There is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
David Benatar, The Fall of the University of Cape Town: Africa’s Leading University in Decline (S.l.: Politicsweb Publishing, 2021) IN his conclusion to this history of the University of Cape Town (UCT) since 2015, David […]
Phakamisa Ndzamela, Native Merchants: The Building of the Black Business Class in South Africa (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2021) MOST South Africans probably think of black business people as those who have grown rich in the […]
Clinton van der Berg, Guns and Needles: A Journey into the Heart of South African Sport’s Steroid and Drug Culture (Cape Town: Penguin, 2022) SOUTH Africa has a major problem with drugs in sport: the […]
Keyan G. Tomaselli, Contemporary Campus Life: Transformation, Manic Managerialism and Academentia (Cape Town: BestRed, 2021) THIS book is a reminder that the medium is indeed sometimes the message. Keyan Tomaselli, for many years the well-known […]
Luthando Dyasop, Out of Quatro: From Exile to Exoneration (Cape Town: Kwela, 2021) ONE Saturday afternoon in 1980, Luthando Dyasop left home in Mthatha on foot. A week later after a circuitous journey he arrived […]
Imraan Coovadia, The Poisoners: On South Africa’s Toxic Past, 1973‒2020 (Cape Town: Umuzi, 2021) THE USE of poison as a political weapon is characteristic of fragile societies enveloped by suspicion and conspiracy. Imraan Coovadia opens […]
Ralph Mathekga, The ANC’s Last Decade: How the Decline of the Party will Transform South Africa (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2021) IN his foreword, Stephen Grootes makes the telling observation that in an age of growing […]
Susan Williams, White Malice: The CIA and the Neo Colonisation of Africa (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2021) ‘THE AMERICANS were everywhere.’ This was the view of CIA asset Washington Okumu, a Kenyan well-known to South Africans as […]
Paul Erasmus, Confessions of a Stratcom Hitman (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2021) THERE was no so-called third force: the propaganda, dirty tricks and orchestrated violence of the transition to democracy were part of Stratcom, a project that […]
Bill Freund, An Historian’s Passage to Africa: An Autobiography (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2021) WHAT were the chances of an economic historian from Chicago finding the happiest days of a somewhat unsettled life in Durban? […]