The South African War rounded off the British conquest of Southern Africa. Only now, a hundred years later, are some of the more baleful legacies of the war being addressed. This new history is an up-to-date account of the military struggle in South Africa including the whole web of miscalculations and shattered illusions that surrounded it which spread far beyond the battlefields.

More than 25 years have passed since South Africans were being shot or hacked or burned to death in political violence, and the memory of the trauma has faded. Nevertheless, some 20 500 people were killed between 1984 and 1994. Conventional wisdom has it that most died as a result of the ANC's people's war. Many books have been written on South Africa's political transition, but none has dealt adequately with the people's war. This book does. It shows the extraordinary success of the people's war in giving the ANC a virtual monopoly on power, as well as the great cost at which this was done. The high price of it is still being paid. Apart from the terror and killings it sparked at the time, the people's war set in motion forces that cannot easily be tamed. Violence, once unleashed, is not easy to stamp out. 'Ungovernability', once generated, is not readily reversed. For this new edition, Anthea Jeffery has revised and abridged her seminal work. She has also included a brief overview of the ANC's National Democratic Revolution for which the people's war was intended to prepare the way. Since 1994, the NDR has been implemented in many different spheres. It is now being speeded up in its second and more radical phase.

To quote the title of Nelson Mandela's 1994 autobiography, it has been a long walk to freedom. The history of South Africa, one of the oldest inhabited places on earth, is also the story of one of the newest nations, made and remade over the last century. This compellingly written history of South Africa, from prehistoric times through 1999, is the only up-to-date history of the nation. Beginning with an overview of the modern nation, this narrative history traces South Africa from prehistory through the European invasions, the settlement by Dutch, the imposition of British rule, the many internecine wars for control of the nation, the institution of apartheid, and, finally, freedom for all South Africans in 1994 and the Mandela years 1994-1999. Twin themes of colonial rule and racism intertwine over the course of the last three hundred and fifty years. Beck, a specialist in the history of South Africa, illuminates the conflicts, personalities, and tragedies of South African history over this period, culminating in the end of apartheid in 1994, the release from prison of Nelson Mandela, and his formation of a new government. Brief sketches of key people in the history of South Africa, a glossary of terms, maps, and a bibliographic essay of suggested reading complete the work. Every library should update its resources on South Africa with this engagingly written and authoritative history.

The Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) is one of the most intriguing conflicts of modern history. It has been labeled many things: the first media war, a precursor of the First and Second World Wars, the originator of apartheid. The difference in status and resources between the superpower Great Britain and two insignificant Boer republics in southern Africa was enormous. But, against all expectation, it took the British every effort and a huge sum of money to win the war, not least by unleashing a campaign of systematic terror against the civilian population. In The Boer War, winner of the Netherland's 2013 Libris History Prize and shortlisted for the 2013 AKO Literature Prize, the author brings a completely new perspective to this chapter of South African history, critically examining the involvement of the Netherlands in the war. Furthermore, unlike other accounts, Martin Bossenbroek explores the war primarily through the experiences of three men uniquely active during the bloody conflict. They are Willem Leyds, the Dutch lawyer who was to become South African Republic state secretary and eventual European envoy; Winston Churchill, then a British war reporter; and Deneys Reitz, a young Boer commando. The vivid and engaging experiences of these three men enable a more personal and nuanced story of the war to be told, and at the same time offer a fresh approach to a conflict that shaped the nation state of South Africa.

A new perspective on the last, longest and most expensive of Britain's colonial wars.

In the aftermath of World War II, South Africa's white government decreed a brutal system of segregation at the very moment when the United states began wresting with the civil rights movement. In "Loosing the Bonds", Robert Massie recreates the passions and struggles of these years, deftly exposing the way politics and personalities, money and morality interact in modern America. 40 photos. National print ads, media.