No last place to rest

This book examines the impact of coal mining on the lives of former-labour tenant and rural communities in post-apartheid South Africa.No Last Place to Rest: Coal Mining and Dispossession in South Africa is an exploration of the ongoing struggles faced by families in the Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Na...

Darkest before dawn

A collection of Robert Sobukwe's political writings, speeches and court testimonies supplemented by an account of his years in Kimberley following release from Robben Island.There are several accounts of Robert Sobukwe’s courageous role in contesting South Africa’s system of apartheid and of his ...

Queer mozambique

Postcolonial Mozambique decriminalized homosexual acts in 2015. This legal reform was not a response to litigation or public pressure, but came from a parliamentary initiative and lobbying by a few organizations. Subsequent public opinion polls show that Mozambique is an outlier in Africa in its ...

Advances in psychological assessment in south africa

Advances in Psychological Assessment in South Africa provides a detailed, practical and critical appraisal of the evolution of psychological testing since the publication of Psychological Assessment in South Africa: Research and Applications (2013). Editors Laher and Cockcroft once again bring to...

Kielezo cha insha

Kielezo cha Insha is the earliest guide to essay writing in Kiswahili, published by Wits University Press in 1954. After Tanzania's independence in 1961 the book was not available for several decades because of the political and economic sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa.The ...

These potatoes look like humans

These Potatoes Look Like Humans offers a unique understanding of the intersection between land, labour, dispossession and violence experienced by Black South Africans from the apartheid period to the present. In this ground-breaking book, Mbuso Nkosi criticises the historical framing of this deba...

English-isizulu / isizulu-english dictionary

The first the English and Zulu Dictionary dictionary was published in 1958 by Wits Unviersity Press and compiled by C.M. Doke and B.W. Vilakazi, intended as a companion to the Zulu-English Dictionary compiled by Doke and Vilakazi (first published 1948 by Wits University Press). The first combined...

I write the yawning void

Sindiwe Magona is a celebrated South African writer, storyteller and motivational speaker known mainly for her autobiographies, biographies, novels, short stories, poetry and children’s books. I Write the Yawning Void is a collection of essays that highlight her engagement with writing that span ...

Violence, slavery and freedom between hegel and fanon

A deep dive into the influences of Hegelian thought on the work of revolutionary and postcolonial theorist Frantz FanonHegel is most often mentioned – and not without good reason – as one of the paradigmatic exponents of Eurocentrism and racism in Western philosophy. But his thought also played a...

Entanglement

This original book is a much needed and far reaching exploration of post-apartheid South African life worlds. Entanglement aims to capture the contradictory mixture of innovation and inertia, of loss, violence and xenophobia as well as experimentation and desegregation, which characterises the pr...

Surfacing

An anthology dedicated to contemporary Black South African feminist writing influential to today's scholars and radical thinkersSurfacing: On Being Black and Feminist in South Africa is the first collection dedicated to contemporary Black South African feminist perspectives. Leading feminist theo...

And wrote my story anyway

Critically examines influential novels in English by eminent black female writersStudying these writers' key engagements with nationalism, race and gender during apartheid and the transition to democracy, Barbara Boswell traces the ways in which black women's fiction criticality interrogates narr...

Bones and bodies

Alan G. Morris critically examines the history of evolutionary anthropology in South Africa, uncovering the often racist philosophical motivations of these physical anthropology researchers and the discipline itselfSouth Africa is famed for its contribution to the study of human evolution. In Bon...

Students must rise

A detailed account of the incredibly influential Soweto Student Uprising of 1976The Soweto Student Uprising of 1976 was a decisive moment in the struggle against apartheid. It marked the expansion of political activism to a new generation of young activists, but beyond that it inscribed the role ...

Mutant city

Examines how Johannesburg's 21st-century surge in speculative writing and film & fantasy, comics, sci-fi, noir & reflects the city's mutations, anxieties, and imaginative possibilities.

Needlework in africa

This beautifully crafted book explores needlework; encompassing sewing, embroidery, weaving, quilting, tattooing and more; as a lens for understanding gendered and marginalised histories and identities. Through case studies from across Africa, it highlights the work of fashion designers, weavers,...

Expelled

Expelled is an award-winning drama comedy that unfolds over an explosive week in a privileged South African family.Lou and Rich have staked everything on their son Alex: he has a place at an elite boys' school, is popular, and is on the first rugby team. His status seems untouchable until a reckl...

Rogue spying

In South Africa's democracy, the civilian intelligence agency's power has been weaponized to spy on political rivals, the media and civil society, while oversight institutions largely falter. As inquiries into Jacob Zuma's presidency opened doors for intelligence reform, Cyril Ramaphosa's adminis...

Caught in neutral

Analysis of South Africa's automotive industry within global production networks, critiquing inconsistent industrial policies and highlighting worker's agency in shaping equitable labor conditions, and a just transition to electric vehicles.

Customs and beliefs of the |xam

Based on the articles published in the 1930s by Dorothea Bleek in the journal Bantu Studies, this revised and expanded edition brings together a wide range of |xam beliefs and key narratives as told to Bleek and Lloyd by |xam teachers.

Transnational families in africa

This is the first book to capture the poignant stories of transnational African families and their use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in mediating their experiences of migration and caring across distance. Transnational Families in Africa analyses the highs and lows of famil...

African archaeology without frontiers

Confronting national, linguistic and disciplinary boundaries, contributors to African Archaeology Without Frontiers argue against artificial limits and divisions created through the study of ‘ages’ that in reality overlap and cannot and should not be understood in isolation. Papers are drawn from...

Writing the ancestral river

Writing the Ancestral River is an illuminating and unusual biography of the Kowie River in the Eastern CapeThis tidal river runs through the centre of what used to be called the Zuurveld, a formative meeting ground of different peoples who have shaped our history: Khoikhoi herders, Xhosa pastoral...

Death and compassion

Examines what literature reveals about human attitudes towards elephants and who shows compassion towards them Elephants are in dire straits – again. They were virtually extirpated from much of Africa by European hunters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but their numbers resurged for a...

Lie on your wounds

Selection of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe’s letters from prison in opposition to South African apartheid This book collates nearly 300 prison letters to and from Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, inspirational political leader and first President of the Pan-Africanist Congress. These letters are testimony to...

Lie on your wounds

Selection of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe’s letters from prison in opposition to South African apartheidThis book collates nearly 300 prison letters to and from Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, inspirational political leader and first President of the Pan-Africanist Congress. These letters are testimony to ...

The world looks like this from here

Reflecting on the problematics of psychology as a colonial, Euro-American discipline, this book builds a compelling case for thinking and doing psychology differently in and for Africa. This book sets out a situated, pluralising framework for researching, teaching and practising African psycholog...

Conspicuous consumption in africa

Amal’ezulu

Politics and community-based research

Politics and Community-Based Research: Perspectives from Yeoville Studio, Johannesburg provides a textured analysis of a contested urban space that will resonate with other contested urban spaces around the world and challenges researchers involved in such spaces to work in creative and politicis...

Organise or die?

Organise or Die? Democracy and Leadership in South Africa?s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) is the first in-depth study of one of the leading trade unions in the country. Founded in 1982, the trade union played a key role in the struggle against white minority rule, before turning into a cent...

Like family

An analytic and historical perspective of literary texts to understand the position of domestic workers in South AfricaMore than a million black South African women are domestic workers. Precariously situated between urban and rural areas, rich and poor, white and black, these women are at once i...

Cape radicals

A long way home

In no other society in the world have urbanisation and industrialization been as comprehensively based on migrant labour as in South Africa. Rather than focusing on the well-documented narrative of displacement and oppression, A Long Way Home captures the humanity, agency and creative modes of se...

African ark

The story of how Africa’s mammals have helped shape the continent’s landscapes over time to support an amazing diversity of lifeAfrica is home to an amazing array of animals, including the world’s most diverse assortment of large mammals. These include the world’s largest terrestrial mammal, the ...

Regarding muslims

An analysis of the role of Muslims from South Africa’s founding to the present and points to the resonance of these discussions beyond South Africa. How do Muslims fit into South Africa's well-known narrative of colonialism, apartheid and post-apartheid? South Africa is infamous for apartheid, bu...

Public intellectuals in south africa

This edited collection gives voice to neglected public intellectuals in the arts, humanities, and journalism in South Africa who gave voice and presence to those who have been marginalized and silenced in South African historyEdward Said described a public intellectual as someone who uses accessi...

Labour disrupted

Analyses the fragmentation and future of labour movements in South Africa and globally in the context of globalisation, the fourth industrial revolution and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Transforming research methods in the social sciences

A look at the research methods in development across the global SouthSocial science researchers in the global South, and in South Africa particularly, utilise research methods in innovative ways in order to respond to contexts characterised by diversity, racial and political tensions, socioeconom...

Bury me at the marketplace

When Chabani Manganyi published the first edition of selected letters twenty-five years ago as a companion volume to Exiles and Homecomings: A Biography of Es’kia Mphahlele, the idea of Mphahlele’s death was remote and poetic. The title, Bury Me at the Marketplace, suggested that immortality of a...

Mbeki and after

For nearly ten years – indeed more if we include his period of influence under Mandela’s presidency – Thabo Mbeki bestrode South Africa’s political stage. Despite attempts by some in the new ANC leadership to airbrush out his role, there can be little doubt that Mbeki was a seminal figure in Sout...

Sol plaatje's native life in south africa

Sheds new light on Native Life appearing at a critical historical juncture, and reflects on how to read it in South Africa’s heightened challenges today. First published in 1916, Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa was written by one of the South Africa's most talented early twentieth-centu...

Wits

When the National Government assumed power in 1948, one of the earliest moves was to introduce segregated education. Its threats to restrict the admission of black students into the four ‘open universities’ galvanised the staff and students of those institutions to oppose any attempt to interfere...

A search for origins

A study of the 'Cradle of Humanity and its history.The 'Cradle of Humankind' (COH), bordering Gauteng and the North-West Province, was declared a World Heritage Site for the wealth of the human and animal fossils found there. Research based on fossils found in the area as well as signs of early h...

Becoming men

This vivid evocation of the lives of 32 boys from a Johannesburg township is essential reading for anybody wishing to understand black masculinity in South AfricaBecoming Men is the story of 32 boys from Alexandra, one of Johannesburg's largest townships, over a period of twelve seminal years in ...

Land, chiefs, mining

Land, Chiefs, Mining explores aspects of the experience of the Batswana in the thornveld and bushveld regions of the North-West Province, shedding light on defi ning issues, moments and individuals in this lesser known region of South Africa. Some of the focuses are: an important Tswana kgosi (ch...

Apartheid and the making of a black psychologist

This intriguing memoir details in a quiet and restrained manner with what it meant to be a committed black intellectual activist during the apartheid years and beyond. Few autobiographies exploring the ‘life of the mind’ and the ‘history of ideas’ have come out of South Africa, and N Chabani Mang...

New south african review 1

Is South Africa on a long-term decline?The New South African Review revives the tradition of critical, analytical scholarship developed by the South African Review in the 1970s and 1980s. Accessible to a wide readership and drawing upon authors from well beyond academia, its objective is to be in...

The musical instruments of the indigenous people of south africa

A detailed collection of information about the playing and making of the instruments of indigenous peoples' in South Africa. Percival Kirby was a musician and ethnomusicologist and for many years head of the music department at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Between 1923 and...

Baragwanath hospital, soweto

Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto illustrates how this rapidly growing, underfunded but surprisingly effective institution found the niche that allowed it to exist, to provide medical care to a massive patient body and at times even to flourish in the apartheid state. The book offers new ways of explo...

Black x

What does it mean to be Black in an anti-Black world?In Black X: Liberatory Thought in Azania, Tendayi Sithole offers a compelling example of how to engage South Africa differently. Set in the Black point of view as a site of critical reflection, he confronts the question of colonial conquest, so...

I want to go home forever

Thirteen true stories about xenophobia and belonging in JohannesburgGenerations of people from across Africa, Europe and Asia have turned metal from the depths of the earth into Africa’s wealthiest, most dynamic and most diverse urban centre, a mega-city where post-apartheid South Africa is being...

Visual century volume three: 1972-1993

In the third volume of the Visual Century Collection, the national struggle for democracy is juxtaposed with the challenging art of the time period.Visual Century: South African Art is a four-volume publication that reappraises South African visual art of the 20th century from a postapartheid per...

Parrots of africa, madagascar and the mascarene islands

A detailed examination of all aspects of parrots from behavior to their conservation.Parrots' colour and charisma, coupled with the fact that they mimic human speech, make them fascinating to many people. They are ancient birds with unique bill and foot structures that enable them to forage on fr...

Termites of the gods

Siyakha Mguni’s personal journey, over many years, to discover the significance of a hitherto enigmatic theme in San rock paintings known as formlings. In Termites of the Gods, Siyakha Mguni narrates his personal journey, over many years, to discover the significance of a hitherto enigmatic theme...

Visionary animal

An illustrated collection that takes stock of current knowledge and proposes a new way of reading indigenous artFor thousands of years, nomadic hunter-gatherers assigned a fundamental role to the visualization of the animals who shared their lives. Some, such as the Cape eland, the largest of ant...

Our lady of benoni

An innovative play tackling the role of patriarchy in South African cultureZakes Mda's satire is a kaleidoscopic display of the extremes to which men (and by implication women) are prepared to go in terms of valuing what is 'virginal'. Mda presents us with the consequences of transgression: that ...

Women by women

A look into the talent of South African female photographersCommissioned by the Ministry of Arts and Culture, this book celebrates the 50th anniversary of the 1956 women's march on the Union Buildings. It provides a dramatic and unprecedented showcase of photographic talent, from the early pionee...

People of the eland

The cornerstone of current understanding of rock art of the San of DrakensbergFirst published in 1976, People of the Eland was the first major step away from the outsider's view upon San rock art that had dominated studies of rock art for nearly a century. The book, an account of the rock art of ...

Monarchs, missionaries and african intellectuals

Much of the work in the field of African studies still relies on rigid distinctions of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’, ‘collaboration’ and ‘resistance’, ‘indigenous’ and ‘foreign’. This book moves well beyond these frameworks to probe the complex entanglements of different intellectual traditions in...

Ties that bind

Intimacies of friendship create vital spaces for practices of power and resistance within the histories of apartheid and colonialism. What does friendship have to do with racial difference, settler colonialism and post-apartheid South Africa? While histories of apartheid and colonialism in South ...

Practical anatomy

A clear, concise and accessible dissection guide for undergraduate allied health sciences and medical students encountering dissection for the first timePractical Anatomy is designed to enable novice anatomists to grasp the biological background of the human anatomy while understanding its comple...

The intrapreneur’s journey

An essential business guide on how to develop an organization's innovation culture and internal entrepreneurs (intrapreneurs)The Intrapreneur’s Journey: Empowering Employees to Drive Growth is an essential guide on effectively creating and implementing a sustainable culture of innovation and entr...

Dominance and decline

As Jacob Zuma moves into the twilight years of his presidencies of both the African National Congress (ANC) and of South Africa, this book takes stock of the Zuma-led administration and its impact on the ANC. Dominance and Decline: The ANC in the Time of Zuma combines hard-hitting arguments with ...

Healing the exposed being

This ethnography explores the Ngoma healing tradition as practiced in eastern Mpumalanga, South Africa. ‘Bungoma’ is an active philosophical system and healing practice consisting of multiple strands, based on the notion that humans are intrinsically exposed to each other and that this is the cau...

The african national congress and the regeneration of political power

The African National Congress is light years beyond the liberation movement of old. It remains a juggernaut, but its control and dominance are no longer watertight. The ANC lives the contradictions of weaknesses, cracks and factions while retaining its colossal status. As a party-movement it draw...

Uncovering memory

My interest in site-specific research is not random. My mother escaped through the sewers of Breslau, Germany in 1945 (today known as Wroclaw, Poland). My father was born in a country that no longer exists. Their final destination was Johannesburg, South Africa. This is where I enter the narrativ...

Climate change

Climate change affects us all, but it can be a confusing business. In this book, three scientists with several decades of experience in assessing the potential effects of climate change for the southern African region share their insights. Complex issues are dealt with in plain language, without ...

Original apartheid hustler

A powerful literary biography uncovering Dugmore Boetie’s erased legacy, blending archival research, oral history, and decolonial critique to challenge apartheid’s racial and cultural erasures.

Shadow state

A powerful analysis of events that helped galvanise resistance across civil societyThe 2017 publication of Betrayal of the Promise, the report that detailed the systematic nature of state capture, marked a key moment in South Africa’s most recent struggle for democracy. In the face of growing evi...

Children in mind

A psychologist’s guide for parents, care-givers and health care practitioners to the emotional challenges facing children and their parents todayCurrent research shows that certain childhood mental disorders are diagnosed more frequently today than in previous generations. Many of today’s childre...

Being black in the world

An annotated edition of a classic text by South Africa's first black psychologist, a collection of essays reflecting on what it meant to be black during the apartheid yearsBeing-Black-in-the-World, one of N. Chabani Manganyi’s first publications, was written in 1973 at a time of global socio-poli...

Psychodynamic psychotherapy in south africa

An accessible text for practitioners, students, and non-specialists about the practice of psychotherapy in South Africa.Psychoanalysis as a long term modality is inaccessible to the average South African. In this book the authors describe how psychoanalytically orientated or psychodynamic psychot...