A brutally honest expos?, After Mandela provides a sobering portrait of a country caught between a democratic future and a political meltdown. Recent works have focused primarily on Nelson Mandela's transcendent story. But Douglas Foster, a leading South Africa authority with early, unprecedented access to President Zuma and to the next generation in the Mandela family, traces the nation's entire post-apartheid arc, from its celebrated beginnings under "Madiba" to Thabo Mbeki's tumultuous rule to the ferocious battle between Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Foster tells this story not only from the point of view of the emerging black elite but also, drawing on hundreds of rare interviews over a six-year period, from the perspectives of ordinary citizens, including an HIV-infected teenager living outside Johannesburg and a homeless orphan in Cape Town. This is the long-awaited, revisionist account of a country whose recent history has been not just neglected but largely ignored by the West.

Thami Mnyele's life spanned the era of apartheid. He was born the same year the National Party won office and came of age in a time (the 1960s) and a place (Johannesburg) that offered a sensitive young black artist little encouragement. In 1985, in the waning days of apartheid, he was killed by South African Special Forces operatives in Gaborone, Botswana, where he had joined the banned African National Congress. Although reticent by nature, he played a vanguard role in efforts to throw open the doors of South African culture. Thami Mnyele's story sheds light on this tumultuous era from an unusual perspective: that of an artist and not a "young lion." Not only does Mnyele's story help us understand the birth of a modern African aesthetic; it also addresses the genesis of revolutionary commitment. How did a man come to face the prospect of martyrdom and learn to accept it? How did this choice affect what he was able to express as an artist? Diana Wylie's beautifully written and illustrated literary biography reveals the struggles inside and around a gentle South African artist as he remade himself into a revolutionary soldier, and brings fresh insights to our understanding of South Africa's recent history.

Award-winning journalist Alec Russell was in South Africa to witness the fall of apartheid and the remarkable reconciliation of Nelson Mandela's rule; and returned in 2007-2008 to see Mandela's successor, Thabo Mbeki, fritter away the country's reputation. South Africa is now perched on a precipice, as it prepares to elect Jacob Zuma as president--signaling a potential slide back to the bad old days of post-colonial African leadership, and disaster for a country that was once the beacon of the continent. Drawing on his long relationships with all the key senior figures including Mandela, Mbeki, Desmond Tutu, and Zuma, and a host of South Africans he has known over the years--including former activists turned billionaires and reactionary Boers--Alec Russell's Bring Me My Machine Gun is a beautifully told and expertly researched account of South Africa's great tragedy: the tragedy of hope unfulfilled.

An award-winning South African journalist leads readers into the heart of his countrys AIDS crisis, exploring the perspectives of those who are infected, those who are trying to help--and those who reject any help offered to them. of b&w photographs.

Mandela & Mbeki: The Hero and the Outsider presents a comparative historical study of the narrative of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. A persistent theme among historical narratives of South African presidential politics was that Mandela is a 'hero,' and that his style embodied an inclusive approach. His former deputy and successor, on the other side, was regarded a little harshly as a 'prince.' The book is concerned with the historical contexts in which these two narratives were centered, and it takes the reader on a journey of what South African history could look like when Mandela, a character of legend, is cast in the role of an introverted ruler, and Mbeki as manifesting the sense of an outsider. Mbeki had a reputation for being 'an opinionated foreigner' in his country's politics of avant-gardism and universalism. Mandela & Mbeki: The Hero and the Outsider presents a picture of the period 1912-2008, organized around a number of themes of current interest: the 'invention' of traditions and modern nations, Black Consciousness, the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress, the working class, and the middle class. It is a stimulating account with a great deal of interesting detail, taking the debate about these two protagonists beyond the 'orthodox' platform to which it had been taken in the mid-1990s. The book demonstrates, on the one hand, that Mandela's legend amounts to a great deal more than the surge of his charisma, and that his Republicans' avant-gardism did much to make Mandela the leader he became. On the other hand, the book also demonstrates that Mbeki was a pragmatist and a 'hyphenate' leader, both by custom and by principle, and was historically programmed by his exile past into the primordialist he became. *** "An original interpretation of a wide range of sources using diverse concepts, with many American metaphors (such as the "Godfather"), the book provides considerable food for thought... Recommended." - Choice, Vol. 50, No. 04, December 2012.

Post-colonial South Asia and Africa invite comparison: along with their political boundaries, they inherited from colonial regimes administrative languages, a cluster of sovereign state institutions and modern economic nuclei. When they became independent, South Asian and African states were - for all their diversity - thrust into a common position in the international system, and embarked on a common history as 'emergent', 'non-aligned', 'developing nations'. This is the first book to offer a single-volume comparative history of postcolonial South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa in the first generation since independence. South Asia and Africa After Independence draws together the political and economic history of these two regions, assessing the colonial impact, establishing breaks and continuities, and highlighting their diversity and interplay. Waites sets out a framework for analysing the first generation of post-colonial history, offering an interpretation of 'post-colonialism' as a historical phenomenon, and provocatively challenging us to re-think this term in relation to South Asian and African history. This book is an important reference for the study of global, world, African and South Asian history.

Reflecting on South Africa's achievement of majority rule, this book takes a critical and searching look at the country's past. It presents South Africa's past in an objective, clear, and refreshing manner. With chapters contributed by ten of the best historians of the country, the book elaborately weaves together new data, interpretations, and perspectives on the South African past, from the Early Iron Age to the eve of the mineral revolution on the Rand. Its findings incorporate new sources, methods, and concepts, for example providing new data on the relations between Africans and colonial invaders and rethinking crucial issues of identity and consciousness. This book represents an important reassessment of all the major historical events, developments, and records of South Africa - written, oral, and archaeological - and will be an important new tool for students and professors of African history worldwide.