You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
It is 1834. The Eastern Cape frontier is burning. Rauch Beukes, a young Boer of 17, returns to the family homestead to find it razed, the livestock gone and his mother and sisters slaughtered by the marauding Xhosa from across the Great Fish River. So begins a tale of violence and warfare and love and lust across racial divides, painted against the
It is impossible to separate the Great Trek from events which took place as far back as the Portuguese explorers because those events shaped the backdrop to the causes of the Great Trek. Most writers have specialized in the trek itself whereas Binckes has adopted a broader approach that studies the impact of the earlier white incursions and migrations on southern Africa, to create a better understanding of the trek and its causes.
The historian and author of The Great Trek recounts the devastating period of violence among indigenous peoples in early 19th century southern Africa. From 1815 to 1840, southeastern Africa experienced a devastating period of warfare between the Zulus, the Matabele, and other indigenous peoples. Though the causes of the unrest—which the Zulu called the Mfecane—are still debated by historians, we know that hundreds of thousands of lives lost. Some estimate the total number of deaths to be near two million. At the center of the turmoil was the Zulu Kingdom and its King Shaka, whose wars of expansion sparked mass migrations among smaller tribes. One of Shaka’s lieutenants, Mzilikazi Khumalo, escaped execution and began a trail of destruction from Zululand north to the Highveld. Refugees from Mzilikazi’s warpath then formed their own alliance—including with the Dutch-speaking Voortrekkers, arriving on their own “Great Trek” to escape British control. Finally defeated in 1836 by the Voortrekkers in a nine-day battle, Mzilikazi and his followers crossed the Limpopo River and founded the kingdom of the Matabele in what is now Zimbabwe.
Faced with the total onslaught by its enemies, in 1979, Apartheid South Africa established Vlakplaas lit. shallow farm, a 100-hectare farm nestling in the hills outside Pretoria on the Hennops River as a secret operation under the arm of C1, a counter-terrorism division of the South African Police headed by Brigadier Schoon.The first phase of Vlakplaas operations, up until 1989, was aimed at fighting the enemy: the armed wings of the liberation movements, the African National Congresss Umkhonto we Sizwe (or MK), the Pan Africanist Congresss Azanian Peoples Liberation Army (or APLA) and the South African Communist Party. The second phase was fighting organized crime in which Vlakplaas itself ...
None
This is the true story of Irving Tucker, who married an English girl, Yvonne, and left South Africa in 1976 to farm sheep on the Welsh border, growing their own organic vegetables and living a healthy life style. They returned to South Africa every year on holiday. The couple was childless. The book deals with IrvingÕs complex personality and his love of practical jokes, and traces the relationship between him and the writer over the period 1961Ð2011. The death of Yvonne in 2010 is the primary reason why Irving announces to his friends that he is going to kill himself; this despite the fact that he is healthy, relatively young and has recently sold a piece of art for over £1 million. For ...
For almost 43 years three school notebooks lay in obscurity in the County Armagh home of sixty two-year old James McRoberts. The closely filled pages recorded just over two years in his life in uniform as he played his part in what was then known as the Great War. During the Home Rule crisis of 1914, one of several in Ireland's history, James McRoberts, like many other men, joined the Young Citizen Volunteers, an organization that eventually became the 14th Royal Irish Rifles, a battalion of the 36th (Ulster) Division. These notebooks, written at the time and with footnotes added some forty years later, record his Army service between 8 January 1915 and 3 April 1917. They tell, with remarkab...
This books is the culmination of an investigation spanning several years into state sponsored apartheid death squads ...
This is the true story of Irving Tucker, who married an English girl, Yvonne, and left South Africa in 1976 to farm sheep on the Welsh border, growing their own organic vegetables and living a healthy life style. They returned to South Africa every year on holiday. The couple was childless. The book deals with IrvingÕs complex personality and his love of practical jokes, and traces the relationship between him and the writer over the period 1961Ð2011. The death of Yvonne in 2010 is the primary reason why Irving announces to his friends that he is going to kill himself; this despite the fact that he is healthy, relatively young and has recently sold a piece of art for over £1 million. For ...
The first volume in this two-part oral history brings to life the experiences of British Army soldiers during the Troubles in the mid 1970s. British Army veteran Ken Wharton has written extensively on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland, shedding light on the experiences and sacrifices of British military and police. Though often overlooked by historians, many of these committed soldiers and peacekeepers lost their lives in the fighting. Combining his own personal experience with meticulous research and firsthand testimonies from fellow soldiers, Wharton takes reders into the dangerous streets of the Ardoyne and New Lodge, of Andersonstown, Turf Lodge and Ballymurphy, and of the Creggan in Londonderry and the Derrybeg in Newry. He is equally candid and critical of the Loyalist paramilitaries and the Republicans, as well as the Irish-Americans and their political stooges in the US Government. This book is for anyone who wishes to look back and try to understand the madness inflicted upon several generations of innocent Irish and British people.