The Russian view of the Cape as represented in this volume may be unique. During the period in question, Russia had no cultural, political or economic ties with South Africa. Russians saw the Cape only as a convenient stopover en route to the Far East, to their country’s distant domains that could not be reached by sea otherwise. The Cape was one of the ‘exotic’ lands they would visit on such journeys, their first and only introduction to the African continent. Although amazed and perplexed by the ‘entirely different world’ they found here, Russian travellers would often draw unexpected parallels between life in their motherland and the realities of the Cape Colony. The selections include memoirs of such important Russian personalities as Yuri Lisyansky, Vasily Golovnin, Ivan Goncharov and Konstantin Posyet. Most of the texts appear in English for the first time.

In January 1900, galvanised by the daring of the Boers in taking on imperial Britain, the young Russian officer Yevgeny Avgustus set off for the Transvaal to fight in the Anglo-Boer War. Like most of the foreign volunteers who flocked to the Boer cause, he ended up on the Natal front. Avgustus and his companions joined the Krugersdorp Commando, and their experiences in the field are portrayed in vivid detail. The central part of this gripping account covers the Battle of the Tugela Heights in February 1900 and the Boers' subsequent retreat. The immediacy of Avgustus's writing captures his trepidation and excitement as he approaches the battlefield for the first time, as well as his experience of life on commando. The keen eye of this foreign volunteer brings to life a turning point in South African history. Avgustus is a gifted writer, and his narrative offers both acute observation and thoughtful introspection. A gripping portrayal of human frailty and courage in the face of mortal danger, A Russian on Commando highlights both the strange attraction and the absurdities of war.

Six centuries ago Polynesian explorers, who inhabited a cosmos in which islands sailed across the sea and stars across the sky, arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand where they rapidly adapted to new plants, animals, landscapes and climatic conditions. Four centuries later, European explorers arrived with maps and clocks, grids and fences, and they too adapted to a new island home. In this remote, beautiful archipelago, settlers from Polynesia and Europe (and elsewhere) have clashed and forged alliances, they have fiercely debated what is real and what is common sense, what is good and what is right. In this, her most ambitious book to date, Dame Anne Salmond looks at New Zealand as a site of cosmo-diversity, a place where multiple worlds engage and collide. Beginning with a fine-grained inquiry into the early period of encounters between Maori and Europeans in New Zealand (1769–1840), Salmond then investigates such clashes and exchanges in key areas of contemporary life – waterways, land, the sea and people. We live in a world of gridded maps, Outlook calendars and balance sheets – making it seem that this is the nature of reality itself. But in New Zealand, concepts of whakapapa and hau, complex networks and reciprocal exchange, may point to new ways of understanding interactions between peoples, and between people and the natural world. Like our ancestors, Anne Salmond suggests, we too may have a chance to experiment across worlds.

Issues for Nov. 1957- include section: Accessions. Aanwinste, Sept. 1957-

There is a group of Jews in South Africa that has been almost overlooked by local Jewish organisations. In fact they are not even viewed as an entity, but rather as an aggregate of individuals whose number is unknown. These are the Russian-speaking Jews from the former Soviet Union- South African Jewry's 'lost tribe'. Unlike Israel, Germany or the United States, South Africa did not experience the influx of hundreds of thousands of Soviet and post-Soviet Jews in the 1970s to 1990s. That is probably a reason why neither researchers nor journalists has ever considered them as a South African phenomenon. In addition, unlike those Jews from the ex-USSR in Israel, Germany or the United States, in South Africa they have not formed their own communities and do not play a prominent part in the existing ones. In fact, they usually appear to be unwilling to involve themselves with South African Jewish organisations. They keep their distance and are not as religious or Zionist as their locally-born counterparts and are generally not community oriented. To some observers they may even appear to be more Russian than Jewish. Generally speaking, ex-USSR emigres are not clearly bound to their Jewish identity. They might be Jews but do they manifest any 'Jewishness'?

In a compelling example of the cultural history of South Africa, Robert Ross offers a subtle and wide-ranging study of status and respectability in the colonial Cape between 1750 and 1850. His 1999 book describes the symbolism of dress, emblems, architecture, food, language, and polite conventions, paying particular attention to domestic relationships, gender, education and religion, and analyses the values and the modes of thinking current in different strata of the society. He argues that these cultural factors were related to high political developments in the Cape, and offers a rich account of the changes in social identity that accompanied the transition from Dutch to British overrule, and of the development of white racism and of ideologies of resistance to white domination. The result is a uniquely nuanced account of a colonial society.