Jonathan Ball Publishers

‘A gripping, poetic, vivid and deeply entertaining memoir.’ – Niq Mhlongo, author‘The courage of conviction Mashaba displays is something to behold.’ – Vuyo Mvoko, journalistThey say a mirror never lies. If that’s the truth, then my reflection was of...

As a young girl, Razina Theba makes her way every day to the tiny family flat on Vorster Street in Fordsburg. It is here, just outside of the Johannesburg city centre, where she grows up, playing in the Yard with countless cousins, learning to enjoy...

Ton Vosloo is one of South Africa’s most widely admired newspapermen and businessmen. Under his leadership, Naspers evolved from a print group into a media giant with investments across the world. In his memoir, Vosloo tells the story of his...

When he first visited Paris as a young student, artist Louis Jansen van Vuuren could never have imagined that one day he would end up owning a château in rural France.Almost French is the entertaining, often hilarious account of his induction over the...

‘If Steve Biko were alive today, we would have a country that gladly embraces African culture as the dominant driving force for how society is organised ...’In 1968, two young medical students, Steve Biko and Mamphela Ramphele, fell in love while...

The real significance of this book lies in the fact that it tells us more about the everyday life of black South Africans. It delves into the essence of black family life and the secret anguish of family members who often battle to cope. – Niq...

‘You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.’It’s easy to imagine that state capture began with Jacob Zuma and the Guptas. But you’d be wrong.Born out of the ANC Women’s League 20 years ago, Bosasa has come to be described as the...

Meet Daisy De Melker, who ‘lovingly’ prepared a flask of strychnine-laced coffee for her son. She is very different from Najwa Petersen, who carefully planned a ‘house robbery’ to eliminate her musician husband. Chané van Heerden placed her victim’s...

Just like in the squatter camp in Atteridgeville, there was no electricity in our new home. But here it was very different: it was safe. Only years later I figured out why the crime rate was so low in our village: there was nothing to steal.Born in...

‘Mark Shaw is the foremost analyst of organised crime in SA.’ – Jonny SteinbergAt the dawn of the country’s brave new democracy, Cape Town was at war. Pagad, which began as a community protest action against crime, had mutated into a sinister...

“Shanti is a heroine that the reader will not easily forget. The story that is told here is worth not only knowing but also remembering.” – Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, author, filmmaker and academicVividly set against the backdrop of 19th century India and...

‘There is only one way to survive and even thrive in the third world, and that is by being as Caucasian as you possibly can. Fact: white people have it easier in life because they deserve it.’Coconut Kelz is a young Caucasian woman trapped in a black...

In 1899, Deneys Reitz, then aged seventeen, enlisted in the Boer army to fight the British. He had learnt to ride, shoot and swim almost as soon as he could walk. When he fought as a member several Boer commandos, he made full use of these skills and...

In the 1990s deep-cover police agent RS536 took on the Durban underworld as part of a new organised crime intelligence unit. He rubbed shoulders with drug lords, smugglers and corrupt cops, and was instrumental in busting an international drug ring...

In the cut-throat world of low-cost airlines, competition is the name of the game. Not only up in the air but also on the ground.Crash and Burn is an insider’s tale of the South African airline industry over the past thirty years and the dramatic...

Mother. Nurse. Gold-digger. Cause célèbre. When Daisy de Melker stood trial in 1932, accused of poisoning her son and two husbands, the public couldn’t get enough of her. Crowds gathered outside court baying for blood, and she waved to them like a...

He swore to serve the people, but Jacob Zuma robbed us blind.This 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 the people...

‘When I joined the struggle as a 13-year-old boy in Soweto, I would never have imagined that one day I would blow the whistle on a special kind of corruption that was destroying the party and the values I had been fighting for all my life.’In 2010,...

‘From the vantage point of years in active politics, Tony Leon provides a lucid analytical balance sheet of SA Ltd 2021. Eschewing political correctness, Leon tells it as he sees it.’ – Judge Dennis Davis‘Anyone who wants to understand South Africa...

‘With remarkable courage, insight and access, Mark Shaw takes the reader into the darkest corners of South Africa’s ganglands.’ – Mandy WienerThe assassination of police investigator Charl Kinnear in Cape Town in 2020 was yet one more in a spate of...

Hitmen for Hire takes the reader on a journey like no other, navigating a world of paid hitmen, informers, rogue policemen, criminal taxi bosses, gang leaders, and crooked politicians and businessmen. Criminologist Mark Shaw examines a society in...

How to Steal a City is the gripping insider account of this intervention, which lays bare how Nelson Mandela Bay metro was bled dry by criminal syndicates, and how factional politics within the ruling party abetted that corruption.As a former senior...

Jock of the Bushveld is the classic and much-loved story based on the true experiences of Sir Percy Fitzpatrick and his Staffordshire bull terrier, Jock. The story begins in the 1880s, at the time of the South African gold rush, when young Fitzpatrick...

PRAVIN GORDHAN has been at the centre of many of the political storms that have torn through South Africa’s political landscape. He has been investigated by the Hawks, fired as finance minister, accused of running a ‘rogue unit’ at SARS and come up...