Africa
HILL OF DESTINY Author Peter Becker
‘This mountain is my mother,’ said Chief Moshesh to his missionary friend, Eugene Casalis, ‘and had it not been for her, you would have found my country without inhabitants.’ It was the year 1837, and he was referring to Thaba Bosiu, a sprawling, flat-topped hill crowned with lofty sandstone precipices – a magnificent stronghold situated to the immediate south of the Caledon River, in the heart of South Africa. Moshesh was reflecting on the turbulent history of the Basotho tribe he had founded some fifteen years before out of a motley rabble of emaciated, war-weary warriors, starving women, children and grey heads, and bands of cannibals. But by 1837 he was middle-aged and prosperous and deeply revered by his subjects.
A contemporary of the Zulu conquerors Shaka and Dingane and the Matabele tyrant, Mzilikazi, Moshesh was known throughout the tribal territories of South Africa and the British Cape Colony. Of humble descent, he had not always lived on Thaba Bosiu, but had fled together with a handful of followers into its impregnable heights in 1824, during the Dark Age of South African tribal history – a ghastly era of internecine warfare launched by the mighty Shaka.
In tracing Moshesh’s extraordinary life, what struck me was the profound influence the pioneer missionaries had on his life, men like Eugene Casalis and Thomas Arbousset. They not only led him to Christ but transformed the Basotho nation into what is Lesotho today … a Christlike country. Moshesh saw them as sent by God to lead the Basotho people out of darkness into a new world of enlightenment.
A magnificent read!
RULE OF FEAR Author Peter Becker
Bloody story of Dingane
He killed a king – and became one of the most bloodthirsty tyrants in African history.
His name was Dingane. It was he who slew his own brother Shaka, one of the most revered rulers in Zulu history, and initiated a new era of bloody tyranny. His fear of retribution, together with the coming of the white man, resulted in an appalling massacre like something from the gore-swamped days of Nero’s Rome.
Peter Becker, renowned author of PATH OF BLOOD and HILL OF DESTINY (both available in Panther Books), has written a savagely exciting study of one of the most controversial and violent leaders of any nation at any time.
Inter-woven in this biography on Dingane is the work done by the first 2 missionaries to come to Natal and seek to win this man for Christ – Alan Gardiner and Francis Owen. How can one but admire these missionaries, seeking to win for Christ one of the most bloodthirsty tyrants in African History?
THE SHACKLED CONTINENT Author Robert Guest
The Shackled Continent, Robert Guest’s fascinating first book, seeks to diagnose the sickness that continues to hobble Africa’s development. Why are so many African nations at war? Why has AIDS affected Africa so much more than any other region, causing life expectancy in several churches to plummet to below forty? Why are so many African governments corrupt, inept and despotic? Why has foreign aid proven such a failure?
With an engaging combination of first-hand experience and economic insight. Robert Guest offers trenchant and sometimes controversial explanations for this state of affairs. The Shackled Continent examines the logic behind the chaos in Congo and the economic madness of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. With vivid reporting from big slums and small villages in Malawi, the book explains why so few Africans own their own homes. To illustrate how bad roads and bribe-hungry policemen affect African business, the author rides a beer truck into the Cameroonian rainforest and is stopped at roadblocks forty-seven times.
There are stories of hope here, too. Uganda, for example, has managed to curb the spread of AIDS. Botswana is peaceful and prosperous. South Africa, the continent’s economic engine, has avoided a full-blown civil war.
Printed in 2005, the book made for fascinating reading, a must-read for anyone wanting to find out why Africa is in the state it is in today.
AFRICA’S MOMENT Author Jean-Michel Severino and Olivier Ray
The twenty-first century will be the century of Africa. This continent was once seen as empty, rural, animist, poor and forgotten by the world. Now, fifty years after independence, it is full to bursting, urban and monotheist. If poverty and violence are still rampant, economic growth has taken off again and a middle-class is developing. Africa will hold a central place in the big issues facing the world today. If it once made a ‘false start’, here it is back again – in the fast lane.
The West has missed the turnaround of a continent that will no longer wait for us. How can we best understand it? Demography, economics, politics, diplomacy, cultures and religions – this book presents the different facets of this new Africa, which will soon have a billion people, at the mid-point of the most rapid population boom that humanity has ever known.
“The West is wedded to a retrograde vision of Africa’s past and knows nothing of its present, even less of its future. This unprecedented book forces revision of that outlook by addressing a world, just a few decades from now, where one in four human beings will be African.’
Keith Hart. University of London
A fresh, encouraging look at Africa and its future.
HOLDING UP THE SKY Author S. Blackburn-Wright
An African Life
This astonishing autobiographical work is the story of a young Australian woman’s complex love affair with Africa and its people. SANDY BLACKBURN-WRIGHT lived and worked in South Africa between 1988 and 2003 – years coinciding with some of the nation’s most tumultuous and significant events, including the release of Nelson Mandela. As a community development worker in the townships, she witnessed the brutality of life under the apartheid regime. At the same time, she was bewitched by the uncrushable spirit of the people, the richness of the culture and the beauty of the land. Through her work, and her marriage to a black South African, she became part of a world few white women have entered, experiencing first hand the joys and challenges of township life and mixed-race families.
This was a heart-wrenching journey. It is a true story beautifully told, with honesty, integrity and courage. Living her story out in South Africa between 1988 to 2003 made it even more riveting.
THE BRIGHT CONTINENT Author Dayo Olopade
For years, Dayo Olopade struggled to reconcile the media’s image of Africa as warring, impoverished and pitiful with the Africa she had known since childhood: resilient, joyful and innovative, a continent of impassioned community leaders. In the Bright Continent, she reports firsthand on the explosion of commercial opportunities and technological innovations that are improving outcomes for families, children and the environment in Africa now.
The Bright Continent joins the conversation started by authors such as Jeffrey Sachs, Nicolas Kristof and Dambisa Moyo. Olopade rejects stale and ineffectual foreign interventions, arguing that the increasingly globalized challenges the continent faces can and must be addressed with the tools Africans are already using to solve these problems themselves. In many ways, Africa’s model of doing more with less – of working around dysfunctional institutions to establish strong informal networks – can be a powerful model for the rest of the world. Behind the dire headlines, Olopade
THE BOY WHO NEVER GAVE UP Author Dr. Emmanuel Taban
A Refugee’s Epic Journey to Triumph
In 1994, 16-year-old Emmanuel Taban walked out of war-torn Sudan with nothing and nowhere to go after he had been tortured at the hands of government forces, who falsely accused him of spying for the rebels. When he finally managed to escape, he literally took a wrong turn and, instead of being reunited with his family, ended up in neighbouring Eritrea as a refugee.
Over the months that followed, young Emmanuel went on a harrowing journey, often spending weeks on the streets and facing many dangers. Relying on the generosity of strangers, he made the long journey south to South Africa, via Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, travelling mostly by bus and on foot.
When he reached Johannesburg, 18 months after fleeing Sudan, he was determined to resume his education. He managed to complete his schooling with the help of Catholica missionaries and entered medical school, qualifying as a doctor, and eventually specializing in pulmonology.
Emmanuel’s skill and dedication as a physician, and his stubborn refusal to be discouraged by setbacks, led to an important discovery in the treatment of hypoxaemic COVID-19 patients; By never giving up, this son of South Sudan has risen above
THE AFRICANS Author David Lamb
“Africa is a continent of surprises; nothing is ever quite as it seems and nothing ever happens quite as it is supposed to.
Part political travelogue and part contemporary history, this book is the result of four years spent in Africa by the Los Angeles Times correspondent. David Lamb bounced from wars to coups, travelling through forty-eight countries and over 300,000 miles, interviewing witch doctors and presidents, guerrilla leaders and university professors, shanty town dwellers and slick entrepreneurs, seeking always to capture and to understand the contradictions of this diverse continent and its many peoples, caught between the mistakes of the past and the possible calamities of tomorrow.
Exhaustive in scope, fascinating in details, The Africans is a balanced, objective yet highly readable book that peels away Western misconceptions and romantic notions. It shocks as it informs – and offers a small hope for the future.”
This is the best general survey of Africa, describing what happened after many African countries gained their independence between the 1970’s and the 1980’s. It is essential reading for an understanding of modern-day Africa.
AFRICA Author B. Harden
Dispatches from a fragile continent
Harden was the chief reporter for the Washington Post and spent from 1985 – 1990 reporting on Africa. This book, published in 2000, is a remarkable and controversial book describing what happened in Sudan, Kenya, Congo, Zambia, Nigeria and Ghana during those early years. The issues he addresses are:
- The incompetent intervention of Western Government
- The battle between the old tribal way of life and modernity
- Presented through gripping true stories about individual people.
Williams Shawcross wrote:
“Harden evokes passion, argument and fabulous stories about the destruction of Africa at the end of the millennium.”
“Initially, I wanted to write a story about my family in East Africa and about my dad’s life. But as I went into East Africa, these tales became the backdrop, says Hartley.
He goes back and gives us this true account of what happened in East Africa in the 1990’s. He gives vivid accounts of the awful tragedies in Somalia, Ethiopia, Burundi and Rwanda, of the massacres, famines, civil wars, warlords, botched U.N. relief efforts and the wild excesses of the pack who followed them. It is horrendous what happened, especially during the genocide in Rwanda, at times very disturbing reading.
You will struggle to find a more authentic, urgent account of the underbelly of contemporary Africa. Hartley has created a disturbing, compelling account of what happened in East Africa in the 1990’s and is a must read for anybody who wants to understand East Africa today.
THE ZANZIBAR CHEST Author A. Hartley
“Initially I wanted to write a story about my family in East Africa and about my dad’s life. But as I went into East Africa these tales became the backdrop, says Hartley.
He goes back and gives us this true account of what happened in East Africa in the 1990’s. He gives vivid accounts of the awful tragedies in Somalia, Ethiopia, Burundi and Rwanda, of the massacres, famines, civil wars, warlords, botched U.N. relief efforts and the wild excesses of the pack who followed them. It is horrendous what happened, especially during the genocide in Rwanda, at times very disturbing reading.
You will struggle to find a more authentic, urgent account of the underbelly of contemporary Africa. Hartley has created a disturbing, compelling account of what happened in East Africa in the 1990’s and is a must read for anybody who wants to understand East Africa today.
DARK STAR SAFARI Author Paul Theroux
(Overland from Cairo to Cape Town)
“Safari” in Swahili means ‘a journey, typically a long one’. In Dark Star Safari, Theroux’s itinerary is Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town – down the Nile, through Sudan and Ethiopia, to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe landing up in Cape Town, journeying by train, boat, cattle truck, and taxis. He passes through some of the most beautiful – and often life-threatening landscapes on earth.
Having been to most of these countries, I loved reading this book, it brought back so many wonderful memories. If you love Africa, and love travel, here is a book for you, you will love it.
NO STOPPING FOR LIONS Author S. Glynn
(A year-long African journey)
“Africa is ‘a worm’ that makes its way stealthily into your being. Sometimes it sleeps and sometimes it wriggles about, but it’s there, just under your skin”.
Jo Glynn and her husband Neil had no idea of the truth of this statement when they set out to travel around Africa for a year, but from South Africa to Kenya, Malawi to Uganda, Tanzania to Zimbabwe, the warmth of the people, beauty of the landscape and awe-inspiring diversity of the wildlife soon worked their way into the travelers’ hearts and souls. Entirely dependent on their trusty Toyota Landcruiser, ‘the Troopy’, and often with only each other for company, Jo and Neil found their journey not only opened their eyes to the wonders of this most mysterious of continents, but also allowed them to reach a deeper appreciation of each other and their relationship. In addition, it enabled Neil to find his childhood home in what was once Northern Rhodesia, giving new life to his much-cherished memories,
From encounters with waterlogged warthogs and lions who don’t know how to hunt to conversations with street kids orphaned by the AIDS epidemic and Maasai warriors grappling with the clash between tradition and progress, Jo has captured the humour and the pathos, the tragedy and the wonder that is Africa.”
Another wonderful read covering the countries I have visited, from Cape Town to Entebbe in Uganda. A delightful read …