{"title":"Jacana Pocket History Series","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"9781431423309","title":"Thabo Mbeki","description":"Mbeki was a complex figure, full of contradictions and paradoxes: a rural child who became an urban sophisticate; a prophet of Africa’s Renaissance who was also an anglophile; a committed young Marxist who, while in power, embraced conservative economic policies and protected white corporate interests; a rational and dispassionate thinker who was particularly sensitive to criticism and dissent; a champion of African self-reliance who relied excessively on foreign capital and promoted a continental economic plan – NEPAD – that was disproportionately dependent on foreign aid; and a thoughtful intellectual who supported policies on HIV\/AIDS that withheld antiretroviral drugs from infected people, resulting in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths. Thabo Mbeki is the most important African political figure of his generation and a dominant figure in South African politics for 14 years. A pan-African philosopher-king who spent two decades in exile, as president of Africa’s most industrialised state, he set out a sweeping vision of an African Renaissance. As a key liberation leader in exile, Mbeki was instrumental in his party’s anti-apartheid struggle. During the South African transition, he helped build one of the world’s most respected constitutional democracies. As president, despite some successes, he was unable to overcome South Africa’s inherited socioeconomic challenges, and his disastrous AIDS policies will remain a major blotch in his legacy. He will, however, be remembered more as a foreign policy president for his peacemaking efforts in Africa and in the building of continental institutions such as the African Union and NEPAD. This book seeks to rescue Mbeki from South African parochialism and to restore him to a pan-African pantheon.","brand":"Adekeye Adebajo","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46158157644094,"sku":"9781431423309","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431423309_0267b488-6b5d-4728-8f04-f8373eaf77cf.jpg?v=1707455634"},{"product_id":"9781431403820","title":"South Africa at war, 1939-1945","description":"Bill Nasson’s South Africa at War, 1939–1945 is the first history of South Africa’s involvement in World War II to appear for a very long time. It is written by one of South Africa’s leading historians, who has specialised in writing the history of war. With characteristic brio, erudition and good humour, Bill Nasson tells an illustrated story of South Africa at war against Nazi Germany, its unpreparedness at the start, its surprising success in rising to the challenge, and the huge impact the war had on South African society and on expectations of change. It explores the impact, both immediate and in a wider historical context, of the 1939–45 crisis upon the Union and its divided and often volatile society. Touching on a broad range of experiences and events – military, political, economic and social – here is an evocative portrayal of a largely neglected episode in South Africa’s modern history.","brand":"Bill Nasson","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46158162231614,"sku":"9781431403820","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431403820_e2784f43-b56b-4de4-9be7-3c79ce642acc.jpg?v=1707455615"},{"product_id":"9781770099623","title":"Shaka","description":"We all picture Shaka as a lean, mean, assegai-wielding warrior-king, the military genius who founded the Zulu nation. In fact, we don’t actually know when he was born, what he looked like, or exactly when he died. Almost every other story you’ve heard is probably either wrong or contested. This biography draws on the last two decades of historical research to reassess the eyewitness accounts and use newly available oral traditions. The picture that emerges is astonishingly different from the popular stereotype.","brand":"Dan Wylie","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46158547878206,"sku":"9781770099623","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781770099623_31fc8f16-3967-40ef-b8a1-537adc64e9ac.jpg?v=1707617028"},{"product_id":"9781431426683","title":"Robert Mugabe","description":"Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe was an African leader who sharply divides opinion. As a man and leader he has come to embody the contradictions of his country’s history and political culture. As a symbol of African liberation he remains respected and revered by many on the African continent, but this heroic status contrasts sharply, in the eyes of his detractors, with repeated cycles of gross human rights violations, capital flight, and mass emigration precipitated by the policies of his government and his demonic image in Western media. In this timely biography intended for a general audience, Sue Onslow and Martin Plaut explain Mugabe’s formative experiences as a child and young man; his role as an admired Afro-nationalist leader in the struggle against white settler rule; and his evolution into a political manipulator and survivalist. They also address the emergence of political opposition to his leadership and the uneasy period of coalition government. Ultimately, they reveal the complexity of the man who led Zimbabwe for its first four decades of independence.","brand":"Sue Onslow","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46189115343166,"sku":"9781431426683","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431426683_df35f618-da2d-4b3f-9f7e-087ae147cc22.jpg?v=1707455638"},{"product_id":"9781431424122","title":"Poverty in South Africa","description":"South Africa's social landscape is disfigured by poverty, inequality and mass unemployment. Poverty in South Africa: Past and Present argues that it is impossible to think coherently or constructively about poverty, and the challenge it poses, without a clear understanding of its origins, its long-term development, and it's changing character over time. This historical overview seeks to show how poverty in the past has shaped poverty in the present. Colin Bundy traces the lasting scars left on the face of South African poverty by colonial dispossession, coerced labour and segregation; and by a capitalist system distinctive for its reliance on cheap, right-less black labour. While the exclusion of the poor occurs in very many countries, in South Africa it has a distinctive extra dimension. Here, poverty has been profoundly racialised by law, by social practice, and by prejudice. He shows that the 'solution' to the 'poor white question' in the 1920s and '30s had profound and lasting implications for black poverty. After an analysis of urban and rural poverty prior to 1948, he describes the impact of apartheid policies and social engineering on poverty. Over four decades, apartheid reshaped the geography and demography of poverty. This pocket history concludes with two chapters that assess the policies and thinking of the ANC government in its responses to poverty. One describes the remarkable story of the social security programme developed by the ANC in government since 1994, and finds that cash transfers - pensions and grants - have been the most effective mechanism of redistribution used by the ANC, even though the party remains edgy and anxious about a 'culture of entitlement'. A final chapter reviews the distribution and dimensions of contemporary poverty, inequality and unemployment, and considers available policy options - and their shortcomings.","brand":"Colin Bundy","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46189115605310,"sku":"9781431424122","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431424122_71919770-9782-473b-b368-4d954a0bad32.jpg?v=1707455634"},{"product_id":"9781431403660","title":"Ingrid Jonker","description":"","brand":"Louise Viljoen","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46189116916030,"sku":"9781431403660","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431403660_92fde04c-d569-438d-bc5d-1355f62e6c5d.jpg?v=1707455615"},{"product_id":"9781431423347","title":"Jack Simons","description":"Jack Simons: Teacher, Scholar, Comrade is a pocket biography informed by personal knowledge of its subject, and firsthand experience of the ANC in exile in Zambia, as well as by research in the archives and interviews. Born in 1907, Jack Simons was one of the leading left-wing intellectuals – and one of the greatest teachers – in 20thcentury South Africa. As a lecturer in African Studies at the University of Cape Town from 1937 until he was prevented from teaching by the government in 1964, and thereafter through his lectures and writings in exile, he had a profound effect on the thinking of generations of white and black students and on the liberation movement as a whole. As Albie Sachs wrote in an obituary in The Guardian (1995), ‘It is not just the way he influenced so many individuals. It was the impact he had on the culture of a people. The new South African Constitution requires that the values of an open and democratic society should be nurtured. Simons fought all his life both for openness and democracy. His intellectual rigour, the honesty of his person, the sweep of his information, the humanity of his vision and interactiveness and the vitality of his ideas, imprinted themselves on the generation that fought hardest for liberty and made the most direct contribution to achieving the new constitutional order.","brand":"Hugh Macmillan","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46189117505854,"sku":"9781431423347","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431423347_86333c24-2893-4ce6-bb57-99ff0c5c8016.jpg?v=1707455634"},{"product_id":"9781431423088","title":"Frantz Fanon","description":"Psychiatrist, revolutionary, writer and philosopher, Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) played many roles during his brief life. Born on the island of Martinique, he died in the United States from cancer, following a meteoric career that took him to France, Algeria, Tunisia, and numerous places in between. Best known for Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Fanon drew upon psychology, European philosophy, and his own experience to articulate radical critiques of racism, colonialism, and nationalism that still vitally inform understandings of these issues. Yet Fanon remains controversial, given his advocacy of violent struggle, and, consequently, is often misunderstood. This biography - the most succinct and straightforward to date - demythologises Fanon by situating his life and ideas within the historical circumstances he encountered. Synthesising a range of secondary literature with readings of his work, it elevates enduring aspects of Fanon's legacy, while also countering interpretations of his writing that have granted uncritical omniscience to his views. Written with clarity and passion, Christopher J. Lee's account ultimately argues for the complexity of Frantz Fanon and his continued importance today.","brand":"Christopher J. Lee","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46189122715966,"sku":"9781431423088","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431423088_e4065935-90cd-465a-b9fe-d4212d8d6306.jpg?v=1707455630"},{"product_id":"9781431431298","title":"Josie Mpama\/Palmer","description":"While African National Congress narratives dominate much of the scholarship on South Africa’s freedom struggle, Josie Mpama\/Palmer’s political life offers a different perspective. Highly critical of the patriarchal attitudes that hindered black women from actively participating in politics, Mpama\/Palmer was an outspoken advocate for women’s social equality.  and encouraged black women to become more involved in national conversations. Mpama\/Palmer was the first black woman to join the Communist Party of South Africa, and spent a year in Moscow at the Lenin School. She was an integral figure in establishing the Federation of South African Women, an organization, and served as its Potchefstroom Branch Secretary.  Mpama\/Palmer’s activism and political legacy is an inspiring example for women in South Africa and around the world.","brand":"Robert R. Edgar","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46189124714814,"sku":"9781431431298","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431431298_642843de-7cb5-4dc0-b260-332c82a633c9.jpg?v=1707455643"},{"product_id":"9781431404872","title":"Govan Mbeki","description":"This biography of Govan Mbeki (1910–2001), activist and intellectual, goes beyond the narrative details of his long life. Drawing on lengthy interviews with 'Oom Gov', it analyses his thinking, expressed in his writings over 50 years. This helps establish what is distinctive about him: as African nationalist and as committed Marxist – more than any other leader of the liberation movement, he sought to link theory and practice, ideas and action. The biography also explores controversial aspects of Mbeki's personality and career: his reputation as a hardliner, the personal and psychological price paid for militancy, and his role in the tensions within the ANC leadership on Robben Island.","brand":"Colin Bundy","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46189129662782,"sku":"9781431404872","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431404872_f7cd562c-8ecd-44a1-a214-91ddc30e369e.jpg?v=1707455619"},{"product_id":"9781431421176","title":"Emperor Haile Selassie","description":"Emperor Haile Selassie was an iconic figure of the twentieth century, a progressive monarch who ruled Ethiopia from 1916 to 1974. This book, written by a former state official who served in a number of important positions in Selassie’s government, tells both the story of the emperor’s life and the story of modern Ethiopia. After a struggle for the throne in 1916, the young Selassie emerged first as regent and then as supreme leader of Ethiopia. Over the course of his nearly six-decade rule, the emperor abolished slavery, introduced constitutional reform, and expanded educational opportunity. The Italian invasion of Ethiopia in the 1930s led to a five-year exile in England, from which he returned in time to lead his country through World War II. Selassie was also instrumental in the founding of the Organization of African Unity in 1963, but he fell short of the ultimate goal of a promised democracy in Ethiopia. The corruption that grew under his absolute rule, as well as his seeming indifference to the famine that gripped Ethiopia in the 1970s, led finally to his overthrow by the armed forces that he had created. Haile Selassie was an enlightened monarch in many ways, but also a man with flaws like any other. This short biography is a sensitive portrayal of Selassie as both emperor and man, by one who knew him well.","brand":"Bereket Habte Selassie","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46403640656190,"sku":"9781431421176","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431421176_69acaae6-b0d7-4e8d-863d-7a21e87f73f0.jpg?v=1707455630"},{"product_id":"9781431421138","title":"Patrice Lumumba","description":"Patrice Lumumba was a leader of the independence struggle in what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the country’s first democratically elected prime minister. After a meteoric rise in the colonial civil service and the African political elite, he became a major figure in the decolonisation movement of the 1950s. Lumumba’s short tenure as prime minister (1960–1) was marked by an uncompromising defence of Congolese national interests against pressure from international mining companies and the Western governments that orchestrated his eventual demise. Cold war geopolitical manoeuvring and well-coordinated efforts by Lumumba’s domestic adversaries culminated in his assassination at the age of thirty-five, with the support or at least the tacit complicity of the U.S. and Belgian governments, the CIA, and the UN Secretariat. Even decades after Lumumba’s death, his personal integrity and unyielding dedication to the ideals of self-determination, self-reliance, and pan-African solidarity assure him a prominent place among the heroes of the twentieth-century African independence movement and the worldwide African diaspora. Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja’s short and concise book provides a contemporary analysis of Lumumba’s life and work, examining both his strengths and his weaknesses as a political leader. It also surveys the national, continental, and international contexts of Lumumba’s political ascent and his swift elimination by the interests threatened by his ideas and practical reforms.","brand":"Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46403640918334,"sku":"9781431421138","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431421138_8b05c53a-7ce1-4168-b95a-b54496c6c6c6.jpg?v=1707455629"},{"product_id":"9781431401000","title":"San rock art","description":"The new Jacana series of pocket guides is meant for those who are looking for a brief but lively introduction to a wide range of relevant topics of South African history, politics and biography. Written by some of the leading experts in their fields, the individual volumes are informative and accessible, inexpensive yet well produced, slim enough to put in your pocket and carry with you to read.","brand":"Lewis-Williams","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46403642425662,"sku":"9781431401000","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431401000_89e921be-1315-4ce8-ae99-26a8120ee295.jpg?v=1707455610"},{"product_id":"9781431432400","title":"Boutros Boutros-Ghali","description":"This is the first historical biography in English to be published on Egyptian scholar-diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the most intellectually accomplished of the nine UN secretaries-general. The first African and first Arab to occupy the post, Boutros-Ghali held the office in the momentous five post-Cold War years (1992–1996), massively expanding UN peacekeeping and leading intellectual debates on development, democratization and human rights.  He had earlier been a key architect of the Egypt–Israel peace treaty as Egypt’s minister of state for foreign affairs, a major figure in Third World diplomacy, and a professor of international law and relations. This accessible biography sets Boutros-Ghali’s career within the political, social and cultural contexts from which he emerged.  Professor Adekeye Adebajo is a senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS) in South Africa. He is the author of UN Peacekeeping in Africa, and served with UN missions in South Africa, Western Sahara and Iraq.","brand":"Adekeye Adebajo","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46403662840126,"sku":"9781431432400","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431432400_da655089-5b5d-4317-87a2-2963e9098558.jpg?v=1707455648"},{"product_id":"9781431432301","title":"Luthuli","description":"In an important addition to the Jacana Pocket Histories of Africa series, Robert Trent Vinson recovers the important but largely forgotten story of Albert Luthuli, Africa’s first Nobel Peace Prize winner and president of the African National Congress from 1952 to 1967.  One of the most respected African leaders, Luthuli linked South African anti-apartheid politics with other movements, becoming South Africa’s leading advocate of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent civil disobedience techniques. He also framed apartheid as a crime against humanity and thus linked South African antiapartheid struggles with international human rights campaigns.  This book places Luthuli and the South African liberation movement in a global context, and examines aspects of Luthuli’s leadership that were not previously publicly known: Vinson is the first to use new archival evidence, numerous oral interviews, and personal memoirs to reveal that Luthuli privately supported sabotage as an additional strategy to end apartheid.  This multifaceted portrait will be indispensable to students of South African history and politics.","brand":"Robert Trent Vinson","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46403665527102,"sku":"9781431432301","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431432301_4c9fb4a0-1e3d-4643-8fba-4791f969b74c.jpg?v=1707455648"},{"product_id":"9781431425631","title":"Oliver Tambo","description":"Born in Pondoland in 1917, Oliver Tambo cut his political teeth in the ANC Youth League. This book traces his role as a leader of the legal ANC through the Defiance Campaign, the Congress of the People and the Treason Trial, and his evolution from militant 'Africanism' towards acceptance of the idea of the ANC as open to people of different racial groups and political persuasions. The book also traces his role from the aftermath of Sharpeville in 1960 as, for 30 years, the pre-eminent leader of the ANC in exile in London, Tanzania and Zambia. It shows how, placing himself at the political centre of the organisation, he held the ANC together through great difficulties, managing its relations with African states and great powers, and steering it towards the negotiated end of apartheid. The book analyses the sources of Tambo's strength as a leader, emphasizing his integrity and commitment to democracy, and the importance to him of religion, music and family.","brand":"Hugh MacMillan","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46403670016318,"sku":"9781431425631","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431425631_a0e11914-0951-4746-84d0-11e368b23072.jpg?v=1707455639"},{"product_id":"9781431422036","title":"Nelson Mandela","description":"Jacana is delighted to announce the forthcoming publication of a new pocket biography of Nelson Mandela by the renowned South African historian, Colin Bundy. Writing with his characteristic elegance, insight and striking turn of phrase, Colin Bundy sets out to extricate the person of Mandela from a pervasive sense of Mandela; distinguishing between the actual, historical Mandela and a generalised and essentially mythical Mandela. There are two main elements in this task. The first involves locating Mandela’s life, his character and actions, in South African history, which Bundy does in five masterly chapters. The second element, the subject of the first and the final chapters, asks a different set of questions, about memory and remembering; about legacy in the long term. This book will undoubtedly establish itself as the finest introduction to Mandela’s life available. It is not only a skilful overview and summary of the 20th-century icon but a fresh and engaging look, each page revealing new insights and original observations expressed in felicitous prose.","brand":"Colin Bundy","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46403695837502,"sku":"9781431422036","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431422036_6fba717e-e040-49f1-b06f-b12199a46cc7.jpg?v=1707455630"},{"product_id":"9781431405787","title":"The idea of the ANC","description":"The African National Congress (ANC) has established itself as Africa’s most famous liberation movement. The year 2012 is an important year in the history of the African National Congress’ organisational, political and ideological development and growth. It marks 100 years of the ANC’s existence; a milestone that has prompted partisans to a century of unparalleled achievement in the struggle against colonialism and racial discrimination and the year of the 53rd National Conference in Mangaung.  It is, though, a liberation whose critics have painted a less-flattering portrait of the historical ANC, as a communist puppet, a moribund dinosaur, or an elitist political parasite. For such sceptics, the ANC – now in government for two decades – has betrayed South Africans rather than liberated them. The politics of the ANC, and those of the country it governs, are today tumultuous. South Africans endure deep inequality and unemployment, violent community protests, murders of foreign residents, major policy blunders, an AIDS crisis, and deepening corruption. Inside the ANC there are episodes of open rebellion against the leadership, conflicts over the character of a post-liberation movement, and debilitating battles for succession to the movement’s presidency. The Idea of the ANC explores how ANC intellectuals and leaders interpret the historical project of their movement. It investigates three interlocked ideas: a conception of power, a responsibility for promoting unity, and a commitment to human liberation. It explores how these notions have shaped South African politics in the past, and how they will inform ANC leaders’ responses to the challenges of the future.","brand":"Anthony Butler","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46403703931198,"sku":"9781431405787","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431405787_43638ce4-16da-4613-b7a9-b5d9198b8819.jpg?v=1707455620"},{"product_id":"9781431424108","title":"The Truth and Reconciliation Commission","description":"South Africa marks the 20th anniversary of the TRC. 15 April 2016 marked 20 years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings began. The TRC was set up to give an opportunity for perpetrators of human rights transgressions to come clean about the atrocities that happened during those evil days of apartheid. Sadly, only half of the truth came to the fore. Many families still do not know what happened to their loved ones. There are few people better placed than Mary Burton to write about the TRC, having been one of its Commissioners. Burton's pocket book provides an informed account from the inside of the process and workings of the TRC and a measured and balanced assessment of its outcomes and significance. Even at the time of its existence, the TRC came in for criticism from a variety of quarters: both the African National Congress and ex-President FW de Klerk took legal action to challenge or prevent the publication of the Commission's report; however, the Commission also fulfilled a vital and important role in the transition from apartheid to democracy, and it has become a model for other countries wishing to undertake similar journeys to deal with past atrocities and come to some kind of national resolution, reconciliation or closure.","brand":"Mary Ingouville Burton","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46403723493694,"sku":"9781431424108","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431424108_e0469959-ed10-4459-8b29-3811918e0062.jpg?v=1707455634"},{"product_id":"9781431421091","title":"Thomas Sankara","description":"Thomas Sankara, often called the African Che Guevara, was president of Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in Africa, until his assassination during the military coup that brought down his government. Although his tenure in office was relatively short, Sankara left an indelible mark on his country’s history and development. An avowed Marxist, he outspokenly asserted his country’s independence from  France and other Western powers while at the same time seeking to build a genuine pan-African unity. He is held in high esteem by Julius Malema and the Economic Freedom Fighters. Ernest Harsch traces Sankara’s life from his student days to his recruitment into the military, early political awakening, and increasing dismay with his country’s extreme poverty and political corruption. As he rose to higher leadership positions, he used those offices to mobilise people for change and to counter the influence of the old, corrupt elites. Sankara and his colleagues initiated economic and social policies that shifted away from dependence on foreign aid and toward a greater use of the country’s own resources to build schools, health clinics, and public works. Although Sankara’s sweeping vision and practical reforms won him admirers both in Burkina Faso and across Africa, a combination of domestic opposition groups and factions within his own government and the army finally led to his assassination in 1987. This is the first English-language book to tell the story of Sankara’s life and struggles, drawing on the author’s extensive first-hand research and reporting on Burkina Faso, including interviews with the late leader. Decades after his death, Sankara remains an inspiration to young people throughout Africa for his integrity, idealism, and dedication to independence and self-determination.","brand":"Ernest Harsch","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46404176216382,"sku":"9781431421091","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431421091_63b37427-6728-4549-b7d3-42b464b0af66.jpg?v=1707455630"},{"product_id":"9781770099630","title":"Steve Biko","description":"The new Jacana series of pocket guides is meant for those who are looking for a brief but lively introduction to a wide range of relevant topics of South African history, politics and biography. Written by some of the leading experts in their fields, the individual volumes are informative and accessible, inexpensive yet well produced, slim enough to put in your pocket and carry with you to read.","brand":"Lindy Wilson","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47031918068030,"sku":"9781770099630","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781770099630_7f002c75-279a-405d-a3bf-87707f0f97aa.jpg?v=1707617028"},{"product_id":"9781770099616","title":"Umkhonto weSizwe","description":"This Friday, 16 December 2011, is the 50th anniversary of the launch of Umkhonto weSizwe. Umkhonto weSizwe, the Spear of the nation, popularly known as MK, was the armed wing of the African National Congress. On 16 December 1961 it launched its campaign of symbolic sabotage with the dramatic blowing up of electricity pylons and other strategic installations. For three decades it pursued a range of strategies in an attempt to weaken the apartheid state and bring the liberation movement to power. The 50th anniversary will see both a commemoration of those who died in the service of MK, and a critical reflection on the achievements of the armed struggle and its legacy for South Africa today. The book, Umkhonto weSizwe, offers a new and nuanced account of the ANC’s armed wing. It presents in broad outline the various stages in MK’s thirty-year history, considers the difficult strategic and moral problems the army faced, and argues that its operations are likely to be remembered as a just war conducted with considerable restraint. The story is illustrated with personal accounts from those who were active members of this armed group.","brand":"Janet Cherry","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47031918133566,"sku":"9781770099616","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781770099616_bb94272a-7d57-4b78-875d-e276b6abda3a.jpg?v=1707617028"},{"product_id":"9781431431304","title":"Mozambique’s Samora Machel","description":"Samora Machel (1933–1986) led Mozambicans through a war against their Portuguese colonizers and in 1975, became the first president of the People’s Republic of Mozambique. His military successes against a colonial regime backed by South Africa, Rhodesia, the United States, and its NATO allies enhanced his reputation as a revolutionary hero. In 1986, during the country’s civil war, Machel died in a plane crash under circumstances that remain uncertain.","brand":"Barbara S. Isaacman","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47825006821694,"sku":"9781431431304","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431431304_a3645465-95ea-4f41-bc9f-b41b131a49d5.jpg?v=1707455643"},{"product_id":"9781431403851","title":"Plague, pox and pandemics","description":"Over the last decades, we have seen more than three dozen new infectious diseases appear, some of which could kill millions of people with one or two unlucky gene mutations or one or two unfavourable environmental changes. The risks of pandemics only increase as the human population grows; therefore to direct our future we should examine our past. Howard Phillips provides the first look into the history of epidemics in South Africa, probing lethal episodes which significantly shaped this society over three centuries. Focusing on devastating diseases such as smallpox, bubonic plague, Spanish influenza, polio and HIV\/Aids, Plague, Pox and Pandemics probes their origin, their catastrophic course and their consequences in both the short and long term. Their impact ranges from the demographic to the political, the social, the economic, the spiritual, the psychological and the cultural. As each of these epidemics occurred at crucial moments in the country’s history – early in European colonisation, in the midst of the mineral revolution, during the South African War and World War I, as industrialisation was getting under way, and within the eras of apartheid and post-apartheid – the book also examines how these processes affected and were affected by the five epidemics, thereby adding important dimensions to an understanding of each. To those who read this book, South African history will not look the same again.","brand":"Howard Phillips","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47829676130622,"sku":"9781431403851","price":195.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431403851_77490698-7064-4ba3-af45-21ec3ee8ce46.jpg?v=1707455615"},{"product_id":"9781431408832","title":"ANC women's league: Sex, politics and gender","description":"The women’s league has played a large but little understood role in the history of the ANC. Over the years it has been headed by some powerful women including Albertina Sisulu and Winnie Mandela and has often gained public and media attention. But what role has it actually played in black political life and what influence has it had on national and gender politics in the country? This book provides a revealing insight into the connections between gender, sex and politics in the history of South Africa.","brand":"Shireen Hassim","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47830118957374,"sku":"9781431408832","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431408832_18768064-bce3-4774-bc48-01f62e77b292.jpg?v=1707455625"},{"product_id":"9781431404933","title":"ANC youth league","description":"This book tells the story of the ANC Youth League from its origins in the 1940s to the controversies of the Malema era. It analyses the ideology and tactics of its founders, some of whom (notably Mandela and Tambo) later became iconic figures in South African history. It also shows how the early Youth League gave birth not only to the modern ANC but also to its rival, the Pan Africanist Congress. Dormant for many years, the Youth League re-emerged in the transition era under the leadership of Peter Mokaba – infused with the tradition of the militant youth politics of the 1980s. Throughout its history the Youth League has tried to ‘dynamise’ and criticise the ANC from within, while remaining devoted to, and dependent on, the mother body. This book argues that in all this time the Youth League has struggled to find a balance between loyalty and rebellion.","brand":"Clive Glaser","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47830118793534,"sku":"9781431404933","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431404933_4caf14c8-60ec-4053-8b87-f271acd83b30.jpg?v=1707455620"},{"product_id":"9781431408917","title":"Chris Hani","description":"Chris Hani is one of the most iconic black leaders in South Africa’s recent history. His assassination in 1993 by far-right wingers threatened to upset the negotiations process and required Mandela’s televised address to the nation to calm tempers. This short biography brings out his role in MK and in the politics of the early 1990s, and is written by a distinguished historian who met Hani in exile in Lusaka.","brand":"Hugh Macmillan","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47830119809342,"sku":"9781431408917","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431408917_783046d6-9d3c-4855-b369-d8812063ae44.jpg?v=1707455624"},{"product_id":"9781431403790","title":"South Africa's struggle for human rights","description":"South Africa’s transition to a post-apartheid democracy has been widely celebrated as a triumph for global human rights. Yet, less than a generation after the achievement of freedom, the future of human rights and constitutionalism in South Africa is uncertain. This book seeks to explain how and why the apartheid government and the ANC both ‘discovered’ human rights in the mid-1980s. It does so by exploring several rights ‘regimes’ over two centuries: African nationalist, liberal, and republican. Although fragmented and episodic, these traditions help explain why rights discourse and constitutionalism gained broad acceptance in the last decade of the twentieth century, and momentarily aligned South Africa with broader global trends.","brand":"Saul Dubow","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47876069163326,"sku":"9781431403790","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/products\/9781431403790_b7e1ee48-8a2e-4ab1-81ac-76f4c834ce22.jpg?v=1707455615"},{"product_id":"9781431408870","title":"Short-changed? South Africa since 1994","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhat are the most significant developments – political, social, economic – in South Africa since 1994? How much has changed since the demise of apartheid, and how much remains stubbornly the same? Should one celebrate a robust democracy now two decades old, or lament the corrosive effects on political life of factionalism, greed and corruption? This book tries to answer such questions, and does so by avoiding simplistic or one-sided assessments of life under Mandela, Mbeki and Zuma. It recognises real advances under ANC rule, but it also identifies the limits and contradictions of such progress. It shows, too, how the country’s past permeates the present, complicating and constraining the politics of transition, so that genuine transformation has been short-changed.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Colin Bundy","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52840044822846,"sku":"9781431408870","price":202.0,"currency_code":"ZAR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4357\/7662\/files\/9781431408870.jpg?v=1767796034"}],"url":"https:\/\/exclusivebooks.co.za\/collections\/jacana-pocket-history-series\/products.oembed","provider":"Exclusive Books Online","version":"1.0","type":"link"}