite King (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2022) WE have three supermarkets at our local shopping centre: Woolworths, Pick n Pay and Spar. Although their clienteles are mixed, […]
Al J. Venter, Takka Takka Bom Bom: A South African War Correspondent’s Story (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2022) THE TITLE is Swahili for the water-cooled machine guns of World War One used in East Africa where […]
Tendai Biti et al. In the Name of the People: How Populism is Rewiring the World (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2022) POLITICAL populism, as a contributor to this book suggests, is easy to spot; but hard […]
John Carneson, The John and Ntombi Story: A Memoir of Their Love and Times (Johannesburg: Grasped Image, 2022) AT first sight John Carneson and Ntombi Lukhele might seem an unlikely couple in terms of character […]