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 t...

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 Umk...

“... enjoyable, convincing story wrapped in dramatic, well-researched history”— John Gordon Davis, bestselling author of Hold My Hand I’m Dying. 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 aga...

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 Irving’s complex personality and his love of practical jokes, and traces the relationship between him and the writer over the period 1961–2011. The death of Yvonne in 2010 is t...