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 i...

What does it take to deceive those closest to you? How do you lead a double life and not lose yourself? Is there ever a point of return? These are the themes – and more – that Jonathan Ancer explores as he tells the tales of some of South Africa’s most unusual and successful spies: from the navy superspy on the Russian payroll to the party girl who fell in love with Cuba, from the accidental mole in the heart of Pretoria’s war on the frontline states to the idealistic students used and abu...

PRAVIN GORDHAN has been at the centre of many of the political storms that have torn through South Africa's political landscape. He has been investigated by the Hawks, fired as finance minister, accused of running a 'rogue unit' at SARS and come up against the public protector, to name a few.Seasoned journalists Jonathan Ancer and Chris Whitfield take a magnifying glass to someone at the centre of this tumultuous period to try to understand the man behind the public image. They go ...

The Three Comma Club is the most exclusive club in the world.Its members include pop stars and politicians, inventors and industrialists, media magnates and mining moguls, heirs and heirs-in-waiting.Each has crossed a threshold marked by nine zeroes separated by three commas. Each is blessed or burdened with more money than they could spend in a dozen lifetimes. There are just over 3,000 of them, a minuscule sliver of humanity.And yet they wield enormous power over ...

The apartheid agent and killer who got away with it all …It was in 1972 when the seemingly ordinary Craig Williamson registered at Wits University and joined the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). Williamson was elected NUSAS’s vice president and in January 1977, when his career in student politics came to an abrupt end, he fled the country and from Europe continued his anti-apartheid ‘work’. But Williamson was not the activist his friends and comrades thought he was. In Jan...

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 ...

PRAVIN GORDHAN has been at the centre of many of the political storms that have torn through South Africa’s political landscape. He has been investigated by the Hawks, fired as finance minister, accused of running a ‘rogue unit’ at SARS and come up against the public protector, to name a few.Seasoned journalists Jonathan Ancer and Chris Whitfield take a magnifying glass to someone at the centre of this tumultuous period to try to understand the man behind the public image. They go ...

Investigative journalist Jacques Pauw exposes the darkest secret at the heart of Jacob Zuma’s compromised government: a cancerous cabal that eliminates the president’s enemies and purges the law-enforcement agencies of good men and women. As Zuma fights for his political life following the 2017 Gupta emails leak, this cabal – the president’s keepers – ensures that after years of ruinous rule, he remains in power and out of prison. But is Zuma the puppet master, or their puppet? Journey wit...

THE PHENOMENAL BESTSELLER'Fantastic, timely, eye-opening' Armando Iannucci, New Statesman, Books of the Year'Captures a collective sense of anger and awakening' Matt Haig, Observer, Books of the YearBehind our democracy lurks a powerful but unaccountable network of people who wield massive power and reap huge profits in the process. In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones set...

This is the book President Jacob Zuma does not want you to read. From Shaik to 'The Spear', award-winning investigative journalist Adriaan Basson reveals the truth behind Jacob Zuma's presidency of the ANC and South Africa. From one bad decision to another, this explosive, roller-coaster account traces the unravelling of a likeable but deeply flawed leader who came to power as victim, not visionary. Basson forensically unpacks the charges against Zuma and reveals a president whose first pr...

Max du Preez has one hell of a story to tell. In his career as a renegade reporter, he’s survived three dismissals, seven libel suits, thirteen criminal cases, four aeroplane crashes, a bombing, two assassination attempts and was a regular on right-wing hit lists. He was in Soweto on 16 June 1976, witnessed the debauched parties of apartheid cabinet ministers, and stepped over dead bodies in a bombed Angolan village. He looked into apartheid killer Dirk Coetzee’s eyes and published his sto...

In 1977 R W Johnson's best-selling How Long Will South Africa Survive? provided a controversial analysis of the survival prospects of the apartheid regime. Now, after more than twenty years of ANC rule, he believes the situation has become so critical that the question must be posed again. He moves from an analysis of Jacob Zuma's rule to the increasingly dire state of the South African economy, concluding that the country is heading towards a likely International Monetary Fund bail-out, w...