Tag: book review

Originally, the Venda Building Society, VBS Mutual Bank was a small, little-known lender in Limpopo before it rocketed from obscurity in 2016 by giving President Jacob Zuma a controversial home loan to repay the state for improvements to his Nkandla homestead.

Today the focus on ‘a job’ is more pronounced than it has ever been before in our global commercial history. We are living on a planet that is rapidly becoming less and less sustainable and which needs to progressively take better care of its people, and vice versa.

Closing the Gap is an accessible overview of the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) and the impact it is set to have on various sectors in South Africa and Africa. The book explores the previous industrial revolutions that have led up to this point and outlines South Africa’s position been through each one.

What happens to an organisation when good governance and warning signs are ignored? The author had a ringside-seat at one of the worst financial catastrophes South Africa has seen and his new book Enabler or victim? KPMG SA and State Capture describes his experience as Chairman of KPMG during the turbulent period the firm experienced.

This collection offers a new theory of the public sphere. The notion that societies mediate issues through certain kinds of engagement is at the heart of the democratic project and often centres on an imagined public sphere where this takes place.

The dominant news media is often accused of reflecting an ‘elite bias’, privileging and foregrounding the interests of a small segment of society, while ignoring the narratives of the majority. Tell Our Story investigates the problem of disproportionate media representation and offers a hands-on demonstration of listening journalism and research in practice to promote a more active engagement between journalists and local communities.

This timely book analyses the crisis and chaos of journalism in contemporary South Africa at a period when the media and their role are frequently at the centre of public debate. The transition to digital news has been messy, random and unpredictable.

In 2016 Richard Wright was confronted with a diagnosis of rare pituitary cancer, a disease about which little is known, other than that it is usually terminal. In attempting to deal with this bleak knowledge, Richard defined what mattered most in his life, his true purpose, which was ensuring that his two young daughters would not have to grow up without their dad.

Life in a Time of Plague is the story of Britain under the first 75 days of its unprecedented COVID-19 lockdown, seen from the author's rural East Sussex valley home. From the refuge of a seemingly idyllic country idyll, the book monitors in bleak and forensic detail the failure of the Government to protect Britain, and its woeful response at every stage of the pandemic.

In an age of bewilderment, it is difficult to connect with our strange South African history. The events surrounding the ‘Jameson Raid’ of 1895, in which an ebullient Rhodes and his cronies tried to seize the old Transvaal Republic, demonstrate an early attempt at state capture.