My Name Is Zuma


Book Description

Zuma is a 12-year-old boy with autism, from California. Sometimes, Zuma feels discouraged because he is not as popular among the kids in his community. His potential is trapped; locked inside his mind. While other kids can describe their thoughts with words, Zuma thinks in pictures. He struggles with words, and has a hard time expressing himself. His dad is stressed out, and unhappy. Luckily, help comes from professionals who know the perfect strategy to bring out Zuma’s potential to read, speak, and play. They understand that Zuma is not the only one who is different; everyone is. They help Zuma and his family to understand that individuals with disabilities are just as capable as everyone else. Zuma confronts his fears, and ultimately, sets the stage for inclusive education.




Zuma


Book Description

The first edition of Zuma, published in late 2008, concluded with Jacob Zuma's future balancing on a knife's edge. National elections loomed, but so did corruption charges and endless court battles. Since then Zuma's star has spectacularly risen - the corruption charges were dropped, he led the ANC to election victory and duly became President of South Africa, and his new cabinet and government appointments were generally well received. But he has also recently suffered a huge blow with revelations of another love-child, this time with the daughter of soccer supremo Irvine Khoza. Many of his supporters have distanced themselves from him, and Zuma is looking isolated. Pundits are once again wondering how long he'll survive as President. In this revised and updated edition, Jeremy Gordin takes the reader right up to present. He covers in detail the highs and lows of Zuma's past 18 months, including the final salvoes of his legal battles, as well as his first year as President. New material in this edition also includes the 'Pedro' document (a document Zuma wrote in 1986), and accurate information on his wives and children.




Bring Me My Machine Gun


Book Description

The "Financial Times"' world news editor tells the epic story of post-apartheid South Africa--a country once so full of promise, now teetering on the brink of chaos




Spearheading Debate


Book Description

As South Africa’s democracy matures, this book raises pertinent questions: How does the state mediate between traditional tribal authority and constitutional law in matters such as initiation customs or the rights of women, children, and homosexuals? What are the limitations on artistic freedom in a society where sensitivities over colonial- and apartheid-era representations are acute? How does race open up discussions or close down dialogue? and What are the parameters of freedom of speech when minorities fear that hateful language may trigger actual violence against them? Examining disputes over South African art, music, media, editorial cartoons, history, public memory, and a variety of social practices, the culture wars' perspective is extended to new territory in this study, demonstrating its cross-cultural applicability and parsing critical debates within this vibrant society in formation.







Khwezi


Book Description

In May 2006 Jacob Zuma was found not guilty of the rape of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo – better known as Khwezi – in the Johannesburg High Court. Another nail was driven into the coffin of South Africa's fight against sexual violence. Vilified by Zuma's many supporters, Khwezi was forced to flee South Africa and make a life in the shadows, first in Europe and then back on the African continent. A decade after Zuma's acquittal, Khwezi died. But not before she had slipped back into South Africa and started work with journalist Redi Tlhabi on a book about her life. About how, as a young girl living in exile in ANC camps, she was raped by the 'uncles' who were supposed to protect her. About her great love for her father, Judson Kuzwayo, an ANC activist who died when Khwezi was almost ten. And about how, as a young adult, she was driven once again into exile, suffering not only at the hands of Zuma's devotees but under the harsh eye of the media. In sensitive and considered language, Red Tlhabi breathes life into a woman for so long forced to live in hiding. In telling the story of Khwezi, Tlhabi draws attention to the sexual abuse that abounded during the struggle years, abuse that continues to plague women and children in South Africa today.




Enemy of the People


Book Description

Enemy of the People is the first definitive account of Zuma's catastrophic misrule, offering eyewitness descriptions and cogent analysis of how South Africa was brought to its knees – and how a people fought back. When Jacob Zuma took over the leadership of the ANC one muggy Polokwane evening in December 2007, he inherited a country where GDP was growing by more than 6% per annum, a party enjoying the support of two-thirds of the electorate, and a unified tripartite alliance. Today, South Africa is caught in the grip of a patronage network, the economy is floundering and the ANC is staring down the barrel of a defeat at the 2019 general elections. How did we get here? Zuma first brought to heel his party, Africa's oldest and most revered liberation movement, subduing and isolating dissidents associated with his predecessor Thabo Mbeki. Then saw the emergence of the tenderpreneur and those attempting to capture the state, as well as a network of family, friends and business associates that has become so deeply embedded that it has, in effect, replaced many parts of government. Zuma opened up the state to industrial-scale levels of corruption, causing irreparable damage to state enterprises, institutions of democracy, and the ANC itself. But it hasn't all gone Zuma's way. Former allies have peeled away. A new era of activism has arisen and outspoken civil servants have stepped forward to join a cross-section of civil society and a robust media. As a divided ANC square off for the elective conference in December, where there is everything to gain or to lose, award-winning journalists Adriaan Basson and Pieter du Toit offer a brilliant and up-to-date account of the Zuma era.




You Gotta Know the Territory


Book Description

In this fast-paced murder mystery, Detective Joe Zuma returns from his vacation in Cape Code, with his wife, Claudia, a landscape painter, who finds employment as an art teacher in a private school in Santa Monica. Zuma is immediately confronted with the murder of two women, one of whom was a teacher at the same school Claudia is now working in. A parent at the private school is eager to have Claudia work with her child who is depressed. Zuma recognizes the parent as the murder suspect from an earlier crime which Zuma had been unable to secure enough evidence for a trial. Claudia’s painting interests are captured by the hobos who live on the bluffs in Santa Monica, an area adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. Her painting of a hobo is stolen, and its investigation leads to the uncovering of drug-selling connections between the hobo, his very rich and successful brother, the murdered teacher and her German-speaking parents, a principal and students, a homeless woman, as well as the murders of three of these characters. Interspersed between the solving of these murders is the romantic bantering of Claudia and the Bob Dylan–loving Zuma and their genuine love. The resolution to the previously unsolved murder involves the transformation of Zuma from a single-minded pursuit of justice to a delicate balancing of justice and mercy.




Lieutenant Hotshot


Book Description

“You are in the valley now, Modetse, but one day you’ll come out on the mountain,” is what Mama Zuma tells him, but having been brainwashed by the horror of the Lord’s Resistance Army what chance can Modetse ever have of truly finding himself again, or rescuing his little sister Thandi?




Turning and Turning


Book Description

South Africans often are deeply polarised in our perspectives of the present and the past. Our ‘ways of seeing’ are fraught with division, and we fail to understand the complexities when we do not see what lies beneath the surface. There is no denying that the Jacob Zuma presidency took a significant toll on South Africa, exacerbating tensions and exposing the deep fractures that already exist in our society along the lines of race, class and even ethnicity. The Zuma years were marked by cases of corruption and state capture, unprecedented in their brazenness, and increased social protests – many of which were accompanied by violence – aggressive public discourse, lack of respect for reason and an often disturbing resistance to meaningful engagement. Importantly, those years also placed enormous pressure on our democratic institutions, many of which still bear the scars, and challenged the sovereignty of the Constitution itself. As an analyst and governance specialist at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) for twelve years, February has had a unique perch. Turning and turning is a snapshot of her IDASA years and the issues tackled, which included work on the arms deal and its corrosive impact on democratic institutions, IDASA’s party-funding campaign, which February helped lead, as well as work on accountability and transparency. Combining analytical insight with personal observations and experience, February highlights the complex process of building a strong democratic society, and the difficulties of living in a constitutional democracy marked by soaring levels of inequality. There is a need to reflect on and learn from the country’s democratic journey if citizens are to shape our democracy effectively and to fulfill the promise of the Constitution for all South Africans.




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