Many were filled with hopes as high as Mahjoub's stars as they crossed the kala pani (the sea) making their way from India to Durban in southern Africa in the late 1800s. But dreams of a better life and the opportunity to save money and return to the village as 'success stories' were not to be for many who returned 'home' with less than they had started out with, and found that home was no longer the place they had left. Neither were they the same people. Caste had been transgressed, parents had died and spaces for reintegration closed as colonialism tightened its grip. Home for these wandering exiles was no more.

A fusion of linguistic, religious and ethnic groups with rich, diverse roots and intersecting histories make up South Africa. However, the literature on most of the smaller groups tends to be thin and uneven and often tends to relegate them to the margins of the countrys major narratives. This innovative study introduces readers to a fascinating world of linguistic, religious and cultural politics in the South African port city of Durban from around 1950, the world of the Arabic Study Circle.

Is authoritarianism built into liberation structures? Is it inherited from colonial systems? Is liberal democracy inherently elitist? This ground-breaking collection of Essays on Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana and South Africa opens a long-awaited debate on these and other related issues.

This lively, engaging and witty collection of lectures brings together the renowned African and African-American scholars - Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates Jr and Wole Soyinka - to reflect on the public meaning of the iconic Nelson Mandela. Any one of these authors would have been a pleasure to read in his own right, but to have all three of them enjoined in this common intellectual effort is an enlightening experience.

"Salt comes from the north, gold from the south, but the word of God and the treasures of wisdom are only to be found in Timbuktu." 15th-century Malian proverb

In a joint project between South Africa and Mali, a library to preserve more than 200 000 Arabic and West African manuscripts dating from the 13th to the 19th centuries is currently under construction. It is the first official cultural project of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), the socio-economic development plan of the African Union, and when the library is built, the cultural role of Timbuktu will be revived, as it becomes the safehaven for the treasured manuscripts. The manuscripts prove that Africa had a rich legacy of written history, long before western colonisers set foot on the continent.

A valuable reference work and source of inspiration, this biographical dictionary lists the life histories of people who have contributed significantly to the course of South African history but who have not been widely recognised. Illustrated entries include extra-parliamentary political leaders from marginalised communities, women and other pioneers.

It is not only the lives of the illustrious monirity who achieve greatness that have much to teach us, but also those less famous who inspire and help to bulid a nation. This volumes offers biographies of journalists Percy Qoboza, Nata Nakasa and George Heard, composers such as Todd Matshikiza, writers such as Bloke Modisane. Community leaders, social scientists, educationists and many more.

Out of History brings together exciting and innovative work in History and the Humanities. Drawing upon papers which have been presented at the South African Contemporary History and Humanities Seminar at the University of the Western Cape, the book reflects upon how this space fashioned new histories of the South African past over the last twenty years. Written by leading scholars in fields of visual history, public history, heritage, linguistics, oral history and postcolonial studies, the contributions address critical questions about the production of academic knowledge and the status of the Humanities in the post-apartheid present.

Drawing on one of the most comprehensive surveys of post-apartheid attitudes to date, and employing innovative conceptual and methodological tools, Gibsons analysis offers both encouraging and disheartening insights into the success of the truth and reconciliation process. This is a major contribution to the literature on transitional justice and conflict resolution.

This is a Black feminist autoethnographic study, written from the perspective of an insider in both the Pentecostal community and Alexandra township. The book uncovers the daily lives of women in an African Pentecostal community while relating them to Black/African feminist and womanist theory.

This publication explores/hypothesises why apartheid was abandoned by South Africa's ruling white National Party. In this publication, written in the early years of South Africa's democracy, apartheid's decline is examined under three categories: occupational, geographical and political apartheid. It is thus of great historical and sociological interest to researchers and theorists.

In this revealing new book, Boas and Dunn explore the phenomenon of autochthony in contemporary African politics. Autochthony discourses enable the speaker to establish a direct claim to territory by the assertion of being an original inhabitant, a native literally a son of the soil