Southern Africa - long famous for the oldest and best-managed game parks on the continent - is becoming increasingly popular as an adventure travel destination. In the 1990s the number of visitors to the region nearly doubled, to more than 6.5 million tourists per year, as adventure travelers abandoned traditional safari sites in Kenya and Tanzania for the world-class national parks of Botswana and Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia. Favorable political changes have inspired an increase in tourism to South Africa, and the pristine wilderness areas in the smaller nations of Malawi, Lesotho, and Swaziland have become favorites with budget travelers in search of adventure well off the beaten track."Adventuring in Southern Africa "is a comprehensive guide to the geography, culture, natural history, and adventure opportunities in these eight countries, including: The legendary areas of Victoria Falls, the Okavango Delta, the Zambezi River, Etosha, and Kruger National Park The classic safari as well as unconventional car, hiking, rafting, and canoe trips The nuts and bolts of how to plan a trip, including what to pack, how to adjust to local customs, what documents to take, and safari etiquette A full range of travel styles, from luxury tours to independent budget travel How to stay healthy while traveling in Africa With appendices listing safari tour operators and conservation groups, as well as a helpful safari bibliography, Adventuring in Southern Africa is an essential tool for anyone planning a trip to this spectacular and still unspoiled part of the world.

"... this gem of a book deserves a wide audience. Appropriate for African and women's studies courses and a must for college and university libraries." —Choice"... Mpho relates the story of her life with an integrity that makes for utterly compelling reading.... The fortitude of this woman, now in her late 60s, is a lesson to us all." —The Bookseller, United Kingdom"This is a fascinating autobiography..." —KLIATT"... a powerful autobiography of a Lesotho elder who tells her life as an African woman in South Africa. The focus on black culture and concerns as much as racism allows for an unusual depth of understanding of black concerns and lifestyles in Africa." —Reviewer's Bookwatch"An African woman's poignant and beautifully crafted memoir lyrically portrays the brutal poverty and reliance on ritual that shape the lives of her people, the Basotho.... A commanding and important work that will captivate readers with its unique voice, narrative power, and unforgettable scenes of life in Southern Africa." —Kirkus Reviews"... a stunning autobiography of a remarkable woman... Nthunya's telling is eloquent. Although her voice is generally one of dignified emotional distance, it is punctuated by her very human humor and pain." —Publishers Weekly"... recommended for collections in African folklore." —Library Journal"I am telling my stories in English for many months now, and it is a time for me to see my whole life. I see that things are always changing. I was born in 1930, so I remember many things which were happening in the old days in Lesotho and which happen no more. I lived in Benoni Location for more than ten years, and I saw the Boer policemen taking black people and beating them like dogs. They even took me once, and kept me in one of their jails for a while." —Mpho 'M'atsepo NthunyaA compelling and unique autobiography by an African woman with little formal education, less privilege, and almost no experience of books or writing. Mpho's is a voice almost never heard in literature or history, a voice from within the struggle of "ordinary" African women to negotiate a world which incorporates ancient pastoral ways and the congestion, brutality, and racist violence of city life. It is also the voice of a born storyteller who has a subject worthy of her gifts—a story for all the world to hear.

South Africa, together with Lesotho and Swaziland, has a diverse landscape and equally varied flora, which encompasses some 19,000 shrubs and herbs, a large proportion of which bear flowers of intricate and often stunning beauty. Field Guide to Wildflowers of South Africa describes more than 1,100 of these, highlighting the most conspicuous species and those most likely to be encountered across the country. A novel identification aid and easy-to-use keys guide users to the correct family and genus, while individual species descriptions, clear photographs, distribution maps and flowering seasons help pinpoint the plant. With this guide, wildflower enthusiasts at all levels will now be able to identify plants accurately in any part of South Africa.

Prayer and protest come in many guises. The Basotho women of South Africa and Lesotho pray to their ancestors for rain, abundance, and peace by painting and slicing brilliant geometric murals on the mud plaster walls of their houses. "If the prayers are successful," says photographer and author Gary N. van Wyk, "the rains arrive and wash away the paintings." Growing up white under apartheid, van Wyk noticed these vivid houses while traveling with his family through the Highveld below Johannesburg where many Basotho lived and worked on white-owned farms. In the years when links to the outlawed African National Congress party were often severely punished, some Basotho women defiantly splashed their homes with the black, green, and gold colors of the ANC. Van Wyk joined in such protests as an art student by helping paint street murals of state-sanctioned violence. A passion for recording political graffiti led him back to the dwellings decorated in ANC colors, several of which he photographed for this dazzling testament to Basotho lives, ceremonies, history, and art. --Francesca Coltrera

Once the grain basket for South Africa, much of Lesotho has become a scarred and treeless wasteland. The nation's spectacular gullying has concerned environmentalists and conservationists for more than half a century, In Imperial Gullies: Soil Erosion and Conservation in Lesotho, Kate B. Showers documents the truth behind this devastation. Showers reconstructs the history of the landscape, beginning with a history of the soil. She concludes that Lesotho's distinctive erosion chasms, called dongas, often cited as an example of destructive land-use practices by African farmers, actually were caused by colonial and postcolonial practices. The residents of Lesotho emerge as victims of a failed technology. Their efforts to mitigate or resist implementation of destructive soil conservation engineering works were thwarted, and they were blamed for the consequences of policies promoted by international soil conservationists since the 1930s. Imperial Gullies calls for an observational, experimental and, most importantly, a fully consultative and participatory approach to address Lesotho's serious contemporary problems of soil erosion. The first book to bring to center stage the historical practice of colonial soil science and a cautionary tale of western science in unfamiliar terrain it will interest a broad, interdisciplinary audience in African and environmental studies, social sciences, and history. "Showers shows how local people understood that colonial contour conservation methods and road building actually stimulated gully erosion, something colonial scientists failed to realize. Overall it is undoubtedly one of the most important books written to date on any part of the environmental history of Africa. Moreover it stands out in the discipline of environmental history in general as an unusually sophisticated work of great insight and explanatory power."---Richard H. Grove, author of Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 Kate B. Showers is a visiting research fellow and senior research associate at the Centre for World Environmental History, University of Sussex, England. She has lived in rural Lesotho and has served as head of research, Institute of Southern African Studies, National University of Lesotho.

Just before Christmas in 1920, six people sat down to a meal at Morija, headquarters of the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society in Basutoland (Lesotho). All six were taken violently ill, and one of them died. They had been poisoned. The dead man was Édouard Jacottet, an eminent scholar and missionary. There was no trial and subsequently no one was ever convicted of the murder. Who killed Jacottet? Drawing on the great tradition of the "locked room" detective story, Tim Couzens sets out, eighty years after the event, to solve the crime. Why was Jacottet killed? The answer lies buried deep in the past and is revealed here -- for the first time -- in a tale of heroism and courage, of sacrifice, deception, betrayal, and faith. Written and researched with extraordinary care, this is a brilliant piece of detective work, but it is also much more. It is the biography of a deeply committed man, and a history of the Christian mission he served in an isolated African country to whose people and language he devoted his life before it was brutally cut short in strange circumstances. And the story is a national and religious epic, enclosed in a classical tragedy tempered with the sardonic smile of comedy. A compelling, groundbreaking study, Murder at Morija is the outcome of many years of travel and detailed inquiry by its author in pursuit of elusive solutions to complex mysteries.

Although Lesotho is a small state never likely to be a major player in global affairs, its special interactions with South Africa make it a prototype for regional cooperation. Joint action by South Africa's and Botswana's military forces to end anarchy and preserve democracy in Lesotho serves as an important test case of regional peacekeeping in Africa.This reference provides comprehensive entries on historical events and personalities and focuses especially on the Basotho who have shaped Lesotho's development rather than on colonial officials and other expatriates. Greatest attention is given to the events, institutions, issues, personalities, places and external relationships of the post-independence era. The bibliography introduces a plethora of newer publications about Lesotho that have supplanted the rather sparse published literature previously available. An extensive chronology of Lesotho's evolution is included.The authors range of professional expertise and ability to compliment each author's areas of specialization. Offers in depth coverage of the most crucial events and participants in Lesotho's development.