Bøker utgitt av Wits University Press

In 2022 Wits University Press marked its centenary, making it the oldest, most established university press in sub-Saharan Africa. While in part modelled on scholarly publishers from the global North, it has had to contend with the constraints of working under global South conditions: marginalisation within the university, budgetary limitations, small local markets, unequal access to international sales channels, and the privileging of English language publishing over indigenous languages.This volume explores what the Press has achieved, and what its modes of reinvention might look like. In widening and deepening our understanding of the Press as an example of a global South scholarly publisher, this volume asks how publishing can contribute to a broader understanding of Southern knowledge production. Featuring contributions from scholars, publishers and authors this multi-voiced volume showcases the history of the Press's publishing activities over 100 years: from documenting its evolution through book covers and giving credence to some of the leading black intellectuals and writers of the early 20th century and the success of those works in spite of their authors' racial marginalisation, to the role of women, both in publishing and in the spaces afforded to women's writing on the Press's list.The collection concludes with essays by contemporary authors who detail not only their experiences of working with Southern publishers, but also the politics and influences governing their decisions to choose the Press over a Northern publisher. Publishing from the South shows the strategies deployed by the Press to professionalise Southern knowledge making, and in the process demonstrating how university presses in the global South support the scholarly missions of their universities for both local and global audiences.

Reveals the little known details of the assassination of an anti-apartheid activist by an apartheid spy and undercover police officerOn 28 June 1984 a parcel bomb sent by the apartheid security police exploded in an apartment building in Lubango, Angola, killing 36-year-old Jeanette Schoon and her six-year-old daughter Katryn. The Schoons were members of the revolutionary underground, exiled from South Africa and committed to both the African National Congress and to socialism. What many political activists had feared or suspected at the time was confirmed during the 1990s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: the bomb targeting the Schoons was sent by Craig Williamson, an apartheid spy and high-ranking member of the South African security service.Apartheid Spies and the Revolutionary Underground is the first book-length account of the assassination of Jeanette and Katryn Schoon. Jeanette Curtis Schoon and Craig Williamson first met in 1973 on the Wits University campus. Jeanette was a passionate student radical and part of a network of white radicals fighting apartheid. Williamson had successfully infiltrated the student movement and rose within its ranks. He held positions of trust, first within the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) and then, after pretending to 'flee' the country, as an office-bearer of the International Universities Exchange Fund in Sweden, which helped fund many South Africans in exile.The book uncovers how the lives of a group of white radicals intersected with and were impacted by the undercover security police and their operations both within and outside of South Africa. Intensifying political oppression caused many young radicals to flee South Africa in 1976; many of them, like Jeanette and her partner Marius Schoon, joined the African National Congress in exile. Williamson and the Schoons' paths, and those of their comrades, continued to cross: he was a guest in their homes, a supplier of funds for their projects, a witness for the prosecution in political trials and, ultimately, the hand that directed targeted assassinations.Williamson received amnesty for his role in the Schoons' murder, among other crimes. For the friends and family of the Schoons - and for all those seeking social justice - this was an unacceptable outcome and Williamson continues to walk a free man. This book attempts to show the limits of the TRC process to render healing from South Africa's apartheid past. That justice has not been served to the Schoons remains a tragedy in this story of the struggle against apartheid.

A history of the establishment and role of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), the public health organization in South Africa Fighting an Invisible Enemy narrates the founding in 2002 and growth of the internationally renowned centre of excellence for communicable diseases, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in South Africa. In a continent riven with a panoply of formidable contagious pathogens, the book describes how the nascent NICD travelled a rocky road to maturity. Starting humbly, as did many of its sister public health institutions around the world, the road was strewn with daunting obstacles of financial restrictions, bureaucratic straitjacketing, international isolation during the apartheid era and, in later years, the calumny of governmental AIDS denial. Following the triumph of the eradication of the once-dreaded smallpox, the NICD now plays a crucial role in the global effort to eradicate poliomyelitis. While the country has the misfortune of the largest HIV/AIDS pandemic in the world, the Institute's HIV research unit has become a world leader. More remote from public notice are the laboratories and support epidemiologists carry out for ongoing surveillance of communicable diseases and the alerts they provide for any signal of an impending outbreak or pandemic. The Institute's value to public health was clearly shown in the recent Covid-19 pandemic. The maxim that we are only safe when everyone everywhere is safe, underlines the importance of international partnerships and the key role the NICD plays, not only for the country but also for global health. This is a flagship organization in public health in South Africa and this book paints a vivid portrait of its incredible accomplishments.

Revisits the work of Rick Turner, a South African political theorist, and addresses contemporary debates Rick Turner was a South African academic and anti-apartheid activist who rebelled against the apartheid state at the height of its power. For this he was assassinated in 1978, at just 32 years of age, but his life and work are testimony to the power of philosophical thinking for humans everywhere. Turner chose to live freely in an unfree time and argued for a non-racial, socialist future in a context where this seemed unimaginable. This book takes seriously Rick Turner's challenge that political theorising requires thinking in a utopian way. Turner's seminal book The Eye of the Need: Towards a Participatory Democracy laid out some of his most potent ideas on a radically different political and economic system. His demand was that we work to escape the limiting ideas of the present, carefully design a just future based on shared human values, and act to make it a reality, both politically and in our daily lives. The contributors to this volume engage critically with Turner's work on race relations, his relationship with Steve Biko, his views on religion, education and gender oppression, his participatory model of democracy, and his critique of enduring forms of poverty and economic inequality. They show how, in his life and work, Turner modeled how we can dare to be free and how hope can return, as the future always remains open to human construction. This book makes an important contribution to contemporary thinking and activism where the need for South Africans to define their understanding of their greater common good is of crucial importance.

Isidlamlilo / The Fire Eater is a one-woman play inspired by the true story of a woman who served as a political assassin in the build-up to South Africa's first democratic elections. Zenzile Maseko, the protagonist, is a 60-year-old grandmother living in a women's hostel in Durban. Falsely declared dead by the Department of Home Affairs, she finds herself cast into a Kafkaesque nightmare that forces her to confront her past. Flown in on the wings of the Impundulu (the lightning bird), in Zulu folklore a shapeshifting bird associated with witchcraft and the harbinger of storms and death, Zenzile's story weaves a magical and terrifying tapestry. She draws on myth, religious symbolism and traditional beliefs as she shares the realities - at times brutal, at times forgiving - of survival in South Africa. Her story touches on what it means to live through political violence, the transition to democracy, the brutality of inequality, health epidemics like HIV/AIDS, patriarchy, and the apathetic bureaucracy of government departments. Ultimately, Isidlamlilo / The Fire Eater offers a critical and unflinching look at the eddying cycles of violence and revenge that play out across generations. Yet it is most of all a story about regeneration and redemption that speaks to both the country's haunted past and its present-day complexities.Written with pathos and empathy, this playscript will appeal to teachers, high school learners, and tertiary students in theatre, drama and English studies.

Focuses on the challenges faced in accessing and providing abortion services in rural areas, even under progressive abortion legislation Accessing abortion services in rural areas under conditions of liberal abortion legislation is neither straightforward nor simple. As the South African example shows, the liberalization of abortion legislation was the first step in granting pregnant persons access to abortion care. Despite this and some progress in implementation, many challenges persist resulting in a lack of services, especially in areas where distances and transport costs are a factor. Drawing on the findings of a study conducted in three rural districts of the Eastern Cape, the authors highlight the complexities involved in understanding problematic or unwanted pregnancies and abortion services within these communities; the reported barriers to, and facilitators of, access to abortion services among rural populations; and preferences for types of abortion services. A key finding is the conundrum of costs versus confidentiality: lack of confidentiality involves additional costs to access services outside the area; high costs mean that confidentiality may have to be foregone, which leads to stigma. The authors place the findings within a reparative reproductive justice framework and present a comprehensive set of recommendations. Abortion Services and Reproductive Justice in Rural South Africa is an insightful and informative resource - the first of its kind - for scholars in health and sociology, reproductive health policy makers, national planners, health facility managers and providers, and activists.

The story of how Africa's mammals have helped shape the continent's landscapes over time to support an amazing diversity of life Africa is home to an amazing array of animals, including the world's most diverse assortment of large mammals. These include the world's largest terrestrial mammal, the African elephant, which still roams great swathes of the continent alongside a host of other well-known large mammals with hooves such as hippopotamuses, giraffes, rhinoceroses, and zebras. African Ark: Mammals, Landscape and the Ecology of a Continent tells the story of where these mammals have come from and how they have interacted to create the richly varied landscape that makes up Africa as we know it today. It gives an equal airing to small mammals, such as rodents and bats, which are often overlooked by both naturalists and zoologists in favor of their larger cousins. African Ark not only describes the diversity of African mammals and the habitats in which they live; it also explains the processes by which species and population groups are formed and how these fluctuate over time. A book on mammals would not be complete without attention placed on the impact of megafauna on the environment and the important roles they play in shaping the landscape. In this way, mammals such as elephants and rhinoceros support countless plant communities and the habitats of many smaller animals. The book brings in a human perspective as well as a conservation angle in its assessment of the interaction of African mammals with the people who live alongside them. African Ark is at once scientifically rigorous and accessible for the layperson and student alike, while drawing on the contributions of numerous zoologists, ecologists and conservationists dedicated to the understanding of Africa and its wildlife.

An essential business guide on how to develop an organization's innovation culture and internal entrepreneurs (intrapreneurs) The Intrapreneur's Journey: Empowering Employees to Drive Growth is an essential guide on effectively creating and implementing a sustainable culture of innovation and entrepreneurship within organizations. The book is based on the insight that established organizations see continuous delivery of innovative products, services and processes when they enable teams of entrepreneurial employees to think and behave like start-ups. Three qualities make this book unique. First, it explores the theory and practice of intrapreneurship and innovation with a particular, but not exclusive focus on key issues in African contexts. Second, it includes a large, diverse set of instructive examples and case studies of intrapreneurship and innovation in organizations in Africa. And third, it features a useful toolkit: the Intrapreneurship Empowerment Model, a simple yet complete implementation framework. The book includes key resources of practical, real-world tools and assets used by some of the world's most intrapreneurial and innovative organizations. The Intrapreneur's Journey adds value for both practitioners and scholars of intrapreneurship and innovation in Africa and other parts of the world.

Hoping for a better life, many migrants have made the journey to South Africa and set up as informal spaza shop traders in small towns and township areas, supplying the local residents with essentials. These traders work hard, open their shops early, close late and support their relatives and kinspeople in starting new businesses. But thriving in environments afflicted by unemployment and crime is almost impossible when armed robberies are a daily reality, protection from law enforcement is not a given, and access to justice is effectively out of reach. Engaging first-hand with small traders and the Somali communities in Khayelitsha, Kraaifontein and Philippi, Vanya Gastrow investigates the predicament of these modern-day pariahs - social and political outcasts who belong neither to the elite nor the common people, and who are frequently the focus of xenophobic anger. Tracing national-level regulatory developments in post-apartheid democratic South Africa Gastrow shines a light on how retailers have been politicised and how they have faced growing informal and formal regulatory efforts to curtail their business activities. She demonstrates how democratic and constitutional frameworks can erode in contexts of heightened nationalism, populism and economic inequality. By investigating Somali informal shopkeepers' experiences of crime, justice and regulation in the country, the fragility of law, pluralism and democracy in South Africa is uncomfortably exposed.

Originally published: Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press, 1935

Explores the challenges of large, complex, institutionally fragmented, and dynamic city-regions across the BRICS countries and the emergence of formal and informal governance arrangements.

This book seeks to imagine the possibility of a more loving masculinity in a society where structural violence, failures of government and economic inequality underpin much of the violent behaviour that men display. Enriched with personal reflections on his own experiences as a partner, father, psychologist and researcher in the field of men and masculinities, Why Men Hurt Women and Other Reflections on Love, Violence and Masculinity is Kopano Ratele's meditation on love and violence, and the way these forces shape the emotional lives of boys and men. At the core of these critical and deeply insightful texts is the question of why men hurt women they love. Ratele contends that many men in our society suffer from a painful, unrecognised, yet consequential love hunger that sets in during boyhood. This need for love may lie at the root of some of the male violence that damages the lives of women, children and men themselves.

More than 125 years ago, a remarkable group of people came together in Cape Town to write down the language and beliefs of the |xam people, a Bushman group that once lived over much of South Africa. The immensely valuable work of Wilhelm Bleek, Lucy Lloyd and their |xam teachers not only preserved a language now no longer spoken, but also provided fascinating insights into |xam cosmology. First published in 2004, Customs and Beliefs of the |xam reproduces Dorothea Bleek's selection of |xam narratives from the well-known Bleek and Lloyd Collection that was originally published in the journal Bantu Studies during the 1930s. Collated and edited by Jeremy Hollman, the extracts include detailed notes on each of the narratives, as well as Bleek's 'sketch' of |xam grammar. This substantially revised second edition integrates new scholarship on the Bleek and Lloyd archive, and restores previously omitted material. The introduction to each narrative has been expanded to contextualise it within the archive as a whole and, where relevant, reference it to the Notebook of which it is a part. This includes meticulous cross-referencing with the Bleek and Lloyd Collection catalogue code and the Notebook number and line reference. Each of the texts has also been critically reassessed, with additional editorial notes and commentaries, in particular with respect to the |xam words themselves and the ways in which they have been translated. A synopsis of each narrative is provided in an appendix, with cross references to the Bleek and Lloyd notebooks. Customs and Beliefs of the |xam, second edition, is an in-depth, detailed and authoritative resource that will be invaluable to scholars, heritage workers and activists alike.

An historical drama by Elliot Zondi. The plot is based on the events surrounding the assassination of Shaka, the mighty Zulu king, by his two half-brothers, Dingane and Mhlangana, aided and abetted by his paternal aunt, Mkabayi, in 1828. The play explores the classic theme of the tragic hero's fatal flaws: hubris and overconfidence.

Originally published: Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press, 1945

Ranging from economics, psychology, a spurious rebuttal of evolution to a substantial revisionist history and the perils of the 'machine age', this book is a sombre reflection of intellectual history and the academy's role in promulgating political and social divisions in South Africa.

Current research shows that certain childhood mental disorders are diagnosed more frequently today than in previous generations. Many of today's children and teenagers are more unhappy, anxious and distressed than young people used to be. In this highly informative book, child psychologist Jenny Perkel explores in depth why this might be so, highlighting what modern-day South African children and adolescents are experiencing and the environment in which they are being raised.Children in Mind presents a broad range of up-to-date findings from psychological, neurobiological, genetic, psychiatric, sociological and epidemiological research related to the diagnosis and treatment of children's mental health problems. Theoretically informed but not theoretically dense, the book cites both local and international studies to increase awareness and understanding of children's mental health.Perkel discusses a broad spectrum of issues faced by today's children and adolescents: the Covid-19 pandemic, the influence of electronic media, diverse family structures, stress and trauma, and difficult socio-economic circumstances. While offering no easy answers or formulaic solutions to the problems of troubled children, she shows how to think about children's mental well-being in today's South Africa.Children in Mind is an invaluable resource for all those who work with troubled children and adolescents: psychologists, social workers, counsellors, educators and parents. The author's informed and compassionate approach will help equip professionals and parents to help young people navigate complex issues and make adjustments in their behaviour in order to live more balanced and happier lives.

Focuses on how decades of neoliberal capitalism have eroded the global democratic project and how, in the process, authoritarian politics are gaining ground. Scholars and activists from the political left focus on four country cases - India, Brazil, South Africa and the US - in which the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the pre-existing crisis.

Edward Said described a public intellectual as someone who uses accessible language to address a designated public on matters of social and political significance. The essays in this volume apply this interpretive prism and activist principle to a South African context to tell the stories of well-known figures and some that have been forgotten.

Presents the history and inner workings of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) against the canvas of the major political developments in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s up to the first democratic elections in 1994.

South Africa's democracy is often seen as a story of bright beginnings gone astray, a pattern said to be common to Africa. Building on the work of the economic historian Douglass North and the political thinker Mahmood Mamdani, Steven Friedman shows that South African democracy's difficulties are legacies of the pre-1994 past.

Who controls the land and minerals in the former Bantustans of South Africa - chiefs, the state or landholders? The contributors to Land, Law and Chiefs in Rural South Africa capture some of the intense contestations over land, law and political authority, focussing on threats to the rights of ordinary people.

Examines the ongoing project of constituting 'the human' in light of the durability of coloniality and the persistence of multiple oppressions. The 'human' emerges as a deeply political category, historically constructed as a scarce existential resource.

#FeesMustFall, the student revolt that began in October 2015, was an uprising against lack of access to, and financial exclusion from, higher education in South Africa. More broadly, it radically questioned the socio-political dispensation resulting from the 1994 social pact between big business, the ruling elite and the liberation movement. The 2015 revolt links to national and international youth struggles of the recent past and is informed by black consciousness politics and social movements of the international left. Yet, its objectives are more complex than those of earlier struggles. The student movement has challenged the hierarchical, top-down leadership system of university management and it's 'double speak' of professing to act in workers' and students' interests yet entrenching a regressive system for control and governance. University managements, while on one level amenable to change, have also co-opted students into their ranks to create co-responsibility for the highly bureaucratised university financial aid that stands in the way of their social revolution. This book maps the contours of student discontent a year after the start of the #FeesMustFall revolt. Student voices dissect colonialism, improper compromises by the founders of democratic South Africa, feminism, worker rights and meaningful education. In-depth assessments by prominent scholars reflect on the complexities of student activism, its impact on national and university governance, and offer provocative analyses of the power of the revolt.

Offers close readings of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and of responses to it in the work of twentieth-century philosophers, that highlight the entangled history of the translations, transpositions and transformations of Hegel in the work of Frantz Fanon, and more generally in colonial, postcolonial and decolonial contexts.