There is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
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 […]
SPORT and its organisation reflect the society around it, making a mockery of persistent suggestions that sport can or should be apolitical. Thus, in the mid-twentieth century in South Africa it was organised on racially […]
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 […]
I’VE supported West Ham ever since I can recall. Most of my immediate ancestors are from London, my father was born a few streets away from the old Boleyn Ground at Upton Park (his father […]
Dianne Hawker, How to Steal a Gold Mine: The Aurora Story (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2023) LIQUIDATION of mines is not unusual. Often, they are bought, rehabilitated and returned to production. But virtually everything about the […]
Patric Tariq Mellet, Cleaner’s Boy: A Resistance Road to a Liberated Life (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2022) BORN in 1956, Patric Mellet grew up in the ethnic melting pots of District Six and Salt River, Cape […]
READING Peter Fabricius’s ‘Russian roulette’ (DM 168, 8 April 2023) one is struck by the parallels between South Africa’s growing closeness to Russia and Brexit. Both are based on mythology about the past and a […]
THE photo that accompanies this piece indicates that whatever their level of current despair, South Africans have yet to lose their sense of humour, often the only protection against absurdity. A number of potholes in […]
Fred Bridgland, The Guerrilla and the Journalist: Exploring the Murderous Legacy of Jonas Savimbi (Johannesburg: Delta, 2022) THE Portuguese empire in Africa ended chaotically in the mid-1970s making civil war almost inevitable. This was particularly […]