Download or read book Rogues Gallery written by Matthew Blackman and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you reckon corruption in South Africa began with Zuma or even with apartheid, it’s time to catch a wake-up call. Rogues’ Gallery tells the story of some of the biggest skelms to grace our (un)fair shores, showing that dodgy dealings have been a national pastime for as long as South African history has been written down. The action starts with the machinations of three colonial governors: rotten Willem Adriaan van der Stel and the ‘twaddling’ British duo, Sir George Yonge and Lord Charles Somerset. Added to this is Cecil John Rhodes’s unparalleled success in poisoning the land with theft, fraud and war, and Oom Paul Kruger’s corrupt and compromised Volksraads (official and unofficial). Readers are then treated to apartheid’s finest feats in corruption: from the Broederbond’s perfect ten in state capture to the Department of Information’s peddling of fake news and the apartheid state’s manufacture of – no, not illegal cigarettes – Class A drugs! And let’s not forget the hotbed of corruption that was the ‘independent’ homelands. Add to this a few murders, plenty of nepotism and a state president who started out as a Nazi spy, and the gallery of rogues is complete. On the flipside, every chapter also features at least one brave whistle-blower – the true heroes of this book. Irreverent, entertaining and impeccably researched, Rogues’ Gallery busts the myth that the Zuptas were the first to capture the South African state, showing that corruption has always been around – and that the tricks politicians play haven’t changed a jot.

Download or read book It Only Comes in Orange Mr Zuma written by and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Spoilt Ballots written by Matthew Blackman and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you paid even a moment’s attention during high-school history class, you probably know that 1910 brought about the Union of South Africa, that the 1948 general election ushered in apartheid, and that the Rainbow Nation was born when Madiba triumphed in the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. Spoilt Ballots dishes the dirt on these pivotal turning points in our history. But it also sheds light on a dozen lesser-known contests, starting with the assassination of King Shaka in 1828 and ending with the anointing of King Cyril at Nasrec in 2017. Spoilt Ballots dishes the dirt on these pivotal turning points in our history. But it also sheds light on a dozen lesser-known contests, starting with the assassination of King Shaka in 1828 and ending with the anointing of King Cyril at Nasrec in 2017. Spoilt Ballots is as much about the people who voted in some of our most decisive elections as it is about those who didn’t even get the chance to make their mark. It explains why a black man in the Cape had more political rights in 1854 than at any other point in the ensuing 140 years and how the enfranchisement of women in 1930 was actually a step back for democracy. The book will leave you wondering if Oom Paul Kruger’s seriously dicey win in the 1893 ZAR election might have paved the way for the Boer War and whether ‘Slim Jannie’ Smuts really was that slim after all. It’ll explain how the Nats managed to get millions of English-speakers to vote for apartheid and why the Groot Krokodil’s attempt to co-opt coloureds and Indians into the system backfired spectacularly. Entertaining and impeccably researched, Spoilt Ballots lifts the lid on 200 years of electoral dysfunction in our beloved and benighted nation.

Download or read book A Pretoria Boy written by Peter Hain and published by Jonathan Ball Publishers. This book was released on 2021-08-05 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A tour de force of an extraordinary half-century of campaigning for justice' – Helen Clark, former New Zealand Prime Minister and United Nations Development Chief Peter Hain – famous for his commitment to the anti-apartheid struggle – has had a dramatic 50-year political career, both in Britain and in his childhood home of South Africa, in an extraordinary journey from Pretoria to the House of Lords. Hain vividly describes the arrest and harassment of his activist parents and their friends in the early 1960s, the hanging of a close family friend, and the Hains' enforced London exile in 1966. After organising militant campaigns in the UK against touring South African rugby and cricket sides, he was dubbed 'Public Enemy Number One' by the South African media. Narrowly escaping jail for disrupting all-white South African sports tours, he was maliciously framed for bank robbery and nearly assassinated by a letter bomb. In 2017–2018 he used British parliamentary privilege to expose looting and money laundering in then President Jacob Zuma's administration, informed by a 'Deep Throat' source. While acknowledging that the ANC government has lost its way, Hain exhorts South Africans to re-embrace Nelson Mandela's vision.

Download or read book Guns and Needles written by Clinton van der Berg and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Africa revels in its reputation as a sport-loving country. Yet just beneath the surface lurks a dark underbelly that reeks of cheating and illicit shenanigans, where shady characters and willing athletes are prepared to do whatever it takes to come out on top. South African sport is awash with steroids, a habit that formed in the late 1980s and continues unabated today, with participants and champions alike opting to play dirty. Guns and Needles infiltrates an extraordinary environment that includes the story of the youngest athlete, who happens to be a South African, to ever test positive. With doping numbers far higher than the international average, prominent sportswriter Clinton van der Berg probes why this is so. Many of the stories have never been told, including that of the death of a young rugby aspirant and the bodybuilder who talks candidly of his thirty-year odyssey with steroids. Guns and Needles also unmasks the rampant level of steroid use in schoolboy rugby and the prominent busts at senior and Springbok level, while examining the murky steroid underworld and related deaths, as well as the doping culture in boxing, athletics and other sports. This is a gripping read filled with drama, tragedy and scarcely believable stories.

Download or read book Promised Land Exploring South Africa s Land Conflict written by Karl Kemp and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2020-10-04 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Land reform and the possibility of expropriation without compensation are among the most hotly debated topics in South Africa today, met with trepidation and fervour in equal measure. But these broader issues tend to obscure a more immediate reality: a severe housing crisis and a sharp increase in urban land occupations In Promised Land, Karl Kemp travels the country documenting the fallout of failing land reform, from the under-siege Philippi Horticultural Area deep in the heart of Cape Town’s ganglands to the burning mango groves of Tzaneen, from Johannesburg’s lawless Deep South to rural KwaZulu-Natal, where chiefs own vast tracts of land on behalf of their subjects. He visits farming communities beset by violent crime, and provides gripping, on-the-ground reporting of recent land invasions, with perspectives from all sides, including land activists, property owners and government officials. Kemp also looks at burning issues surrounding the land debate in South Africa – corruption, farm murders, illegal foreign labour, mechanisation and eviction – and reveals the views of those affected. Touching on the history of land conflict and conquest in each area, as well as detailing the current situation on the ground, Promised Land provides startling insights into the story of land conflict in South Africa.

Download or read book The Eye of the Needle written by Richard Turner and published by Africa List. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The re-issue of Richard Turner s "Eye of the Needle "comes at a critical time in South African history, along side the revival of Black Consciousness and a reconsideration of what Tony Morphet famously called the Durban Moment . Turner was a central figure in the white South African student movement, and a key figure in the radicalization of its critical project. Inspired by events in Paris 68, he returned to South Africa after acquiring his doctorate at the Sorbonne, and became increasingly influenced by Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness movement. He was a relentless advocate of education among the then non-unionized Black labour force, and a founder of the Institute of Industrial Education. "The Eye of the Needle "was Turner s most incendiary text: a utopian statement advocating the creation of a socialist society through the cultivation of a radical theoretical attitude, couched in the metaphors of Christian ideology. The book was a political scandal and Turner was banned as a result, confined to his home before being assassinated by state security forces in 1978, a few months after Biko s death. Against the backdrop of new labour disputes and the appearance of new unions, and with the emergent calls for a re-radicalization of South African politics, "The Eye of the Needle "is newly relevant. Accompanied by Tony Morphet s exceptionally insightful contextualizing essays, the book provides readers with an excellent entry point for both historical reflection on the 1970s and a critical engagement with the question of how to bring about social justice today."

Download or read book Predator Politics written by Rehana Rossouw and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book How Long Will South Africa Survive written by Richard William Johnson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most up to date and frank account of the developing South African crisis. An analysis of the criminalization of the South African state. A unique perspective on likely future developments there.

Download or read book The Poisoners written by Imraan Coovadia and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Poisoners is a history of four devastating chapters in the making of the region, seen through the disturbing use of toxins and accusations of poisoning circulated by soldiers, spies, and politicians in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Imraan Coovadia’s fascinating new book exposes the secret use of poisons and diseases in the Rhodesian bush war and independent Zimbabwe, and the apparent connection to the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States; the enquiry into the chemical and biological warfare programme in South Africa known as Project Coast, discovered through the arrest and failed prosecution of Dr Wouter Basson; the use of toxic compounds such as Virodene to treat patients at the height of the Aids epidemic in South Africa, and the insistence of the government that proven therapies like Nevirapine, which could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, were in fact poisons; and the history of poisoning and accusations of poisoning in the modern history of the African National Congress, from its guerrilla camps in Angola to Jacob Zuma’s suggestion that his fourth wife collaborated with a foreign intelligence agency to have him murdered. But The Poisoners is not merely a book of history. It is also a meditation, by a most perceptive commentator, on the meaning of race, on the unhappy history of black and white in southern Africa, and on the nature of good and evil.

Download or read book Mobinomics written by Alan Knott-Craig and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these crisscrossing threads are woven the fabric of a community, a society, an economy, a nation. And beyond that, the world itself. But the technology isn't the dream. The dream is what you can do with it.' Three revolutions changed the face of South Africa, the economic powerhouse of the African continent, in 1994. The first was democracy, as millions of newly-enfranchised citizens went to the polls to elect a new government. The second was the internet, bringing information, learning and entertainment into millions of homes. But the real signal of change in the air was the arrival of an electronic device that would put undreamed-of power into the hands of the people. The cellular phone. In a country where less than four per cent of the population had access to a landline phone, mobile telephony opened the gateway to new ways and new worlds of communication. Today, more than 90 per cent of South Africans own at least one mobile phone, and they're not just using them to talk to each other. Mobiles have become tools of education, entrepreneurship, trade, empowerment, activism, media and upliftment. With the advent of the mobile internet, mobiles have also become the hubs of the most powerful force in modern communication. The social network, bringing people together in an interchange of ideas, opinions, chatter and commerce that is changing the way we understand and define communities. This is the story of the biggest and fastest-growing social network in Africa. A network that took shape in the townships of the Western Cape and has grown to be part of the lives of more than 50 million users in 120 countries, sending more than 23 billion messages a month. This is the story of Mxit. A cultural force, a community of millions, with its own economy, its own infrastructure, its own language and its own traditions. This is the story of Mobinomics, the new economy of mobile, and how it is connecting people and changing lives. Read it and learn. Read it and understand. Read it and be moved by the power of mobile.

Download or read book Born a Crime written by Trevor Noah and published by One World. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • More than one million copies sold! A “brilliant” (Lupita Nyong’o, Time), “poignant” (Entertainment Weekly), “soul-nourishing” (USA Today) memoir about coming of age during the twilight of apartheid “Noah’s childhood stories are told with all the hilarity and intellect that characterizes his comedy, while illuminating a dark and brutal period in South Africa’s history that must never be forgotten.”—Esquire Winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and an NAACP Image Award • Named one of the best books of the year by The New York Time, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Esquire, Newsday, and Booklist Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.

Download or read book Breakthrough written by Mac Maharaj and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2021-09-01 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When President F.W. de Klerk announced the unbanning of the liberation movements on 2 February 1990, he opened the door to negotiations that would end apartheid and pave the way to democracy. But how did this moment come about? What power struggles and secret talks had brought the country to this point? Written by two ANC veterans who were close to these events, Breakthrough sheds new light on the process that led to the formal negotiations. Focusing on the years before 1990, the book reveals the skirmishes that took place away from the public glare, as the principal adversaries engaged in a battle of positions that carved a pathway to the negotiating table. Drawing from material in the prison files of Nelson Mandela, minutes of the meetings of the ANC Constitutional Committee, the NWC and the NEC, notes about the Mells Park talks led by Professor Willie Esterhuyse and Thabo Mbeki, communications between Oliver Tambo and Operation Vula, the Kobie Coetsee Papers, the Broederbond archives and numerous other sources, the authors have pieced together a definitive account of these historic developments. While most accounts of South Africa’s transition deal with what happened during the formal negotiations, Breakthrough demonstrates that an account of how the opposing parties reached the negotiating table in the first place is indispensable for an understanding of how South Africa broke free from a spiralling war and began the journey to democracy.

Download or read book Fortunes written by Ebbe Dommisse and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive work based on personal interviews and insider knowledge - bound to become a classic.

Download or read book We Have a Game Changer written by Francesca Beighton and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting a South African digital media business in a time when nobody had a clue how to make money from online news was a bad idea. Doing it on a shoestring budget with a skeleton staff? Downright foolish. A decade later, Daily Maverick has managed to establish itself as one of the country's most influential and intelligent publications - but not without a disproportionate amount of death threats, grey hair and empty bank accounts. We Have A Game Changer lifts the lid on the often unbelievable efforts to keep the dream alive. Marikana, Madiba, Mangaung, Nenegate, Nkandla, Oscar Pistorius, the rise of the EFF, the fall of SARS, 10 years of Zuma and, of course, the #GuptaLeaks: Daily Maverick covered it all with the depth and the signature wit that this plucky digital publisher has become known for. Tracking the biggest moments in South Africa over the last decade and the knock-on effect that they had on both the editorial and business endeavours, this is the story behind the stories. We Have A Game Changer tells what it was like to construct a first draft of history. And what a history that was.

Download or read book Poacher written by Kimon De Greef and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Locked up for poaching abalone, Shuhood Abader began writing his life story. For years, he had been a small cog in a criminal industry stretching from the Cape underworld to China's luxury seafood market. As abalone vanishes from the South African coast, Shuhood's first-person account takes us right into the heart of the crisis. Kimon de Greef is the pre-eminent local expert on the illicit abalone trade. He contextualises Abader's raw, immediate tale by showing how the system works: from desperate fishing communities via gang strongholds on the Cape Flats, tik, guns and police complicity to th.

Download or read book Rebels and Rage written by Adam Habib and published by Jonathan Ball Publishers. This book was released on 2019-03-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adam Habib, the most prominent and outspoken university official through the recent student protests, takes a characteristically frank view of the past three years on South Africa's campuses in this new book. Habib charts the progress of the student protests that erupted on Wits University campus in late 2015 and raged for the better part of three years, drawing on his own intimate involvement and negotiation with the students, and also records university management and government responses to the events. He critically examines the student movement and individual student leaders who emerged under the banners #feesmustfall and #Rhodesmustfall, and debates how to achieve truly progressive social change in South Africa, on our campuses and off. This book is both an attempt at a historical account and a thoughtful reflection on the issues the protests kicked up, from the perspective not only of a high-ranking member of university management, but also Habib as political scientist with a background as an activist during the struggle against apartheid. Habib moves between reflecting on the events of the last three years on university campuses, and reimagining the future of South African higher education. Adam Habib, the most prominent and outspoken university official through the recent student protests, takes a characteristically frank view of the past three years on South Africa's campuses in this new book. Habib charts the progress of the student protests that erupted on Wits University campus in late 2015 and raged for the better part of three years, drawing on his own intimate involvement and negotiation with the students, and also records university management and government responses to the events. He critically examines the student movement and individual student leaders who emerged under the banners #feesmustfall and #Rhodesmustfall, and debates how to achieve truly progressive social change in South Africa, on our campuses and off. This book is both an attempt at a historical account and a thoughtful reflection on the issues the protests kicked up, from the perspective not only of a high-ranking member of university management, but also Habib as political scientist with a background as an activist during the struggle against apartheid. Habib moves between reflecting on the events of the last three years on university campuses, and reimagining the future of South African higher education.