Download or read book The Man Who Founded the ANC written by Bongani Ngqulunga and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2017-06-19 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1912, just over a year after returning from his studies at Columbia and Oxford, the thirty-year-old Pixley ka Isaka Seme succeeded where others had failed in forming a political organisation that represented all black South Africans. Seme also established a national newspaper, became one of the pioneering black lawyers in South Africa, bought land from white farmers for black settlement at the time when opposition to it was gaining momentum, became an adviser and confidant to African royalty, and was considered a leading visionary for black economic empowerment. And yet, when he became president general of the ANC in the 1930s, he brought it to its knees through sheer ineptitude and an authoritarian style of leadership. On more than one occasion he was found guilty for breaching the law, which partly led to him being struck off the roll of attorneys. This book discusses in detail Seme’s extraordinary life, tracing it back to his humble beginnings at Inanda Mission to his triumphs and disappointments across the continents, in his public and private life. When Seme died in 1951 he was bankrupt and his political standing had suffered greatly. And yet he was praised as one of the greatest South Africans ever to have lived. For all this, he has largely been forgotten. This biography brings the remarkable life of this extraordinary South Africa back to public consciousness.
Download or read book Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC written by William Mervin Gumede and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a spokesman for a country, a continent and the developing world, Thabo Mbeki played a crucial role in world politics, but to many people he remained an enigma throughout his presidency. Is this simply because he was a secretive man, or were there complicated political factors at play? Who was the real Mbeki? In this book, multiple-award-winning journalist William Mervin Gumede chronicles Mbeki’s spectacular rise to dominate Africa’s oldest liberation movement. He explores the complex position that Mbeki occupied – following in Nelson Mandela’s footsteps, holding together an alliance with deep ideological differences, and ruling an intensely divided country. Revealing the political and personal tensions behind the scenes, Gumede explains how Mbeki sought to mould the ANC into his image through tight control, and exposes the intrigues behind the battle for succession. Covering Mbeki’s attempts to modernise the economy and kick-start an African Renaissance, and investigating his controversial stance on issues from AIDS to Zimbabwe, the book offers invaluable insights into the arcane machinations behind political decisions that touch the lives of millions every day.
Download or read book The Founders written by André Odendaal and published by Jacana Media. This book was released on 2012 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The African National Congress was founded a hundred years ago, in January 1912. But the roots of the ANC run even deeper in South African history. In fact, the ANC's founding was the culmination of more than sixty years of organisation by a new class of African modernisers.
Download or read book Long Walk to Freedom written by Nelson Mandela and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2008-03-11 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book that inspired the major new motion picture Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's antiapartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality. LONG WALK TO FREEDOM is his moving and exhilarating autobiography, destined to take its place among the finest memoirs of history's greatest figures. Here for the first time, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela tells the extraordinary story of his life--an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph.
Download or read book The Man Who Killed Apartheid The Life of Dimitri Tsafendas written by Harris Dousemetzis and published by African Sun Media. This book was released on 2024-03-04 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 6 September 1966, inside the House of Assembly in Cape Town, Dimitri Tsafendas stabbed to death Hendrik Verwoerd, South Africa’s Prime Minister and so-called “architect of apartheid”. Tsafendas was immediately arrested and before he had even been questioned by the authorities, they declared him a madman without any political motive for the killing. In the Cape Supreme Court, Tsafendas was found unfit to stand trial on the grounds that he suffered from schizophrenia and that he had no political motive for killing Verwoerd. Tsafendas spent the next 28 years in custody, making him the longest-serving detainee in South African history. For most of his incarnation he was subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment by the prison authorities. From 2009 to 2018, Harris Dousemetzis extensively researched the assassination of Verwoerd and the life of Tsafendas. For this research, he travelled to South Africa, Mozambique, Greece, France, and Turkey, and interviewed about 150 people who either knew Tsafendas or Verwoerd or were involved with the case of the assassination. He discovered about 12,000 pages of documents on the case, most of them previously unpublished, in archival collections in South Africa, Portugal and the UK. Dousemetzis collaborated with prominent South African jurists, psychiatrists and psychologists, and concluded his research, by writing the Report to the Minister of Justice in the Matter of Dr. Verwoerd’s Assassination. The report conclusively proved that Tsafendas had assassinated Verwoerd for political reasons and that the apartheid authorities had orchestrated a massive operation to declare him insane and apolitical. This ground-breaking report and this book corrected the historical record regarding Verwoerd’s assassination and Tsafendas. The Man Who Killed Apartheid, based on Dousemetzis’s groundbreaking research, chronicles in detail Tsafendas’s life and conclusively demonstrates that he was a perfectly sane and deeply political person with a long history of political activism. At the same time, the book exposes the lie at the heart of apartheid’s posture on the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd and provides a rare picture of how the racist regime operated and what it was like to live and die under apartheid.
Download or read book Anatomy of a Miracle written by Patti Waldmeir and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The late 1980s were a dismal time inside South Africa. Mandela's African National Congress was banned. Thousands of ANC supporters were jailed without charge. Government hit squads assassinated and terrorized opponents of white rule. Ordinary South Africans, black and white, lived in a perpetual state of dread. Journalist Patti Waldmeir evokes this era of uncertainty in Anatomy of a Miracle, her comprehensive new book about the stunning and-historically speaking-swift tranformation of South Africa from white minority oligarchy to black-ruled democracy. Much that Waldmeir documents in this carefully researched and elegantly written book has been well reported in the press and in previous books. But what distinguishes her work is a reporter's attention to detail and a historian's sense of sweep and relevance. . . .Waldmeir has written a deeply reasoned book, but one that also acknowledges the power of human will and the tug of shared destiny."-Philadelphia Inquirer
Download or read book External Mission written by Stephen Ellis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nelson Mandela's release from prison in February 1990 was one of the most memorable moments of recent decades. It came a few days after the removal of the ban on the African National Congress; founded a century ago and outlawed in 1960, it had transferred its headquarters abroad and opened what it termed an External Mission. For the thirty years following its banning, the ANC had fought relentlessly against the apartheid state. Finally voted into office in 1994, the ANC today regards its armed struggle as the central plank of its legitimacy. External Mission is the first study of the ANC's period in exile, based on a full range of sources in southern Africa and Europe. These include the ANC's own archives and also those of the Stasi, the East German ministry that trained the ANC's security personnel. It reveals that the decision to create the Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) -- guerrilla army which later became the ANC's armed wing -- as made not by the ANC but by its allies in the South African Communist Party after negotiations with Chinese leader Mao Zedong. In this impressive work, Ellis shows that many of the strategic decisions made, and many of the political issues that arose during the course of that protracted armed struggle, had a lasting effect on South Africa, shaping its society even up to the present day.
Download or read book First President written by Heather Hughes and published by Jacana Media. This book was released on 2011 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A full biography of the founding president of the African National Council (ANC), this account uncovers the inspirations for John L. Dube's many public achievements. Tracing the history of his forbearers in the Zulu kingdom, this volume chronicles the politician's life from his birth in 1871, and highlights his many achievements, including the founding of the Ohlange School, the key role he played in the Bhambatha Rebellion, and the authorship of the first Zulu novel. As it evaluates Dube's five-year presidency of the ANC, this book shows that in spite of the many conflicts and ambiguities in his position, Dube's central political belief--that Africans should be directly represented in the parliament of the land--remained remarkably constant throughout his long career.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of the ANC Youth League written by Rebone Tau and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2020-08-01 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What were the origins of the ANC Youth League, where has it gone wrong and how can it once again become an organisation that represents and supports South Africa’s youth? For most of its existence, the ANC Youth League has played a powerful role in the politics of the ANC, and therefore of South Africa. In this book, Youth League member Rebone Tau tells the story of the league, from its formation in Soweto in 1944 to its banning, reconstitution and current standing, highlighting key incidents that led to the organisation’s rise and fall. The book explores the radicalising role played by the league’s early leaders, such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and O.R. Tambo; the formation of the ANC Youth and Students Section in exile, first led by Thabo Mbeki; the return from exile in the 1990s and the leadership of Peter Mokaba; the controversies around the presidency of Julius Malema and his subsequent sacking; and the absence of Youth League leadership in the #FeesMustFall movement and current South African politics. Finally, the book considers the role that the Youth League could play in the future. Drawing on exclusive interviews with Youth League insiders, this is a fascinating glimpse into a vital and volatile institution in South African politics.
Download or read book Nelson Mandela A Very Short Introduction written by Elleke Boehmer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-12 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring A pathbreaking analysis of the relationship between Mandela the myth, and Mandela the historical figure, looking at the way images, stories, and politics have been combined to create the iconic image of Mandela that we know today. Boehmer explores the long trajectory of Mandela's life, explaining first the historical and political context of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, and then the post-apartheid period of difficult reconciliation, including the shifts and changes in Mandela's reputation since the millennium. This innovative postcolonial reflection takes on board the more critical revisionist literature on Mandela that has emerged since 2015, looking at responses to his death in 2013, and the 2018 commemorations of the 100th anniversary of his birth. The first edition set a trend in scholarship on Mandela by reading his character and achievements through the lens of his influences, interests, and leading ideas. The second edition extends this focus with a far-reaching critical look at meanings of reconciliation and Mandela's ethic of reciprocity. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Peacemaking in South Africa written by Hendrik W. Van der Merwe and published by Tafelberg. This book was released on 2000 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A political memoir by an internationally known peacemaker. H W van der Merwe has been described in the media as 'the man who brings South Africa's enemies together'. Here he tells his own story, which is also largely the story of the South African 'miracle' negotiated settlement.
Download or read book Kgalema Motlanthe written by Ebrahim Harvey and published by Jacana Media. This book was released on 2012 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting a superb account of a man characterized by his reticence, this biography offers rare and thorough insight into the life of one of South Africa’s most powerful men: Kgalema Motlanthe. From Motlanthe’s ancestral family to his political awakenings as he discovered the African National Congress, this account traces Motlanthe’s political path to becoming the third president of the Republic of South Africa. With impeccable timing and a real sense of history, this book contains wide-ranging interviews with Motlanthe himself as well as with family members, friends, comrades, and leading figures in political organizations, civil society, academia, and the media. Unsparing in its scope, detailed in its revelations, and rigorously critical in its analysis, this biography reveals not only the complex politician but also the very human nature of the man.
Download or read book Mandela written by Anthony Sampson and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-01-11 with total page 1037 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nelson Mandela, who emerged from twenty-six years of political imprisonment to lead South Africa out of apartheid and into democracy, is perhaps the world's most admired leader, a man whose life has been led with exemplary courage and inspired conviction. Now Anthony Sampson, who has known Mandela since 1951 and has been a close observer of South Africa's political life for the last fifty years, has produced the first authorized biography, the most informed and comprehensive portrait to date of a man whose dazzling image has been difficult to penetrate. With unprecedented access to Mandela's private papers (including his prison memoir, long thought to have been lost), meticulous research, and hundreds of interviews--from Mandela himself to prison warders on Robben Island, from Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo to Winnie Mandela and F. W. de Klerk, and many others intimately connected to Mandela's story--Sampson has composed an enlightening and necessary story of the man behind the myth.
Download or read book Spy written by Jonathan Ancer and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1972 Craig Williamson, a big, burly, bearded man, walked onto Wits University and registered as a student. He joined the National Union of South African Students (Nusas), and was on the frontline in the war against apartheid. At one march he was beaten up, arrested and spent a year on trial. Williamson rose up through the student movement's ranks to become the Nusas vice president. After being harassed by security police and having his passport seized, he decided to flee the country to continue his activism with the International University Exchange Fund (IUEF), an anti-apartheid organisation in exile. He was eventually appointed the Fund's deputy director. As the IUEF's money man, Williamson had access to powerful ANC and Black Consciousness leaders. He joined the ANC and formed his own unit to carry out clandestine work to topple the National Party government. But Williamson was not the anti-apartheid activist his friends and comrades thought he was. In January 1980, Captain Williamson was unmasked as a South Africa spy. His handler, Colonel Johan Coetzee, the head of South Africa's notorious security branch, flew to Sweden to bring him and his wife back home. Williamson was described as South Africa's superspy who penetrated the KGB. Williamson returned to South Africa and during the turbulent 1980s worked for the foreign section of the South African Police's security branch. Two years after he left Switzerland he returned to Europe under a false name and with a crack squad of special force officers to blow up the ANC's headquarters in London. He was also responsible for a parcel bomb that killed Ruth First in Mozambique and the bomb that killed Jeanette Schoon and her 6-year-old daughter Katryn in Angola. He left the security branch to join Military Intelligence and finally the State Security Council"--Publisher's description.
Download or read book Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War Against Apartheid written by Alan Wieder and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2013-07 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ruth First and Joe Slovo, husband and wife, were leaders of the war to end apartheid in South Africa. Communists, scholars, parents, and uncompromising militants, they were the perfect enemies for the white police state. Together they were swept up in the growing resistance to apartheid, and together they experienced repression and exile. Their contributions to the liberation struggle, as individuals and as a couple, are undeniable. Ruth agitated tirelessly for the overthrow of apartheid, first in South Africa and then from abroad, and Joe directed much of the armed struggle carried out by the famous Umkhonto we Sizwe. Only one of them, however, would survive to see the fall of the old regime and the founding of a new, democratic South Africa. This book, the first extended biography of Ruth First and Joe Slovo, is a remarkable account of one couple and the revolutionary moment in which they lived. Alan Wieder’s deeply researched work draws on the usual primary and secondary sources but also an extensive oral history that he has collected over many years. By weaving the documentary record together with personal interviews, Wieder portrays the complexities and contradictions of this extraordinary couple and their efforts to navigate a time of great tension, upheaval, and revolutionary hope.
Download or read book Slovo the Unfinished Autobiography written by Joe Slovo and published by Ocean Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The unfinished autobiography of ANC leader Joe Slovo with a foreword by Nelson Mandela.
Download or read book The Congress Movement April 1926 1928 written by Sylvia Neame and published by HSRC Publishers. This book was released on 2015 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Volume 1 traces the unfolding of the congress movement from 1917 and looks at socialist and other forces that played an integral part in its formation. The 1918\201320 upsurge, which included an African mineworkers' strike, played a key role in this development and laid the basis in the 1920s for a partnership between the Industrial and Commercial Workers\2019 Union and the African National Congress. Volume 2 examines the intricate development of the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union and the African National Congress in the second half of the 1920s. Various trends of reformism and radicalism affected these two organisations. This later led to the beginning of the breakup of the ICU with the secession of the Natal contingent, in part under the influence of a narrow ethnic Zulu nationalism. The breakaway also took place in the wake of an important phase in which the ICU leaders had become identified with a peasant uprising on white farms. Volume 3 explores how the ANC emerges and steps into its primary role as a national liberation movement resulting from a complex process stretching from the 1920s to the beginning of the 1960s. A key theme in this context is the integral role of the then Congress Youth League leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo."--Publisher description.
