there is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
WHEN my yoga teacher suggested returning to in-person classes from September, I was pleased to think of sharing the experience ‘live’ again. His email encouraged booking soon as places were limited, and I assumed he […]
Michela Wrong, Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad (London: Fourth Estate, 2021) The title of this substantial book is a double entendre. It uses the words […]
RECENTLY, on 6 September, yet another apartheid functionary took with him to the grave secrets of the past without being put through a conclusive truth process. The dead man was João Rodrigues, the last surviving […]
John R. Schlapobersky, When They Came for Me: The Hidden Diary of an Apartheid Prisoner (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2021) IN John Schlapobersky’s case they came on Friday 13 June 1969 in the middle of a […]
Tyrone August, Dennis Brutus: The South African Years (Cape Town: BestRed, 2020) ALTHOUGH renowned as a poet, political activist, journalist and teacher, with a life story that is relatively well-known, Dennis Brutus has proved an […]
THIRTY years after the fall of apartheid and Cricket South Africa (CSA) is involved in protracted hearings about social justice and nation building; in essence a truth commission to look at what has happened to […]
Dominique Malherbe, Searching for Sarah: The Woman who Loved Langenhoven (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2021) SARAH (Saartjie) Eva Goldblatt was born in London on Christmas Day 1889 to a Jewish family that emigrated to South Africa […]
Robert Schapiro, Secrets from the Cockpit: Pilots Behaving Badly and Other Flying Stories (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2021) WHEN I was young, we dressed up in our best clothes to travel by plane. Passengers were treated […]
In his address to the nation on Friday 16 July, President Cyril Ramaphosa was blunt: recent public violence and looting had been ‘a deliberate, co-ordinated and well-planned attack on [South Africa’s] democracy … The constitutional […]
Jeremy Vearey, Into Dark Water: A Police Memoir (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2021) THIS is a curate’s egg of a book. Correctly sub-titled as memoir, it is the work of a former MK soldier and ANC […]