There is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
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? […]
Richard Conyngham, All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa, 1910‒1948: A Graphic History (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2021) THIS illustrated history is largely inspired by files found in the basement archives of the Supreme Court of […]