Conversations with Myself

Conversations with Myself

by Nelson Mandela, ISBN:9780230749016, R290.00

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Due 12 October 2010

Nelson Mandela is one of the most inspiring and iconic figures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of taking pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has opened his personal archive, which offers an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life. Conversations With Myself gives readers access to the private man behind the public figure: from letters written in the darkest hours of Mandela's twenty-seven years of imprisonment to the draft of an unfinished sequel to Long Walk to Freedom. Here he is making notes and even doodling during meetings, or recording troubled dreams on the desk calendar of his cell on Robben Island; and, writing journals while on the run during the anti-apartheid struggles in the early 1960s, or conversing with friends in almost seventy hours of recorded conversations. In these pages he is neither an icon nor a saint; here he is like you and me. An intimate journey from the first stirrings of his political conscience to his galvanizing role on the world stage, Conversations With Myself is a rare chance to spend time with Nelson Mandela the man, in his own voice: direct, clear, private.

Long Shadow of Apartheid, The

The Long Shadow of Apartheid - Race in South Africa since 1994

by Lucy Holborn, ISBN:9781869825836, R160.00

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The Institute’s research on changing racial sentiment in South Africa since 1994 has been published under the title The Long Shadow of Apartheid: Race in South Africa since 1994. The research includes interviews with senior business and academic leaders in South Africa. The project was funded through a grant from the Maurice Webb Trust. 

South Africa is a country obsessed by race. Yet beyond the coverage of high-profile incidents and statements, and our individual experiences, we know relatively little about the state of race relations – about the way in which people of different races view and treat one another. Have race relations got better since 1994? What factors influence race relations? Is South Africa drifting towards a race war, as some have predicted? Why does race dominate political discourse so many years after the end of apartheid? Why have some of the most high-profile incidents of alleged racism in recent years involved people too young to remember racial segregation? Are race relations in South Africa’s farming communities at breaking point?
Improving race relations and erasing the legacy of racial division left by apartheid is likely to be a slow process. This work assesses what progress has been made over the last 15 years, and in doing so exposes the important role politicians, the media, and civil society can play in improving – or worsening – relations between the races.

Zimbabwe - Years of hope and despair

Zimbabwe - years of hope and despair

by Philip Barclay, ISBN:9781408805664, R190.00

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Philip Barclay lived and worked as a diplomat and blogger in Zimbabwe during 2006-2009 - one of the few permitted Western observers of events on the ground. In this electrifying first-hand account we witness the key events that marked the decline of this once prosperous and stable nation. In early 2007, The Movement for Democratic Change (led by Morgan Tsvangiari) held large rallies, leaving Tsvangiari severely beaten and activists killed and arrested. Philip Barclay attended the trials of the MDC activists while campaigns for the next election were beginning to take shape, even though both parties were divided. Although it looked certain that President Robert Mugabe would win the next election in March 2008, given that he controlled all state media, as Philip travelled around the country there was a sense of hope and excitement at the prospect of change. On polling day it became immediately obvious that the MDC had won. The following months saw a widespread outbreak of violence; reports came in of rape, murder and mass evictions as the military and party militia's assaulted and intimidated the supporters of the MDC. Mugabe was not ready to stand down. Philip witnessed a bomb site where activists were burned alive and interviewed rape victims and members of illegal refugee camps. Philip himself was stopped and threatened by a ZANU-PF militia. By July 2008 the country had fallen apart. Hyperinflation ensued, utilities failed and the worst Cholera epidemic in recent world history hit a starving population. A unity agreement was eventually signed in early 2009, but is this really a new dawn for Zimbabwe? Concise, fluent, imaginative and authoritative, Zimbabwe gets to the terrifying core of a country systematically destroyed by its own government, and asks important questions about what the future may hold.

Fighting for Justice

Fighting for Justice

by Jay Naidoo, ISBN:9781770101777, R210.00

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Jay Naidoo was a tireless anti-apartheid campaigner in the 1980s, serving as the first General Secretary of Coastu, South Africa's largest union federation and the backbone of the internal mass struggles against apartheid. In 1993, he stepped down to lead twenty leaders from Cosatu into parliament on an ANC ticket, and was asked by Nelson Mandela to work as the Minister responsible for the Reconstruction and Development Programme, and then as the Minister of Communications. In 1999 Jay moved away from politics and entered the world of business, setting up the J&J Group, an investment and management company. He remained engaged in the field of development and was appointed as the Chairman of the Development Bank of Southern Africa. In 2003 he became the Chairman of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, launched to fight the malnutrition facing 2 billion people around the world. Fighting for Justice is a gripping account of Jay's life, from his roots in a distant village in India to his present fierce engagement with global issues of social justice. It tells the story of a man from a working-class family living with the cruel realities of apartheid, his life-changing encounter with Steve Biko and his involvement in student, community and national politics. It is also a searingly honest recount of the painful personal choices Jay has had to make, and includes his intercontinental love affair with the French Canadian journalist and writer Lucie Page. Fighting for Justice weaves an enthralling tale of intrigue, pain and triumph as the issues of race, language and culture encounter the uncompromising terrain of political and social activism.

PK van der Byl-African Statesman

P K van der Byl - African Statesman

by Hannes Wessels, ISBN:9781920143497, R250.00

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30° South Publishers, 2010 - 352 pages

Historically relevant and important, with much previously unpublished political information, PK van de Byl's story is controversial, uncompromising and 'in-your-face', but also eminently readable, laced with anecdotes and humor. The narrative gives the reader an overview of the history of the white man in southern Africa with detailed emphasis on the Rhodesian story through the life and times of PK van der Byl; one of the major players in a political drama that ended in the accession to power of Robert Mugabe under the auspices of the British government led by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. By his very nature PK was controversial and confrontational. This account is likely to give offense to some because it portrays him as bluntly as he was in real life. Much can be contested about PK van der Byl but few will dispute he was an extremely colorful character with a devilish sense of humor. This memoir covers his life with a full flourish while doing nothing to detract from the seriousness of the international political and military conflict in which he was engaged. The reader will glean new information on a highly controversial subject and emerge with a more sympathetic understanding of what PK van der Byl and his colleagues did and strove for. The human tragedy that has followed the removal from power of Ian Smith and his Rhodesian Front party will almost certainly force the reader to deal with some uncomfortable conclusions, of value to anyone sincere about grappling with the volatile and deeply troubling challenges that confront all Africans today.

Jan Smuts - Man of courage and vision

Jan Smuts - Man of courage and vision

By Antony Lentin, ISBN:9781868423903, R160.00



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In this new biography, Professor Antony Lentin reassesses the life of one of South Africa's great leaders.  Smuts was a scholar, statesman and soldier with a career spanning half a century, but what was his lasting contribution?  In the earlier half of his life, he focused his efforts primarily on the birth pangs and development of South Africa: the Boer Wars, the formation of the Union of South Africa and South Africa's role in the First World War….
Smuts also made significant contributions on the world stage.  In 'Jan Smuts: Man of Courage and Vision' the author examines this role closely, paying particular attention to the Paris Peace Conference of 1918-19 where Smuts pleaded tirelessly to obtain more reasonable terms for Germany to avoid its gratuitous humiliation.  Lentin argues that it was this magnanimity - Smuts' fight for international reconciliation - that should stand as his historical legacy.

Pappa in Afrika

Pappa in Afrika
By Anton Kannemeyer, ISBN:978-1-77009-871-8, R280.00

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Summary   

Anton Kannemeyer, aka Joe Dog of Bitterkomix fame, unflinchingly explores the vigorous debates around race that enliven and shadow daily life in South Africa. Pappa in Afrika brings together recent drawings, paintings and comics that tackle colonialism and its ongoing legacy head-on, adopting Hergé’s Tintin as the archetypal figure of the white settler. Praised in the New York Times for its “semiotic sophistication, graphic ingenuity and X-ray political vision”, Kannemeyer’s work is as relentless in its critique of the hypocrisy and racist attitudes of white society as it is of the greed and corruption of Africa’s new political elite.

About the Author

Born in 1967 and based in Cape Town, Kannemeyer has been publishing and exhibiting his work since 1992, the year he and Conrad Botes founded Bitterkomix as students at the University of Stellenbosch. Recent solo shows have taken place in Cape Town, Johannesburg and New York.

Red in the rainbow

Red in the rainbow - The life and times of Fred and Sarah Carneson

by Lynn Carneson, ISBN:97817700220850, R220.00

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Red in the Rainbow is a story of humanity in the face of political turmoil. Fred and Sarah Carneson were fiercely committed members of the Communist Party from the 1930s onwards. Dedicated activists in brutal times, theirs is a story of political persecution and torture, prolonged separation and enduring love.
Lynn Carneson, their daughter, candidly narrates the joy, the terror, the pain and the impact of her extraordinary life as the child of such devoted protestors, revealing how, despite endless campaigning, financial difficulty, emotional breakdown and her father’s seven-year imprisonment, the family managed to stay together.
Based on personal recollection as well as official records, newspaper articles and Fred and Sarah’s prison letters, Lynn describes her parents’ underground work, their involvement in watershed events such as the Treason Trial, and the family’s constant surveillance by security police. She vividly recounts their life as exiles in London and their long-awaited return to South Africa in 1991.
Red in the Rainbow not only invokes Fred and Sarah’s lifelong political struggles and triumphs in gripping detail, but also tells a poignant human story of endurance, breakdown, courage and the survival of a marriage against all odds.

Unspoken Alliance

The Unspoken Alliance:Israel's secret relationship with Apartheid South Africa

ISBN:9781770098404, R180.00

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Editorial Review - Publishers Weekly vol. 257 iss. 16 p. 46 (c) 04/19/2010

During the mid-1950s, the young state of Israel built diplomatic ties to postcolonial African nations on their common histories of oppression. But by 1987, Israel's alliances on the continent had completely changed—despite international sanctions, Israel maintained a close and covert relationship with South Africa; their military trade kept the Israeli economy vital and buttressed the faltering apartheid government. With recently declassified documents, Polakow-Suransky, an editor at Foreign Affairs , offers an important, provocative, and occasionally disturbing analysis of this clandestine alliance. He identifies two wars as decisive turning points in Israeli–South African relations. The 1967 Six-Day War and Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories alienated former friends and won it new enemies; and the 1973 Yom Kippur War left the economy “in shambles,” and created a powerful incentive for Israel to export arms to and cultivate its relations with the South African government. The author concludes his smart and readable study with a charged epilogue in which he writes that, as evinced by its policies towards Palestinians, Israel itself “risks remaking itself in the image of the old apartheid state.” (June) 

Telling Times

Telling Times:Writing and Living 1950 - 2008

by Nadine Gordimer, ISBN:9781408800249, R295.00

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Nadine Gordimer's life reflects the true spirit of the writer as moral activist, political visionary and literary icon. Telling Times collects together all her non-fiction for the first time, spanning more than half a century, from the twilight of colonial rule in South Africa, to the long, brutal fight to overthrow South Africa's apartheid regime and to her leadership role over the last 20 years in confronting the dangers of AIDS, globalisation, and ethnic violence. The range of this book is staggering, from Gordimer's first piece in The New Yorker in 1954, in which she autobiographically traces her emergence as a brilliant, young writer in a racist country, to her pioneering role in recognising the greatest African and European writers of her generation, to her truly, courageous stance in supporting Nelson Mandela and other members of the ANC during their years of imprisonment. Given that Gordimer will never write an autobiography, Telling Times is an important document of twentieth-century social and political history, told through the voice of one of its greatest literary figures.

Op pad met Mandela

Op pad met Mandela: Vyfien lewensless

deur Richard Stengel, ISBN:9780795702976, R175.00

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As medeskrywer van Nelson Mandela se biografie het joernalis Richard Stengel ure in Madiba se geselskap deurgebring. Drie jaar lank het hy hom bykans oral heen vergesel – selfs onder die mees senutergende omstandighede. Op pad met Mandela: vyftien lewenslesse is sy manier om hierdie ervaring met ander te deel. Dié Afrikaanse uitgawe van Mandela’s Way bied ook aan Afrikaanse lesers ’n nadere blik op dié merkwaardige man, wat deur mense wêreldwyd as ’n lewende legende beskou word. Die lewenswysheid wat Madiba uit sy grootste uitdagings geput het, word hier in vyftien lesse oor die liefde, die lewe en leierskap vervat: waarom dit belangrik is om jou teenstanders fyn dop te hou, waarom waagmoed nie noodwendig ’n gebrek aan vrees beteken nie, en hoekom dit belangrik is om dinge in die lewe te vind waaruit jy plesier en vervulling kan put.

Eugene Terreblanche - my storie

Eugene Terre'Blanche - My Storie

by Amos van der Merwe, ISBN:9781920424107, R220.00

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Shortly after the recent murder of Eugene Terre’Blanche comes a book that presents, among other things, Terre’Blanche’s own version of the then much publicised and often disastrous events which he instigated as leader of the AWB. These included the Battle of Ventersdorp, the invasion of Mmabatho and the storming of the World Trade Centre during the constitutional negotiations.
Terre’Blanche believed himself to have been the victim of forces greater than himself and the AWB. Contemplating these – and other – events in prison, he came to the conclusion that, time and time again, he had fallen into the trap laid by the then NP government. He repeatedly explains these theories in some detail and with a fair amount of logic. Terre’Blanche also maintained that he had been jailed unfairly for assaulting a petrol attendant and intimated that he knew the identity of the actual culprit.
Dr Amos van der Merwe wrote the book with Terre’Blanche’s full co-operation in an autobiographical style: Terre’Blanche tells his story in his own ‘voice’, in the first person. For the first time he also lifts the lid on his life in prison – he tells of the fear, but also of the good relations with his fellow inmates, all of them black.
In addition to many of Terre’Blanche’s poems, the book also contains an abbreviated description of his childhood years, his service in the police force and his marriage, as well as a detailed perspective on his political convictions – far more moderate than what South Africans have come to expect of the militant resistance leader over the course of three decades. Much space is also devoted to his deepened Christian faith.
This book gives an unusual insight into the psyche of this controversial figure. It succeeds in exploring Terre’Blanche’s deeper motives and provides a fascinating perspective on one of South Africa’s most prominent figures.
Readers will be able to decide for themselves who Eugene Terre’Blanche really was and what he really stood for. Did he in the end fall foul of what he was warning us about? It remains an open question whether his new-found moderate views in some way actually led to his violent death. In his own words: “Do I have an opportunity to pave the way where others have failed?”
Eugene Terre’Blanche was ready for the press when the AWB leader was killed.