At the very dawn of the country’s brave new democracy, Cape Town was at war. Pagad, which started as a community protest action against crime, had mutated into a sinister vigilante group wreaking death and destruction across the city. Mark Shaw tells the incredible tale of how the police’s response pulled together former foes – struggle cadres and the apartheid security apparatus – to break the Pagad death squads.
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In this book, award-winning author Niq Mhlongo has brought together deeply personal stories that tease apart a multitude of thought-provoking perceptions on black tax by well-known writers, such as Dudu Busani-Dube, Sifiso Mzobe, Fred Khumalo, Mohale Mashigo, Thanduxolo Jika and many other new voices. The stories cover an engrossing cross-section of experiences, ranging from the student who diverts bursary money to put food on the table back home, family members who make outrageous demands on individuals often resulting in debt to look after their families, to people who are happy to open their homes to provide shelter to jobseekers or the downtrodden.
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In this deeply personal book, Hlumelo Biko – who was born of Steve and Mamphela’s union – movingly recounts his parents’ love story and how their message to fellow black South Africans to love themselves helped to change the course of South African history.
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A Father is Born by Tumiso Mashaba is an exceptionally reflective and moving account of a son’s relationship with a distant and brutal father. Covering themes of fatherhood, black masculinity, toxic masculinity, generational trauma, infidelity, abuse, and suicide and mental health, Mashaba creates a realistic backdrop of a gritty modern South Africa.
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Murder has always fascinated us, and when women are the masterminds, the intrigue grows exponentially. Not only are female murderers much rarer than male killers, but their crimes usually also involve a more sophisticated type of plotting. In Blood on Her Hands, award-winning journalist Tanya Farber investigates the lives, minds and motivations of some of South Africa’s most notorious female murderers.
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Here is the Cape Town underworld laid bare, explored through the characters who control the “protection” industry – the bouncers and security at nightclubs and strip clubs. A book that lays bare the myth that violence and gangsterism in Cape Town is confined to the ganglands of the Cape Flats – wherever you find yourself, you’re only a hair’s breadth away from the enforcers.
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A Man of Good Hope by Jonny Steinberg is the story of a person shorn of the things we have come to believe make us human – personal possessions, parents, siblings.
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In this eye-opening, compassionate, searing and beautifully written account, Steinberg seeks to understand the AIDS crisis in South Africa. As he grapples to get closer to answers that remain maddeningly just out of reach, he realises that he must look within to unravel some of the enigma surrounding the greatest African disaster of our times.
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On 9 June 2003, a 43-year-old coloured man named Magadien Wentzel walked out of Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town. Behind him lay a lifelong career in the 28s, South Africa’s oldest and most reviled prison gang, for decades rumoured to have specialised in rape and robbery. Jonny Steinberg met Wentzel in prison in the dying months of 2002. By the time Wentzel was released, he and Steinberg had spent more than 50 hours discussing his life experiences. The Number is an account of their conversations and of Steinberg’s journeys to the places and people of Wentzel’s past.
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