Archive for the ‘South Africa’ Category
by Amy on May 3rd, 2013
Sam Marshall interviewed author Barry Gilder on his SABC2 show Morning Live about his book on the ANC, from liberation movement to government, titled Songs and Secrets.
During the interview, Gilder says that he didn’t really write Songs and Secrets as a memoir, but rather tried to tell the story of the liberation struggle.
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by Amy on May 2nd, 2013
At the recent launch of her new short story collection, Ride the Tortoise, at The Book Lounge in Cape Town, Liesl Jobson read from a section of the book in which a selection of her erotic flash fiction had been brought together.
Watch the video of her reading “The Science of Curves”:
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by Amy on Apr 30th, 2013
Join MFBooks Joburg, Jacana Media, eNCA, Brooklyn Mall and Weylandts as we launch one of the most anticipated books of the year, Drug Muled: Sixteen Years in a Thai Prison: The Vanessa Goosen Story by Joanne Joseph, writen with Larissa Focke.
On Tuesday 7 May, Vanessa Goosen, Ilse Salzwedel (who also wrote a biography of Dubai prison survivor Selna Visser) and Joanne Joseph will be in conversation with RSG presenter Suzanne Paxton at Weylandts Brooklyn Mall. The event starts at 6 PM for 6:30 PM.
See you there!
Event Details
- Date: Tuesday, 07 May 2013
- Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
- Venue: Weylandts
Shop 45
Brooklyn Mall
Design Square
309 Veale Street
Pretoria | Map
- Guest Speakers: Vanessa Goosen, Ilse Salzwedel, Suzanne Paxton
- RSVP: admin@zebrasquare.co.za
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by Amy on Apr 30th, 2013
Liesl Jobson first became aware of the “the power of bearing witness to one’s own experience” at age 14, when her family moved to Connecticut and she set to writing letters about her life there.
“Writing is a means of making sense of it all,” Jobson told Penny Haw in an interview for Business Day, and this is exactly what she does in her recently released short story collection, Ride the Tortoise:
WHEN she was 14 years old, Liesl Jobson and her family moved from Cape Town to New Canaan, Connecticut, for 18 months. Several successful movies, including The Stepford Wives and Revolutionary Road, were made in New Canaan. It was also where Jobson discovered her love and talent for writing.
“While living there, I realised how much I liked to tell people what was happening to me in letters,” she says. “I loved writing letters and I loved getting letters. But I recognised that I was far more interested in what I was writing to people than what they were writing back. I guess that’s when I first came to an understanding of the power of bearing witness to one’s own experience. It’s when you tell your own story that you learn to understand what has really happened. Even if you don’t put the full spiel out there, writing is a means of making sense of it all.”
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by Amy on Apr 29th, 2013
Christa Kuljian first became interested in the Central Methodist Church’s work with refugees in Johannesburg following the xenophobic violence of 2008. In her book, Sanctuary: How an Inner-city Church Spilled onto a Sidewalk, she investigates this period in the church’s history, but also looks at its involvement in Johannesburg in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.
Kuljian spoke to Polity’s Shannon de Rhyhove about the book and her research:
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by Amy on Apr 26th, 2013
Colin Bundy taught a UCT Summer School course on “Govan Mbeki and the place of ideas in the National Liberation Struggle” earlier this year.
The lunchtime talk explored Mbeki’s career as an activist and intellectual. Bundy considered how Mbeki was distinctive in the ANC leadership “for his belief that the movement should engage with rural people and their struggles and for his writings, produced over fifty years, which sought to link theory with practice, ideas with actions.” Bundy’s book, Govan Mbeki: A Jacana Pocket Biography, was recommended as reading material for the lecture.
Listen to the podcast of his talk:
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by Amy on Apr 25th, 2013
In his article about Kevin Davie’s book Freedom Rider: 10 000km by Mountain Bike across South Africa, Sean O’Toole writes that, “Davie’s narrative is littered with details that alert us to the difficult bodily labour he undertook, one that he argues is linked to our ‘encoded’ ancestral ability to hunt by endurance.”:
There are few rural spaza shops in the Eastern and Western Cape, according to Kevin Davie, although they are plentiful in the provinces of Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal.
While pedalling up, down and around the fortress-like mountain range that dominates most of these provinces, a range of “crushing beauty” known as uKhahlamba in isiZulu, Intaba Zokhahlaba in isi-Xhosa, Maluti in Sesotho and Drakensberg in Afrikaans and English, Davie would often stop for a drink, usually a Coke.
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by Amy on Apr 25th, 2013
Written and illustrated in 1973 by one of South Africa’s most famous artists, Gerard Sekoto, Shorty and Billy Boy is a book for children as well as art lovers and collectors:
The manuscript of Shorty and Billy Boy formed part of a private collection of South African artist Gerard Sekoto’s sketches, artworks, letters and memoirs repatriated to South Africa from France. The story was clearly written and illustrated as a personal exercise and possibly a sentimental souvenir of his own childhood memories, but has not been published until now. Sekoto may well have composed it as a gift for children of friends, as he was often engaged in making greeting cards with accompanying illustrations. There are other unfinished stories and musical compositions in the estate collection, but Shorty and Billy Boy is the most complete.
Shorty and Billy Boy tells the tale of two troublesome dogs whose thieving ways take them to the far-away town of Porcupine Hills. Here they meet all sorts of interesting characters, but continue their mischief until Billy Boy is caught red-handed and sent to jail. Here he dreams about the kindness of others, and comes to realize that good deeds are the true measure of freedom.
The Gerard Sekoto Foundation has approved a number of editorial changes made to Sekoto’s original text, where the aim has been to preserve the integrity and flavour of the unpublished story, while making it more accessible to present-day readers. The South African context of the tale has been accentuated, and obsolete language and minor inconsistencies have been removed. The result is a timeless and engaging story that retains Sekoto’s unique spirit and imagination.
About the author
Gerard Sekoto (1913–1993) is acknowledged as an iconic and inspirational figure. Sekoto came from a leading academic missionary family, and had a good education compared with many of his peers. Art was not formally offered to black students, even in missionary schools of the 1920s, so Sekoto was forced to teach himself his craft. Sekoto left South Africa in 1947 for France, where he lived in exile for nearly 45 years. While there, Sekoto continued, through his art, to reflect the intrinsic humanism with which his art is associated. The French Government awarded him the Chevalier des Artset des Lettres shortly before his death in 1993. He lies buried at Nogent-sur-Marne, outside Paris.
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by Amy on Apr 24th, 2013
Hop on board and Ride the Tortoise with Jacana Media and Love Books as we celebrate Liesl Jobson’s new short story collection.
Jobson will be in conversation with poet and author Arja Salafranca.
The event will take place at Love Books on Thursday 2 May at 6 PM for 6:30 PM.
See you there!
Event Details
- Date: Thursday, 02 May 2013
- Time: 6:00 PM for 6:30 PM
- Venue: Love Books
The Bamboo Lifestyle Centre
53 Rustenburg Road
Melville
Johannesburg | Map
- Guest Speaker: Arja Salafranca
- RSVP: rsvp@jacana.co.za, 011 726 7408
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by Amy on Apr 24th, 2013
Protecting the Inheritance: Governance and Public Accountability in Democratic South Africa focuses mainly on public accountability and the state, institutional design and measures of public accountability, decentralised governance, leadership and management of public and private economies and industries, democratic accountability and political parties and participation, civil society and voice.
The basic assumption of the book is that without comprehensive, integrated and functional democratic accountability measures in place, the constitutional democratic state will collapse.
About the editor
Daniel Plaatjies has a PhD in the study of Governance, Public policy and Public Finance from the University the Witswatersrand. He is a visiting professor at the University of Free State and is currently Head of performance monitoring and Evaluation within the Office of the Premier, Free State Provincial Government. He is also serving on secondment as an adviser to the Minister of Public service and Administration. Plaatjies is the editor of Future Inheritace: Building State Capacity in Democratic South Africa.
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Download this eBook at LittleWhiteBakkie.com
Download this eBook at LittleWhiteBakkie.com
