Zebra

Author of Pale Native, Max du Preez speaks to Jan Hennop, new editor for DispatchOnline, about his book, the ANC and Julius Malema. Gcina Ntsaluba attended a special “Dispatch Dialogue” night with du Preez and reports on his speech during the event.

VETERAN journalist, writer and political commentator Max du Preez was in town to talk about his latest book Pale Native, and the thrills and dangers of frontline investigative journalism.

Speaking in his characteristic straight-shooting and uncompromising manner at the Dispatch Dialogue on Tues day night, Du Preez said the book was an entertaining analysis of southern African politics, filled with drama and action.

It takes readers on a remarkable journey, from the contradictions of history to the triumphs and troubles of the present, to the halls of Parliament, burning townships, Presidents, guerillas, and hit men.

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Watch: “Three questions for Max du Preez”:

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Book details

• Pale Native: Memories of a Renegade Reporter by Max du Preez
  EAN: 9781770220607
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Dwars: Mymeringe van ’n Bleek Boorling deur Max du Preez
  EAN: 9781770220560
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

What has become, Max du Preez wonders aloud in his latest column, of that once glorious political party, Africa’s oldest, the ANC? Why the silence from Luthuli House on the antics of Julius Malema? Feeling similarly frustrated? Here’s your chance to vent with Max:

The ANC has become an insult to all those who carry its membership cards and those who voted for it last April – and to the many who died for it over the years.

Yes, sir, I mean you too, you who loves sending angry messages, often with accusations of racism, to the News24.com comments section whenever anyone criticises the government or those in Luthuli House.

What has become of the self-respect of this once proud organisation that was formed 98 years ago and brought us giants such as Sol Plaatje, Albert Luthuli, OR Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Chris Hani and Nelson Mandela?

• Read the complete article

Book details

• Pale Native: Memories of a Renegade Reporter by Max du Preez
  EAN: 9781770220607
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Dwars: Mymeringe van ’n Bleek Boorling deur Max du Preez
  EAN: 9781770220560
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

To mark the publication of the revised, updated edition of Max du Preez’s classic memoir, Pale Native – now also available in Afrikaans – the Daily Dispatch brings readers an excerpt from the book. Remember the UDF with Max – and watch out for a sting in the tail of his analysis:

By 1983, I had witnessed the collapse of Portuguese colonialism in our region, the uprisings in Soweto and other townships, the killing of Steve Biko and the SADF’s wars in Namibia, Angola and other frontline states. I knew by then apartheid and minority rule were evil, dangerous and unsustainable.

But I was part of the white, privileged, authoritarian, chauvinist, racist Afrikaner establishment. I felt threatened by black people. So how does one break out of that and find a new political home? Well, I looked around and the only democrats I could find who seemed to want someone like me and had a vision for the future I could believe in were the UDF – people like Allan Boesak, Azhar Cachalia, Christmas Tinto, Murphy Morobe, Terror Lekota, Johnny Issel, Andrew Boraine, Trevor Manuel, Sydney Mufamadi, Cheryl Carolus, Valli Moosa, Frank Chikane and Desmond Tutu.

The UDF consisted of Christians, Muslims, Jews, communists, trade unionists, entrepreneurs, socialists, social democrats, intellectuals and workers, men and women from the cities and the deep rural areas, from every region of our country. What kept them together was their dream of freedom, dignity, democracy and justice. If you believed that apartheid should end and be replaced by a fair system where the race, ethnicity or gender of citizens did not determine their standing in society, you were welcome.

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Book details

• Pale Native: Memories of a Renegade Reporter by Max du Preez
  EAN: 9781770220607
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Dwars: Mymeringe van ’n Bleek Boorling by Max du Preez
  EAN: 9781770220560
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

In a piece that has drawn a large amount of comment since being published in the current Mail & Guardian, Richard Calland finds himself astonished by the airless atmosphere that Parliament served up for Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation address. The ANC’s gone cold on its man, he writes:

For 15 years I have wended my way up through the labyrinth of corridors and stairs to the press box high up above the Speaker’s lectern in the National Assembly to attend the State of the Nation address — “Sona”, as it is now jocularly known. I don’t think I have missed one since 1996.

As with attending a live football or cricket game, there are advantages and disadvantages to being there. All you see of the president delivering his Sona is the top of his head — if you are lucky and can lean over the balcony from the front row.

His face can be seen on the big screens adjacent to the press box — but then you might as well be at home watching it on TV. But if you are there, you can gauge the atmosphere, the political temperature.

• Read the complete article (and scroll down for the lengthy comments list)

Book details

• Anatomy of South Africa: Who Holds the Power? by Richard Calland
  EAN: 9781868729036
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Max du Preez is al om die beurt geprys en verkwalik vir sy kritiek oor President Jacob Zuma en die ANC (veral teen Julius Malema en die jeugliga). Díe keer maak Du Preez egter ‘n interessante vergelyking tussen Zuma en vorige Afrika-konings of Opperhoofde soos Moshoeshoe en Sobhuza. Wil Zuma koning kraai of President wees vra hy. Baie sal sê die antwoord is eenvoudig – kyk hoe het Zuma dan gemaak toe ‘n jong man hom die week glo gevloek het – die jong lat is reguit selle toe gestuur. Die reaksie wys meer na ‘n verontwaardigde heerser as ‘n demokratiese president of hoe? Die onderstaande artikel is in Beeld gepubliseer kort voor President Zuma se power staatsrede.

Pres. Jacob Zuma gedra homself al hoe meer soos ’n tradisionele Afrika-koning of opperhoof eerder as die president van ’n moderne regstaat.

Ek bedoel nie nare kêrels soos Shaka of Mzilikazi nie; ek bedoel goedaardige opperhoofde soos Sekhukhune van die Bapedi, Sobhuza van die Swazi en Moshoeshoe van die Basotho. Hulle was al drie groot nasiebouers en het stabiliserend op hul omgewing ingewerk.

Toevallig – of juis nie? – was dié drie konings ook bekend daarvoor dat hulle vreeslik baie vroue en kinders gehad het.

Moshoeshoe (1786 – 1870) was een van die eerste leiers in suider-Afrika wat sy koninkryk eerder gekonsolideer en verdedig het as om oorlog te maak. Hy was die koning wat na sy onderdane geluister het; die diplomaat en vredemaker; die inklusiewe, verdraagsame staatsman.

• Lees die volledige artikel in Beeld

Boekbesonderhede

• Dwars: Mymeringe van ’n Bleek Boorling deur Max du Preez
  EAN: 9781770220560
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Zebra Press en Boekehuis nooi jou uit na ‘n gesprek tussen Tim du Plessis, redakteur van Beeld en Max du Preez, skrywer van onder andere Pale Native wat nou beskikbaar is in Afrikaans as Dwars: Mymeringe van ’n bleek boorling.

Sien jou daar!

• Datum: Saterdag, 13 Februarie 2010
• Tyd: 11:00 VM vir 11:30 VM
• Plek: Boekehuis, h/v Lothbury & Fawley strate
  Aucklandpark
  Johannesburg | Map
• Gasspreker: Tim du Plessis
• RSVP: boekehuis@boekehuis.co.za, 011 482 3609

Boekbesonderhede

• Dwars: Mymeringe van ’n bleek boorling deur Max du Preez
  EAN: 9781770220560
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

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.

• Read the complete article in the Mail & Guardian

Book details

• White Power: The Rise and Fall of the National Party by Christi van der Westhuizen
  EAN: 9781770073050
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Political commentator Richard Calland’s 2006 book Anatomy of South Africa dissected the pre-Polokwane power relations that held sway in the country. He’s now working on a new book that maps the state of play under Jacob Zuma. Calland gives us a preview of his thinking in this recent column on Zuma’s still somewhat inchoate power web:

Taking stock after nearly eight months in office, what is the “State of Zuma”? Because I had low expectations, he has exceeded them. I had low expectations not because I am cynical or because of Zuma’s limitations per se, but because I have learned to be realistic about what an individual political leader can do with problems of the scale, density and complexity of the modern age.

As he is bound, therefore, to fail, does it matter how badly? Which calls to mind Toby Ziegler’s recall in the iconic West Wing series of the exchange between Princes Richard and Geoffrey in The Lion in Winter as they hear King Henry approach their dungeon: “You fool! As if it matters how a man falls down,” says Geoffrey. And Richard says, “When the fall’s all that’s left, it matters a great deal.”

Zuma is failing rather well — or better than expected. With the ignoble exceptions of advocate Lawrence Mushwana to the human rights commission and Menzi Simelane as National Director of Public Prosecutions, his appointments have been solid — unspectacular and largely uncontroversial.

• Read the complete article in the Mail & Guardian

Book details

• Anatomy of South Africa: Who Holds the Power? by Richard Calland
  EAN: 9781868729036
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

The entire political landscape has changed since Max du Preez first published his acclaimed book, Pale Native: Memories of a Renegade Reporter, in 2003.

This revised, updated edition has new chapters on the ‘”bloodless coup” of Polokwane, the demise (and an updated assessment) of Thabo Mbeki, the Zuma and Malema Show, the rise of Cope and the 2009 election, the country’s slide into systemic corruption and the spectacular crash of the SABC, as well as the controversies in Afrikaner culture and politics (the Free State University racist video, the De la Rey song and the language debate at Stellenbosch University).

The book will also be published in Afrikaans for the first time, under the title Dwars: Mymeringe van ’n Bleek Boorling.

A must-read from one of South Africa’s top opinion makers.

Book details

• Pale Native: Memories of a Renegade Reporter by Max du Preez
  EAN: 9781770220607
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Dwars: Mymeringe van ’n bleek boorling deur Max du Preez
  EAN: 9781770220560
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!