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All Under Heaven
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 300

All Under Heaven

History of the author's family who emigrated from China in 1911 and settled in South Africa. Their family name was Fok. It was probably changed by immigration officials when they arrived.

Soweto Inside Out
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 233

Soweto Inside Out

This is a book about Soweto from inside and out. It is an effort to mark a century since the first forced removals of black Africans from central Johannesburg to the banks of the Klipspruit River. It is also in recognition of the limited books available on a world-famous city. A wide variety of writers have contributed: Sowetan experts with views from inside the township as well as interested outsiders who are peering in. Contributors include writers from publications as varied as Drum, Sowetan, Mail & Guardian, Time magazine, The Economist, The Independent and New York Times.

Contemporary Dance in South Africa
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 184

Contemporary Dance in South Africa

This book explores when and how, and to what effect, the body in South African contemporary dance protests, subverts, or represents a site of the struggle against oppressive forces of power. It considers how the dancing body is choreographed, what meanings lie behind the movements it makes in space, the possible effect of these movements, how and why it is costumed, and its relationship to its setting and space. It examines a selection of contemporary South African dance works, including Flatfoot Dance Company’s Transmission: Mother to Child (2005), Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre’s Home (2003), Musa Hlatshwayo’s Umthombi (2004), Mlu Zondi’s Silhouette (2006), and Nelisiwe Xaba’s They L...

Improvising Reconciliation
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 219

Improvising Reconciliation

An Open Access edition of this book will be made available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library on publication. Improvising Reconciliation is prompted by South Africa's enduring state of injustice. It is both a lament for the promise, since lost, with which non-racial democracy was inaugurated and, more substantially, a space within which to consider its possible renewal. As such, this study lobbies for an expanded approach to the country's formal transition from apartheid in order to grapple with reconciliation's ongoing potential within the contemporary imaginary. It does not, however, presume to correct the contradictions that have done so much to corrupt the co...

When the Lions Came to Town
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 264

When the Lions Came to Town

The early 1970s in South Africa were a time of economic boom, political repression, growing isolation and an unshakeable confidence that the Springboks were the best rugby team in the world - until the infamous 1974 British Lions tour. It was a tour in which a group of talented and long-haired rugby players from the British Isles played, sang and drank their way across the country, beating the Springboks 3-0 in the four Tests, with the last one a dubious draw. Until then the Lions hadn’t beaten South Africa at home in 78 years. Based on original research and interviews with players on both sides, When the Lions Came to Town vividly recreates a tumultuous rugby tour that sent shockwaves through South Africa. It captures a bygone era, a time before television, a golden age of amateurism, pranks and setting hotel rooms alight – as the Lions did after winning the series in PE. Insightful, provocative and frequently amusing, When the Lions Came to Town casts a fresh eye on a divisive but undeniably colourful period in South African political, social and sporting history.

Thabo Mbeki
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 649

Thabo Mbeki

Hailed in the Times Literary Supplement as 'probably the finest piece of non-fiction to come out of South Africa since the end of apartheid', The Dream Deferred is back in print and updated with a brilliant new epilogue. The prosperous Mbeki clan lost everything to apartheid. Yet the family saw its favourite son, Thabo, rise to become president of South Africa in 1999. A decade later, Mbeki was ousted by his own party and his legacy is bitterly contested – particularly over his handling of the AIDS epidemic and the crisis in Zimbabwe. Through the story of the Mbeki family, award-wining journalist Mark Gevisser tells the gripping tale of the last tumultuous century of South Africa life, fol...

A Matter of Honour
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 248

A Matter of Honour

The South African-born Chinese community is a tiny one, consisting of 10,000 to 12,000 members in a population of approximately 45 million. Throughout much of the history of this race-conscious country, the community has been ignored or neglected, and officially classed along with people of mixed race or with Indians in the South African category of 'Asiatic'. Shaped by both external and internal forces, Chinese identities in South Africa are beginning to receive more media and scholarly attention as China's aid, trade, and investment in Africa grow and large numbers of new Chinese immigrants stream into South Africa and other African states. A Matter of Honour examines the shifting social, ...

Kuyanuka and other Plays
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 93

Kuyanuka and other Plays

Kuyanuka and other Plays by Gha-Makhulu Diniso is also a collection of three one person plays; Kuyanuka was first performed in 1991, Koropa in 2000 and Shoeville in 2005. As critic Darryl Accone observes: It is precisely because of his conscience and commitment to true freedom that Diniso remains an artist neglected in his own country. Not for him complacency about the much lip-serviced Rainbow Nation, a least not while the stench of inequality not only persists but grow fouler by the day. There is no extravagant escapism imported from abroad and peddled to the nouveaux riches and petite bourgeois of the New South Africa. Instead though the creation of multiple characters reflecting the harshness of life under the neo-liberal economic order, Diniso expresses the problematic of celebrating political freedom when most black people find their living standards under threat and soaring unemployment and casualization undermining much of the early liberation promise.

Become a Better Writer
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 170

Become a Better Writer

Improving the quality of your writing starts with rethinking your assumptions and developing healthier writing habits. This book will help you do both. Become a Better Writer: How to Write with Clarity and Simplicity is a practical guide for those who wish to write more clearly and concisely. Drawing on their extensive experience as writers and editors, the authors discuss tools and tips for making your writing accessible and meaningful to your target audience. The book is readable and engaging, covering different kinds of writing (including reports, essays, emails, novels and speeches) across a wide range of subjects. The examples discussed are derived from real-world material and are particularly relevant to the African context. The book will be especially useful to writers of non-fiction.

A Thousand Tales of Johannesburg
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 314

A Thousand Tales of Johannesburg

A Thousand Tales of Johannesburg is Harry Kalmer’s spellbinding ode to Johannesburg and its people. This is the story of Sara, who poses stiffly for a photo with her four children at Turffontein concentration camp in 1901, and of Abraham, who paints the street names on Johannesburg’s kerbs. It is the tale of their grandson Zweig, a young architect who has to leave Johannesburg when he falls in love with the wrong person, and of Marceline, a Congolese mother who flees to the city only to be caught up in a wave of xenophobic violence. Spanning more than a hundred years, A Thousand Tales of Johannesburg is a novel that documents and probes the lives of the inhabitants of this incomparable African city – the exiled, those returning from exile, and those who never left.