The Wretched of the Earth is a classic, political work which has gained prominence in South Africa during the recent student (and political) uprisings. It is an in- depth analysis of the effects of colonization on the individual in society. It examines the consequences of a decolonizing struggle and the needed path to liberation.
For millions of readers worldwide, Alan Paton's books have described life in contemporary South Africa. Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful revolves around the everyday experiences of a group of men and women whose lives reflect the human costs of maintaining a racially divided society. Writing at the peak of his powers, Paton delivers again a masterpiece.
The Dutch Reformed minister DF Malan led the Afrikaners to victory in 1948 and instituted the policy of apartheid. Today grim-faced photographs of NP leaders like Malan and his successors have come to symbolise a system of racial oppression, which dehumanised and impoverished the majority of South Africa’s population.Yet, when Malan was asked on his deathbed about the most important service he had rendered during his political career, he answered, ‘that I could serve my nation; that I could unite my people’. This biography tries to understand this dichotomy: how a man who earnestly sought to unite and to protect a people could also contribute to a legacy that continues to scar a country.The book introduces the reader to Malan the man: the shy, bookish young boy, the distracted intellectual who once left home with his slippers on, the uncertain lover and the thinker who spent hours preparing his speeches, first for church sermons and then for parliamentary debates.The rise in Afrikaner nationalism in the years after the Anglo-Boer War offers the backdrop to Malan’s personal and political life. This growing movement spurs him on to leave the church to become editor of Die Burger and provincial leader of the National Party. This book therefore also offers a gripping behind-the-scenes account of Afrikaner nationalist politics.
What questions would you ask if you had a chance to meet Raymond Ackerman, Donald Gordon, Adrian Gore, Koos Bekker, Herman Mashaba or Pam Golding? What would you want to know about how they started out; how the spark of an idea kindled into an empire? What drove them to become the success they are today?Written by some of South Africa's leading journalists, writers and academics, and edited by Moky Makura, whose 2008 book Africa's Greatest Entrepreneurs shed much-welcomed light on entrepreneurs on the continent, these are the stories of how the country's top businesses were created, as told by the people who created them.
Colin Eglin was at the front-line of the making of South African history for the second half of the 20th Century. He served in parliament through the terms of seven successive prime ministers and presidents. This title recalls an active life well lived, from childhood in South Africa in the 1920s and 1930s to fighting his way through Italy.
The war declared by the Boers on 11 October 1899 gave the British, as Kipling said, ‘no end of a lesson’. It proved to be the longest, the costliest, the bloodiest and the most humiliating campaign that Britain fought between 1815 and 1914.Thomas Pakenham has written the first full-scale history of the war since 1910. His narrative is based on first-hand and largely unpublished sources ranging from the private papers of the leading protagonists to the recollections of survivors from both sides. Out of this historical gold-mine, the author has constructed a narrative as vivid and fast-moving as a novel, and a history that in scholarship, breadth and impact will endure for many years.
