by Amy on May 16th, 2012
From the Tiger Brands case, through the Walmart saga to the recent auction scandal, the Competitions Tribunal has seldom been far from the news in the last few years.
Join ex-Head of the Competition Tribunal David Lewis for an inside account of the way this relatively new body has dealt with the anti-competitive practices of South African Big Business, through their examination of mergers, abuse of dominance (or monopolies) and cartels, and enlivened with case studies of each.
Lewis will launch his book, Thieves at the Table: Enforcing the Competition Act, at The Book Lounge on Wednesday 23 May at 6PM. See you there!
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Cats: Events,
Non-fiction,
South Africa
Tags: Competition Commission,
Competition Tribunal,
David Lewis,
Enforcing the Competition Act – A Personal Account,
English,
Events,
Jacana,
Non-fiction,
South Africa,
The Book Lounge,
Thieves at the Dinner Table
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by Amy on May 16th, 2012
Doing business with low-income communities – which academics and practitioners have christened ‘the base of the pyramid’ (BoP) – now includes a focus on creating sustainable markets with the potential to realise future profit – simply ‘milking’ a market for the next quarter’s profits is seen as short-sighted. The status quo is shifting, and the rules of both commercial and social engagement with middle- and lower-end markets in developing economies are transforming. There is keen interest from both local and global businesses and institutions to be involved in these markets. And they care about the practical detail of doing it effectively, and ethically. This new view accords that doing business in a healthier economy benefits firms by lowering transaction costs and the long-term cost of capital.
In South Africa, around 60% of the population is unserved or underserved by current business (and many other providers of support and services). That’s a significant new market, and in the South African context, doing business in this market can achieve a great deal more than simply finding new customers. Regardless of global trends or government pressures, accessing these markets is challenging. Often, customers who survive on minimal incomes seek and will value different market offerings from those traditional customers have purchased. They have unique needs and identities requiring innovative, non-traditional business models and approaches.
New Markets, New Mindsets showcases pioneering businesses and their BoP champions, as well as their experiments, successes, failures and best practices in creating new AND sustainable markets in previously underserved communities.
The book includes top tips for those wishing to tap into these communities in ethical and effective ways, interviews with over 40 role players, and case studies including Nestlé, Danone, Massmart/Walmart, Nedbank, Blue Label Technologies and Capitec, among others.
About the authors
Dr Tashmia Ismail is a fellow at UNU Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, and a senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) where she teaches innovation and BoP strategy. Ismail heads the GIBS BoP Hub, which offers a collaborative multi-stakeholder platform for firms interested in developing and executing BoP strategies. She is interested in how innovative and sustainable business models can be shaped for firms in developing markets. Currently, her research is directed at understanding internal innovation management and the external networks firms must engage with to ensure success in low income contexts.
Dr Nicola Kleyn is a senior lecturer at the Gordon Institute of Business Science where she lectures and researches in the fields of marketing, branding and reputation management. She is both passionate and curious about how organisations can best manage the dynamic tensions that arise when individuals and companies seek to create win-win-win solutions that concurrently enable people, profit and planet. She was instrumental in initiating a stream of BoP focused research and teaching at GIBS and plays an active role in the BoP Hub at GIBS.
Gwen Ansell is a veteran writer, editor and writing trainer. She has written several textbooks, including Introduction to Journalism, which is a set text for the national curriculum and trains scholars, journalists and other communicators in writing skills. As a researcher, Ansell is the author of the South African cultural history Soweto Blues, and has done extensive value-chain and innovation research on the South African music industry.
Book details
- New Markets, New Mindsets: Creating wealth with South Africa’s low-income communities through partnership and innovation by Tashmia Ismail, Nicola Kleyn, Gwen Ansell
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EAN: 9781920292034
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Cats: Business,
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Tags: Business,
Creating wealth with South Africa’s low-income communities through partnership and innovation,
English,
Gwen Ansell,
Jacana,
New Markets,
New Mindsets,
Nicola Kleyn,
Non-fiction,
South Africa,
Tashmia Ismail
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by Amy on May 15th, 2012
Jacana Media is thrilled to announce that McIntosh Polela has been shortlisted for the prestigious Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for his book My Father, My Monster.
“McIntosh Polela’s brave and honest account of his struggles to make something of himself under terrible conditions, and his heartbreaking look at his difficult relationship with his father, made sure that the voice of many unheard South Africans was acknowledged by the judges.” – Tymon Smith, Sunday Times
An overwhelmed Polela said he “felt embarrassed crying in front of such a big audience because, as spokeman for the Hawks, I’m supposed to be stiff and snobbish and shouldn’t cry.”
– Sunday Times, May 13 2012
A triumph of the human spirit
Police spokesperson and former TV journalist McIntosh Polela has been on our screens for many years. But behind his seemingly unfazed demeanour a troubled past haunts him. His parents disappeared when he was a little boy, leaving him and his sister Zinhle to suffer years of brutal abuse.
When the truth of his parents’ disappearance is revealed, the teenage McIntosh makes a fully functioning gun from found objects which he keeps for the day when he finds his father. He knows that he must come face to face with the man who robbed him of his childhood.
McIntosh has to confront his father about his mother’s brutal death. How can he possibly forgive, when his father remains a remorseless, brutal and heartless monster?
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Cats: Awards,
Biography,
Non-fiction,
South Africa
Tags: 2011 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award,
Awards,
Biography,
English,
Jacana,
McIntosh Polela,
My Father My Monster,
Non-fiction,
South Africa
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by Amy on May 9th, 2012
Shoe Shop is not just a book, it is part of a larger project, The Shoe Shop Project, which is currently consuming the city of Johannesburg. Percy Zvomuya spoke to Marie-Hélène Gutberlet, curator of the Shoe Shop Festival and co-editor of the corresponding publication, about the reflection on human movement and migration that underlies the project.
German curator and scholar Marie-Hélène Gutberlet writes in the recently published book Shoe Shop that one of her first impressions of Johannesburg was that walking was not something white people did. One day, while walking in Parktown North, a white man in a van stopped and “asked me where I was headed.Apparently, I was not supposed to be walking on the street, even in a ‘safe’ suburb such as this one.”
Shoe Shop is a concept linked to a project, Migration and Media, which started in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. After Frankfurt, the project moved to Bamako, Mali, after which it tracked down to Johannesburg.
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Photo courtesy Artslink.co.za
Cats: Africa,
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Tags: Africa,
Art,
Cara Snyman,
English,
Jacana,
Mail & Guardian,
Marie-Helene Gutberlet,
Non-fiction,
Shoe Shop,
Shoe Shop Festival,
South Africa
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by Amy on May 9th, 2012
Nozuko Poni of Unbranded Truth spoke to Thando Mgqolozana, author of Hear Me Alone, about the controversies his writing often raises:
Nozuko Poni: Who is Thando Mgqolozana?
Thandi Mgqolozana: I’d like to think of myself as an ordinary, big hearted underachieving rural bumpkin who enjoys reading books and pretends to be writing stuff that other people may read, which they don’t.
NP: What is your earliest memory of literature?
TM: My maternal uncle was a teacher, and I say ‘was’ because I don’t know what he is now; possibly nothing, like my dad. So this guy was a teacher and read a lot. His big books, his name appended on the inside cover of all, were all over the place in our village home. You might imagine that I’m about to say he inspired me, he didn’t; I didn’t like him. But that’s my earliest memory of literature. At school I remember the title of a certain poem and its author. I think the musical way we began reciting the poem is what moved me; we said, ‘Children’s Rain Song, by Musaemura Bonas Zimunya…’ then I’d go blank. But then came the year, much later in school, when I read Troubled Waters by Joseph Diescho. This was in the final year of school. I read this book several times, for pleasure, and I have never stopped reading since then.
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Cats: Feature,
Fiction,
South Africa
Tags: English,
Feature,
Fiction,
Hear Me Alone,
Jacana,
Nozuko Poni,
South Africa,
Thando Mgqolozana,
Unbranded Truth
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by Amy on May 8th, 2012
Slow Motion author Andie Miller‘s short work of non-fiction, “From the Margins”, has been published in Itch. Read the piece in which Miller speaks to two domestic workers about the great lengths they (literally) go to using the dysfunctional Cape Town public transport system to reach their place of employment:
I have been wondering where Lovey got her name. A nickname, I assume, from an English-speaking person; perhaps an employer of her mother’s when she was a child. No, she enlightens me, it is short for her real name: Lovedalia. I hear ‘Lovedahlia’. After a flower, I think. How beautiful. Again, I couldn’t be further from the truth.
‘My mum was at Lovedale College in the Eastern Cape,’ she tells me. ‘And then my father proposed to her. And she didn’t want to get married because she wanted to study. She wanted to be a teacher. But in the old days, you know, if the man came and proposed marriage and went to your parents, you could never say no. And then she got married to my father, when she was in her second year of college. And then she was expecting a girl, me, and she called me Lovedalia.’
Lovedale has produced some famous names, including Thabo Mbeki and Chris Hani. Mbeki’s father Govan was named after William Govan, the Scottish missionary who was the first headmaster of the Lovedale Institute, as it was originally called. ‘But they would never allow you to study when you got married,’ says Lovey. ‘They would think that, when you married and then you study, you would be over your husband. Your knowledge… you would be brighter than your husband.’ Consequently Lovey’s mother never taught. She followed her husband to Cape Town, where he ‘was working at Lever Brothers, in Salt River, who make the Sunlight soap. He worked there from 1944 and he retired in 1986; at the same firm all his life.’ Lovey has been working as a domestic worker for forty-four years.
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Cats: Misc,
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Short Stories,
South Africa
Tags: Andie Miller,
Cape Town,
Domestic Workers,
English,
From the Margins,
Itch,
Jacana,
Misc,
Non-fiction,
Short Stories,
Short Story,
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South Africa,
Stories About Walking,
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by Amy on May 7th, 2012
The launch of Up in Arms: Pursuing Accountability for the Arms Deal in Parliament by Raenette Taljaard brought a large crowd of readers to The Book Lounge last week, all of them eager to hear the vibrant and witty discussion with Noseweek editor, Martin Welz.
Describing the book as necessary, Book Lounge proprietor Mervyn Sloman, said that Taljaard was not trying to score political points in this highly personal and honest account. He noted that her insider status as parliamentarian and actor in the unfolding drama at the time had given her a unique perspective.
Welz began by reading a passage from Up in Arms, an extract of correspondence between Taljaard and a defensive and outraged Thabo Mbeki spokesperson which Welz described as lying at the heart of the book. Mbeki was demanding an explanation of Taljaard’s serious allegations of corruption against well-known and prestigious transnational corporations and companies – amongst them British Aerospace, France’s Thomson CSF, Germany’s Blohm & Voss, Italy’s Augusta and Sweden’s Saab. She had taken bold steps to ensure that investigations would take place and was, in turn, accused of making personal attacks.
Welz then asked Taljaard to speak about the relationship between the arms industry and governments. Taljaard described how the awareness had strongly emerged of how most of these companies were ones in which their governments had a “golden share”. “If you look at the extent to which companies are drilling their foreign policy objectives in government through that golden share it stands to reason that there will always be a very close association. That’s the reason for the golden share because when you’re dealing with defence exports, you are effectively dealing with foreign policy. There will never be a time when one can separate companies from the strategic policy holders,” she said.
Welz and Taljaard continued to explore the multiple layers of intrigue and dimensions of complexity that describe the beleaguered arms deal, in a fascinating discussion that held the large audience in thrall. Questions from the audience were answered fielded with wry wit by the author who was at pains to underline that she is now a commissioner of the Independent Electoral Committee, which she described as “the political equivalent of celibacy”.
* * * * * * * *
Liesl Jobson tweeted from the launch using #livebooks:
* * * * * * * *
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Cats: Events,
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Politics,
South Africa
Tags: Arms deal,
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Events,
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by Amy on May 4th, 2012
Jacana has released a spine-chilling trailer for James Whyle’s debut novel, The Book of War. The novel, based on first-hand accounts of the 8th Xhosa War, tells the story of a boy who comes to manhood in the bloody cauldron of war:
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Cats: Fiction,
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South Africa
Tags: 8th Xhosa War,
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by Amy on May 3rd, 2012
Congratulations to Jenny Hatton and Joan Rankin who have won the 2012 Crystal Kite Member Choice Award (Africa region) for their book Finding Aunt Joan:
Finding Aunt Joan describes the drive with family (plus dog and mouse) crammed inside the car. Hugely amusing and perhaps the best of the three. Jenny Hatton’s text is simple, direct, easy to digest – ideal inspiration for some of Joan Rankin’s friendliest, most frantic set of illustrations. A delight for early readers.
The Lucy Books consist of three charming little square books which make a sort of sequence – the process of packing up one home, moving to the next, and enjoying life when you get there. Children will easily relate to the stories which reflect true to life events such as going on a journey, moving house and a visit to the beach. The rhythmic text of the Lucy books will help build children’s reading skills and confidence while they are absorbed by the humorous illustrations depicting Lucy and her family.
Full list of Crystal Kite Member Choice Awards 2012 Winners
Africa: Finding Aunt Joan: Jenny Hatton and Joan Rankin, Jacana Media
Australia: The Last Viking: Norman Jorgensen, Fremantle Press
California/Hawaii: Won Ton – A Cat Tale Told in Haiku: Lee Wardlaw, Henry Holt Books for Young Readers
Flordia/GA: Cleopatra’s Moon: Vicky Alvear Shecter, Arthur A Levine Books (Scholastic Press)
Kansas/LA: Between Shades of Gray: Ruta Sepetys, Philomel Books (Penguin Young Readers Group)
Middle East/Asia: Orchards: Holly Thompson, Delacorte Dell (Random House)
Minnesota/Iowa: Bluefish: Pat Schmatz, Candlewick Press
Nevada: Black & White: The Confrontation between Reverend Fred L Shuttlesworth and Eugene “Bull” Connor: Larry Brimner, Boyds Mills Press
New England: Pearl: Jo Knowles, Henry Holt Books for Young Readers Thelonious Mouse, Orel Protopopescu, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
PA/DE/NJ: The Absolute Value of Mike: Kathryn Erskine, Philomel Books (Penguin Young Readers Group)
Texas/OK: MINE! Patrice Barton, Random House Children’s Books
Americas: Witchlanders: Lena Coakley, Atheneum Books for Young Readers (Simon & Schuster)
UK/Europe: Dark Parties: Sara Grant, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (Hachette Book Group USA)
Washington: The Friendship Doll: Kirby Larson, Delacorte Dell (Random House)
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Cats: Awards,
Children,
Fiction,
South Africa
Tags: 2012 Crystal Kite Awards,
Awards,
Children,
Childrens Books,
Crystal Kite Member Choice Awards,
Fiction,
Finding Aunt Joan,
Jacana,
Jenny Hatten,
Joan Rankin,
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by Amy on May 2nd, 2012
Stephanie Nieuwoudt spoke to Ashraf Kagee to find out more about his novel Khalil’s Journey, which recently won the 2011/12 European Union Literary Award. Kagee tells her that Khalil’s Journey is the story of “one man’s journey through the 20th century in which he experiences the two world wars, the Depression, the rock ’n’ roll era, the Soweto riots, the Information Scandal and the rise in terrorism”:
Professor Ashraf Kagee, from the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University, is a highly esteemed researcher. But now he can add another feather to his cap – that of award-winning literary author.
Kagee won the 7th European Union Literary Award for non-published fiction for his novel, Khalil’s Journey (Jacana).
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Cats: Awards,
Fiction,
South Africa
Tags: Ashraf Kagee,
Awards,
EU Literary Award,
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