Latest titles

  • Seeking Sanctuary

    Seeking Sanctuary brings together poignant life stories from fourteen lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) migrants, refugees and asylum seekers living in Johannesburg, South Africa. ...

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  • Our Changing World-View

    Ranging from economics, psychology, a spurious rebuttal of evolution to a substantial revisionist history, and the perils of the ‘machine age’, the ten lectures (originally published in 1932) includes leading intellectuals and academics of the day, notably Jan Smuts, Robert Broom and R.F.A. Hoernlé. ...

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  • Doing Plays for a Change

    These five plays by one of South Africa’s foremost black playwrights were written between 1979 and 1986, a period in the country’s history marked by intense repression and escalating violence. ...

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  • Monarchs, Missionaries and African Intellectuals

    Centred on two case studies, Bhekizizwe Peterson examines the development of black theatre in South Africa and the entanglements of different intellectual traditions. ...

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  • Destroying Democracy

    Volume six of the Democratic Marxism series focuses on how decades of neoliberal capitalism have eroded the global democratic project and how, in the process, authoritarian politics are gaining ground. ...

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  • You Strike a Woman, You Strike a Rock / Wathint’ Abafazi, Wathint’ Imbokotho

    You Strike a Woman, You Strike a Rock / Wathint’ Abafazi, Wathint’ Imbokotho is a bristling example of protest theatre making during the height of apartheid, created in ensemble fashion in 1986. ...

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  • Public Intellectuals in South Africa

    The essays in this volume utilise the idea of public intellectualism as an interpretive prism and activist principle within a historical South African context. They offer fascinating insights into the thought and work of a number of public intellectuals across a range of disciplines – from journalism and arts criticism to history and politics. ...

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  • San Elders Speak

    This richly illustrated book documents San material culture through the words of four San elders in conversation with two academics. Their discussion, over seven days, of the world’s largest collection of San artefacts provides a novel perspective that enriches scholarly knowledge and brings past and present San ways of life vividly alive. ...

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  • Prisoners of the Past

    Building on the work of economic historian Douglass North and Ugandan political scholar Mahmood Mamdani, Friedman argues that the difficulties besetting South African democracy are legacies of the past, not products of the post-1994 era. ...

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  • Falling Monuments, Reluctant Ruins

    Examining questions around heritage, ruins and remembrance in post-apartheid South Africa, the contributors seek to understand how architecture contests or subverts the persistent conditions in order to promote social justice, land reclamation and urban rehabilitation. ...

    More about: Falling Monuments, Reluctant Ruins

News

News

Bhekizizwe (Bheki) Peterson, a great South African intellectual has passed

Thursday, June 17th, 2021

Wits University Press is saddened to hear and share the news about the passing of Bhekizizwe (Bheki) Peterson on 16 June 2021.  Born in 1961 in Alexandra Township, Johannesburg, Bheki Peterson was a great South African intellectual, Professor of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and talented artist. He published extensively on […]

Radio Soundings: South Africa and the Black Modern by Liz Gunner wins UJ’s Book of the Year Award for 2020

Tuesday, November 17th, 2020

Wits University Press is excited to announce that author Liz Gunner has won the University of Johannesburg’s Vice-Chancellor’s Distinguished Awards 2020: Book of the Year for Radio Soundings: South Africa and the Black Modern. These awards acknowledge excellence in teaching, research, innovation and service. Professor Elizabeth “Liz” Gunner is a Visiting Research Professor with the […]

Bill Freund – a tribute

Tuesday, August 18th, 2020

6 July 1944 – 17 August 2020 MEDIA RELEASE It is with great sadness that Wits University Press heard the news of the death of social historian, academic and intellectual, Bill Freund on Monday 17 August 2020.  Described as one of the grandmasters of South African economic historiography, he was a remarkable and prolific scholar and […]

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