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News & Views by Terry Bell
Browsing All Posts filed under »Book Reviews«
If We Must Die
Book review: If We Must Die by Stanley Manong. This is a major myth buster; a massively detailed autobiography that provides one of the finest insights to date of life in the ANC’s exiled uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) army in the crucial years following the 1976 student uprisings in South Africa.
The editor who was a spy
November 29, 2015
One of the most successful agents of South Africa's apartheid state was the editor in chief of the country’s leading Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Times. This claim is contained in a book by veteran journalist John Matisonn to be released this week.
Alex La Guma comes home
August 9, 2015
“Alex La Guma has come home.” With those words, a visibly emotional Blanche La Guma last month received the first book, “hot off the presses” containing three of her late husband’s best-known novels, all of them banned in the apartheid era. The occasion was the initial launch of Alex La Guma – A colossus revisited […]
Treachery and the quest for truth
March 14, 2015
Book Review: Askari — an exceptional book that, to quote author Jacob Dlamini, "complicates how we think about apartheid and its legacies, and reminds us of the stories that still refuse to be told.....we would do well to examine the taboos, the secrets and the disavowals at the core of our collective memories".
True building blocks for the future
June 16, 2014
Review: Book 'n Bricks by Sindiwe Magona. An inspirational and beautifully illustrated tale of a school that provides a signpost to a potentially more stable, egalitarian and healthy future.
A tale that is a warning & stark reminder
January 30, 2013
This book is much more than the very well told story of the life and tragic death of the young idealist; it is also a stark reminder of the mundane brutishness that can be unleashed when bigotry and power supercede justice.
Historical gallop reflected through a distorted prism
February 10, 2012
An archived and critical book review from 2004 dealing with RW Johnson's controversial South Africa: the first man, the last nation
An invaluable insight into apartheid’s ‘spooks’
January 6, 2011
Apartheid’s Friends — The rise and fall of South Africa’s Secret Service by James Sanders (John Murray) (First published: December, 2006) James Sanders is a researcher of note. He proved this with his doctoral thesis at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) which was published by Frank Cass in 2000 as South Africa […]
Terry Bell Writes 
December 21, 2015
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