Joe Modise, post-apartheid South Africa’s first defence minister.
Patrick Durand/Sygma via Getty Images
The authors of Joe Modise’s biography set out to debunk smears against him.
Former South African President and uMkhonto weSizwe leader Jacob Zuma dances at a party rally.
Michele Spatari / AFP via Getty Images
There’s confusion in South Africa about what’s driving the popularity of Jacob Zuma and his uMkhonto weSizwe party.
Former South African president Jacob Zuma.
Simon Maina/AFP via Getty Images.
Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe is now the largest party in KwaZulu-Natal and the fourth biggest nationally.
Cover detail of the book Guerrillas and Combative Mothers.
UKZN Press
The interviews in this book offer firsthand insights into women’s participation in the armed struggle against apartheid.
Jacob Zuma at the launch of his new party, uMkhonto Wesizwe, in 2023.
Fani Mahuntsi/Gallo Images via Getty Images
The ANC tied itself in knots defending Zuma’s destructive bad behaviour in the past. Acting against him now would require it to own up to its sins.
Former South African president Jacob Zuma is campaigning for a new opposition party opposition.
Chesnot/Getty Images
Jacob Zuma claims that his new political home, the Umkhonto we Sizwe Party, is the authentic ANC, not the one led by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, left, hosts his Tanzanian counterpart during a state visit in March 2023.
GCIS/Flickr
Ties between the two nations date back to Tanzania’s solidarity with the anti-apartheid struggle.
An artist’s impression of Gan Siyobonga memorial park in Israel.
Supplied by author
Gan Siyabonga is unique in Israel. It highlights a group that was both anti-apartheid and pro-Zionist.
Members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions sing political songs in 1987 in Johannesburg.
Walter Dhladhla/AFP via Getty Images
Struggle songs are relevant even in the post apartheid context because they continue to be an important way in which people deliberate on issues.
Mikhail Gorbachev at his news conference following a summit with US President Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986.
Photo by Bryn Colton/Getty Images
External changes, including the end of the Cold War, helped lead to the ending of apartheid. Gorbachev played a major role in that process.
Former South African president Jacob Zuma.
(Photo by Rajesh Jantilal/AFP via Getty Images
The posturing is bound to continue. But at the age of 78 Jacob Zuma’s long day in the sun is over.
South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters toyi-toyi at an anti-Israel protest.
PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP via Getty Images
South Africa’s famous toyi-toyi was adopted from Zimbabwean troops, who learned it in Algeria – showing the interconnected nature of Africa’s liberation struggles.
Rivonia trialist Denis Goldberg speaking at a gala event in 2011 to honour the surviving members of the Rivonia Trial.
Photo by Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images
Goldberg was the youngest Rivonia triallist. Segregated prisons meant he was sent to Pretoria, while his fellow accused were incarcerated on Robben Island.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela with former American world boxing champion Marvin Hagler. The undated photo was taken after Mandela’s release.
Louise Gubb/GettyImages
Prison life is about routine: each day like the one before; each week like the one before it, so that the months and years blend into each other.
The cover of ‘Seven Steps to heaven’.
From: Wolf's Kompaktkiste
The story of jazz in the ANC army-in-exile, Umkhonto we Sizwe culture is far more nuanced – and positive – than depicted in a new film.
South African President Jacob Zuma sings before his opening address at the 54th National Conference of the governing ANC.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
Zuma’s last address to South Africa’s governing party, the ANC, as its president, betrayed his strange way of dealing with issues. He came across as delusional and self-indulgent.
Oliver Reginald Tambo served as ANC president from 1967 to 1991.
Reuters
Factions within South Africa’s ANC nostalgically point to the example of Oliver Reginald Tambo whose seen as an exemplar of integrity, personifying an ideal leader who served the party selflessly.
A soldier with the 9th South African Infantry Battalion during a biennial training exercise with the US military in the Eastern Cape.
US Army/ Taryn Hagerman
One of the problems bedevilling South Africa’s army is being compelled to be everything to everybody. Its strategic direction is compromised by generals who pander to the whims of politicians.
ANC military veterans guard the party’s headquarters.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings
The militant talk and antics by the ANC’s ex-soldiers may seem like theatrics, but they are a chilling reminder of how Zimbabwe used armed militia to crash opponents and democracy.
Zimbabwean police beat up a man protesting the reintroduction of local banknotes.
REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo
From poetry to factual narratives and personal memoirs, these books are worth reading.