D-Day eighty years on
‘THE constant rolling of the vessel coupled with my intense occupation in the wheelhouse with the screen of the Gee machine soon brought me to the extremes of sea-sickness. I felt absolutely dreadful and was […]
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Saving South Africa: Lessons from the uMngeni Municipality Success Story
Chris Pappas and Sandile Mnikathi, Saving South Africa: Lessons from the uMngeni Municipality Success Story (Johannesburg: Pan Macmillan, 2024) IT is hard to imagine two people less alike in appearance. One is white, short and […]
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Prisoners of Jan Smuts: Italian Prisoners of War in South Africa in WWII
Karen Horn, Prisoners of Jan Smuts: Italian Prisoners of War in South Africa in WWII (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2024) RELUCTANT soldiers who readily surrendered, then enjoyed a largely contented and creative life in South African […]
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Showing the middle finger to democracy in South Africa
DENIALISM is an understandable human reaction – and a dangerous one. Those with faith in democracy tend to employ it when faced with populist threats from right and left: ‘they don’t really mean it’; ‘our […]
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The First Black Dominican Sisters in Natal (1922‒39): At the Crossroads of Race and Gender
Philippe Denis, The First Black Dominican Sisters in Natal (1922‒39): At the Crossroads of Race and Gender (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2023) THE KEY event of this book is the rushed and slipshod transfer […]
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An Orwellian South Africa?
LIKE Kafka, George Orwell (Eric Blair) left his eponymous mark on history; plus anticipation of a particular forthcoming year. It’s now forty years since 1984, which turned out not to embody the dystopic future Blair […]
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Breaking the Bombers: How the Hunt for Pagad Created a Crack Police Unit
Mark Shaw, Breaking the Bombers: How the Hunt for Pagad Created a Crack Police Unit (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2023) THE NEGOTIATED political settlement of the early 1990s opened up South Africa in more ways than […]
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South Africa’s upcoming elections
MUCH is being made of the fact that a large number of the world’s nations will be holding general elections this year. Some will of course be a farce: Vladimir Putin will be reaffirmed as […]
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Moscow on the veld
WE may never know exactly how Alexei Navalny died. One possibility put forward by someone familiar with such matters is that he was forced to stay out in sub-zero temperatures and then punched in the […]
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Capture in the Court: In Defence of Judges and the Constitution
Dan Mafora, Capture in the Court: In Defence of Judges and the Constitution (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2023) THIRTY years down the line from its first democratic elections, the political landscape of South Africa may best […]