Latest Books Donated to the OR Authors' Bookcase

These books are donated to Alumni House and are creating a lot of interest!

A sincere Thank You to all authors who send their books to us. Please note that the year date depicts the first year that the Author was at Rhodes and not the year the book was published.

 

Kelvin Hulley (1970)

 

Ralston Raft in The Dance Fire is an African adventure with a delightful mix of ingredients. The story brings together diverse characters; some are noble and grand, others are boisterous and devil-may-care. Ralston Raft finds himself caught in a chain of events following his controversial resignation from the university where he teaches philosophy.

 Does Raft's life, as it unfolds, keep with the existentialist thinking he teaches his students? Unrequited love, a treasure hunt into the Botswana wilderness, and a truly moving encounter with the San Bushmen are some of the elements of this book. Southern Africa is presented with love and sensitivity in a style which provides the reader with a genuine feel, without being hindered by laborious tracts of text.

A rich vein of descriptive humour enhances the book immensely, with each chapter "a must read" story on its own. Roman poet, Horace, asserted that literature should delight and instruct. This book delivers on both promises? They say that the sunsets at Hippocampus Lodge are a sight to behold. Africa is about daytime and night-time, not minutes and seconds.

Book available at Pegasus publishers, amazon.com and kalahari.com

 

Marguerite Poland (1968)

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Taken Captive by Birds: A Memoir by Marguerite Poland and illustrated by Craig Ivor

All my life I have been 'taken captive by birds'.  Their doings are the thread that runs through childhood, the link to people and to place. Their appearance and their presence can at once recall a name, a scent, a morning full of song and exploration; an evening sorrow, a childhood fear. For, somehow, it is the birds that saw it all: those unobtrusive harbingers whose boundaries are defined by other laws than ours but whose ancient lore remains a cipher to remembrance for me. 

Marguerite Poland is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award for English Literature from both the Departments of Arts and Culture (2005) and SALA (2010).

Book available at kalahri.com

 

 Dr Saleem Badat

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The Forgotten People: Political Banishment under Apartheid

The apartheid state employed many weapons against its opponents:  imprisonment, banning, detention, assassination - and banishment.  In a practice reminiscent of Tsartist and Soviet Russia, a large number of 'enemies of the state' were banished to remote and often areas, far from their homes, communities and followers.  Here their existence became 'a slow torture of the soul', a kind of social death.

This is the first study of an important but hitherto neglected group of opponents of apartheid, set in a global, historical and comparative perspective.  It looks at the reasons why people were banished, their lives in banishment and the efforts of a remarkable group of activists, led by Helen Joseph, to assist them.  Indeed, this book originated in a promise made by the author to Helen Joseph, who had undertaken an epic journey in 1962 to visit all those banished across the lentgh and breadth of South Africa.  The work is illustrated with stunning photographs by Ernest Cole, Peter Magubane and others.

Saleem Badat is Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University.  He is the author of Black Student, Politics, Higher Education and Apartheid and Black Man, You Are on Your Own, co-author of National Policy and a Regional Response in South African Higher Education, and co-editor of Apartheid Education and Popular Struggle in South Africa. 

Jacana Media

 

Dimitri Philactou (1960)

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In A Likely Impossibility, Dimitri Philactou weaves a compelling story that draws on the experiences of the Greek Diaspora of Egypt and London, to tell the tale of young love whose fire refuses to extinguish itself and continues to burn through time.  Dimitri and Elly are two young lovers who find themselves fighting traditions and family expectations to keep their love alive.  Can fate keep them apart forever?  Can their love weather the trials and deviousness that destiny and their families throw in their way?  The reader follows the tale of their love starting in 50s London and through time and places like New York and Greece.  At each place fate and family expectations that 'Ships marry Ships' seem to conspire together to keep them apart.  Sometimes the only thing that can fan the flame of love is the belief that "A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility".

 Kerkyra Publications

Jim Davis (1996)

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Jim Davis is the best kind of aviation teacher.  He is an experienced and skilled, pilot, instructor, and aviation journalist.

What is in this book for you?  Three things:

Your Safety:  PPL is a practical, no-nonsense book for everyone who loves flying.  It gives you understanding so you can make smart decisions in the cockpit.  The plan is to help you become a good safe pilot regardless of your hours.

Your PPL exams:  PPL makes your swotting easy and exciting.  It covers all your exam subjects as well as the flying exercises.  There are 500 full colour pages with simple explanations, true life stories, every-day examples, test papers and 361 diagrams.

Your time:  Your weekends and evenings are free from lecture schedules.  Keep PPL with you and study whenever it suits you.

Website:  www.jimdavis.co.za

 

Steuart Pennington (1971)

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Africa - The Good News is intended to shift the perception of Africa as a continent of woe to a continent of hope and opportunity.

Unlike the countless books that try to explain what went wrong in Africa, Africa - The Good News looks at what is going right. It gives voice to Africans (and non-Africans) who have a different story of Africa to tell. It explains why a growing number of journalists, investors and academics are starting to look at Africa differently and describe the continent as one of growth and not just of despair.

It looks at where Africa is today, where it is planning to go and its position in a global world, economically, socially, politically. It looks at the business opportunities, challenges and success stories on the continent. Importantly, it investigates what is being done to address the continent's many challenges and problems from leadership to poverty and almost everything in between.

Africa - The Good News is not about despair. It is about hope. In that context we have attempted to make this book readable to anyone who is interested in Africa's perception of itself, the new winds of change that are gusting over her nations and the growing opportunity in arguably the most ethnically diverse, biologically rich, scenically beautiful continent in the world!

Website:  www.sagoodnews.co.za

Janice Warman (1977)

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Take two women:  One finds her high-flying career has flown her straight into a brick wall;  The other discovers her husband lurking in the shrubbery, texting his mistress.  This is the book they wrote.

From divorce to depression, menopause to marriage, from infidelity to insomnia - its all here in The Hey Nonny Handbook written by Julia Jeffries and Janice Warman.  This book won't provide chicken soup for your soul.  What it will show you is what the authors found themselves;  that literature can save your life.  There's nowhere you've been that someone more articulate hasn't been before.  As C.S. Lewis said, 'We read to know we are not alone'.  Women have always banded together for reasons of safety and mutual support.  The Hey Nonny Club started life as a loose collection of women (not a collection of loose women!) who had troubles in their life - and from that club this book has grown.  The authors hope that women everywhere will learn from their experiences and benefit from their words, from the City high-flyer to the mother in track pants mucking out the guinea pigs.  Laced with the acid wit of The Independent's cartoonist Sally Ann Lasson, it abounds in wicked humour and black comedy.

 

Zubeida Jaffer (1978)

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In Africa:  The Untold Story, veteran journalist, Zubeida Jaffer revisits Rwanda after 18 years and tells of efforts to reconstruct the country withing the context of growing opportunities on the African continent.  This is the second in the series of self-published pocket book reflections.

Website: www.zubeidajaffer.co.za

 

Michael Gerald Dalton (1969)

Wild West Adventures in the Great African Bush is written by David Robert Dalton with contributions by Michael Gerald Dalton, Trevor Charles Dalton & Garth Hugh Dalton.

A downright hilarious and heart-warming tale of the African "Wild West" and the notorious "Dalton Gang" shown through the fertile imagination of a six-year-old boy, his little black "Pawnee" friend, his three-legged Jack Russell dog and his three elder brothers.  It is loosely based on the author's childhood in the small town of Messina, near the Southern Rhodesia border, in the early 1960's.

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Michael Sheridan Stone (1963)

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The African sun is an eclectic collection of poems linked by one common element, the author’s abiding love for Africa – its landscape, wildlife and, above all, its people.  He rejoices in adventures with elephants, leopards, lemurs, snakes and elusive birds, protests at the precipitous decline in the quality of life in his former homeland of Zimbabwe (whilst taking some comfort from the enduring tradition of Ubuntu) and gently bemoans his failure to reclaim his boyhood past.

 

 

Dan Wylie (1980) and Craig Mackenzie (1992)

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No other world : Essays on the life-work of Don Maclennan is the indispensable guide to the life and work of Don Maclennan – one of South Africa’s most incisive and important poets of the last few decades. Don published or printed some twenty volumes of poetry, increasingly spare and lapidary, increasingly concerned with his approaching death.  Though sometimes disturbing, they above all celebrated the simple fact of being alive, being in love, being sensuous.  He knew that there is “no other world” than this one.  There is probably no poetry in South Africa’s national oeuvre more thoughtfully authentic than his.  Editors: Craig Mackenzie is Professor of English at the University of Johannesburg and came to know Don Maclennan as a postgraduate student at Rhodes University.  Dan Wylie is Professor of English at Rhodes University, where he studied and worked with Don Maclennan.

 

Jeremy Shearar (1949)

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  Against the World maps South Africa’s journey to increasing isolation in the United Nations, from a respected member in 1945 to a ‘pariah’ in the early sixties. Events unfold from 1945, when Field Marshall J.C. Smuts proposed the adoption of a Preamble to the United Nations Charter.  Three years later, South Africa refused to sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Global criticism against apartheid intensified, until in 1960 it culminated in calls from African members for economic and diplomatic sanctions.  By 1961, South Africa had become isolated in the United Nations and relegated to a moral wilderness.  For the modern reader of history and social affairs, the book clarifies South Africa’s past and present role in the evolution of international humanitarian law. As South Africa’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva and New York, author Jeremy Shearar had direct access to primary material.  This led to his unique insights and his more comprehensive reflections on the tensions between governments and officials in relation to events.

 

Sarah Wild (2003)

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Searching African Skies is the story of South African radio astronomy:  from the first telescope built in the country by NASA in the 1960s, to Africa challenging one of radio astronomy’s world leaders, Australia.  Interspersed with lXam Bushmen stories rewritten from original manuscripts and Xhosa starlore, Sarah Wild takes you on a journey, in her inimitable style, from the bare sandy Karoo into the hearts of distant galaxies.  Award winning science columnist Sarah Wild is currently the Science and Technology Editor at Business Day.  She has a Bachelor of Science in Physics, Electronics and English Literature, specialising in radio astronomy.  This is her first full-length African science book.

 

Dr Derek Botha (1961)

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In NO LABELS:  Men in Relationship with Anorexia Derek Botha argues that traditional understandings of and approaches to diagnosis and treatment for anorexia nervosa are unacceptable, inappropriate and laden with labelling ways, and thus exacerbate these men’s struggles, leaving them dishonoured, disabled, powerless and even more distressed.  He presents alternative ways of understanding the nature of their social positionings as well as a more appropriate therapy for them, namely narrative therapy. Dr Derek Botha trained and practiced  in South Africa and Australia in the mental health field.  He has been published widely in international journals, especially in the area of critical approaches to mental health.  He lives and practices in Cape Town.

Book available at amazon.com and amazon.co.uk

 

Peter Brian Neville Jackson (1946)

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Peter Jackson was born in Bloemfontein 1923 and grew up in the southern Free State. He studied at St Andrews College and Rhodes University where he got enthralled with biology and decided upon an applied career. Seeing no future in this direction at Rhodes he obtained his MSc at UCT, pioneering the technique of underwater research. After a sojourn as a pilot in the RAF during the Second World War he set out to establish many of the fishery centres in East and Central African. He was thrown into important managerial positions at an early age and carried out foundation basic and applied studies leading teams of researchers in this field. Returning to a post in the JLB Smith Institute in the 1970s he then promoted the establishment of a Fishery Science degree at Rhodes University and was instrumental in many of the pioneer studies of this kind in South Africa. In his later years he served his alma mater in many ways and used his environmental knowledge in helping to establish Coastal & Environmental Services. He died in 2007 after completing his memoirs and his Fisheries Experiences in Central and East Africa, The English Basket, which was then edited and published by his sons.

(Compiled by Prof Roy Lubke for the Book Launch held at Rhodes University)

 

Andre Van Heerden (1965)

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 Andre van Heerden’s Leaders and Misleaders – the art of leading like you mean it flays the misguided belief that we can produce leaders through skills-training and quick-fix solutions, and insists that the key is character-development and the fomenting of wisdom through on-going education. Giving skills to people of negative character will see those skills misused, and this is why our society tends to produce misleaders rather than leaders.

Andre van Heerden, who has worked with leaders in almost every category of business, uses compelling examples from history and corporate life to demonstrate how leaders are only developed by education, the continual nurturing of the intellect and the will.  Everyone has intellect and will, and therefore the potential to lead, and using those faculties properly, is leading like you mean it.  But without on-going education, they are either corrupted or fade. Before committing another cent to leadership development for your team, read this book and discover:

• What leading like you mean it really means
• Why misleaders are everywhere, but great leadership is hard to find
• The vital understanding of leadership that presidents, CEO's, and managers are missing
• What we as a society can do to change the status quo in the coming decade.

WEB-SITES: www.powerofintegrity.com      www.leadersandmisleaders.biz

Any queries please e-mail alumni@ru.ac.za

 

Duncan Clarke (1966)

Africa's Future tells the tale of Africa’s economic evolution, providing unique prisms through which to view the continent’s panoramic story – ultimately one of triumph over the influences of nature and over multiple political tragedies.  It explains how Africa in effect went backwards for one and a half thousand years, from the Roman Empire to 1500 CE.  Only in more recent times has Africa gradually begun to evolve and grow, to the point at which its modern and archaic economies uneasily coexist today.   Duncan Clarke, acclaimed author of Africa:  Crude Continent and an acknowledged expert on the economics and geopolitics of Africa, provides fresh and challenging insights into our vision of Africa’s economies and future, offering seasoned views on a continent of enormous potential which has witnessed many false dawns.

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Book available at Amazon.com

 

David Hilton-Barber (1953)

Footprints: On the trail of those who shaped Tzaneen's history is an idiosyncratic view of one of South Africa's loveliest districts.  History is certainly revealed, but the book is much more than dry-as-dust facts and chronologies.  The mountains and valleys and abundant vegetation of the northern Drakensberg have inspired many people.  Their stories enliven almost every page.  As Tito Mboweni states in his foreword: 'This is a book about Tzaneen, the vast splendour of its mountain ranges, the historical events that shaped its history, its rich cultural heritage and, above all, the strength and determination of the many people who have left their footprints here."

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Books available from Porcupine Press

 

Herman Wasserman

Prof Wasserman is Deputy Head of Rhodes School of Journalism and Media Studies and Honorary Senior Lecturer in Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield.  Tabloid Journalism In South Africa examines the success of tabloid journalism in South Africa at a time when global print media are in decline.  Less than a decade after the advent of democracy in South Africa, tabloid newspapers have taken the county by storm.  One of these papers – the Daily Sun- is now the largest in the country, but it has generated controversy for its perceived lack of respect for privacy, brazen sexual content, and unrestrained truth-stretching.  Herman Wasserman considers the social significance of the tabloids and how they play a role in integrating readers and their daily struggles with the political and social sphere of the new democracy.  Wasserman shows how these papers have found an important niche in popular and civic culture largely ignored by the mainstream media and formal political channels.

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 Popular Media, Democracy and Development in Africa provides students and scholars with a critical perspective on issues relating to popular media, democracy and citizenship outside the global North.  As part of the Routledge series Internationalizing Media Studies, the book responds to the important challenge of broadening perspectives on media studies by bringing together a range of expert analyses of media in the African continent that will be of interest to students and scholars of media in Africa and further afield.

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 Books available at amazon.com

 

Steve Murray (1951)

Why Do Aircraft Crash? Pilots and Their Limitations is an invaluable guide to pilots both general and commercial – and anyone who’s’ considered taking to the air.  Today, most aviation accidents are the result of human limitations, not mechanical failure.  How can pilots best deal with their limitations to avoid accidents?  Steve Murray explores physical and mental limitations, the interface between humans and computers, human error, and problems with human communication.  He explains decision making and the problems of stress.  And he examines accident analysis, with a special focus on gliders. Steve started his flying career with the South African Air Force in 1952.  Nearly 60 years later, he continues flying on a private pilot's licence. With a lifelong, passionate involvement in the practice and study of aviation with a D.Litt in aviation psychology, Steve has an extraordinary wealth of experience and unique insight into aviation accident causation.

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Book available at amazon.com and Kalahari.net

 

 

Bill Malkin (1970)

ITS  A FACT: A Book Of South African Trivia provides a collage of South African life for the casual reader. Every anecdote is factual and strikes a balance between events of historical or political significance, general interest and pure trivia.  In researching the book, Bill became aware of how wonderfully colourful are the history and the people of South Africa and the book proves to be simultaneously fun and informative.

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Susan Blackbeard (1973) (also publishing under the name S I Brodrick)

"Set mostly on the Queenstown/Grahamstown axis, but also incorporating Johannesburg and other parts of South Africa, The Door is a cleverly written novel dealing with the life and loves of Bing, a young man from a blue-collar family.  Bing’s relationship with the drama student, Helen, who comes from an up-market background, is explored.  The ways in which the tensions between the two – and their eventual separation – affect Minnie, the daughter and only child from their marriage, is convincingly realized.  

Although written in the present tense, The Door effectively opens on a vista into the past, showing the reader how even liberal whites were contained in a net of ideological and legal restrictions, making it difficult for them to reach out to fellow black South Africans.  To realize the manner in which icons of the present day such as Steve Biko and Nelson Mandela were viewed in the 1970s through white eyes is a mind-bending exercise."

part of review by Poet and Emeritus Professor of English, University of Cape Town,  Geoffrey Haresnape.

 Website:  www.sibrodrick.blogspot.com

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For information on how to buy the book, please e-mail: 

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Chris Walmsley (Nevin Weakley) (1968)

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Mugabe-my part in his victory' is a light-hearted but factually based look at national service in the Rhodesian police force immediately prior to Robert Mugabe’s accession to power in Zimbabwe. It follows the transition of Chris Walmsley and his university friends from raw, high spirited recruits to disciplined and competent policemen.Not that this is a straightforward process. The police officers, recruits and Mugabe all had different ideas on how this should be achieved. They could not all be right….

Available from Amazon.com in paperback or kindle edition

Also available at bookorder@mpa.com Tel:  072 439 4133

 

Hugh Lewin (1958)

In July 1964 Hugh Lewin was held under the country’s 90-day detention law and later sentenced, with other members of the African Resistance Movement, to seven years’ imprisonment for protest sabotage activities against apartheid. He served the full term in Pretoria and left South Africa on a ‘permanent departure permit’ in December 1971. He spent 10 years in exile in London, followed by another ten years in Zimbabwe, before finally being allowed to return home at the end of 1992. He became director of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in Johannesburg and was a member of the Human Rights Violations Committee of the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission.

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Bandiet was first published in London in the mid-70s. Hailed as a classic work of South African prison literature, it remained banned in South Africa for many years. Bandiet Out Of Jail republishes the full text of the original Bandiet: Seven Years in a South African Prison with the addition of new stories that were excluded from the original. The new book also brings together previously unpublished poems

Websites to buy the book online:

Canada, UK, USA, South Africa

Source:  ColdType

  Stones against the Mirror is a moving memoir which is both a family history and a story of friendship and betrayal between people caught up in the wrenching forces of the South African Struggle. Lewin describes his progress towards a meeting with Adrian Leftwich, the man who betrayed him to the Security Police in 1964.  After 40 years, Lewin is determined to meet with his long-term friend both to find out what happened at his trial and to deal with the emotions of anger and bitterness that have assailed him ever since.

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Source:   Random House Struik

 

Nathi Mhlaba (2000)

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 Called into women's ministry and single, Nathi shares her experience with others and has been discipling women since university. 

"In a world where being a couple is being promoted, where being in a relationship is the “in” thing, single women often feel left out and have the pressure to find someone. As women, we end up meeting the wrong people and settling for second best, as we feel that God has forgotten us.
Learn how to:
• be content in your singleness and fall more in love with God
• be joyful in the NOW
• prepare for the season that you are in (by reading, listening to preaching on being single or marriage)
Being single is not a curse but a gift, and we should look at it that way."

 Source:  Amazon.com

 

Sarah K. Gess (1955)

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Wasps of the subfamily Masarinae are sometimes called "pollen wasps" because they are the only wasps that - like bees- provision their nest cells with pollen and nectar.  Numbering a little over 300 known species, they favour regions of the world with hot, dry climates and scrubby vegetation, and are especially plentiful and diverse in southern Africa, where Sarah K. Gess has made the study of aculeate Hymenoptera, including these fascinating insects, her life's work.

Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England.

 

David Christie (1995)