Zebra

The Fairy Godmother, Donna McCallum, has a firm opinion of South Africa’s 2010 vision particularly of the Soccer World Cup. She urges others to join her in becoming active members of the South African community, and in helping her steer the country towards a clearer dream. McCallum is the author of The Fairy Godmother’s Guide to Getting What You Want.

As a Fairy Godmother helping individuals and companies to get clear on their dreams, goals and visions; I am very cognisant that we have not defined a clear vision for South Africa post 2010 or certainly not one that I, as a South African Citizen, am aware of. And without a clear vision that can be translated between government, business, civil society and the average man on the street we are in danger of running around like a chicken with its head chopped off.

The 2010 FIFA World Cup has given us a goal as a nation – it has provided the impetus to invest in much needed infrastructure such as roads, it has created jobs and is a brilliant marketing tool for this country to catapult our tourism to even greater levels. As we herald in the New Year the country is experiencing the positivity, upliftment and energy that comes with reaching a goal. 2010 is a great year for South Africa, people are saying.

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Book details

• The Fairy Godmother’s Guide to Getting What You Want by Donna McCallum
  EAN: 9781770200210
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Even some of the world’s greatest inventors have their bad days. History’s Worst Inventions introduces fifty of humanity’s most dangerous discoveries and dreadful gadgets, not to mention the occasional success that was born of failure.

Starting with Icarus’s ill-fated flight, author Eric Chaline takes you on a tour of humanity’s creativity, greed, stupidity and inventiveness. From the ancient discoveries of asbestos and tobacco, to such modern-day mistakes as the subprime mortgage, History’s Worst Inventions revisits such intriguing but luckless contraptions as the steam-powered car and the atmospheric railway.

About the author

A graduate of Cambridge University, Eric Chaline majored in Japanese History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, at the University of London. He is conducting doctoral research in sociology at London’s South Bank University.

His previous publications include: The Book of Gods and Goddesses: A Visual Directory of Ancient and Modern Deities and Traveler’s Guide to the Ancient World: Ancient Greece.

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History is a catalogue of errors, and History’s Worst Decisions shines a light on fifty of the biggest. Starting with Adam and Eve’s original blunder in eating the apple, author Stephen Weir takes you on a tour from the Trojan War to the Enron scandal, meeting such famous culprits as Cleopatra, Winston Churchill and Robert Mugabe along the way.

History’s Worst Decisions doesn’t just point the finger at individuals; the actions of governments and corporations are also placed under scrutiny. The underlying motivations – often sinister, sometimes naïve – that propelled those responsible to commit their mistakes are unveiled, as is the lasting impact that their decisions have had on the world that we live in today.

About the author

Stephen Weir is a writer and publisher who has worked with authors as diverse as the Australian novelist Patrick White – who won the Nobel Prize for Literature – the noted British military historian John Keegan and the billionaire George Soros.

Book details

• History’s Worst Inventions: And the People Who Made Them by Eric Chaline
  EAN: 9781770220904
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• History’s Worst Decisions: And the People Who Made Them by Stephen Weir
  EAN: 9781770220911
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Ziphezinhle Msimango recently conducted a Q&A-style interview with Ryk Neethling, one of South Africa’s sporting gems and the subject of Clinton van der Berg’s Chasing the Dream. The picture that emerges is quite different from the sportsman’s public image: Neethling refers to himself as a hard-working Afrikaans boy who enjoys spending time with his friends.

If your house caught fire what would you save? I’ve been burgled so many times that most of my things have been stolen. I’m not precious about stuff, but I would save my autographed copy of Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom.

What are your creature comforts? My heated pool. In winter it’s nice to see steam coming from the pool when it’s freezing outside.

• Complete article at Times Live

Book details

• Chasing the Dream by Clinton van der Berg
  EAN: 9781770220300
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Intrepid journalist and author Christi van der Westhuizen expended quite a lot of time and resources working on her book, White Power: The Rise and Fall of the National Party – time and resources that she would not have cared to see come to nought, but which almost did.

In a fascinating article published in the Mail & Guardian, van der Westhuizen writes about when Eugene “Prime Evil” de Kock – one of the figures in the current Presidential Pardon brouhaha – nearly got her book banned, and why it is instead de Kock who should be banned, for life, from ever living as a free man:

On November 21 2007 De Kock succeeded in obtaining, on an ex parte basis, an urgent interim interdict from Judge Willie Hartzenberg in the Pretoria High Court. If made final, it would have had the effect of banning my book, White Power and the Rise and Fall of the National Party.

De Kock complained that a quotation from Leon Wessels, former deputy minister of law and order, in which he said “(a)nother example would be Eugene de Kock, braaiing meat and drinking for hours next to a corpse they had set on fire …”, was defamatory.

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Book details

• White Power: The Rise and Fall of the National Party by Christi van der Westhuizen
  EAN: 9781770073050
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Marlene Wasserman, of te wel Dr Eve, is sekerlik Suid-Afrika se mees bekende seksterapeut. Derduisende aanhangers se sy het hulle huwelike en verstand gered met haar raad en goeie wenke. Sy het glo ook hul lewenstyle verbeter met boeke soos The Pillowbook en Ageing and Sexuality.

Wie dan beter om vir Tiger Woods deur sy troebel toestand te help? Dr Eve het die afgelope naweek ‘n ope aanbod van hulp aan Woods gemaak in Rapport:

“Tiger, indien jy in Afrika is… kom na vore, gesels oor alles waardeur jy gaan. Gebruik die geleentheid om mense op te voed oor jou toestand en word ’n rolmodel vir mans.”

Dít is die ope uitnodiging wat dr. Marlene Wasserman aan die bekende gholfspeler rig. Sy is ook bekend as dr. Eve, een van die land se bekendste seksterapeute.

Wasserman sê sy kan nie voorbly met navrae oor seksverslawing nie sedert gerugte die ronde begin doen het dat die sportster in Montrose Place in Bischopscourt, Kaapstad, behandel word.

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Boekbesonderhede

• The Pillowbook: Creating a Sensual Lifestyle deur Marlene Wasserman
  EAN: 9781770200098
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• Ageing and Sexuality: Your 21st Century Guide to Lifelong Sensuality deur Dr Eve
  EAN: 9781770200784
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Foto te dank aan Mediaswirl

Dr Eve blogs about an experience that could have come straight as an object lesson out of her book, Ageing and Sexuality:

Her name was Joy. She wore a red dress. I was in a red dress. The other women wore black. It was New Year’s Eve, Miami. An evening of oysters, champagne and a burning desire to get home. I danced the night away. I met Joy over our red dresses and prawns. We exchanged names and the fact that we both have a love for dancing in that nameless, senseless place in which you know you can share a profound time together and will never see each other ever again. We danced together, we danced with our partners, but kept returning to dance together, two ageing women in their red dresses.

After we dutifully kissed our partners, with an understanding and few words, we both simultaneously slipped off our shoes and walked into the warm swimming pool in our red dresses – and swam and laughed. I felt the exhiliration, the freedom to express myself as I choose, to feel the joy in my body. With no words I kissed Joy farewell, knowing we had shared a special and unique evening and that was good enough. Dripping wet I jumped on the bus to return to the condo, pack and catch my plane home.

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• Ageing and Sexuality: Your 21st Century Guide to Lifelong Sensuality by Dr Eve
  EAN: 9781770200784
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Lately rugby player Joost van der Westhuizen’s sterling rugby record has been eclipsed by his personal tribulations off the field – many of which are discussed in his biography, Joost: The Man in the Mirror / Spieëlbeeld. However, the fact remains that in his day he was one of the Springboks’ finest assets. SA Rugby magazine is currently doing a count down of players they deem to be the 50 best since the bokkes’ re-admission into international rugby, and Joost ranks fifteenth:

Joost van der Westhuizen is widely regarded as one of the greatest scrumhalves of all-time. He played 89 Tests, making him the fourth most capped Springbok in history, and captained South Africa on 10 occasions.

He scored 38 tries in his Test career, making him the top try-scorer in Springbok history as well as the most prolific try-scoring Test scrumhalf of all-time. He formed a Springbok record and legendary halfback combination with Henry Honiball, was an integral member of the 1995 World Cup and 1998 Tri-Nations winning squads and was inducted into the International Rugby Hall of Fame in 2007.

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Book details

• Joost: Spieëlbeeld by David Gemmell
  EAN: 9781770220782
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• Joost: The Man in the Mirror by David Gemmell
  EAN: 9781770220737
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’n Versameling genotvolle essays geskryf vir Rhynie Greeff se vermaaklike rubriek, Brief uit Brittanje, wat sedert 2005 in verskeie Afrikaanse koerante verskyn het.

Briewe uit Brittanje dek, onder andere, amusante verbintenisse met Suid-Afrika, satiriese stukke soos ’n gesprek met Charles Dickens en komiese stories oor die vorstehuis, ’n seksmiljoenêr, ’n fisantejag en ’n F.W. de Klerk-gholfbaan in Brittanje. Grappige en soms oneerbiedige stukke oor politici, klimaatsverandering, geheime agente en sport word getemper met dieper insig oor rolspelers soos die Suid-Afrikaner wat die vader van die moltreinstelsel was, die beroemde vlieënier Sailor Malan en die Brit wat in 1910 met Uniewording ’n twee dae lange straatskouspel in Kaapstad met 6 000 deelnemers aangebied het. Die stories wyk ook uit na Doebai, Switserland en die VSA, en daar is oorgenoeg verskeidenheid om die leser geïnteresseerd te hou.

Die speelse humor maak die boek ontspannend en onweerstaanbaar, maar dit is ook leersaam en prikkelend. Dis ’n heerlike leeservaring vir oud en jonk.

Oor die outeur

Rhynie Greeff woon in Engeland en het ’n doktorsgraad in ekonomie. Hy is ’n voormalige diplomaat en sakeman in die chemiese bedryf, kommoditeitshandel, sportbestuur en telekommunikasie. Hy was baie jare lank in die topbestuur van Telkom.

Hy is ’n liedjieskrywer met “Baby You’re a Magician” wat deur Ray Dylan (EMI) opgeneem is en is ook die agtergrondstem op Karen Zoid se treffer “Afrikaners is Plesierig”. Sy roman, Daughter of the Stars, het in 1996 verskyn.

Sy bekende maandelikse rubriek, Brief uit Brittanje, verskyn sedert 2005 in Beeld, Sake-Beeld en Sake24 (ingesluit by Die Burger en Volksblad).

Boekbesonderhede

• Briewe uit Brittanje deur Rhynie Greeff
  Boektuisblad
  EAN: 9781770220768
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Dale Hefer, the author of the forthcoming From Witblits to Vuvuzelas: Marketing in the New South Africa, started Chillibush Communications with just a year of advertising experience under her belt. Two years later she’d built it into a sizable company with big name clients. Want to know how? Take a look at her Q&A with Entrepreneur Magazine:

For some people owning their own business is a lifelong ambition. Dale Hefer is one such person. As a university student she dreamed of having her own company. “It was an itch I just had to scratch,” she says, elaborating on some of the many business ventures she has embarked on, which include importing second hand clothes and selling them out of a hut, to selling made-in-China radios on the side of the road. Today she owns and runs Chillibush Communications, boasts a list of big-player clients as well as a nomination for the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur Awards.

Taking on the unknown

What’s remarkable about Hefer’s story is that she took on an industry notorious for its competitiveness, without knowing much about it. “I got a job with a media monitoring company and for the four years that I was there I was thinking ‘I want my own business’, but I realised there wasn’t much scope in that industry. Advertising sounded glamorous and sexy and I thought ‘How difficult can it be?’,” she remembers. But in spite of that early naivete, Hefer was not lacking in determination or practical sense. She joined an advertising agency to learn all she could about the industry. “I told myself I would be there for a year, which I was – to the day. I just sucked up every piece of knowledge I could and when I left I started Chillibush,” she relates.

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Book details

• From Witblits to Vuvuzelas: Marketing in the New South Africa by Dale Hefer
  EAN: 9781770200296
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