Jacana Media: 155 books

Richard Pithouse, an activist intellectual who has been an important contributor to the South African public sphere for twenty years, offers a penetrating andbeautifully written exploration of the escalating crisis in South Africa in the Zuma era. Writing the Decline, often written with a view from...

Meet Philani Dladla who has one of the most inspiring young South African stories you’re ever likely to encounter. An avid reader with an insatiable desire for knowledge, Philani has used his love for books to overcome drug addiction and change his lot in life – while trying to do the same for...

Freedom Rider is an adventure in extreme endurance sport, as well as an inquiry into the unique story of our fascinating country. When journalist Kevin Davie started riding his mountain bike in remote, wide-open South African spaces he found himself on a 10 000 km journey that tested his courage and...

To celebrate her 14-year clean and sober birthday, Ferguson organises to take a R3.2 million Ferrari California out on a test drive for the day. Twenty minutes before she returns the car, she is involved in a spectacular car crash, during which she experiences a near-death collision. The crash is...

In 2003, Thabo Jijana's father was gunned down in a scrap between rival taxi associations who had been forced to operate from a single rank. A decade later, Thabo faces up to South Africa's most violent industry to try to figure out how and why his father was murdered. In this searing first-person...

This work is the long-awaited sequel to the historian Nigel Penn's award-winning book Rogues, Rebels and Runaways, in which he entertained and informed readers with stories of the lives of some remarkable characters from early Cape history. In this new volume Penn, a consummate raconteur and storyteller,...

Bright, articulate, and charismatic, former journalist and police spokesman McIntosh Polela has been on African television screens for many years. But behind a dazzling career, Polela’s troubled past haunts him. When he was a child, both his parents disappeared, leaving him and his sister Zinhle...

Experimenting with the narrative structure by crafting together snapshots, this short story collection touches upon topics as diverse as anorexia, cleaning the oven, the terror of losing a child, exile, infidelity, and desire. Using panache and hypnotic honesty, it traverses the terrain of loss and...

In this searing and revealing account of cricket in post-apartheid South Africa, Ashwin Desai deftly tells a story of promise and despair, the story of a new pitch; a quick start full of hope, followed by a steady erosion of the commitments needed to fulfil the promise of a level-playing field. Economic...

African Muckraking is the first collection of investigative and campaigning journalism written by Africans about Africa. The editors delved into the history of modern Africa to find the most important and compelling pieces of journalism on the stories that matter.This collection of 41 pieces of African...

Part tourist guide, part monograph, this book journeys through South Africa’s amazing wildlife reserves. Indicating what types of animals to find and in which provinces to find them, this record not only contains stunning pictures and pertinent, detailed information but also teaches wildlife enthusiasts...

What happens when a goofy, armchair-liberal white guy takes up with an Africanist shoe fetishist? Marrying Black Girls for Guys Who Aren’t Black finds out as it chronicles Hagen Engler’s journey from being the whitest person this side of a Radiohead concert to being ever so slightly blacker. Living...

“I wrestled with life and lost.” So begins the story of Michael, a corporate lawyer known to his colleagues and associates as Sir Marvin, who picks his way – sometimes delicately, but more often in his own blundering way – through the unfathomable intricacies that make up a life: love and...

Khalil, ‘the Companion’, is given his name by The One Above at his birth in 1903. Despite evidence of this divine interest, Khalil’s eighty-odd years of life remain fairly ordinary – even though many of these years are spent under the far from ordinary conditions of The System in South Africa....