Testing

Ella Blumenthal’s story of surviving the Holocaust and building a new life in South Africa could easily be mistaken for fiction. From the ashes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising to the fires of Majdanek, Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz; from the abandon of post-war Poland to the refuge of Paris, Palestine and getting married and moving to Johannesburg and eventually Cape Town; from stateless refugee to displaced immigrant, Ella’s 101 years of life have been nothing short of herculean. Together with her niece Roma Rothstein, five years her junior, Ella survived three concentration camps before being liberated by the British Army in 1945. They made their way across Europe to join their last surviving family member in Palestine where Ella met the South African man she would marry after just thirteen days. She followed Isaac Blumenthal to the tip of Africa where they settled in Brakpan, outside Johannesburg where Ella and her husband built a business and raised their four children.

Read more less

Spanning a lifetime of love and loss, crossing borders and oceans, Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt, co-authored by her son Harry Whittaker, draws Lucinda Riley's Seven Sisters series to its stunning, unforgettable conclusion.1928, ParisA boy is found, moments from death, and taken in by a kindly family. Gentle, precocious, talented, he flourishes in his new home, and the family show him a life he hadn’t dreamed possible. But he refuses to speak a word about who he really is.As he grows into a young man, falling in love and taking classes at the prestigious Conservatoire de Paris, he can almost forget the terrors of his past, or the promise he has vowed to keep. But across Europe an evil is rising, and no-one’s safety is certain. In his heart, he knows the time will come where he must flee once more.2008, the AegeanThe seven sisters are gathered together for the first time, on board the Titan to say a final goodbye to the enigmatic father they loved so dearly.To the surprise of everyone, it is the missing sister who Pa Salt has chosen to entrust with the clue to their pasts. But for every truth revealed, another question emerges. The sisters must confront the idea that their adored father was someone they barely knew. And even more shockingly: that these long-buried secrets may still have consequences for them today.

Read more less

When André de Ruyter took over as Eskom CEO in January 2020, he quickly realised why it was considered the toughest job in South Africa.Aside from neglected equipment, ageing power stations and an eroded skills base, he discovered that Eskom was crippled by corruption on a staggering scale. Fake fuel oil deliveries at just one power station cost Eskom R100 million per month; kneepads retailing for R150 a pair were purchased for R80 000; billions of rands of equipment supposedly housed in the company’s storerooms was missing. Faced with police inaction, he was compelled to plunge into a world that was foreign to him – a world of spies and safe houses, of bulletproof vests and bodyguards. In Truth to Power, De Ruyter tells the behind-the-scenes story of how he launched a private investigation that exposed at least four criminal cartels feeding off Eskom. While fighting this scourge, he had to deal with political interference, absurd regulations, non-paying municipalities, unfounded accusations of racism, wildcat strikes, sabotage and a poisoning attempt. De Ruyter takes the reader inside the boardrooms and government meetings where South Africa’s future is shaped, with ministers often pulling in conflicting directions. He explains how renewable energy is the cheapest and quickest solution to our power crisis, in spite of fierce opposition from vested coal interests. De Ruyter candidly reflects on his three years at the power utility, his successes and failures, his reasons for leaving and his hopes for the future. As someone who worked at the highest levels of the state but is not beholden to the ruling party, he is uniquely placed to speak truth to power.

Read more less

‘Unlikely to be superseded in a long time.’ – JM Coetzee One of the most celebrated political leaders of our time, Nelson Mandela has been written about by many biographers and historians. But in one crucial area, his life remains largely untold: his marriage to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. During his years in prison, Nelson grew ever more in love with an idealised version of his wife, courting her in his letters as if they were young lovers frozen in time. But Winnie, every bit his political equal, found herself increasingly estranged from her jailed husband’s politics. Behind his back, she was trying to orchestrate an armed seizure of power, a path he feared would lead to an endless war. Jonny Steinberg tells the tale of this unique marriage – its longings, its obsessions, its deceits – making South African history a page-turning political biography. Winnie and Nelson is a modern epic in which trauma doesn’t affect just the couple at its centre, but an entire nation. It is also a Shakespearean drama in which bonds of love and commitment mingle with timeless questions of revolution, such as whether to seek retribution or a negotiated peace. Steinberg reveals, with power and tender emotional insight, how far these forever-entwined leaders would go for each other and where they drew the line. For in the end, both knew theirs was not simply a marriage, but a struggle to define anti-apartheid policy itself.

Read more less

Harry Oppenheimer, the international gold-and-diamond magnate, presided over the corporate dynasty of Anglo American and De Beers for more than 25 years. Famed for his wealth and his companies’ economic power, he straddles the history of 20th-century South Africa like a colossus. Yet, two decades after his death, the Oppenheimer empire is no more. As the political opposition’s key financial backer, the founder (along with Anton Rupert) of the Urban Foundation after the Soweto uprising in 1976, and a ubiquitous philanthropist, Oppenheimer helped propel the process of reform. Nevertheless, in some quarters he is demonised as the archetype of ‘white monopoly capital’ and scapegoated, along with Nelson Mandela, for the country’s disappointing democratic dividends. In the first, full-scale biography of Oppenheimer, based on unrestricted access to his subject’s private papers and extensive interviews with family members and close associates, Michael Cardo eschews both the corporate hype and the political propaganda to produce a vivid, fully rounded portrait. He tackles thorny questions of legacy and Oppenheimer’s complicity with the oppressive racial order of the past. Cardo brings to life the places, people, events and relationships that shaped Harry Oppenheimer’s long and rich career at the intersection of business and politics. From the diamond fields of Kimberley, where Harry’s father, Ernest Oppenheimer, arrived to seek his fortune, through the heir’s long apprenticeship, to his emergence on the world stage as a magnate and ‘monarch’ in his own right, Cardo traces the evolution of a dynasty.

Read more less