Rhoda: A Biography
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 […]
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Confronting the geography of apartheid
IT was the most banal of events: fifty years ago, in mid-October 1973, two cricket teams met in the local league in Alexandra Park, Pietermaritzburg. But one of them, Aurora, comprised players from different ethnic […]
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South Africa: moving towards the illiberal
THE TRADITIONAL categorisation of political ideology and practice occupying a spectrum stretching from left to right is now obsolete. It was always problematic if considered at the point where far right collided with far left […]
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UDF unites, apartheid divides: the 40th anniversary of a non-racial front
CONSULT a history book and it will probably tell you that the United Democratic Front (UDF), launched forty years ago on 20 August 1983, was the internal wing of the ANC. It is true that […]
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Standing up for Science: A Voice of Reason
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, […]
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Looking in a Russian mirror
The mutinous Yevgeny Prigozhin seems to have survived his failed insurrection relatively well. While his Wagner Group fighters in Ukraine have been absorbed into the Russian army, their presence in Africa continues unaltered and largely […]
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Zondo at your Fingertips
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 […]
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Whitey: The Rise and Rule of the Shoprite King
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, […]
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From king of the world to parliamentary outcast
FOR anyone with links to Britain there has been precious little of which to be proud in the last few years; certainly, since the 2016 Brexit referendum. The English component of the Union has been […]
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Takka Takka Bom Bom: A South African War Correspondent’s Story
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 […]