Wits University Press

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-Natal provinces of South Africa whose lives have been upended by the relentless expansion of coal mining operations. These regions, burdened with the task of fulfilling the nation's energy needs and boosting the country’s economy, witness daily the harsh realities of dispossession that extend far beyond the mere loss of property.

Dineo Skosana presents a compelling argument that dispossession remains a present-day reality and crisis, contradicting the notion that it is merely a relic of the past in the post-apartheid landscape. It challenges the narrow perspective that equates land loss in material and economic terms only. Skosana considers the impact of grave relocations—a common occurrence in these mining-dominated locales— and the profound spiritual anguish and dehumanisation communities endure as their lands are excavated. In African societies, connections to the land extend beyond the material; land has a sacred and ancestral value. Grave relocations disrupt this connection families have with their ancestors. In dispossessing not only the living but also the dead from their lands, the author argues that the act wounds the collective soul of a people, eroding their cultural heritage, and collective identity and belonging.

This book offers a rich ethnographic account of the experiences, struggles and resistance of the affected communities as well as a critical analysis of the legal and policy frameworks that enable their exploitation. In relation to the ‘land question’ in South Africa, No Last Place to Rest presents deep insights for communities, activists and government sectors acting in support of social justice and redress.

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 debate within narrow materialist and legalistic arguments. His assertion is that, for most Black South Africans, the meaning of land cannot be separated from one’s spiritual and ancestral connection to it, and this results in him seeing the dispossession of land in South Africa with a perspective not yet explored.

Nkosi takes as his starting point the historic 1959 potato boycott in South Africa, which came about as a result of startling rumours that potatoes dug out of the soil from the farms in the Bethal district of Mpumalanga were in fact human heads. Journalists such as Ruth First and Henry Nxumalo went to Bethal to uncover these stories and revealed horrific accounts of abuse and routine killings of farmworkers by white Afrikaners. The workers were disenfranchised Black people who were forced to work on these farms for alleged ‘crimes’ against National Party state laws, such as the failure to carry passbooks.

In reading this violence from the perspectives of both the Black worker and the white farmer, Nkosi deploys the device of the eye to look at his research subjects and make sense of how the past informs the present. His argument is that the violence against Black farmworkers was not only on the exploitation of cheap labour, but also an anxiety white farmers felt about their settler-colonial appropriation of land. This anxiety, Nkosi argues, is pervasive in current heated public debates on the land question and calls for ‘land expropriation without compensation’. Furthermore, the dispossession of Black people from their land cannot be overcome until there is a recognition of the dead and restless spirits of the land, and a spiritual return to home for Black people’s ancestors. Until such time, the cycles of violence will persist.

This book will be of interest to academics and scholars working in the area of land and workers’ struggles but also to the general reader who wants to gain a deeper understanding of redress and social justice on multiple levels.

Shows how anti-Semitism has been distorted to serve the Israeli state

Good Jew, Bad Jew is a critique by one of South Africa’s foremost political theorists of mainstream understandings of Jewishness. Steven Friedman offers a searing analysis of the weaponisation of anti-Semitism in service of political objectives that support the Israeli state and global white supremacy. Looking specifically at the way in which language is used to shape identities, Friedman uses many examples to illustrate how anti-Semitism and anti-Semites are increasingly defined as anything and anyone that opposes the interests and policies of the Israeli state.

The use of anti-racist language to defend racial domination distorts not only the meaning of what it is to be Jewish, but sheds light on how all dogmatic nationalisms function. Friedman uses India and South Africa as examples, but the analysis applies across the world too.

Good Jew, Bad Jew does not offer a simplistic binary understanding of Jewishness and the actions of the Israeli state and ideology. It is a detailed, deeply researched and critical work that will appeal to both specialists and general readers looking for a considered view on how language shapes belief systems and how the powerful forces of racism and nationalism – and their opponents – are being misrepresented.

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 the transition from apartheid to the post-apartheid period and addresses themes such as HIV/Aids, language and culture, home and belonging.

Magona worked as a teacher, domestic worker and spent two decades working for the United Nations in the United States of America. She has received many awards for her fierce and fearless writing ‘truth to power’. Her written work is often informed by her lived experience of being a black woman resisting subjugation and poverty. <br>
These essays bring to life many facets of Magona’s personal history as well as her deepest convictions, her love for her country and despair at the problems that continue to plague it, and her belief in her ability to activate change. They demonstrate Magona’s engaging storytelling and mastery of the essay form which serve as meaningful supplements to her fictional works, while simultaneously offering direct and insightful responses to the conditions that inspired them.

Through her essays Magona offers a reimagining of a broken society and the role literature can play in casting new light on old wounds.

The story of how Africa’s mammals have helped shape the continent’s landscapes over time to support an amazing diversity of life

Africa 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 African elephant, which still roams great swathes of the continent alongside a host of other well-known large mammals with hooves such as hippopotamuses, giraffes, rhinoceroses, and zebras. African Ark: Mammals, Landscape and the Ecology of a Continent tells the story of where these mammals have come from and how they have interacted to create the richly varied landscape that makes up Africa as we know it today. It gives an equal airing to small mammals, such as rodents and bats, which are often overlooked by both naturalists and zoologists in favor of their larger cousins.

African Ark not only describes the diversity of African mammals and the habitats in which they live; it also explains the processes by which species and population groups are formed and how these fluctuate over time. A book on mammals would not be complete without attention placed on the impact of megafauna on the environment and the important roles they play in shaping the landscape. In this way, mammals such as elephants and rhinoceros support countless plant communities and the habitats of many smaller animals.

The book brings in a human perspective as well as a conservation angle in its assessment of the interaction of African mammals with the people who live alongside them. African Ark is at once scientifically rigorous and accessible for the layperson and student alike, while drawing on the contributions of numerous zoologists, ecologists and conservationists dedicated to the understanding of Africa and its wildlife.

Accessing abortion services in rural areas under conditions of liberal abortion legislation is neither straightforward nor simple. As the South African example shows, the liberalisation of abortion legislation was the first step in granting pregnant persons access to abortion care. Despite this and some progress in implementation, many challenges persist resulting in a lack of services, especially in areas where distances and transport costs are a factor.

Drawing on the findings of a study conducted in three rural districts of the Eastern Cape, the authors highlight the complexities involved in understanding problematic or unwanted pregnancies and abortion services within these communities; the reported barriers to, and facilitators of, access to abortion services among rural populations; and preferences for types of abortion services.

A key finding is the conundrum of costs versus confidentiality: lack of confidentiality involves additional costs to access services outside the area; high costs mean that confidentiality may have to be foregone, which leads to stigma. The authors place the findings within a reparative reproductive justice framework and present a comprehensive set of recommendations.

Abortion Services and Reproductive Justice in Rural South Africa is an insightful and informative resource – the first of its kind – for scholars in health and sociology, reproductive health policy makers, national planners, health facility managers and providers, and activists.

Using conversations, observations, and reflections, psychologist Kopano Ratele meditates on love, violence and masculinity

This book seeks to imagine the possibility of a more loving masculinity in a society where structural violence, failures of government and economic inequality underpin much of the violent behavior that men display. Enriched with personal reflections on his own experiences as a partner, father, psychologist and researcher in the field of men and masculinities, Why Men Hurt Women and Other Reflections on Love, Violence and Masculinity is Kopano Ratele’s meditation on love and violence, and the way these forces shape the emotional lives of boys and men.

At the core of these critical and deeply insightful texts is the question of why men hurt women they love. Ratele contends that many men in our society suffer from a painful, unrecognized, yet consequential love hunger that sets in during boyhood. This need for love may lie at the root of some of the male violence that damages the lives of women, children and men themselves.

Blending academic analysis and rigor in a readable narrative style, Ratele illuminates the complex nuances of gender, intimacy and power in the context of the human need for love and care. While unsparing in his analysis of men’s inner lives, Ratele lays out a path for addressing the hunger for love in boys and men. He argues that just as the beliefs and practices relating to gender, sexuality and the nature of love are constantly being challenged and revised, so our ideas about masculinity, and men’s and boys’ capacity to show genuine loving care for each other and for women, can evolve.

An anthology dedicated to contemporary Black South African feminist writing influential to today's scholars and radical thinkers

Surfacing: On Being Black and Feminist in South Africa is the first collection dedicated to contemporary Black South African feminist perspectives. Leading feminist theorist, Desiree Lewis, and poet and feminist scholar, Gabeba Baderoon, have curated contributions by some of the finest writers and thought leaders into an essential resource. Radical polemic sits side by side with personal essays, and critical theory coexists with rich and stirring life histories. The collection demonstrates a dazzling range of feminist voices from established scholars and authors to emerging thinkers, activists and creative practitioners.

The writers within these pages use creative expression, photography and poetry in eclectic, interdisciplinary ways to unearth and interrogate representations of blackness, sexuality, girlhood, history, divinity, and other themes. Surfacing asks: what do the African feminist traditions that exist outside the canon look and feel like? What complex cultural logics are at work outside the centers of power? How do spirituality and feminism influence each other? What are the histories and experiences of queer Africans? What imaginative forms can feminist activism take?

Surfacing is indispensable to anyone interested in feminism from Africa, which its contributors show in vivid and challenging conversation with the rest of the world. It will appeal to a diverse audience of students, activists, critical thinkers, academics and artists.

Challenges the mainstream understanding of BRICS and US dominance to situate the new global rivalries engulfing capitalism

BRICS is a grouping of the five major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Volume five in the Democratic Marxism series, BRICS and the New American Imperialism challenges the mainstream understanding of BRICS and US dominance to situate the new global rivalries engulfing capitalism. It offers novel analyses of BRICS in the context of increasing US induced imperial chaos, deepening environmental crisis tendencies (such as climate change and water scarcity), contradictory dynamics inside BRICS countries and growing subaltern resistance.

The authors revisit contemporary thinking on imperialism and anti-imperialism, drawing on the work of Rosa Luxemburg, one of the leading theorists after Marx, who attempted to understand the expansionary nature of capitalism from the heartlands to the peripheries. The richness of Luxemburg’s pioneering work inspires most of the volume’s contributors in their analyses of the dangerous contradictions of the contemporary world as well as forms of democratic agency advancing resistance.

While various forms of resistance are highlighted, among them water protests, mass worker strikes, anti-corporate campaigning and forms of cultural critique, this volume grapples with the challenge of renewing anti-imperialism beyond the NGO-driven World Social Forum and considers the prospects of a new horizontal political vessel to build global convergence. It also explores the prospects of a Fifth International of Peoples and Workers.

This book examines the profound legacy of Johnny Clegg (1953-2019), the South African musician, anthropologist and cultural activist who revolutionised the nation's musical landscape. From his groundbreaking collaboration with Sipho Mchunu in the 1970s through to his success with Juluka and Savuka, and as a solo artist, Clegg navigated apartheid-era censorship while reshaping South African cultural politics.

Drawing on unprecedented access to archival materials and band member interviews, this interdisciplinary research analyses Clegg's unique position as both scholar and performer. The study presents three critical interventions: an examination of his synthesis of music, dance and political philosophy as embodied resistance to apartheid; an analysis of his transnational impact and navigation of the global cultural boycott; and an investigation of cultural appropriation and decolonial practice through his engagement with, and reinterpretation of Zulu traditions.

Situated at the intersection of ethnomusicology, anthropology and African studies, this volume offers fresh theoretical frameworks for understanding cultural hybridity and postcolonial performance. It positions Clegg's work within broader discussions of race, power and cultural production in the Global South.

Drawing on a rich archive of colonial photography, Mokoena explores how images of African policemen and nightwatchmen in colonial South Africa challenged traditional narratives of oppression, revealing how uniform and portraiture transformed the black male figure into an aesthetic subject worthy of admiration.

This illustrated collection of essays brings into focus African men in colonial uniforms as a subject of portraiture. It extends the literature on colonial ethnographic photography by creating a narrative of nightwatchman portraiture from the rich archive of images. While a genre of photography developed around images of the ‘Zulu warrior’ after the defeat of the English at Isandlwana, Hlonipha Mokoena argues that the spectacle of the Zulu male body was inaugurated after the last Zulu king, Cetshwayo, was photographed as a posing subject.

Much research has focussed on the African man as a functionary of settler power; these essays shift debates about how the body moves in history. Placed in uniform, the male subject becomes aestheticised and admired. Mokoena focuses on the sartorial selection processes and co-optation of colonial aesthetic culture that constructed the idea of the Nonqgqayi or nightwatchman as a fully formed photographic presence. The beauty captured in these images upends conceptions of colonial photography as a tool of oppression.

In its focus on the figure of the black and brown fighting man, The Nightwatchman offers an innovative work on the history of portraiture in colonial South Africa and new avenues for the interpretation of visual representations of the black male figure.

Making a Life explores the dynamic everyday life-making strategies of young men in Zandspruit, a sprawling informal settlement on the outskirts of Johannesburg. In many ways Zandspruit typifies the precariousness of life within South Africa, where two-thirds of young people lack waged employment. However, rather than seeing Zandspruit as dumping ground, Hannah Dawson calls for an integrated understanding of the complex linkages between people’s lives and livelihoods, and the multifaceted socio-political landscape of urban settlements.

Based on 14 months of ethnographic research, Dawson investigates how social belonging, identity and economic realities intertwine in places such as Zandspruit. This approach not only challenges conventional approaches to studying work; it also questions the increasingly prevalent perspective that romanticises the adaptive survival strategies of the urban poor. By exploring the intricate connections between those with and without wages, the author shows how young men manage complex social, political and economic conditions.

Making a Life offers insights into issues such as urban work, citizenship, un(der)employment and inequality in South Africa. At the same time, it contributes to a global understanding of how young people – men especially – manage economic uncertainty.

In 2022 Wits University Press marked its centenary, making it the oldest, most established university press in sub-Saharan Africa. While in part modelled on scholarly publishers from the global North, it has had to contend with the constraints of working under global South conditions: marginalisation within the university, budgetary limitations, small local markets, unequal access to international sales channels, and the privileging of English language publishing over indigenous languages.

This volume explores what the Press has achieved, and what its modes of reinvention might look like. In widening and deepening our understanding of the Press as an example of a global South scholarly publisher, this volume asks how publishing can contribute to a broader understanding of Southern knowledge production. Featuring contributions from scholars, publishers and authors this multi-voiced volume showcases the history of the Press’s publishing activities over 100 years: from documenting its evolution through book covers and giving credence to some of the leading black intellectuals and writers of the early 20th century and the success of those works in spite of their authors’ racial marginalisation, to the role of women, both in publishing and in the spaces afforded to women’s writing on the Press’s list.

The collection concludes with essays by contemporary authors who detail not only their experiences of working with Southern publishers, but also the politics and influences governing their decisions to choose the Press over a Northern publisher. Publishing from the South shows the strategies deployed by the Press to professionalise Southern knowledge making, and in the process demonstrating how university presses in the global South support the scholarly missions of their universities for both local and global audiences.

Predicaments of Knowledge explores the difficult questions South African universities face after apartheid: Is there a difference between Africanising a university and decolonising a university? What about differences between deracialising and decolonising the curricula taught at universities across disciplines?

Through a range of reflections on race, language, colonial, postcolonial and decolonial knowledge projects from Africa and Latin America, this book explores the pitfalls and possibilities that face a post-apartheid generation inventing the future of knowledge.

The distinctions between Africanisation, decolonisation and deracialisation are often conflated in the political demands put to universities. Suren Pillay emphasises all three as important but distinct imperatives. If an intervention is undertaken with the aim of decolonising the university while actually addressing deracialisation, it can undermine the effort to decolonise. Similarly, if an initiative to Africanise the university does not address decolonisation, both processes can be undermined.

Drawing on more than two and a half decades of the author’s participation in these debates, these essays aim to intervene in and elucidate questions and predicaments, rather than offering blue prints; they are dialogical in spirit even when polemical in tone. In conversation with existing continental African and Latin American experiences, they offer incisive reflections on current South African debates.

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 incarceration on Robben Island after the Anti-Pass Campaign that led to the tragic events of Sharpeville in March 1960. Far less attention has been paid to the years the leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress spent in Kimberley, between 1969–1978, after his release from the Island. Darkest Before Dawn, the follow-up to Lie on Your Wounds: The Prison Correspondence of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, captures the story of the post-prison years of Sobukwe’s life.

This latest compilation complete with a biographical narrative by the editors and enriched with images from Sobukwe’s life in this period of his life demonstrates the many challenges Sobukwe faced as well as his continued political resolve to fight for an end to apartheid. This is captured in the many meetings he had in spite of banning orders and letters he exchanged with friends and admirers, including the celebrated novelist Bessie Head whose letters to Sobukwe are published here for the first time. Sobukwe continued to meet political allies, such as Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko, he pursued a legal career and played host to international visitors. The portrait of Sobukwe that emerges is that of a highly ethical man, a figure of dignity and fortitude, and a wise elder whose commitment to the people of Africa and to the vision of Pan-Africanism who remained undeterred, despite his being forced to live, in his final years, under near impossible conditions.

To do justice to Sobukwe’s legacy, his intellectual contribution and his unfailing desire to pursue liberation for the African people, we need to view his biography against the backdrop of his words. Darkest Before Dawn includes a definitive collection of his political writings, speeches, unpublished court testimonies, interviews with Gail Gerhart and Joe Thloloe, and expansive annotations by the compilers. The book ends with a reflective essay which highlights the ongoing pertinence of Sobukwe's legacy.

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, social cohesion and justice. Since South Africa is a name given to the country by its conquerors, not by its indigenous inhabitants, for true liberation, a renaming needs to occur. The concept of Azania holds this emancipatory gesture.

The post conquest, post 1994 liberal narratives mute the prevalence of racism while valorizing non-racialism and the transcendence of race. To indicate this silencing, the book deploys the concept of X, both as a signifier of repression and dehumanization of the Black subject, and as an empty signifier that holds the opportunity for radical and compassionate rehumanization.

The book examines these strands of erasure and hope for the Black subject. Sithole scrutinizes the colonial contract, arguing that it is not a contract since there has never been an agreement between the indigenous people and the settler colonialists. This brings into focus the land question, specifically land dispossession and its existential connection to black life. The relevance of Black Consciousness to the Azanian existential tradition is based on Steve Biko’s case that Marxism ignores Black ontological misery through its valorization of class and failure to include anti-Black racism in its analysis of power. Finally, Sithole analyses Mabogo P. More’s philosophical meditations around what it means to be Black in an anti-Black world.

In erasing the idea of South Africa and inscribing an open-ended naming of X, the book opens the way for something new to take its place that is imbued with greater humanity. This gesture opens up the potential to think about liberation in this country that is yet to rename and redefine itself.

In South African higher education, the images of dysfunction are everywhere. Student protests. Violence. Police presence. Rubber or real bullets. Class disruptions. Burning tyres. Damaged buildings. Injury and sometimes death. Reports of wholesale corruption. Year after year, often in the same set of universities; the problem of routine instability seems insoluble.

The financial, academic and reputational costs of ongoing dysfunction are high, especially for those universities caught-up in the never-ending struggle to overcome apartheid legacies. Any number of explanations have been ventured, including a lack of resources, shortage of capacity, rural location, corrupt officials, and endemic conflict. Corrupted takes a deeper look at dysfunction in an attempt to unravel the root causes in a sample of South African universities.

At the heart of the problem lies the vexed issue of resources or, more pertinently, the relationship between resources and power: who gets what, and why? Whatever else it aspires to be—commonly, a place of teaching, learning, research and public duty—a university in an impoverished community is also a rich concentration of resources around which corrupt staff, students and those outside of campus all vie for access.

Taking a political economic approach, Jonathan Jansen describes the daily struggle for institutional resources and offers accessible, sensible insights. He argues that the problem won’t be solved through investments in ‘capacity building’ alone because the combination of institutional capacity and institutional integrity contributes to serial instability in universities. Rather, durable solutions would include the depoliticisation of university councils and appointments of academics with integrity and capacity to manage and lead these fragile institutions.

This groundbreaking and long overdue study will offer a promising way forward for universities to better serve their communities and the country more broadly.

This book addresses urgent current debates on decolonisation by offering reimagined teaching and learning interventions for obtaining greater epistemic justice in the contemporary postcolonial university.

At a time when debates on decolonisation have gained urgency in academic, civic and public spaces, this interdisciplinary collection by authors based at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, serves as a valuable archive documenting and reflecting on a turbulent period in South African higher education. It is an important resource for academics looking to grasp debates on decoloniality both in South Africa, and in university and teaching spaces further afield. Calling for concerted and collaborative work towards greater epistemic justice across diverse disciplines, the book puts forward a new vision of the postcolonial university as one that enables excellent teaching and learning, undertaken in a spirit of critical consciousness and reciprocity.

China and Africa have long shared a history of allegiance and contact points through global political forces from the time of colonialism and the Cold War. With China’s rise as the new superpower, its presence in Africa has expanded, leading to significant economic, geopolitical and cultural shifts. While issues such as trade, aid and development have received much attention, Chinese and African encounters through the lens of the visual arts and material culture is a neglected field.

Visualising China in Southern Africa: Biography, Circulation, Transgression is a ground-breaking volume that addresses this deficit through engaging with the work of contemporary African and Chinese artists while analysing broader material production that prefigures the current relationship. The essays are wide-ranging in their analysis of ceramics, photography, painting, etching, sculpture, film, performance, postcards, stamps, installations, political posters, cartoons and architecture.

Visualising China in Southern Africa confines its focus to southern Africa, yet even within this region, the context is complex. Ethnicity and nationalism, the lingering influence of Cold War allegiances and colonial configurations all continue to play a role. The various visual cultures discussed in this volume emphasise the commonality of these categories, but also point towards other shared histories that transcend the nation-state category.

The collection includes scholarly chapters, photo essays, interviews, and artists’ personal accounts, organised around four themes: material flows, orientations and transgressions, spatial imaginaries, and biographies. The artists, photographers, filmmakers, curators and collectors in this volume include: Stary Mwaba, Hua Jiming, Anawana Haloba, Gerald Machona, Nobukho Nqaba, Marcus Neustetter, Brett Murray, Diane Victor, William Kentridge, Kristin NG-Yang, Kok Nam, Mark Lewis, the Chinese Camera Club of South Africa, Wu Jing, Henion Han and Shengkai Wu.

Amal’ezulu (Zulu Horizons), first published in 1945 in the Bantu (later, African) Treasury Series by the University of the Witwatersrand Press, was the second volume of poetry produced by the renowned Zulu author B.W. Vilakazi. It was written during the ten years he spent living in Johannesburg, in ‘exile’ from his birthplace, KwaZulu-Natal. The poems in this collection represent a turning point in Vilakazi’s life; they express yearnings for the beloved land, animals and ancestral spirits of his rural home, as well as expressions of deep disillusionment with the urban life he encountered in the ‘City of Gold’, and in particular the suffering of the black miners who brought this gold to the surface but never experienced the benefits of the wealth it produced for the mine owners. Vilakazi was deeply conscious of the subhuman system that held these miners in its grip, and gave voice to their suffering in many of the poems in the collection, in particular the now famous poem ‘Ezinkomponi’ (‘On the mine compounds’).

Renowned as the father of Nguni literature, Vilakazi was both a traditional imbongi (bard) and a forward-looking poet who could fuse Western poetic forms with Zulu izibongo (praise poetry). In these poems he assumes the role of the voice of the voiceless, and gives poignant expression to the stoic endurance of those caught up in the brutalities of capitalist exploitation of African labour, and the appalling injustices of the migrant labour system.

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 the South African context, by examining two case studies. The case studies constitute the core around which is woven this intriguing story of the development of black theatre in South Africa in the early years of the century. It also highlights the dialogue between African and African-American intellectuals, and the intellectual formation of the early African elite in relation to colonial authority and how each affected the other in complicated ways.

The first case study centres on Mariannhill Mission in KwaZulu-Natal. Here the evangelical and pedagogical drama pioneered by the Rev Bernard Huss, is considered alongside the work of one of the mission’s most eminent alumni, the poet and scholar, B.W. Vilakazi. The second moves to Johannesburg and gives a detailed insight into the working of the Bantu Dramatic Society and the drama of H.I.E. Dhlomo in relation to the British Drama League and other white liberal cultural activities.

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 itself

South Africa is famed for its contribution to the study of human evolution. In Bones and Bodies Alan G. Morris takes us back over the past century of anthropological discovery in South Africa and uncovers the stories of the individual scientists and how they contributed to our knowledge of the peoples of southern Africa, both ancient and modern. Not all of this history is one which we should feel comfortable with, as much of the earlier anthropological studies have been tainted with the tarred brush of race science. Morris critically examines the work of Raymond Dart, Thomas Dreyer, Matthew Drennan, and Robert Broom who all described their fossil discoveries with the mirror of racist interpretation, as well as the life and times in which they worked.

Morris also considers how modern anthropology tried to rid itself of the stigma of these early racist accounts. In the 1960s and 1970s, Ronald Singer and Phillip Tobias introduced modern methods into the discipline that jettisoned much of what the public wished to believe about race and human evolution. Modern methods in physical anthropology rely on sophisticated mathematics and molecular genetics but are difficult to translate and sometimes fail to challenge preconceived assumptions.

In an age where the authority of the expert and empirical science is questioned, this book shows the battle facing modern anthropology in how to explain science in a context that seems to be at odds with life experience. In this highly accessible insider account, Morris examines the philosophical motivations of these researchers and the discipline itself. Much of the material draws on old correspondence and interviews as well as from published resources.

You Strike a Woman, You Strike a Rock / Wathint’ Abafazi, Wathint’ Imbokotho is a bristling example of protest theatre making during the height of apartheid. Created in ensemble fashion in 1986 by director Phyllis Klotz in collaboration with performers Thobeka Maqhutyana, Nomvula Qosha and Poppy Tsira, this play stands as a contemporary South African classic.

The play focuses on three central characters: Sdudla, Mambhele and Mampompo living and working in a Cape Town township trying to eke out a living in a racially, socially and economically unequal world. There are few work opportunities and there is a great deal of red tape to be self-sufficient. Men are glaringly absent from this world – working as cheap migrant labour in urban areas. Women have to undertake great risk to see their husbands and to try keep a semblance of family cohesiveness. Helicopters fly above and state security police surveil the area. The play shows how these women work miracles to ensure the survival and wellbeing of their families at all cost.

Following the famous 1956 slogan of the South African woman’s march against apartheid laws, this latest publication in 2021 is a testament to the contemporariness of this play. Its themes around gender activism and the need for gender parity remains as true today as it did fifty years ago. Fresh and full of life, this is an important historical document and will be a landmark play for high schools and students of theatre.

A history of the erosion of democracy across the globe

Democracy is being destroyed. This is a crisis that expresses itself in the rising authoritarianism visible in divisive and exclusionary politics, populist political parties and movements, increased distrust in fact-based information and news, and the withering accountability of state institutions. Over the last four decades, democracy has radically shifted to a market democracy in which all aspects of human, non-human and planetary life are commodified, with corporations becoming more powerful than states and their citizens. This is how neoliberal capitalism functions at a systemic level and if left unchecked, is the greatest threat to democracy and a sustainable planet.

Volume six of the Democratic Marxism series focuses on how decades of neoliberal capitalism have eroded the global democratic project and how, in the process, authoritarian politics are gaining ground. Scholars and activists from the political left focus on four country cases – India, Brazil, South Africa and the United States of America – in which the COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled and highlighted the pre-existing crisis. They interrogate issues of politics, ecology, state security, media, access to information and political parties, and affirm the need to reclaim and re-build an expansive and inclusive democracy.

Destroying Democracy is an invaluable resource for the general public, activists, scholars and students who are interested in understanding the threats to democracy and the rising tide of authoritarianism in the global south and the global north.

Decolonising the Human examines the ongoing project of constituting ‘the human’ in light of the durability of coloniality and the persistence of multiple oppressions

The ‘human’ emerges as a deeply political category, historically constructed as a scarce existential resource. Once weaponised, it allows for the social, political and economic elevation of those who are centred within its magic circle, and the degradation, marginalisation and immiseration of those excluded as the different and inferior Other, the less than human.

Speaking from Africa, a key site where the category of the human has been used throughout European modernity to control, exclude and deny equality of being, the contributors use decoloniality as a potent theoretical and philosophical tool, gesturing towards a liberated, pluriversal world where human difference will be recognised as a gift, not used to police the boundaries of the human. Here is a transdisciplinary critical exploration of a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and decolonial studies.

An incisive analysis of South Africa's ANC power-as party, as government, as state

South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) is in decline, its hegemony has been weakened, its legitimacy diluted. President Cyril Ramaphosa's appointment suspended the ANC's electoral decline, it also heightened internal tensions between those who would deepen its acquired status as corrupt and captured, and those who would remodel it as redeemable. These are the incontrovertible knowns of South African politics; what will evolve from this is less certain.

In Precarious Power, renowned political scientist Susan Booysen uses in-depth research and analysis to distill that which is bound to shape South Africa's political future, Booysen focuses on contradictory party politics and internal ANC dissent that is veiled for the sake of retaining an electoral following. Also exposed is the incongruous, populist policy­making, protest politics and the use of soft law to ensure it does not alienate angry citizens, fueling further discontent and protest. The ANC's power has become exceedingly precarious. Precarious Power is the name of the political game, for the foreseeable future.

The comprehensive analysis in Precarious Power will appeal not only to political scientists and postgraduate students, but to all who take a keen interest in current affairs.

Critically examines influential novels in English by eminent black female writers

Studying 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 narrow ideas of nationalism. She examines who is included and excluded, while producing alternative visions for a more just South African society.

This is an erudite analysis of ten well-known South African writers, spanning the apartheid and post-apartheid era: Miriam Tlali, Lauretta Ngcobo, Farida Karodia, Agnes Sam, Sindiwe Magona, Zoë Wicomb, Rayda Jacobs, Yvette Christiansë, Kagiso Lesego Molope, and Zukiswa Wanner. Boswell argues that black women's fiction could and should be read as a subversive site of knowledge production in a setting, which, for centuries, denied black women's voices and intellects.

Reading their fiction as theory, for the first time these writers' works are placed in sustained conversation with each other, producing an arc of feminist criticism that speaks forcefully back to the abuse of a racist, white-dominated, patriarchal power.

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 Africa

Becoming Men is the story of 32 boys from Alexandra, one of Johannesburg's largest townships, over a period of twelve seminal years in which they negotiate manhood and masculinity. Psychologist and academic Malose Langa has documented graphically what it means to be a young black man in contemporary South Africa. The boys discuss a range of topics including the impact of absent fathers, relationships with mothers, siblings and girls, school violence, academic performance, homophobia, gangsterism, unemployment and, in one case, prison life. Dominant themes that emerge are deep ambivalence, self-doubt and hesitation in the boys' approaches to alternative masculinities that are non-violent, non-sexist and non-risk-taking. The difficulties of negotiating the multiple voices of masculinity are exposed as many of the boys appear simultaneously to comply with and oppose the prevalent norms. Providing a rich interpretation of how emotional processes affect black adolescent boys, Langa suggests interventions and services to support and assist them, especially in reducing the high-risk behaviours generally associated with hegemonic masculinity. This is essential reading for students, researchers and scholars of gender studies who wish to understand manhood and masculinity in South Africa. Psychologists, youth workers, lay counsellors and teachers who work with adolescent boys will also find it invaluable.

A politician's journey to bring home Mahatma Gandhi's teachings home to South Africa in the wake of WWII

In November 1949, Davidson Don Tengo (D.D.T.) Jabavu, the South African politician, Methodist lay preacher and retired professor of African languages and Latin at Fort Hare University in the Eastern Cape, set out on a four-month trip to attend the World Pacifist Meeting in India. The conference brought together delegates from over thirty countries to reflect on how Mahatma Gandhi’s life and teachings could inform pacifist work in the post-World War II era.

Jabavu wrote an isiXhosa account of his journey up the east coast of Africa and to different parts of India which was first published in 1951 by Lovedale Press. His narrative contains wide-ranging reflections on the fauna and flora of the changing landscape, on intriguing social interactions during his travels, and on the conference itself, where he considered what lessons Gandhian principles might yield for oppressed South Africans engaged in struggles for freedom and dignity. He incorporates accounts of chance meetings with important figures of post-independence India and of the anti-colonial struggle in East Africa, as well as with members of the American civil rights movement. His commentary on non-violent resistance, and on the dangers of nationalism when coupled with militarism and racism, enriches the existing archive of intellectual and political exchange between Africa and India from a black South African perspective.

This new edition includes Jabavu’s travelogue in the original isiXhosa, with an English translation by the late anthropologist Cecil Wele Manona. Tina Steiner’s introductory chapter examines the networks of international solidarity and friendship that Jabavu helped to strengthen in the course of his travels. A chapter by Mhlobo W. Jadezweni, whose updating of the original isiXhosa orthography has made Jabavu’s text accessible to new generations of readers, considers the richness of Jabavu’s isiXhosa style as a contribution to the archive of great African-language literature. Catherine Higgs provides biographical sketches of D.D.T. Jabavu and Cecil Wele Manona which situate this travelogue within the broader context of their lives. Evan M. Mwangi’s Afterword is a reflection on the historical and political significance of making African-language texts available to readers across Africa.

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 the desolate conditions of his imprisonment and to his unbending commitment to the cause of African liberation.

The memory of Sobukwe has been sadly neglected in post- apartheid South Africa. With the changing political climate, the decline of the African National Congress’s power, the re- emergence of Black Consciousness, and the growth of student protests, Sobukwe is being looked to once again.

An innovative book about the relationship between South Africa and India

South Africa's future is increasingly tied up with that of India. While trade and investment between the two countries is intensifying, they share long-standing historical ties and have much in common: apart from cricket, colonialism and Gandhi, both countries are important players in the global South. As India emerges as a major economic power, the need to understand these links becomes ever more pressing. Can the two countries enter balanced forms of exchange? What forms of transnational political community between these two regions have yet to be researched and understood? The first section of South Africa and India traces the range of historical connection between the two countries. The second section explores unconventional comparisons that offer rich ground on which to build original areas of study. This innovative book looks to a post-American world in which the global South will become ever more important. Within this context, the Indian Ocean arena itself and South Africa and India in particular move to the fore. The book's main contribution lies in the approaches and methods offered by its wide range of contributors for thinking about this set of circumstances.

During embalming an arm jerks and strikes a mortician, leaving him unmoored. A pastor’s wife encounters a young congregant in her kitchen wearing her apron and preparing breakfast. A man’s attempt to make sense of why a tornado picked him up leads to a showdown with a cult leader. A daydreaming, gawky kid is appointed guardian of a watermelon that the ocean could snatch away. Love comes slowly, like water heating over a low fire or extra sugar being stirred into tea. In another story, the love of a father cannot save his musician son. A young woman living in a recognisable future contemplates the end of memory as her body transforms into the silver promise of a carapace. Another young woman feels she should be smiling but nothing stirs in her when her father wakes from death after 15 minutes. Battling portentous pre-dawn heat and still air, a bystander abandons removing caterpillars from a Ficus because the idea of touching them makes her squeamish. Elsewhere in the suburbs, in a fixer-upper from hell, crickets screech and squeal, their ringing like that of a demented alarm clock.

When Water Wants To presents the winners of the DALRO Can Themba Short Story Award. Celebrating the legacy of master storyteller Can Themba, this collection provokes, inspires, challenges and entertains with bold storytelling and keen social commentary. The stories range from the deeply personal to the wildly allegorical, playing with genre conventions and inhabiting a multitude of perspectives and unruly voices. These exciting new authors confirm the pre-eminence of the short story, and its oral antecedents, by delving into the national psyche in the conversations they have, the connections they make, and the themes, concerns and water-soaked imagery they share.
When Water Wants To brings together the ten winners of the literary competition, the DALRO Can Themba Short Story Award. In celebraton of Themba’s legacy, these emerging South African authors provoke, inspire, challenge and entertain with bold storytelling and keen social commentary. Their stories range from the deeply personal to the wildly allegorical, playing with genre conventions and inhabiting a multitude of perspectives and unruly voices. Confirming the pre-eminence of the short story, and its oral antecedents in our culture, the stories delve into the national psyche in the conversations they have, the connections and parallels they make and the themes, concerns and water-soaked imagery they share.





The featured stories include ‘No Good Deed’ (KJ Aires); ‘Murmur Becomes a Wave’ (Megan Choritz); ‘Mr Duiker Sang the Blues’ (Dyondzo Kwinika); ‘Letters of Remembrance’ (Sebabatso Madibu); ‘Zombie’ (Lerato Mahlangu); ‘A Mortician’s Instinct’ (Kamva Majo), ‘African Death, Western Medicine’ ( Lethukukhanya Mzulwini); ‘The Woman Who Buried Rain’ (Rabada Unarine Princess); ‘The Watermelon Caretaker’ (Rosieda Shabodien); and ‘Man of the House’ (Dashalia Singaram).

Rock Art of the Waterberg: Rites and Transformation is a landmark archaeological study that unveils the nuanced world view and rituals practised by local Bushman groups living in the Waterberg area of northern South Africa millennia ago. Through unprecedented documentation of 130 rock art sites; many photographed for the first time; Lyn Wadley and Ghilraen Laue reveal a complex narrative of human creativity and cultural interaction.

Strategically located along river corridors leading to the Limpopo River, these sites offer an extraordinary glimpse into the lives of Bushman hunter-gatherers, Iron Age farmers and Khoekhoe herders. Their intricate visual languages span three distinct painting traditions: delicate Bushman fine-line art, robust Iron Age finger paintings and enigmatic geometric works that speak to millennia of cultural exchange.

Beyond mere documentation, the book explores profound themes of human experience; hunting, initiation, healing and spiritual transformation. Archaeological evidence illuminates how these diverse groups coexisted and influenced one another cultural practices over two thousand years, challenging simplistic narratives of cultural isolation.

Richly illustrated with archival photographs, enhanced views of the rock sites using cutting-edge photographic technology and original artworks by local artists, Rock Art of the Waterberg is a powerful testament to early human creativity and offers a crucial argument for preserving these fragile cultural archives. This ground-breaking study redefines our understanding of South African rock art and cultural heritage, offering scholars and enthusiasts an unprecedented journey into a forgotten world.

A sweeping story with intimate roots, Darker Shade of Pale traces a little-known chapter in the history of global migration: the journey of Jewish families from the Russian Empire’s Pale of Settlement to the far-flung colony of South Africa at the turn of the twentieth century. Written by acclaimed South African sociologist Deborah Posel, this deeply personal yet broadly resonant narrative blends family memoir with incisive historical analysis.

At its heart is Posel’s grandfather, Maurice Posel, whose story of struggle and ambivalence she pieces together from family lore, feint archival traces and the lives of others. In turn, Maurice’s seemingly insignificant life becomes a prism through which Posel considers afresh ‘the greatest migration in human history’, as historians call it. Maurice’s journey – and, importantly, those of the educated, working women Posel follows – reveals theunspoken, often painful costs of uprooting: what had to be abandoned, what was endured, and what could never be fully left behind.

From the shtetl’s rigid traditions to the racial hierarchies of the British Empire, Posel explores how Jewish migrants navigated social orders. She examines how identities shifted and how success was both a goal and a burden – particularly for those who didn’t achieve it. Along the way, Darker Shade of Pale sheds new light on the complicated role of Jews in colonial South Africa, their uneasy positioning within whiteness, and their unexpected interactions with Black communities.

Lyrical, probing and unflinching, Darker Shade of Pale is essential reading for anyone interested in migration, identity, and the hidden layers of history and their continued tremors. It’s a powerful reminder that the migrant story is never simple and always singular.

Perfect for readers of Isabel Wilkerson, Adam Hochschild, and Daniel Mendelsohn.

First published by Ravan Press in 1985, Cast in a Racial Mould was a pioneering book. It is now republished by Wits University Press with a new foreword by Michael Burawoy and with support from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Entering what Marx called the hidden abode of capitalism; the labour process; this book analyzes the nature of work and worker resistance in the metal industry which lies at the core of South Africa manufacturing industry. In an introductory chapter Webster points out that most studies of the labour process have neglected worker resistance. He challenges Braverman depiction of mass production as a juggernaut which inherently imposes progressively tighter controls on workers, and points to two forms of worker resistance which have been important in the history of South Africa foundries.

Discussing the first of these in Part I, he shows how resistance to deskilling on the part of white craft moulders gave rise to a distinctive racial hierarchy of control in the foundries. Using race as a last line of defence against machinofacture assault on their craft privileges, the white moulders effectively became supervisors of semi-skilled black labour;The collapse of this form of control was precipitated by the rise, in a South African foundry context, of the second form of resistance ; increasingly confident bargaining by black semi-skilled workers in the wake of mechanization and the emergence of independent black unions. This is the focus of Parts II and III of the book. The onset of popular struggle in the townships from 1976 onwards forced the state, through a process that began with the Wiehahn and Riekert commissions, to embark on an attempt to incorporate black unions in a deracialized industrial relations system. Webster analyzes the interplay between the transformation of the labour process and the crisis in the system of racial capitalism as a whole to show how worker organizations, in resisting the state incorporative strategy, have begun to develop a working class.

Siphiwo Mahala delves into the lives of iconic figures from South Africa's tumultuous past in this remarkable collection of plays. The collection opens with The House of Truth, which explores the complexity of Can Themba, a fearless journalist, playwright and poet living under an oppressive apartheid regime. The one-man play weaves together elements of Themba's life and career, recreating the excitement and pathos of the DRUM era South Africa's first magazine for a black audience, and his resident neighborhood, Sophiatown in Johannesburg, before it was destroyed by apartheid legislation. Themba is brought back to life as an ordinary person with human flaws and attributes both tragic and inspirational.

In the second play, Bloke and His American Bantu. Mahala brings to life the extraordinary lives of Bloke Modisane, a South African writer exiled in London, and Langston Hughes, the renowned American poet. This two-hander play celebrates their remarkable camaraderie and intellectual exchange. Through a reimagined correspondence, the play deftly explores how a simple friendship blossomed into a catalyst for international solidarity and cultural exchange across continents, from Africa to the UK to America.

As a whole, the plays explore the intersections of identity, creativity and resistance. With wit, poise, and unflinching honesty, they bring to life the triumphs and struggles of these remarkable men who left an indelible mark on their worlds, and celebrate the human spirit's capacity to persevere, inspire and uplift.

Restless Infections is a collection of critical essays exploring artistic interventions in urban spaces, focusing on place-making and the politics of space in South Africa. The writers examine seminal artworks by South African artists, addressing diverse forms of expression such as site-specific performances, immersive installations, film, photography, and online performances.

The book is divided into three sections: The Restless City, Public Art for Multiple Publics, and Land, Home, Belonging. It introduces new perspectives on public sphere performance, such as Khanyisile Mbongwa’s re-imagining of township alleyways for public encounters and Mbongeni Mtshali’s study of everyday performances that challenge colonial and neo-colonial spatial organization.

The title, Restless Infections, is derived from the popular Infecting the City public art festival, symbolizing the persistent state of restlessness in a city still grappling with the legacies of colonialism, inequality, and racial segregation. This restlessness is tied to a desire for economic and political stability, expressed through transient art forms like Santu Mofokeng’s billboard photography.

The book shifts the focus of public art discourse in South Africa from static forms like monuments and statues to dynamic, temporary interventions that question the concept of publicness. These interventions engage with protest, public intimacy, audience interaction, and the disrupted topography of apartheid cities.

As the first scholarly volume to read public spheres through a multi- and interdisciplinary lens, Restless Infections argues that the diverse artistic modes explored are essential to understanding the complexities of publicness in South Africa.

Bibliography and Modern Book Production is a fascinating historic journey through the fields of print history, librarianship and publishing. It covers key developments from 1494 to 1949 in bibliography and book production from the history of scripts and paper manufacture to the origins of typefaces and printing. Although not a textbook, the book was a guide for library students in the 1950s on the essential literature of librarianship.

As the first librarian appointed to Wits University in 1929, Percy Freer’s near encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject of bibliography enabled him to develop a key resource for relevant library examinations in South Africa and abroad. Due to its immense value as a historic record, and to acknowledge Freer’s contributions as scholar, librarian and publisher, it is being reissued as part of the Wits University Press Re/Presents series to make it accessible to scholars in book histories, publishing studies and information science.

On 28 June 1984 a parcel bomb sent by the apartheid security police exploded in an apartment building in Lubango, Angola, killing 36-year-old Jeanette Schoon and her six-year-old daughter Katryn. The Schoons were members of the revolutionary underground, exiled from South Africa and committed to both the African National Congress and to socialism. What many political activists had feared or suspected at the time was confirmed during the 1990s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: the bomb targeting the Schoons was sent by Craig Williamson, an apartheid spy and high-ranking member of the South African security service.

Apartheid Spies and the Revolutionary Underground is the first book-length account of the assassination of Jeanette and Katryn Schoon. Jeanette Curtis Schoon and Craig Williamson first met in 1973 on the Wits University campus. Jeanette was a passionate student radical and part of a network of white radicals fighting apartheid. Williamson had successfully infiltrated the student movement and rose within its ranks. He held positions of trust, first within the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) and then, after pretending to ‘flee’ the country, as an office-bearer of the International Universities Exchange Fund in Sweden, which helped fund many South Africans in exile.

The book uncovers how the lives of a group of white radicals intersected with and were impacted by the undercover security police and their operations both within and outside of South Africa. Intensifying political oppression caused many young radicals to flee South Africa in 1976; many of them, like Jeanette and her partner Marius Schoon, joined the African National Congress in exile. Williamson and the Schoons’ paths, and those of their comrades, continued to cross: he was a guest in their homes, a supplier of funds for their projects, a witness for the prosecution in political trials and, ultimately, the hand that directed targeted assassinations.

Williamson received amnesty for his role in the Schoons’ murder, among other crimes. For the friends and family of the Schoons – and for all those seeking social justice – this was an unacceptable outcome and Williamson continues to walk a free man. This book attempts to show the limits of the TRC process to render healing from South Africa’s apartheid past. That justice has not been served to the Schoons remains a tragedy in this story of the struggle against apartheid.

Isidlamlilo / The Fire Eater is a one-woman play inspired by the true story of a woman who served as a political assassin in the build-up to South Africa’s first democratic elections. Zenzile Maseko, the protagonist, is a 60-year-old grandmother living in a women’s hostel in Durban. Falsely declared dead by the Department of Home Affairs, she finds herself cast into a Kafkaesque nightmare that forces her to confront her past.

Flown in on the wings of the Impundulu (the lightning bird), in Zulu folklore a shapeshifting bird associated with witchcraft and the harbinger of storms and death, Zenzile’s story weaves a magical and terrifying tapestry. She draws on myth, religious symbolism and traditional beliefs as she shares the realities – at times brutal, at times forgiving – of survival in South Africa. Her story touches on what it means to live through political violence, the transition to democracy, the brutality of inequality, health epidemics like HIV/AIDS, patriarchy, and the apathetic bureaucracy of government departments.

Ultimately, Isidlamlilo / The Fire Eater offers a critical and unflinching look at the eddying cycles of violence and revenge that play out across generations. Yet it is most of all a story about regeneration and redemption that speaks to both the country’s haunted past and its present-day complexities.

Written with pathos and empathy, this playscript will appeal to teachers, high school learners, and tertiary students in theatre, drama and English studies.

Revisits the work of Rick Turner, a South African political theorist, and addresses contemporary debates

Rick Turner was a South African academic and anti-apartheid activist who rebelled against the apartheid state at the height of its power. For this he was assassinated in 1978, at just 32 years of age, but his life and work are testimony to the power of philosophical thinking for humans everywhere. Turner chose to live freely in an unfree time and argued for a non-racial, socialist future in a context where this seemed unimaginable.

This book takes seriously Rick Turner’s challenge that political theorising requires thinking in a utopian way. Turner’s seminal book The Eye of the Need: Towards a Participatory Democracy laid out some of his most potent ideas on a radically different political and economic system. His demand was that we work to escape the limiting ideas of the present, carefully design a just future based on shared human values, and act to make it a reality, both politically and in our daily lives.

The contributors to this volume engage critically with Turner’s work on race relations, his relationship with Steve Biko, his views on religion, education and gender oppression, his participatory model of democracy, and his critique of enduring forms of poverty and economic inequality. They show how, in his life and work, Turner modeled how we can dare to be free and how hope can return, as the future always remains open to human construction. This book makes an important contribution to contemporary thinking and activism where the need for South Africans to define their understanding of their greater common good is of crucial importance.

South Africa is ready for a new vocabulary than can form the basis for a national consciousness which recognises racialised identities while affirming that, as human beings, we are much more than our racial, sexual, class, religious or national identities.
The Colour of Our Future makes a bold and ambitious contribution to the discourse on race. It addresses the tension between the promise of a post-racial society and the persistence of racialised identities in South Africa, which has historically played itself out in debates between the ‘I don’t see race’ of non-racialism and the ‘I’m proud to be black’ of black consciousness.
The chapters in this volume highlight the need for a race-transcendent vision that moves beyond ‘the festival of negatives’ embodied in concepts such as non-racialism, non-sexism, anti-colonialism and anti-apartheid. Steve Biko’s notion of a ‘joint culture’ is the scaffold on which this vision rests; it recognises that a race-transcendent society can only be built by acknowledging the constituent elements of South Africa’s EuroAfricanAsian heritage.
The distinguished authors in this volume have, over the past two decades, used the democratic space to insert into the public domain new conversations around the intersections of race and the economy, race and the state, race and the environment, race and ethnic difference, and race and higher education. Presented here is some of their most trenchant and yet still evolving thinking.

Inkondlo kaZulu (Zulu Poems), the first volume of poetry by B.W. Vilakazi, was first published in 1935. This was the first book of poems ever published in isiZulu; it also marked the launch of the newly established Bantu (later, African) Treasury Series (published by the University of the Witwatersrand Press), a collection of twenty classic works written between 1935 and 1987 in African indigenous languages. It contains superb nature poems and also reflects Vilakazi’s contact with Western modernity. As both a traditional imbongi (bard) and a forward-looking poet who could fuse Western poetic forms with Zulu izibongo (praise poetry), he used his writings to express his resistance to the realities of capitalist exploitation of African labour and the appalling injustices of the migrant labour system. By committing to writing in poetic form what had traditionally been conveyed orally from one generation to the next, he preserves for future generations deep philosophical and emotional experiences of Zulu society.

The republication of Inkondlo kaZulu affords the reader the opportunity to reappraise Vilakazi’s intellectual significance and his renown as the ‘father of Nguni literature’ at a time when the need is acutely felt to unshackle ourselves from ethnic boundaries and break the invisible chains of inherited prejudice.

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 years

Being-Black-in-the-World, one of N. Chabani Manganyi’s first publications, was written in 1973 at a time of global socio-political change and renewed resistance to the brutality of apartheid rule and the emergence of Black Consciousness in the mid-1960s. Manganyi is one of South Africa’s most eminent intellectuals and an astute social and political observer. He has written widely on subjects relating to ethno-psychiatry, autobiography, black artists and race. In 2018 Manganyi’s memoir, Apartheid and the Making of a Black Psychologist was awarded the prestigious ASSAf (The Academy of Science of South Africa) Humanities Book Award. Publication of Being-Black-in-the-World was delayed until the young Manganyi had left the country to study at Yale University. His publishers feared that the apartheid censorship board and security forces would prohibit him from leaving the country, and perhaps even incarcerate him, for being a ‘radical revolutionary’. The book found a limited public circulation in South Africa due to this censorship and original copies were hard to come by.

This new edition is an invitation to a younger generation of citizens to engage with early decolonialising thought by an eminent South African intellectual. While the essays in this book are clearly situated in the material and social conditions of that time, they also have a timelessness that speaks to our contemporary concerns regarding black subjectivity, affectivity and corporeality, the persistence of a racial (and racist) order and the possibilities of a renewed de-colonial project. Each of these short essays can be read as self-contained reflections on what it meant to be black during the apartheid years. Manganyi is a master of understatement, and yet this does not stop him from making incisive political criticisms of black subjugation under apartheid. The essays will reward close study for anyone trying to make sense of black subjectivity and the persistence of white insensitivity to black suffering. Ahead of its time, the ideas in this book are an exemplary demonstration of what a thoroughgoing and rigorous de-colonial critique should entail. The re-publication of this classic text is enriched by the inclusion of a foreword and annotation by respected scholars Garth Stevens and Grahame Hayes respectively, and an afterword by public intellectual Njabulo S. Ndebele.

In the period between the outbreak of World War II in 1939 and the enactment of university apartheid by the Nationalist Government in 1959, the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits) developed as an ‘open university’, admitting students of all races. This, the second volume of the history of Wits by historian Bruce Murray, has as its central theme the process by which Wits became ‘open’, the compromises this process entailed, and the defence the University mounted to preserve its ‘open’ status in the face of the challenges posed by the Nationalist Government.



The University’s institutional autonomy is highlighted by Yunus Ballim in his preface to the centenary edition of WITS: The ‘Open’ Years. He writes: ‘The emerging posture of a university willing to rise in defence of academic freedom was important because this was to become infused into the institutional culture of Wits.’



The book looks at the University’s role in South Africa’s war effort, its contribution to the education of ex-volunteers after the war, its leading role in training job-seeking professionals required by a rapidly expanding economy, and the rise of research and postgraduate study. Students feature prominently through their political activities, the flourishing of a student intelligentsia, the heyday of the Remember and Give (Rag) parade, rugby intervarsity, and the stunning success of Wits sportsmen and women. WITS: The ‘Open’ Years paints a vivid picture of the range of personalities who enlivened the campus – among them some well-known figures in the new South Africa.



The book includes chapters by Alf Stadler, who was Professor of Political Studies at Wits and the author of The Political Economy of Modern South Africa, and Jonty Winch, former Sports Officer at Wits and the author of Wits Sport.

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 narrative. I was born during apartheid and my interest in memory and identity is a result of my historical and political context.’



Each one of us comes with a history, a complex web of DNA and a library of information that shapes who we are and how we view the world. How can we use our own complexities not only to engage with one another but to build it for story content? As an artistic researcher, filmmaker and educator, Tanja Sakota has often thought how to bring this subjective experience into pedagogical practice. Using paired themes of memory and forgetting, segregation and migration, perpetrators and victims, Sakota travels along a timeline of memory as she takes us on a journey through South Africa, Germany, Poland and Bosnia/Herzegovina. Using a camera and short film techniques, she hosts several workshops focused on interacting and engaging with remembering through different memory sites. The author sits at the core but the book is an interdisciplinary work shaped around films made by different participants using the camera to access and unveil personal interpretations of space and place. Questions that underpin the uncovering of memories are: How does one use a camera to unmask invisible memories hidden within sites? How does one remember events that one hasn’t necessarily experienced? How does one use film to interrogate the past from the future present? As the journey evolves, workshop participants and readers alike enter into a conversation around practice-based research, autoethnography and film.

Uncovering Memory is not a handbook offering a prescriptive method. Instead, it is a pedagogical text that offers an interactive approach for students and peers to consider, adapt or react to in their own teaching and learning practices. The narrative encourages readers to self-reflect as they explore their own memory using the camera and short film format as an engaging tool for research and knowledge production.

Maps the university’s current and future vision as it marks its centenary in 2022

The University of the Witwatersrand occupies a special place in the hearts and minds of South Africans. It is a leading university renowned for its commitment to academic excellence, social justice and the advancement of the public good. Its history is inextricably linked with the development of Johannesburg, with mining and economic development, and with political and social activism across the country.

Wits University at 100: From Excavation to Innovation captures important moments of Wits’ story in celebration of the university’s centenary in 2022. It explores Wits’ origins, the space and place that it occupies in society, and its transformation as it prepares the ground for the next century. From its humble beginnings as a mining college in Johannesburg to its current position as a flourishing and inclusive university, Wits University at 100 is a story of innovation driven from the global South.

In text and image, Wits is presented as a dynamic institution that thrives because of its people, many of whom, in one way or another, have shifted the world. The experiences, achievements and insights of past and present ‘Witsies’ come alive in this glossy, full-color book that maps the university’s vision for the future.

Has South Africa ‘done well’ at limiting illness and deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic? Academic and political commentator, Steven Friedman, thinks not. While the country’s mainstream media believes it has, in his view the evidence tells another story. South Africa has experienced by far the most cases and deaths in Africa – at one point as many as the rest of the continent combined.

One Virus, Two Countries: What Covid-19 tells us about South Africa offers a searing analysis of government and expert scientists’ responses to the pandemic. Friedman argues that South Africa is two societies in one – a ‘First World’ which resembles Western Europe and North America, and a ‘Third World’ which looks much like the rest of Africa or South Asia. The South African state, the media and the scientific community have largely tried to deal with the virus through a ‘First World’ lens in which much of the country was either invisible or a problem – not a partner. Friedman argues this approach prevented the country from responding in a way which would have protected most citizens. This is why case numbers and deaths are so high: South Africa has done worse than the rest of Africa not despite the fact that it has a ‘more developed’ health system, but because it does.

One Virus, Two Countries is a controversial book that will rouse much needed debate about South Africa’s health and economic system in a context of serious inequality.

A multidisciplinary analysis of how state capture unfolded in South Africa and was contested within both civil society and the state itself. It presents a scholarly and empirical understanding of how things went awry, even with various regulating bodies in place, and how to prevent state capture from happening again in the future.

The metaphor of ‘state capture’ has dominated South Africa’s political discourse in the post-Zuma presidency era. What is state capture and how does it manifest? Is it just another example of a newly independent, failed African state? And is it unique to South Africa?

The contributors in this collection try to explain the phenomenon from a variety of viewpoints and disciplines. All hold fast to the belief that the democracy that promised the country so much when apartheid ended has been significantly eroded, resulting in most citizens expressing a loss of hope for the future. Read together, the essays cumulatively show not only how state capture was enabled and who benefitted, but also how and by whom it was scrutinised and exposed in order to hold those in power accountable. The book aims to present a scholarly and empirical understanding of how things went awry, even with various regulating bodies in place, and how to prevent state capture from happening again in the future.

WITS: The Early Years is a history of the University up to 1939. First established in 1922, the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg developed out of the South African School of Mines in Kimberley circa 1896. Examining the historical foundations, the struggle to establish a university in Johannesburg, and the progress of the University in the two decades prior to World War II, historian Bruce Murray captures the quality and texture of life in the early years of Wits University and the personalities who enlivened it and contributed to its growth.



Particular attention is given to the wider issues and the challenges which faced Wits in its formative years. The book examines the role Wits came to occupy as a major centre of liberal thought and criticism in South Africa, its contribution to the development of the professions of the country, the relationship of its research to the wider society, and its attempts to grapple with a range of peculiarly South African problems, such as the admission of black students to the University and the relations of English- and Afrikaans-speaking white students within it.



This edition of WITS: The Early Years is republished in the University’s centenary year with a preface by Keith Breckenridge, who writes, ‘In the republication of Murray’s two volume history of Wits, readers have an opportunity to explore the often dramatic and contested story of this university … Murray produced an intimate, almost scandalous intellectual history of the institution that served as his home for practically half a century.’

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 entrepreneurship within organizations. The book is based on the insight that established organizations see continuous delivery of innovative products, services and processes when they enable teams of entrepreneurial employees to think and behave like start-ups.

Three qualities make this book unique. First, it explores the theory and practice of intrapreneurship and innovation with a particular, but not exclusive focus on key issues in African contexts. Second, it includes a large, diverse set of instructive examples and case studies of intrapreneurship and innovation in organizations in Africa. And third, it features a useful toolkit: the Intrapreneurship Empowerment Model, a simple yet complete implementation framework. The book includes key resources of practical, real-world tools and assets used by some of the world’s most intrapreneurial and innovative organizations.

The Intrapreneur’s Journey adds value for both practitioners and scholars of intrapreneurship and innovation in Africa and other parts of the world.

Senkatana is a tragic play adapted from Sotho folk narrative. The play is regarded as a classic of Sesotho literature.
Seen as one of the greatest essayists and dramatists writing in Southern Sotho, Senkatana was Mofokeng’s first book, published in 1952 in the African (then Bantu) Treasury Series, an imprint of Witwatersrand University Press.

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 with their autonomy and freedom to decide who should be admitted.



In subsequent years, as the regime adopted increasingly oppressive measures to prop up the apartheid state, opposition on the campuses, and in the country, increased and burgeoned into a Mass Democratic Movement intent on making the country ungovernable.



Protest escalated through successive states of emergency and clashes with police on campus became regular events. Residences were raided, student leaders were harassed by security police and many students and some staff were detained for lengthy periods without recourse to the courts.



First published in 1996, WITS: A University in the Apartheid Era by Mervyn Shear tells the story of how the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) adapted to the political and social developments in South Africa under apartheid. This new edition is published in the University’s centenary year with a preface by Firoz Cachalia, one of Wits’ student leaders in the 1980s. It serves as an invaluable historical resource on questions about the relationship between the University and the state, and on understanding the University’s place and identity in a constitutional democracy.

Dintšhontšho tsa bo-Juliuse Kesara is a translation into Setswana of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, by the renowned South African thinker, writer and linguist Sol T. Plaatje, who was also a gifted stage actor. Plaatje first encountered the works of Shakespeare when he saw a performance of Hamlet as a young man; it ignited a great love in him for the works of the Elizabethan dramatist. Many years later he translated several of Shakespeare’s plays into Setswana in a series called Mabolelo a ga Tsikinya-Chaka (‘The Sayings of Shakespeare’.) Dintšhontšho tsa bo-Juliuse Kesara went to print five years after Plaatje’s death, in 1937, published in the Bantu (later, African) Treasury Series by the University of the Witwatersrand Press.



His translations of Shakespeare’s plays into Setswana helped to pioneer and popularise a genre, the drama script, that was previously not well known in Southern Africa. It also showcased the rich range of Setswana vocabulary and served Plaatje’s aim of developing the language.
Dintšhontšho tsa bo-Juliuse Kesara ke phetolelo ya Setswana ya Julius Caesar ya ga Shakespeare ka mokwadi, moakanyi wa MoAforika le seitseanape sa puo Sol T. Plaatje, yo gape e neng e le modiragatsi yo o nang le bokgoni wa serala. Plaatje o rakane la ntlha le ditiro tsa ga Shakespeare fa a bona tiragatso ya Hamlet e sa le lekawana, mme seo se ne sa tsosa lerato le le boitshegang mo pelong ya gagwe la ditiro tsa mokwadi yoo wa MoElisabeta. Dingwaga di le dintsi morago ga foo o fetoletse diterama tsa ga Shakespeare di balwa mo puong ya Setswana mo dikgatisong tsa Mabolelo a ga Tsikinya-Chaka (‘The Sayings of Shakespeare’). Dintšhontšho tsa bo-Juliuse Kesara e gatisitswe dingwaga di le tlhano morago ga loso lwa ga Plaatje, ka 1937. E gatisitswe mo metseletseleng ya Bantu (moragonyana African) Treasury Series ya Univeristy of the Witwatersrand Press.



Go fetolela diterama tsa ga Shakespeare mo Setswaneng go thusitse go godisa le go naya serodumo mokwalo wa boitlhamedi wa diterama o o neng o sa tlwaelega thata mo malobeng. Go bontshitse gape khumo le nonofo ya tlotlofoko ya Setswana mme ga thusa Plaatje go tlhabolola puo ya gaabo jaaka e ne e le maikaelelo a gagwe.

Examines the need and prospects for a UBI

As jobs disappear and wages flat-line, paid work is an increasingly fragile and unattainable basis for dignified life. This predicament, deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic, is sparking urgent debates about alternatives such as a universal basic income (UBI). Highly topical and distinctive in its approach, In the Balance: The Case for a Universal Basic Income in South Africa and Beyond is the most rounded and up-to-date examination yet of the need and prospects for a UBI in a global South setting such as South Africa.

Hein Marais casts the debate about a UBI in the wider context of the dispossessing pressures of capitalism and the onrushing turmoil of global warming, pandemics and social upheaval. Marais surveys the meaning, history and appeal of a UBI before even-handedly weighing the case for and against such an intervention.

The book explores the vexing questions a UBI raises about the relationship of paid work to social rights, about prevailing notions of entitlement and dependency, and the role of the state in contemporary capitalism. Along with cost estimates for different versions of a basic income in South Africa, it discusses financing options and lays out the social, economic and political implications. This incisive new book advances both our theoretical and practical understanding of the prospects for a UBI.

Pelong ya Ka, a collection of essays and sketches in Sotho was first published in 1962 in the Bantu Treasury Series imprint of Witwatersrand University Press. S. Machabe Mofokeng is regarded as one of the greatest essayist and dramatist in Southern Sotho. His first book, Senkatana (a play) was published in 1952.

Pelong ya Ka comprises 20 essays which range from meditative, descriptive, and narrative to polemic style, with the tone of voice characterised by melancholy, humour, and satire. The essays span over a wide range of themes, as suggested by their titles, e.g. Pelo (The heart), Bodutu (‘Solitude’), Death (‘Lefu’), Nako (‘Time’), Pampiri (‘Paper’), Ho kganna mmotokara (‘Driving an automobile’), Sepetlele (‘Hospital’), Lenyalo (‘Matromony’), and Boqheku (‘Old age’). Nhlanhla Maake says of this collection “Mofokeng’s essays fuse simplicity with dept.” Pelong ya Ka is part of the African Treasury Series published by Wits University Press.

Motswasele II, the first historical drama written by a Botswanan author, originally published in the Bantu (later, African) Treasury Series by the University of the Witwatersrand Press, in 1945, Leetile Disang Raditladi explores the concept of chieftainship and what it means to be a good chief through the characters of two powerful men, Moruakgomo and Motswasele. According to the history of the Bakwena, the two men vied for the throne. Raditladi critiques the tyranny of Motswasele, whose actions are those of a greedy dictator with no regard for his people. His iron-fisted rule, disregard for advice from his council, and the fact that he helps himself to his subjects’ cattle at will cause great unhappiness. He surrounds himself with untrustworthy people who are not of royal blood and know nothing about power. In contrast, Moruakgomo is portrayed as a true leader who is caring, brave, wise, visionary and not above taking advice.

In the drama, Motswasele is cautioned against wronging people he may need in the future, and being swayed by false songs of praise. Motswasele II highlights the importance of traditional rule, and the need for a chief to dispense power judiciously and to resolve conflicts where these arise.

A psychologist’s guide for parents, care-givers and health care practitioners to the emotional challenges facing children and their parents today

Current research shows that certain childhood mental disorders are diagnosed more frequently today than in previous generations. Many of today’s children and teenagers are more unhappy, anxious and distressed than young people used to be. In this highly informative book, child psychologist Jenny Perkel explores in depth why this might be so, highlighting what modern-day South African children and adolescents are experiencing and the environment in which they are being raised.

Children in Mind presents a broad range of up-to-date findings from psychological, neurobiological, genetic, psychiatric, sociological and epidemiological research related to the diagnosis and treatment of children’s mental health problems. Theoretically informed but not theoretically dense, the book cites both local and international studies to increase awareness and understanding of children’s mental health.

Perkel discusses a broad spectrum of issues faced by today’s children and adolescents: the Covid-19 pandemic, the influence of electronic media, diverse family structures, stress and trauma, and difficult socio-economic circumstances. While offering no easy answers or formulaic solutions to the problems of troubled children, she shows how to think about children’s mental well-being in today’s South Africa.

Children in Mind is an invaluable resource for all those who work with troubled children and adolescents: psychologists, social workers, counsellors, educators and parents. The author’s informed and compassionate approach will help equip professionals and parents to help young people navigate complex issues and make adjustments in their behavior in order to live more balanced and happier lives.

Ukufa kukaShaka is a historical drama by Elliot Zondi, first published in 1960 in the Bantu (later, African) Treasury Series by the University of the Witwatersrand Press. Its plot is based on the events surrounding the assassination of Shaka, the mighty Zulu king, by his two half-brothers, Dingane and Mhlangana, aided and abetted by his paternal aunt, Mkabayi, in 1828. The play explores the classic theme of the tragic hero’s fatal flaws: hubris and overconfidence. Shaka’s ruthless ambition led him to overstep human boundaries, kill with impunity, bar his warriors from having families and force them into endless wars. His blind spot seems to have been to put the survival and expansion of the Zulu kingdom first and the welfare of his subjects second.

Against this backdrop Mkabayi, whose ambitions for a remarkable Zulu nation were more tempered, played a decisive role in his downfall. Zondi explores arguments both in favor of and against Shaka’s assassination in a way that allows the reader to sympathize with his greater vision and his thwarted plan to fight impending colonialism. His dramatization of the conflict between Shaka and Mkabayi highlights questions of leadership and nation-building that continue to be relevant today.

A glimpse into the lives of LGBTQ migrants in Johannesburg, in their own words

Seeking Sanctuary brings together poignant life stories from fourteen lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) migrants, refugees and asylum seekers living in Johannesburg, South Africa. The stories, diverse in scope, chronicle each narrator’s arduous journey to South Africa, and their corresponding movement towards self-love and self-acceptance. The narrators reveal their personal battles to reconcile their faith with their sexuality and gender identity, often in the face of violent persecution, and how they have carved out spaces of hope and belonging in their new home country. In these intimate testimonies, the narrators’ resilience in the midst of uncertain futures reveal the myriad ways in which LGBT Africans push back against unjust and unequal systems.

Seeking Sanctuary makes a critical intervention by showing the complex interplay between homophobia and xenophobia in South Africa, and of the state of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) rights in Africa. By shedding light on the fraught connections between sexuality, faith and migration, this ground-breaking project also provides a model for religious communities who are working towards justice, diversity and inclusion.

The first biography of an eminent historian of South Africa

Bill Freund, the late social historian and leading analyst of African history, passed away in 2020 soon after finishing his autobiography. Often described as the academy’s ‘outsider insider’, he was an eminent South African historian who published prodigiously in the areas of labour, capital and economic history. What influenced this American-educated academic to become such an astute and trusted observer of the political economy in Africa?

We follow Bill’s intellectual journey from a modest Jewish home in Chicago in the 1950s to the Universities of Chicago, Yale, Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, and finally to a permanent teaching position at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. Peppered in between the commentaries on academic life are stories of his travels, poems he wrote for loved ones, and endearing anecdotes of friendships that shaped his life. As an ‘outsider’, both in the United States and abroad, he is able to offer rich insights into the world of Africanists and their scholarship on different continents. His thoughtful and balanced observations on late- and post-apartheid South Africa are especially interesting and refreshing. This posthumously published autobiography will give deeper insight into this unusual man and the world that shaped him – and which he in turn influenced through a deep commitment to rigorous scholarship. It includes a select bibliography of Bill Freund’s many publications as well as a foreword by Robert Morrell on the making of this autobiography.

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 history

Edward Said described a public intellectual as someone who uses accessible language to address a designated public on matters of social and political significance. The essays in Public Intellectuals in South Africa apply this interpretive prism and activist principle to a South African context and tell the stories of well-known figures as well as some that have been mostly forgotten. They include Magema Fuze, John Dube, Aggrey Klaaste, Mewa Ramgobin and Koos Roets, alongside marginalized figures such as Elijah Makiwane, Mandisi Sindo, William Pretorius and Dr Thomas Duncan Greenlees.

The essays capture the thoughts and opinions of these historical figures, who the contributors argue are public intellectuals who spoke out against the corruption of power, promoted a progressive politics that challenged the colonial project and its legacies, and encouraged a sustained dissent of the political status quo. Offering fascinating accounts of the life and work of these writers, critics and activists across a range of historical contexts and disciplines, from journalism and arts criticism to history and politics, it enriches the historical record of South African public intellectual life.

This volume makes a significant contribution to ongoing debates about the value of research in the arts and humanities, and what constitutes public intellectualism in South Africa.

Johannesburg was still a brash mining town, better known for the production of wealth than knowledge, and the University of the Witwatersrand a mere ten years old when, in 1932, these ten lectures were delivered under the auspices of the University Philosophical Society. They portrayed the ideas of the university’s leading academics of the day, and the programme of lectures reveals a studied effort to introduce an element of bipartisan political representation between English and Afrikaner in South Africa by including Wits’ first principal, Jan Hofmeyr, and politician, D.F. Malan, as discussion chairs. Yet, no black intellectuals were represented and, indeed, the politics of racial segregation bursts through the text only in a few of the contributions. For the most part, race is alluded to only in passing.

As Saul Dubow explains in his new introduction to this re-issue of the lectures, Our Changing World-View</em> was an occasion for Wits’ leading faculty members to position the young university as a mature institution with a leadership role in public affairs. Above all, it was a means to project the university as a research as well as a teaching institution, led by a vigorous and ambitious cohort of liberal-minded intellectuals. That all were male and white will be immediately apparent to readers of this reissued volume. Ranging from economics, psychology, a spurious rebuttal of evolution to a substantial revisionist history and the perils of the ‘machine age’, this book is a sombre reflection of intellectual history and the academy’s role in promulgating political and social divisions in South Africa.

Positions the history and inner workings of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) against the canvas of the major political developments in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s up to the first democratic elections in 1994

Following a hiatus in the 1960s, the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) in South Africa was revived in 1971. In fascinating detail,
Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed bring the inner workings of the NIC to life against the canvas of major political developments in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s, and up to the first democratic elections in 1994.

The NIC was relaunched during the rise of the Black Consciousness Movement, which attracted a following among Indian university students, and whose invocation of Indians as Black led to a major debate about ethnic organisations such as the NIC. This debate persisted in the 1980s with the rise of the United Democratic Front and its commitment to non-racialism. The NIC was central to other major debates of the period, most significantly the lines drawn between boycotting and participating in government-created structures such as the Tri-Cameral Parliament. Despite threats of banning and incarceration, the NIC kept attracting recruits who encouraged the development of community organisations, such as students radicalised by the 1980s education boycotts and civic protests. Colour, Class and Community, The Natal Indian Congress, 1971—1994 details how some members of the NIC played dual roles, as members of a legal organisation and as allies of the African National Congress’ underground armed struggle.

Drawing on varied sources, including oral interviews, newspaper reports, and minutes of organisational meetings, this in-depth study tells a largely untold history, challenging existing narratives around Indian ‘cabalism’, and bringing the African and Indian political story into present debates about race, class and nation.

Building on the work of economic historian Douglass North and Ugandan political scholar Mahmood Mamdani, Friedman argues that the difficulties besetting South African democracy are legacies of the past, not products of the post-1994 era

South Africa’s democracy is often seen as a story of bright beginnings gone astray, a pattern said to be common to Africa. The negotiated settlement of 1994, it is claimed, ended racial domination and created the foundation for a prosperous democracy – but greedy politicians betrayed the promise of a new society.

In Prisoners of the Past Steven Friedman astutely argues that this misreads the nature of contemporary South Africa. Building on the work of the economic historian Douglass North and the political thinker Mahmood Mamdani, Friedman shows that South African democracy’s difficulties are legacies of the pre-1994 past. The settlement which ushered in majority rule left intact core features of the apartheid economy and society. The economy continues to exclude millions from its benefits, while racial hierarchies have proved stubborn: apartheid is discredited, but the values of the pre-1948 colonial era, the period of British colonization, still dominate. Thus South Africa’s democracy supports free elections, civil liberties and the rule of law, but also continues past patterns of exclusion and domination.

Friedman reasons that this ‘path dependence’ is not, as is often claimed, the result of constitutional compromises in 1994 that left domination untouched. This bargain was flawed because it brought not too much compromise, but too little. Compromises extended political citizenship to all but there were no similar bargains on economic and cultural change. Using the work of the radical sociologist Harold Wolpe, Friedman shows that only negotiations on a new economy and society can free South Africans from the prison of the past.

Mahala's biography gives insight into the life and writing of Can Themba (1924–1967), an iconic figure of the South African literary world and Drum journalist who died in exile

This rich and absorbing biography of Can Themba, iconic Drum-era journalist and writer, is the definitive history of a larger-than-life man who died too young. Siphiwo Mahala's intensive and often fresh research features unprecedented archival access and interviews with Themba's surviving colleagues and family.

Mahala’s biography takes a critical historical approach to Themba’s life and writing, giving a picture of the whole man, from his early beginnings in Marabastad to his sombre end in exile in Swaziland. The better-known elements of his life – his political views, passion for teaching and mentoring, family life and his drinking – are woven together with an examination of his literary influences and the impact of his own writing (especially his famous short story 'The Suit') on modern African writers in turn. Mahala, a master storyteller, deftly follows the threads of Themba's dynamic life, showcasing his intellectual acumen, scholarly aptitude and wit, along with his flaws, contradictions and heartbreaks, against a backdrop of the sparkle and pathos of Sophiatown of the 1950s.

Can Themba’s successes and failures as well as his triumphs and tribulations reverberate on the pages of this long-awaited biography. The result is an authoritative and entertaining account of an often misunderstood figure in South Africa's literary canon.

A textbook of case studies for audiologists and speech pathologists that makes recommendations for early detection and intervention of hearing impairments in the South African context

Early hearing detection and intervention (EHDI) is the gold standard for any practicing audiologist, and for families of infants and children with hearing impairment. EHDI programs aim to identify, diagnose and provide intervention to children with hearing impairment from as early as six months old (as well as those at risk for hearing impairment) to ensure they develop and achieve to their potential. Yet EHDI remains a significant challenge for Africa, and various initiatives are in place to address this gap in transferring policy into practice within the southern African context.

The diversity of factors in the southern African context presents unique challenges to teaching and research in this field, which has prompted this book project. The South African government’s heightened focus on increasing access to health care which includes ongoing Early Childhood Development (ECD) programs, make this an opportune time for establishing and documenting evidence-based research for current undergraduate and postgraduate students. Early Detection and Intervention in Audiology: An African Perspective aims to address this opportunity.

Grounded in an African context with detailed case studies, this book provides rich content that pays careful attention to contextual relevance and contextual responsiveness to both identification and intervention in hearing impairment. With diverse contributions from experts in local and international contexts, but always with an African perspective, this is textbook will be an invaluable resource for students, researchers and practitioners.

This edited collection illustrates contestations over land and political authority in South Africa’s rural areas, focusing on threats to popular rights and how they are being supported.

Who controls the land and minerals in the former Bantustans of South Africa - chiefs, the state or landholders? Disputes are taking place around the ownership of resources, decisions about their exploitation and who should benefit. With respect to all of these issues, the courts have become increasingly important.

The contributors to Land, Law and Chiefs in Rural South Africa capture some of these intense contestations over land, law and political authority, focussing on threats to the rights of ordinary people. History and customary law feature strongly in most disputes and succession to chieftaincy is also frequently disputed. Judges have to make decisions in a context where rival claimants to property or office assert their own versions of history and custom. The South African constitution recognizes customary law and the courts are attempting to incorporate and develop this branch of jurisprudence as ‘living customary law’. Lawyers, community leaders and academics are called on to assist in researching cases around restitution, land rights and customary law.

The chapters in this collection discuss legal cases and policy directions that have evolved since 1994. Some chapters analyze the increasing power of chiefs in the South African rural areas, while others suggest that the courts are giving support to popular rights over land and supporting local democratic processes. Contributors record significant pushback from groups that reject traditional authority. These political tensions are a central theme of the collection and thus serve as vital case studies in furthering our understanding of rights and restitution in South Africa.

This edited collection looks at ruins and vacant buildings as part of South Africa’s oppressive history of colonialism and apartheid and ways in which the past persists into the present

Falling Monuments, Reluctant Ruins: The Persistence of the Past in the Architecture of Apartheid interrogates how, in the era of decolonization, post-apartheid South Africa reckons with its past in order to shape its future. Architects, historians, artists, social anthropologists and urban planners seek answers in this book to complex and unsettling questions around heritage, ruins and remembrance. What do we do with hollow memorials and political architectural remnants? Which should remain, which forgotten, and which dismantled? Are these vacant buildings, cemeteries, statues, and derelict grounds able to serve as inspiration in the fight against enduring racism and social neglect? Should they become exemplary as spaces for restitution and justice? The contributors examine the influence of public memory, planning and activism on such anguished places of oppression, resistance and defiance. Their focus on visible markers in the landscape to interrogate our past will make readers reconsider these spaces, looking at their landscape and history anew.

Through a series of 14 empirically grounded chapters and 48 images, the contributors seek to understand how architecture contests or subverts these persistent conditions in order to promote social justice, land reclamation and urban rehabilitation. The decades following the dismantling of apartheid are surveyed in light of contemporary heritage projects, where building ruins and abandoned spaces are challenged and renegotiated across the country to become sites of protest, inspiration and anger.

This ground-breaking collection is an important resource for professionals, academics and activists working in South Africa today.

How I Lost My Mother is a deeply felt account of the relationship between a mother and son, and an exploration of what care for the dying means in contemporary society

The book is emotionally complex – funny, sad and angry – but above all, heartfelt and honest. It speaks boldly of challenges faced by all of us, challenges which are often not spoken about and hidden, but which deserve urgent attention. This is first and foremost a work of the heart, a reflection on what relationships mean and should mean. There is much in the book about relationships of care and exploitation in southern Africa, and about white Jewish identity in an African context. But despite the specific and absorbing references to places and contexts, the book offers a broader, more universal view. All parents of adult children, and all adults who have parents alive, or have lost their parents, will find much in this book to make them laugh, cry, think and feel.

A history of Atlantic solidarity between Cuba and Africa, in struggle for African independence from colonial powers

The Cuban people hold a special place in the hearts of the people of Africa. The Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to African independence, freedom, and justice, unparalleled for its principled and selfless character.’

As Nelson Mandela states, Cuba was a key participant in the struggle for the independence of African countries during the Cold War and the definitive ousting of colonialism from the continent. Beyond the military interventions that played a decisive role in shaping African political history, there were many-sided engagements between the island and the continent. Cuba and Africa, 1959-1994 is the story of tens of thousands of individuals who crossed the Atlantic as doctors, scientists, soldiers, students and artists. Each chapter presents a case study – from Algeria to Angola, from Equatorial Guinea to South Africa – and shows how much of the encounter between Cuba and Africa took place in non-militaristic fields: humanitarian and medical, scientific and educational, cultural and artistic.

The historical experience and the legacies documented in this book speak to the major ideologies that shaped the colonial and postcolonial world, including internationalism, developmentalism and South–South cooperation.

Approaching African–Cuban relations from a multiplicity of angles, this collection will appeal to an equally wide range of readers, from scholars in black Atlantic studies to cultural theorists and general readers with an interest in contemporary African history.

In this timely, original and sophisticated collection, writers from the Global South demonstrate that forms of publicness are multiple, mobile and varied

The notion that societies mediate issues through certain kinds of engagement is at the heart of imaginings of democracy and often centers on the ideal of the public sphere. But this imagined foundation of how we live collectively appears to have suffered a dramatic collapse across the world, with many democracies apparently unable to solve problems through talk – or even to agree on who speaks, in what ways and where. In the 10 essays in this timely, original and sophisticated collection, writers from southern Africa combine theoretical analysis with the examination of historical cases and contemporary developments to demonstrate that forms of publicness are multiple, mobile and varied. They propose new concepts and methodologies to analyse how public engagements work in society.

Babel Unbound examines charged examples from the Global South, such as the centuries old Timbuktu archive, Nelson Mandela as a powerful absent presence in 1960s public life, and the challenges to the terms of contemporary debate around the student activism of #rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall. These show how issues of public discussion span both archive and media, verbal debates in formal spaces and visual performances that circulate in unpredictable ways.

An interdisciplinary account of the life of Johannesburg, South Africa's "global south city"

Anxious Joburg focuses on Johannesburg, the largest and wealthiest city in South Africa, as a case study for the contemporary global South city. Global South cities are often characterised as sites of contradiction and difference that produce a range of feelings around anxiety. This is often imagined in terms of the global North’s anxieties about the South: migration, crime, terrorism, disease and environmental crisis. Anxious Joburg invites readers to consider an intimate perspective of living inside such a city. How does it feel to live in the metropolis of Johannesburg: what are the conditions, intersections, affects and experiences that mark the contemporary urban?

Scholars, visual artists and storytellers, all look at unexamined aspects of Johannesburg life. From peripheral settlements to the inner city to the affluent northern suburbs, from precarious migrants and domestic workers to upwardly mobile young women and fearful elites, Anxious Joburg presents an absorbing engagement with this frustrating, dangerous, seductive city. It offers a rigorous, critical approach to Johannesburg revealing the way in which anxiety is a vital structuring principle of contemporary life.

The approach is strongly interdisciplinary, with contributions from media studies, anthropology, religious studies, urban geography, migration studies and psychology. It will appeal to students and teachers, as well as to academic researchers concerned with Johannesburg, South Africa, cities and the global South. The mix of approaches will also draw a non-academic audience.

A deep dive into the influences of Hegelian thought on the work of revolutionary and postcolonial theorist Frantz Fanon

Hegel 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 crucial and formative role in the work of one of the iconic thinkers of the ‘decolonial turn’, Frantz Fanon. This would be inexplicable if it were not for the much-quoted ‘lord-bondsman’ dialectic – frequently referred to as the ‘master-slave dialectic’ – described in Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit. Fanon takes up this dialectic negatively in contexts of violence-riven (post-)slavery and colonialism; yet in works such as Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth he upholds a Hegelian-inspired vision of freedom.

The essays in this collection offer close readings of Hegel’s text, and of responses to it in the work of twentieth-century philosophers, that highlight the entangled history of the translations, transpositions and transformations of Hegel in the work of Fanon, and more generally in colonial, postcolonial and decolonial contexts.

This comprehensive treatment of Archie Mafeje as a thinker and researcher analyses his overall scholarship and his role as a theoretician of liberation and revolutionary theory

Social scientist Archie Mafeje, who was born in the Eastern Cape but lived most of his scholarly life in exile, was one of Africa's most prominent intellectuals. This ground-breaking work is the first of its kind to consider the entire body of Mafeje’s oeuvre and offers a much-needed engagement with his ideas. The most inclusive and critical treatment to date of Mafeje as a thinker and researcher, the book analyses his overall scholarship and his role as a theoretician of liberation and revolution.

Author Bongani Nyoka's main argument is that Mafeje’s superb scholarship developed out of his experience as an oppressed black person and his early political education, which merged with his university training to turn him into a formidable cutting-edge intellectual force.

There are three main parts to the book. Part I evaluates Mafeje's critique of the social sciences, part II focuses on his work on land and agrarian issues in sub-Saharan Africa and part III deals with his work on revolutionary theory and politics. The book engages in the act of knowledge decolonisation, making a unique contribution to South Africa’s sociological, historical and political studies.

A clear, concise and accessible dissection guide for undergraduate allied health sciences and medical students encountering dissection for the first time

Practical Anatomy is designed to enable novice anatomists to grasp the biological background of the human anatomy while understanding its complexity within the clinical context. As a guide to the dissection of the human cadaver, it provides an account of the biological and systemic foundations of the human body. In keeping with the tradition of its predecessor this revised edition is primarily aimed at undergraduate allied health sciences and medical students who are encountering dissection for the first time and are intimidated by the volume of information to be understood. In addition, some dissections of more complex regions of the anatomy have been integrated into the text for more advanced students. This version has built on the solid foundation of the first edition of Practical Anatomy and Man’s Anatomy, incorporating all the features unique to these texts while updating the methodology and including the latest anatomical terminology as outlined in the Terminologia Anatomica. The text and illustrations have been simplified to provide a clear, concise and accessible dissection guide.

This timely collection of essays analyses the crisis of journalism in contemporary South Africa at a period when the media and their role are frequently at the centre of public debate. The transition to digital news has been messy, random and unpredictable. The spread of news via social media platforms has given rise to political propaganda, fake news and a flattening of news to banality and gossip. Media companies, however, continue to shrink newsrooms, ousting experienced journalists in favour of 'content producers'.

Against this backdrop, Daniels points out the contribution of investigative journalists to exposing corruption and sees new opportunities emerging to forge a model for the future of non-profit, public-funded journalism. Engaging and dynamic, the book argues for the power of public interest journalism, including investigative journalism, and a diversity of voices and positions to be reflected in the news. It addresses the gains and losses from decolonial and feminist perspectives and advocates for a radical shift in the way power is constituted by the media in the South African postcolony.

A valuable introduction to the confusion that confronts journalism students, it has much to offer practising media professionals. Daniels uses her years of experience as a newspaper journalist to write with authority and illuminate complex issues about newsroom politics. Interviews with alienated media professionals and a semi-autobiographical lens add a personal element that will appeal to readers interested in the inner life of the media.

Patrick van Rensburg (1931–2017) was an anti-apartheid activist and self-made ‘alternative educationist’ whose work received international recognition with the Right Livelihood Award in 1981.

Born in KwaZulu-Natal into what he described as a ‘very ordinary South African family that believed in the virtue of racism’, Van Rensburg became a self-styled rebel who tirelessly pursued his own vision of a brighter future for emerging societies in post-colonial southern Africa.

His emotional and intellectual struggle against his upbringing and cultural roots led him to reject his life of white privilege in South Africa. Determined to prevent the emergence of a privileged black elite in post-colonial society, he devoted his life to implementing an alternative, egalitarian approach to education, focusing on quality and functional schooling for the majority. Rewarded with the internationally prestigious Right Livelihood Award for his unique contribution to education, he saw this work as a ‘necessary tool of development’.

Exiled from South Africa in 1960 because of his involvement in the London boycott campaign that gave birth to the Anti-Apartheid Movement, Van Rensburg moved to Botswana (then Bechuanaland). There he founded cooperatives, provided vocational training and was among the earliest educationists to espouse the discipline of development studies.

Perhaps his best-known legacy is the Swaneng Hill School, which he founded to provide an educational home for primary school ‘dropouts’ through a curriculum that combined theory and practice, and academic and manual labour. He involved his pupils in building their school, running it, providing their own food, and making their own equipment and furniture.

Van Rensburg was an innovative and charismatic visionary who captured the zeitgeist of the late twentieth century, and whose work and vision still have resonance for debates in educational policy today.

This collection of satirical sketches takes readers on a sometimes cynical, sometimes hilarious trip through many of the issues that face democratic South Africa

The seed of this collection was sown in 2007 when South Africa won the right to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The debate about huge amounts of public funds being spent on a 'vanity project' instead of being used to improve the lives of the majority of the country’s citizens inspired Mike van Graan, one of South Africa's leading contemporary political playwrights, to use sport as an entry point for satirical commentary. Van Graan follows this with piercing attention towards matters of the state. With themes ranging from the World Cup to the political football of land, from the violent abuse of women to state capture, this selection of satirical sketches takes readers on a rollercoaster trip through many of the issues that face democratic South Africa. The sketches come from six one-person revues, Bafana Republic (2007), Bafana Republic: Extra Time (2008), Bafana Republic: Penalty Shootout (2009), Pay Back the Curry (2016), State Fracture (2017) and Land Acts (2018). Van Graan uses a potent mix of comedy, poetry and drama to make points that hit hard at core issues which 21st-century South Africans are struggling with. Readers will laugh and cringe and sometimes cry, but one thing they will not be able to do is remain unaffected.

Focusing on three South African communities the authors dismiss the idea that some groups are voiceless, arguing that they are being deliberately ignored by dominant news media

The dominant news media are often accused of reflecting an ‘elite bias’, privileging and foregrounding the interests of a small segment of society while ignoring the narratives of the majority. The authors of Tell Our Story investigate this problem and offer a hands-on demonstration of listening journalism and research in practice. In the process they dismiss the idea that some groups are voiceless, arguing that what is often described in such terms is mostly a matter of those groups being deliberately ignored. Focusing their attention on three very different South African communities they delve into the life and struggle narratives of each, exposing the divide between the stories told by the people who actually live in the communities and the way in which those stories have been understood and shaped by the media. The three communities are those living in the Glebelands hostel complex in Durban where over 100 residents have been killed in politically motivated violence in the past few years; the Xolobeni community on the Wild Coast, which has been resisting the building of a new toll road and a dune mining venture; and Thembelihle, a settlement south-west of Johannesburg that has been resisting removal for many years. The book concludes with a set of practical guidelines for journalists on the practice of listening journalism.

‘Why bother to rob a bank, when you can own a bank?’ asked Bertold Brecht. The question is reiterated in the very Brechtian Love, Crime and Johannesburg, the story of Jimmy ‘Long Legs’ Mangane, a people’s poet involved in the struggle, who is accused of robbing a bank. He passionately asserts his innocence, claiming to work for the ‘secret secret service’.
Lewis, his old friend and comrade from the struggle, now owns a bank. How did this happen? The man of the struggle is now a man of accounts. A man of the nineties. Part of the cell phone generation. Added to the mix is an old-style gangster, two girlfriends, a Jewish father and a very unusual Chief of Police.
Described as one of the first genuine post-apartheid plays, Love, Crime and Johannesburg is a witty, light-hearted account of life in the City of Gold at the turn of the millennium. A must for all students of South African theatre. Winner of the 2000 Vita Award for best script of a new South African Play.

Writing the Ancestral River is an illuminating and unusual biography of the Kowie River in the Eastern Cape

This 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 pastoralists, Dutch trekboers and British settlers. Their direct descendants continue to live in the area and interact in ways that have been decisively shaped by their shared history. Besides being a social history, this is also a natural history of the river and its catchment area, where dinosaurs once roamed and cycads still grow. As the book shows, the natural world of the Kowie has felt the effects of human settlement, most strikingly through the establishment of a harbour at the mouth of the river in the 19th century and the development of a marina in the late 20th century. Both projects have had a decisive and deleterious impact on the Kowie. People are increasingly reconnecting with nature and justice through rivers. Acknowledging the past, and the inter-generational, racialised privileges, damages and denials it established and perpetuates, is necessary for any shared future. By focusing on this `little' river, the book raises larger questions about colonialism, capitalism, `development' and ecology, and asks us to consider the connections between social and environmental injustice.

Builds a compelling case for thinking and doing psychology differently in and for Africa

What does the world look like from Africa? What does it mean to think, feel, express without apology for being African? How does one teach society and children to be African—with full consciousness and pride? In institutions of learning, what would a textbook on African-centred psychology look like? How do researchers and practitioners engage in African social psychology, African-centred child development, African neuropsychology, or any area of psychology that situates African realities at the centre? Questions such as these are what Kopano Ratele grapples with in this lyrical, philosophical and poetic treatise on practising African psychology in a decolonised world view. Employing a style common in philosophy but rarely used in psychology, the book offers thoughts about the ideas, contestation, urgency and desire around a psychological praxis in Africa for Africans. While setting out a framework for researching, teaching and practicing African psychology, the book in part coaxes, in part commands and in part urges students of psychology, lecturers, researchers and therapists to reconsider and reach beyond their received notions of African psychology.

Two very different women meet during a long wait to buy subsidized rice and discover they have more in common than their poverty; an old man and a child share a last loving waltz; a cynical, disabled gangster learns humanity from a committed social worker, and a young girl finds her missing father and her role in the political struggle.
This collection of stage plays, one radio play and a cinepoem, captures the essence of Zakes Mda’s method as a dramatist- a slow but intimate process of revelation (on the part of the characters). It is an artistic cooperation of the most pleasurable kind.