there is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
Athol Williams, Deep Collusion: Bain and the Capture of South Africa (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2021) IT’S not unusual for South African whistleblowers to go into hiding overseas. The two computer technicians who uncovered the Gupta […]
FIFTY years ago, Richards Bay on the Zululand coast was hardly more than a spot for recreational fishing. Today it is the site of South Africa’s deepest harbour and main bulk port, shifting 80 million […]
FEW people will recognise the title Inqaba Yabasebenzi. Nor did many back in November 1987 when Inkatha, as the partial price of participation in peace talks in the growing Natal civil war, demanded that the […]
Themba Maseko, For my Country: Why I Blew the Whistle on Zuma and the Guptas (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2021) THIS might well have been the routine story of a young struggle activist who graduated to […]
NOTHING appears to separate the worlds of Cyril Ramaphosa and Jacob Zuma more obviously than their attitudes towards the Zondo Commission into State Capture. Ramaphosa turned up for two apparently co-operative rounds; Zuma when he […]
Gwen Lister, Comrade Editor: On Life, Journalism and the Birth of Namibia (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2021) ON 11 June 1974 a small group of anti-apartheid Cape Town students disrupted a Southern Universities versus British Lions […]
Trevor Ngwane, Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2021) HAVING visited 46 informal settlements to discover that three quarters have popular committees, and just one no committee at all, Trevor Ngwane […]
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 […]