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Bloody crimes of passion, political assassinations, sinister poisonings, investment fraud and mass mining disasters ... Dr David Klatzow has seen it all. During his extraordinary twenty-six-year career as South Africa’s foremost independent forensic scientist, he has investigated countless high-profile and notorious cases. Steeped in Blood provides gripping accounts of dozens of these matters, including the infamous deaths of Brett Kebble and Inge Lotz, the Helderberg aeroplane crash and the frustrating investigations of the brutal apartheid years. From the Gugulethu Seven and Trojan Horse massacres to the assassination of David Webster, Klatzow’s investigations reveal his fierce determination to unveil the truth in spite of overwhelming state obstructions, police bungling and cover-ups. Unfazed by controversy and unwilling to accept no for an answer, Klatzow’s tenacity, fearlessness and forensic know-how are used to brilliant effect in these fascinating cases. This book exposes a demanding and sinister world where the rewards are equalled only by the frustrations, and where the truth is always elusive. But the truth is out there, and David Klatzow will find it.
If you are accused of a crime you did not commit, do you believe that justice will prevail in a court of law? Perhaps you should think again... An innocent woman is almost sent to prison for eight years because of a mistaken fingerprint identification by so-called forensic experts; a chicken farmer is hanged for a brutal murder he did not commit due to incorrect analysis of post-mortem bruising; and a mother is sent to prison for murdering her baby daughter when a substance is falsely identified as blood ... These are just some of the major forensic disasters that have occurred over the past 100 years, and which are exposed in Justice Denied. Contrary to what television series like CSI and N...
In 1986, seven young men were shot and killed by police in Gugulethu in Cape Town. The nation was told they were part of a 'terrorist' MK cell plotting an attack on a police unit. An inquest followed, then a dramatic trial in 1987 and a second inquest in 1989 that again exonerated the police. Finally, ten years later, Eugene de Kock's Vlakplaas unit was exposed at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for having planned and executed the cold-blooded killings. Yet their real agenda remained a mystery. In Hunting the Seven, Beverley Roos-Muller reveals her own decades-long connection to the case and her search for the truth of their deaths that has been shrouded in lies and mystery. Sifting through the evidence, and interviewing many of those involved, Roos-Muller reveals that it was Vlakplaas's only operation in the Western Cape and behind it lay a shocking secret.
In its last decades, the apartheid regime was confronted with an existential threat. While internal resistance to the last whites-only government grew, mandatory international sanctions prohibited sales of strategic goods and arms to South Africa. To counter this, a global covert network of nearly fifty countries was built. In complete secrecy, allies in corporations, banks, governments and intelligence agencies across the world helped illegally supply guns and move cash in one of history's biggest money laundering schemes. Whistleblowers were assassinated and ordinary people suffered. Weaving together archival material, interviews and newly declassified documents, Apartheid Guns and Money exposes some of the darkest secrets of apartheid's economic crimes, their murderous consequences, and those who profited: heads of state, arms dealers, aristocrats, bankers, spies, journalists and secret lobbyists. These revelations, and the difficult questions they pose, will both allow and force the new South Africa to confront its past.
The Karoo is a vast semi-desert region that extends across parts of the Western and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. This environmentally important area is the largest ecosystem in the country and is abundant in wildlife, vegetation, and ancient history. The Plains of Camdeboo is a celebration of this remarkable landscape. At first encounter the Karoo may seem arid, desolate and unforgiving, but to those who know it, it is a land of secret beauty and infinite variety. For generations author Eve Palmer's family have lived on the Karoo farm of Cranemere, situated on the Plains of Camdeboo. This family have battled for decades against this harsh desert; they have had to adapt to it, learning to fear, respect, and ultimately love it. First published in 1966, The Plains of Camdeboo has become a classic in South African literature. Here is a book that is not autobiography, not history, not botanical study, but all of these and more, blending into a uniquely vivid and personal account of life in the Karoo. The animals, the insects, the wealth of fossils, the countless flowers that spring miraculously to life after rain - all are woven into this rich and engaging story.
Dive back into the gripping underworld of Johannesburg with this bonus material edition to the gripping exposé of South Africa's corrupt underbelly with an exclusive postscript and an engaging author interview. This edition is a follow-up to the bestselling, Killing Kebble and includes a postscript updating readers on events and people since the book's original publication in April 2011, as well as an extensive author interview exploring the author's background, the book's success and impact, and people's reactions to it. The book peeled back layers to expose a web of corruption that once gripped Johannesburg. In September 2005, eminent mining magnate and businessman Brett Kebble was killed on a quiet suburban street in Johannesburg. The investigation into his murder exposed the corrupt relationship between South Africa's Chief of Police and Interpol President Jackie Selebi and suave Mafioso Glenn Agliotti. It revealed a lawless underbelly in Johannesburg, dominated by drug lords, steroid-reliant bouncers, an international smuggling syndicate, a shady security unit moonlighting for the police, and sinister self-serving sleuths abusing state agencies.
An outrageous miscellany of serious and light-hearted lies, myths, untruths, fibs and fabrications that tells the tall tale of South Africa. The fibs come thick and fast, like a burst sewerage pipe: • Why everything we've learnt about Shaka Zulu, 'Africa's Napoleon', is a pack of lies. • Back in the darkest of ages (the 1970s!), citizens were told that there were satanic messages if you played some of The Beatles songs backwards. • National icon Hansie Cronje was a paragon of virtue, and integrity ... until he wasn't. • President Nelson Mandela told us that we, as a nation, were 'special'. Turns out we aren't. Whether a fabulous fib, an artful con, a doctor's spin, or simply a bald-faced lie, there's something for everyone.
This enlightening book focuses on the history of how the ethnic groups of Africa, eventually joined by white colonizers from Europe, created the seedbed for the hateful apartheid system in Southern Africa. The reader learns how apartheid began, the dehumanizing effects it had on the black population, and how it was finally abolished in its ‘zero hour’ in 1994. Written by historian, writer and researcher Geoffrey Hebdon, this is the second in a series that covers the experience of a British citizen who emigrated to South Africa during that era, and records in vivid detail his responses to the apartheid system and how South Africa and neighbouring countries evolved after apartheid was abol...
In the Dark with my dress on fire is the remarkable life story of Blanche La Guma, a South African woman who dedicated her life to ending apartheid through her various roles as professional nurse, wife and mother, and underground Communist activist.
This book daringly challenges one of the most controversial murder cases in recent South African history. In 2007 Fred van der Vyver was acquitted of the 2005 murder of his girlfriend Inge Lotz. He then sued the police to the highest court for malicious prosecution - and failed. In spite of the defence's trashing of the prosecution's case at the trial, brothers Thomas and Calvin Mollett provide a compelling argument of how every key element of the prosecuting evidence withstands the closest scrutiny. They use models, measurements, forensic tests, mathematical formulae and the views of experts both here and overseas. The authors show how an ornamental hammer found in Van der Vyver's vehicle, ...