Biko’s Edge
Author: Tendayi Sithole
Biko’s Edge: Reimagining Black Critique offers a fresh and provocative look at Steve Biko’s intellectual legacy, revealing the originality and enduring relevance of his ideas. Moving beyond familiar interpretations of Black Consciousness, it explores Biko’s concept of generativity – how his thinking opens up new ways of seeing, being and imagining.
At its heart, the book argues that Biko’s work invites us to “think on the edge”, challenging dominant liberal frameworks. Through the lens of black critique, Biko’s insights become tools for reimagining justice, identity and resistance.
Sithole delves into four key themes: property, Radio Bantu, the common and the archive, each examined through Biko’s radical perspective. These explorations reveal how Biko’s ideas continue to unsettle and inspire, offering a bold critique of power and inequality.
This is an essential read for those engaged in social theory, black radical thought, philosophy, history, literature and black existentialism, as well as anyone passionate about racial justice and transformative intellectual work.
“Sithole deepens our understanding of Steve Biko’s philosophy by developing an innovative theoretical frame.” – Mandisi Majavu, Associate Professor in the Political and International Studies Department, Rhodes University
“Sithole frees Biko from the myth of being fixed in time – rendering his thought alive in the everyday. Biko’s Edge calls us towards self-determination, freedom, and the deep inner emergence of black strength. In these pages, Biko’s radical spirit endures.” – Thabang Monoa, Senior Lecturer in the Art History Department, University of Cape Town
Full title: Biko’s Edge
Subtitle: Reimagining Black Critique
Author: Tendayi Sithole
Publication: January 2026
ISBN: 978-0-7969-2718-7
Format: 229 x 152 mm
Extent: 196pp
Price: R320
White Gold and Thirsty Communities
Author: John Aerni-Flessner
White Gold and Thirsty Communities unpacks the dramatic story of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) – a feat of engineering, diplomacy and political intrigue. At its heart, it’s a tale of contrasts: a technical success that channels hundreds of millions of cubic metres of water from Lesotho to South Africa’s economic hub, Gauteng – yet a social failure for many communities in Lesotho left without access to that very water.
The book traces two decades of negotiations shaped by global geopolitics and local struggles, from Soweto and Maseru to Washington. Signed in 1986 by two undemocratic regimes – apartheid South Africa and a military-led Lesotho – the LHWP was born in a time of Cold War tensions, township uprisings and anti-apartheid resistance.
The story is not only about a bi-national project that supplies water to South Africa and hydropower to Lesotho. It follows the people – those displaced, those still waiting for promised services, and those whose lives reflect the enduring divide between the privileged and the poor. In both Lesotho and South Africa, water remains a flashpoint for protest and a symbol of broken promises. This book is a compelling exploration of power, inequality and the unfinished business of justice in southern Africa.
“Through an unprecedented exploration of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, John Aerni-Flessner shows us how this feat of transnational engineering serves as a living relic of inequality and global uncertainty. For those interested in how the residues of the past are shaping the future in southern Africa, this is the book we have been waiting for.” – Rachel King, Associate Professor of Cultural Heritage Studies at the University College London Institute of Archaeology, author of Outlaws, Anxiety, and Disorder: Material Histories of the Maloti-Drakensberg
“Delving into the politics of water in Lesotho and South Africa, this book reveals the history and implications of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project. It is a remarkable work that lays bare the entrenched racial and class injustices that have shaped dam development in southern Africa.” – Nthabiseng Mokoena-Mokhali, Archaeologist and Lecturer, Department of Historical Studies, National University of Lesotho
Full title: White Gold and Thirsty Communities
Subtitle: The Cold War, Apartheid, and the Lesotho Highlands Water Project
Author: John Aerni-Flessner
Publication: January 2026
ISBN: 978-0-7983-0545-7
Format: 234 x 156mm
Extent: 264pp
Price: R320
Author contact details: skhan@hsrc.ac.za
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