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When Love Kills is the tale of hip hop star, AKA. whose life unraveled when he embarked on a relationship with 21 year-old Anele Tembe. When she "fell" to her death from the 10th storey of the Pepper Club in April, 2021, after a long night of heated arguing, details would emerge that they'd been caught up in a whirlwind of toxic obsession, alleged substance abuse and violence. Less than 2 years later AKA was assassinated in what looked like a hit to avenge her death. This is their tragic story. 

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There is lament about how and why the ANC have so quickly become preoccupied with material enrichment. Former exile, business leader and political commentator, Oyama Mabandla, excavates the values that created a steady flow of pioneering South Africans under impossible circumstances, bolstered a liberation ethic and championed a leadership that made individual nobility and excellence aspirational. These values, in retreat since 94, can still recapture the nation's best trajectory.

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'It is easier to tell you I used to be in a religious cult. My declaration is most likely to surprise you, even leave you confused. You might ask for more details. I’d tell you it was one of those evangelical churches, and you'd fill in the gaps for yourself because there are endless possibilities of what a cult-like evangelical church can look like in South Africa. Did I eat grass? Or maybe a snake? Was I sprayed with doom?'   Unlike more traditional denominational churches Pentecostal or evangelical churches are more of a movement and much less regulated. Journalist Pontsho Pilane's experience at a powerful evangelical church changed the trajectory of her life and began her journey of deconstruction. Her aim is to be a responsible believer contributing to a more just society. In this memoir and analysis, Pontsho investigates the dangers of uninterrogated belief in Pentecostal churches and how these beliefs affect our everyday lives.

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The Democratic Alliance won control of the uMngeni Municipality in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands after the local government elections in 2021. As the only DA-run municipality in KZN, uMngeni provides a template for how local government could work in a post-ANC South Africa. Written by two leaders at the very heart of the project, Saving South Africa reveals the challenges, the triumphs and disasters the new administration has encountered along the way. It is an eye-opening exposé of how cadre deployment has helped to bring the country to its knees. It is a story of incompetent officials, political spies, gunwielding tenderpreneurs, petty theft and grand larceny. And yet, as we follow the authors on their journey, there is always hope for a better future as the corrupt layers of local governance are gradually stripped away, revealing the responsive and caring civil service envisioned by the South African Constitution.

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Lebogang Seale has written a personal and poignant account of the impact of South Africa’s failing and flailing land reform policy on ordinary people desperate for restorative justice. One Hundred Years of Dispossession shows not only that land reform in South Africa is a criminal failure and monumental disappointment, but more than that, it is a betrayal that punishes the affected communities whose quest for justice remains denied.

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Feeling an exile in the country of his birth, the talented journalist and leading black intellectual Bloke Modisane left South Africa in 1959. It was shortly after the apartheid government had bulldozed Sophiatown, the township of his childhood. His biting indictment of apartheid, Blame Me on History, was published in 1963 – and banned shortly afterwards. Modisane offers a harrowing account of the degradation and oppression faced daily by black South Africans. His penetrating observations and insightful commentary paint a vivid picture of what it meant to be black in apartheid South Africa. At the same time, his evocative writing transports the reader back to a time when Sophiatown still teemed with life. This 60th-anniversary edition of Modisane’s autobiography serves as an example of passionate resistance to the scourge of racial discrimination in our country, and is a reminder not to forget our recent past.

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A comprehensive and evocative history of Durban's Casbah area, including the cinemas, markets, sport and politics of the area amongst many other topics.

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From award-winning non-fiction writer Hedley Twidle comes Show Me the Place, an essay collection searching through history, memory andliterature to find glimmers of utopia. The collection is a book ofelsewhere, in it, the author charts a journey to find other liveable places and spaces in a troubled world. Whether embarking on a bizarre quest to find Cecil Rhodes’s missingnose (sliced off the bust of the Rhodes Memorial) or bike-packing the Scottish islands with a couple of squabbling anarchists, whether learning to surf (much too late) in the wild, freezing waters off the Cape Peninsulaor navigating the fraught politics of a Buddhist retreat centre – the author explores forgotten utopias, intentional communities and islands of imagination with curiosity, hope and humour. Threaded through the pieces in this collection are questions of friendship and human community, of environmental destruction and repair, of landscape and memory. Ranging from the science fiction of Ursula Le Guin to George Orwell’s vision of the good life, from Mohandas Gandhi’sSouth African ashrams to the ‘living laboratory’ of Auroville in south India, Show Me the Place investigates the deep human desire to imagine social and environmental alternatives to what we take as normal or inevitable.

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After state capture, South Africa is (f*cked) not in a good place. The system is down. How do we reboot? We are not the first country to find itself in a difficult spot. China, India, South Korea, Vietnam and many others have gone from being economic basket cases to powerhouses, lifting millions out of poverty. So how can we pick ourselves up and fix things? In this book, Roy Havemann argues that right now we need to focus on six basics ‘E’s: Eskom, Education, Environment, Exports, Ethics, and Equality. Havemann lays out how we can practically bring in lessons from other countries and learn from their achievements and mistakes, for example, how China, Greece and Colombia solved loadshedding, how different South American countries are dealing with inequality and how Brazil and Kenya are upgrading their education systems. He shows that we are slowly moving in the right direction. Our own ‘Operation Vulindlela’ delivery unit, which is a joint initiative of the Presidency and the Treasury, is implementing change where it’s needed but more can be done to accelerate reforms to make South Africa a success. Sometimes the solutions to our problems are right here in our very own country – all that is needed is for us to recognise and harness them.

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The Hawks, South Africa’s elite crime-fighting force, have put scores of our worst criminals behind bars. In this book, investigative journalist Graham Coetzer offers us a rare glimpse into the secretive world of this top police unit.While exposing the deviousness of South Africa’s dangerous criminals, Hunting with the Hawks is also an ode to the hard work and dedication of the best of our police service.  

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