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Book Review

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published by Tafelberg

Ever since he first entered politics, Julius Malema has – like Donald Trump in America – been a divisive and controversial figure, a fact he has been only too happy to exploit to his advantage. Loathed by one section of the public, worshipped by another, over the years, a great deal of speculation has whirled around who he is and what drives his ambition. Many questions have also arisen as to how he has been able to underpin his lavish lifestyle. In this compelling, convincing and meticulously researched book, investigative reporters Micah Reddy and Pauli Van Wyk tear away the veil to reveal the unsettling truth.

Although not intended as a biography (Malema, unsurprisingly, refused to have anything to do with the authors), the book does give a brief resume of his career. Brought up in poverty, Malema became politicised at an early age. At school, he did not do well academically, although he would later explain this away by saying it was because he was too busy with politics. His less-than-stellar academic performance in no way dampened his unwavering thirst for power. He quickly made his presence felt. His personal charisma and larger-than-life personality went hand in hand with an instinctive feel for the masses which saw him rapidly rise through the political ranks until he eventually became president of the ANC Youth League.

As a member of the new elite, Malema openly displayed the self-regard and sense of entitlement that has become the trademarks of far too many of post-colonial Africa’s leaders. Like many others, too, he would use his new position to benefit from government tenders; in his case, mostly in Limpopo.

Malema was initially a fervent supporter of Jacob Zuma, vociferously defending the then Deputy President when he was charged with rape and playing an important role in his campaign to unseat Thabo Mbeki as president of the ANC. His outspokenness soon got him into trouble with the ANC hierarchy, however, and, despite his avowals of permanent support, he would later turn on Zuma after he expelled the young firebrand from the ANC for fomenting divisions and bringing the party into disrepute (ironically, Zuma would later suffer a similar fate).

Determined not to be silenced, Malema responded by forming the Economic Freedom Front (EFF), which advocated the radical redistribution of land and the nationalisation of mines. He was joined by his sidekick and former deputy president of the ANCYL, Floyd Shivambu, who would also become implicated in his share of shady financial and business activities (Shivambu would later deal a big blow to the EFF when, in a headline-grabbing move, he defected to Zuma’s newly formed MK Party. He did not last long there). As the undisputed leader and dominant member of the party, Malema was now able to unleash his demagogic talent freely.

Despite his pro-poor stance and professed aversion to Western capitalism, Malema has displayed few, if any, principles when it comes to accumulating wealth. Like many a populist leader, he has not been afraid to mix his political interests with his business ones or to use his political connections to bankroll both his party and himself. The proceeds from the latter went into luxury items, fleets of cars and a multitude of mansions, farms and properties.

Malema did his best to cover his tracks, but the press soon got wind of his activities and various investigations followed. Despite all the evidence that has been uncovered showing how he has benefited from his back-room deals, Malema has proved singularly adept at exploiting South Africa’s weak justice system and avoiding accountability.

In this deeply researched piece of investigative reporting, the authors provide a lengthy and detailed charge sheet of these. Looming large among the many cases is the scandal surrounding the Venda-based VBS Mutual Bank. A community-based bank, focusing on serving people with modest incomes, it collapsed in 2018 after being looted by corrupt municipal officials, middlemen, politicians, auditors, and even members of the Venda royalty, who had defrauded it of around R2 billion. As a result, many poor and elderly rural folk lost their life savings. Needless to say, both Malema and Shivambu were implicated in the unfolding scandal.

So far, the two politicians have managed to elude being brought to book for these and other corruption allegations, although investigations continue.

Engrossing and revelatory, Malema: Money. Power. Patronage provides a mountain of information on how Malema and other self-styled revolutionaries in the EFF have managed to enrich themselves, all in the name of the people. In doing so, the book also lifts the lid on the amoral careerism and licensed larceny that have become a defining characteristic of South African politics. Sadly, far too many members of the former liberation movements seem to have abandoned the fundamental values that first nourished them and learnt to tolerate the intolerable…

Published by UJ Press

In this well-researched, scholarly overview, the author provides detailed insights into the factors that led to the 2017 overthrow of the long-time Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe. One of the major focus points of the book is the often-overlooked role gender played in this and other military coups.

Tendi argues that Grace Mugabe – often sneeringly referred to as Gucci Grace because of her expensive tastes and extravagant lifestyle – was deliberately cast, by the coup plotters, as a scheming femme fatale, who had taken advantage of her husband’s frail health and declining mental state to position herself to take over the reins of power. This scapegoating of the First Lady was used as a cover for the general’s real motivations for the coup – to ensure that their preferred candidate, the recently sacked deputy president, Emmerson Mnangagwa (who they believed would protect their interests and positions. Mugabe was, reputedly, planning to get rid of some of them, and his rebuff of the generals when they sought a meeting with him to discuss their grievances was, undoubtedly, one of the main catalysts for the coup), would become president and not Mugabe’s own choice for successor – Dr Sydney Sekeramayi.

To bolster the case, as well as making it more appealing to the rank and file, the coup leaders portrayed Mnangagwa as a strong, bold, decisive, masculine figure as opposed to the more reserved, unassuming and, by implication, less manly, Sekeremayi. Mugabe was, likewise, feminised as “an old man” who had lost much of his former charisma and power and was, therefore, no longer up to ruling.

In addition to this, Tendi successfully demolishes the argument, put out at the time, that Mugabe’s overthrow was somehow not really a coup, in the strict sense of its definition, or that it differed markedly from how others had played out elsewhere in Africa. Because of Mugabe’s widespread unpopularity, both within and outside the country, coupled with the general feeling he had long overstayed his welcome in office, the AU and most Western leaders were happy to go along with this fiction. As a result, there was minimal public condemnation. There were even suggestions that Britain, for one, may have had a hand in what transpired or at least given tacit support to the Mnangagwa faction. The book includes personal testimonies and much interesting anecdotage from diplomats and politicians, in this connection.

Sadly, any hopes that the coup would usher in a better Zimbabwe would soon be dashed. As the author observes, most coups by generals tend to have conservative outcomes, and Zimbabwe proved no exception. There has been little meaningful change to the political status quo. Women’s participation in politics has declined, and there has been further repression and ongoing human rights abuses.

As Associate Professor of African Politics at the University of Oxford, Tendi has done his research, and his book includes a great deal of revealing behind-the-scenes detail. The most vivid parts of the book are those describing the fractured civil-military relations, and Mugabe’s failure to address or immediately deal with the generals’ grievances, an uncharacteristic lapse in judgment which resulted in the ageing president’s downfall. The author’s academic background does, however, occasionally show through in the numerous references to other scholars’ work and some rather dry theorising, which tends to slow down the pace of the narrative.

That said, The Overthrow of Robert Mugabe: Gender, Coups and Diplomats remains an important and engaging account of a pivotal moment in Zimbabwe’s recent history.

BOOK REVIEW

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published by Tafelberg

Author David Williams grew up in sight of a railway line, at a time when train travel was still considered romantic. From an early age, he became an avid train-spotter, making himself familiar with the complicated business of timetables, locomotive types, gauges and lines. He developed a particular love for steam engines – in his words, “great creatures that seemed to breathe”- and all the lore and mythology that went with them. It helped, of course, that members of his family, including his father, were employed on the railways, as were many of the colourful characters he met through them. The pride they took in their work rubbed off on the young Williams. Wanting to experience their lifestyle for himself, he eventually found work as a steward in the catering division.

As well as describing his own experiences as a rail enthusiast, Williams, without burdening the reader with too much data, provides a lively, tactile history of the railways in South Africa.

One of the driving forces behind its establishment was Cecil John Rhodes. As an enthusiastic supporter of the Empire, he viewed it as a means of bringing the entire continent under British domination. If his motives were, by current wisdom, questionable, Rhodes was right about the economic benefits that flowed from this form of transport.

More than any other factor, the railway system provided the key to expansion, opening up South Africa to rapid development. In a matter of years, it helped pave the way for the country’s transformation from a primarily rural society to an industrial one. Later on, the need for electrification provided the spur for the establishment of the Electricity Supply Commission and, in turn, ISCOR. The railways also became an important source of employment. For thousands of young men, it was the only job available to them,

Its achievements were impressive. At its peak in the 1970s, it was the tenth-largest railway in terms of route mileage, surpassing the combined mileage of all other African railways. There was, of course, a less edifying side to all of this, and the author does not shirk from describing it. Racial discrimination had existed in South Africa long before the arrival of the railways, but when the National Party came to power in 1948, it was translated into rigid and detailed laws. The ugly reality of this legislation became only too visible when one arrived at a train station and was confronted with its hurtful and demeaning white and non-white signs, separate carriages and platforms. Apartheid also meant that black workers were denied work opportunities on the railways that were specifically reserved for whites.

Sadly, over the last several decades, the South African railway system has fallen into a state of chronic and possibly fatal decay. In part, this has been due to a marked decline in demand for its services, as well as competition from road transport, but poor management and unprecedented levels of vandalism and theft have also contributed to the gloomy overall picture.

The allure of South African train travel, which the author beautifully conveys in this book, is now fast slipping into the pages of history.

An engaging writer and experienced journalist, Williams has an eye for illuminating details, and his enthusiasm for his subject is infectious..Overflowing with vivid, highly pictorial phrases, his prose captures the heyday of train travel, as well as conjuring up the sound and movement of the old trains as they rumbled across the landscape. Fusing history and memoir, his book provides a fascinating look back at another era.

The Mkhwanazi Moment: Cartoons for July and August 2025

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Cogta threw down the gauntlet at Msunduzi Municipality, rejecting its attempt to stop a provincial forensic investigation into allegations of maladministration, corruption and non-statutory compliance.

Pressure mounted on President Cyril Ramaphosa to return from the BRICS summit in Brazil to take decisive action over an unfolding political crisis involving serious political allegations made by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi. In the same week, US President Donald Trump announced a 30% blanket tariff on South African goods, adding to the country’s economic woes.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed a commission of inquiry to investigate the alleged infiltration of South Africa’s law enforcement agencies by criminal syndicates. While some welcomed the scope and urgency of the inquiry, others accused the president of abdicating leadership and acting too late in the face of what they called a deepening national crisis.

The MK Party tabled a motion of no confidence in Cyril Ramaphosa, citing his “failure to act decisively against state-owned enterprises and government institutions” as one of the reasons why corruption-accused former president Jacob Zuma wanted to remove the president.

July was a month marked by more explosive revelations, while the perception of a government that acts only under pressure, and often without meaningful consequence, continued to damage confidence in public institutions.

Seven legacy foundations, including the Thabo Mbeki and Desmond and Leah Tutu legacy foundations, withdrew from the National Dialogue Preparatory Task Team, citing government control and rushed planning. The Democratic Alliance, Action SA, and FF+ also withdrew, for similar reasons.

July’s annual consumer price inflation hit the highest level since September 2024. The increase was fuelled by rising food prices – especially beef – and new municipal tariff hikes.

KwaZulu-Natal Treasury MEC François Rodgers placed the provincial Department of Education under administration. The department had been under scrutiny following allegations that officials subverted procurement processes when awarding National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) tenders.

Book Reviews

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published by Jonathan Ball

Cecil John Rhodes has always excited a great deal of heated passion and fierce debate. In his time, he was both revered and reviled, in South Africa and abroad. More recently, he has come to represent the ugly face of white supremacy and European colonialism, which manifested itself in the “Rhodes Must Fall” movement.

In this exhaustive, meticulously researched study, William Kelleher Storey, who is Professor of History and holds the Sanderson Chair of Arts and Science at Millsap College in the United States, sets out to present a fully-rounded picture of a man who was one of the most influential figures in the history of the British Empire.

Rhodes was unquestionably a product of the Victorian era and shared many of the prejudices of the age. As Storey shows, much of his vision was developed during his time at Oxford. Like many of his colleagues, he believed in British racial superiority and shared the same messianic belief in the role of the empire. As ardent imperialists, they thought of the British as the true heirs of the Romans. They believed that they should play a similar role in bringing civilisation to decadent or barbarous people.

Rhodes originally came out to South Africa in 1870, to join his brother, Herbert, who was farming cotton in the Unkomaas Valley, in Natal. Later, he would follow him to the diamond fields of Kimberley. With fortune seekers streaming in from all over the world, they were colourful, chaotic times, and Storey paints a vivid portrait of what life was like on the diggings.

Unlike his contemporaries, it was not enough for Rhodes to make a fortune out of diamonds. As his wealth grew, so did his ambition. Having entered politics as a way of consolidating his power, extending his influence and protecting his corporate interests, he began developing a plan for settler expansion along the Road to the North. It didn’t stop there. By utilising the rail-road and telegraph, his ultimate vision was to extend British power across Africa. When (much exaggerated) rumours of immensely rich gold fields, to the north of the Limpopo, came to his attention, this would also include the creation of his personal country.

An important part of his plan to populate the subcontinent, which Rhodes openly advocated, included the disenfranchisement of Africans. Once he was elected prime minister of the Cape, he set about introducing racially discriminatory policies to further this goal, upsetting the more progressive elements in the Cape political scene, including the outspoken writer Olive Schreiner (who would later skewer him in her novel Trooper Halket of Mashonaland).

Oddly enough, when gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand, Rhodes initially had cold feet but later changed his mind. Again, his decision to become involved was not just about making money for its own sake. It was about furthering his vision by bankrolling exploration and further white settlement in the north.

It was here that Rhodes allowed his ego and grandiose dreams of recasting Africa in his own mould to get the better of his good judgement. Frustrated by the Boers’ attitude to and control of the gold mining industry, he attempted to provoke an insurrection against the government in Pretoria by organising the infamous – and calamitous – Jameson Raid. As a result of the attempted coup, Rhodes was forced to resign as prime minister of the Cape; the good relationships he had, up until then, so carefully cultivated with the Boers, lay in tatters, and he would never quite regain his old power and prestige. Worse was to follow. While Rhodes was attempting to resurrect his reputation and dealing with the fall-out from the raid, the Ndebele, taking courage from Jameson’s failure and the fact that the country had been denuded of troops, rose up in rebellion against his British South Africa Company rule in their territory. This would be followed, in turn, by a similar uprising by the supposedly more docile Shona. The hardening of relations between the British and Boers, which developed in the wake of the Raid, would also ultimately lead to the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902.

In delving deeply into Rhodes’s controversial life, Storey has acquired a terrific knowledge of his subject and writes about it with flair. No row, crafty manoeuvre, shrewd manipulation, nor evidence of political wheeler-dealing is left unrecorded. Combining historical scholarship with a highly readable narrative, The Colonialist looks destined to become the authoritative work on Rhodes.

Published by Basic Books

Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed that the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union marked “the end of history”. In his view, Western-style liberal democracy represented the final stage of social and political development and that ideological conflict would disappear. His bold prediction has proved to have been built on a shaky foundation. Contrary to the belief that the neoliberal precepts that became dominant in the 1970s were an unqualified success, life in the West has become harder for most people, albeit more comfortable for the thin tier at the top.

With this has come a gradual power shift. By the beginning of the 21st Century there were clear signs that American power had passed its zenith and that its economic and hence strategic dominance in world affairs was in decline. China and India, endowed with vast territory and huge populations, had become the rising stars of the show.

Unsurprisingly, given their belief in their exceptionalism, this has rung alarm bells in the United States. President Donald Trump was re-elected for a second term in office, on an electoral ticket in which he promised to “Make America Great Again”. So far, that hasn’t happened. Not only has the American economy weakened, but Trump’s slash-and-burn approach to foreign policy has alienated many world leaders and undermined, rather than enhanced, trust and respect for the country abroad.

As many countries seek to insulate themselves from Washington’s gravitational pull, a new post-Western order is emerging. In this scholarly, wide-ranging and critical overview. Amitav Acharya, who is the distinguished professor of international affairs at American University, argues that this will not necessarily result in a turn for the worse or lead to a collapse in the global order.

In making his case, Acharya delves deep into the realms of history. Taking ancient Sumer as his starting point, he shows how successive civilisations, across the world, contributed to the current world order over a long time. In doing so, he challenges certain long-held views, among them the common Western assumption that their civilisation began, essentially, with the Greeks.. As he rightly points out, this ignores the influence of the world to the East. Greece had strong Asiatic foundations and borrowed many of its ideas about science, art, sculpture, technology and government from these surrounding cultures, which they then passed on to Rome and the rest of Europe.

Thereafter, the author examines each continent, in turn, from the great civilisations of India and China in the east to the Aztecs and Incas in the Americas, weaving in frequent reminders of how each society synthesised and developed the traditions of those that had gone before. There is an insightful chapter on Africa, tracing its role in the global history of empire building and outlining how its indigenous economies were severely disrupted by the transatlantic slave trade and European colonisation, the effects of which are still being felt today.
This makes way for an analysis of the rise of the West, culminating in the global dominance of the United States. While the Western world order was, on one level, a force for modernity, it also has had its limitations and dark side, such as racism, exploitation and discrimination. Resistance to colonialism led to new actors emerging, who demanded a repositioning of how things were done and insisted on the establishment of a more inclusive world.

With the wheel of fortune turning away from the West, the obvious question arises: what will replace it? Acharya offers various scenarios but believes it will mostly be a shared enterprise and will not be dominated by any single nation.

It is a complex and nuanced subject, but Acharya navigates this fascinating journey through the centuries with great skill while offering a cool and well-reasoned critique of the current world order.

Book Review

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Published by Jonathan Ball

One of the more worrying features of the shaky era we are living in has been a rising tide of authoritarianism, accompanied, in some instances, by a resurrection of many old white supremacist tropes, which date back to Charles Darwin’s time. It was Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, who came up with the concept of eugenics, which popularised the view that races were real entities and that different races were unequal. His ideas gained widespread currency and were supported by many prominent figures, including Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. On a more sinister note, they would also be latched onto by Hitler and the Nazis with their endless preoccupation with “the Jewish question”- how to rid Europe of the Jews – that led, ultimately, to the gas chambers.

The horrors of the Holocaust forced white supremacist ideas into retreat, but they didn’t disappear altogether. South Africa, for one, instituted its policy of apartheid that centred on its notions of separate racial cultures and separate racial frameworks. Behind all this was the belief that whites were inherently superior to blacks and should effectively control the reins of power. This line of reasoning led to the Group Areas Act, under which 3,5 million African and ‘Çoloured’ people were forcibly removed from their homes to make way for whites.

As usual, however, it is to America that we must turn for the big story about race and politics. Nowadays, geneticists say there is little scientific evidence to support theories of race difference. This hasn’t stopped them from finding a new protagonist in Donald Trump and his MAGA movement, whose obsession with refugees, immigrants and declining birth rates has seen the normalisation of what were once regarded as fringe views. Their fears about America being swamped by violent, criminal gangs and getting engulfed in ethnic conflict are, in turn, directly linked to populist Great Replacement thinking – the conspiracy narrative, first espoused by the French author Renaud Camus, that there is a secret plot, masterminded by some mysterious elite, to replace white populations in white-majority countries.

The growing influence of social media has led to a proliferation of alt-right sites and the widespread dissemination of their views, as well as the spreading of doomsday scenarios of a looming white genocide. (with some – including Donald Trump himself – pointing to what is allegedly happening in South Africa, even though these claims are not backed up by any solid evidence). Underlying a lot of it is a profound nastiness which has led, at the extreme end, to the emergence of lone white-male killers who hope that their violent actions will provoke civil war.

South African-born author, Gavin Evans, who grew up under the old National Party regime, with its policy of “separate development”, has made an in-depth study of this subject. In his eloquent, compelling and, at times, alarming book, he succeeds superbly in teasing out the links between the old ideas about eugenics and today’s Great Replacement theories. His conclusions are, by no means, all doom and gloom, however. Despite the growth of the alt-right, the frequency of race-motivated murders, the revival of race science and the election of right-wing politicians, research has shown that racial prejudice is, in fact, declining, especially where communities have become more integrated and people are exposed to other cultures, ideas and ways of life. There are still, however, powerful forces pushing the idea of “race realism”.

Topical, relevant and full of insights, White Supremacy deserves to be read by a wide audience.

published by Bloomsbury.

We live in an age of economic anxiety and instability. The cost of living continues to rise, real wages are in decline, and jobs are becoming increasingly scarce. Many people feel gloomy and fearful about the future. Trust is in deficit.

In this shrewd, thoughtful and hard-hitting polemic, author Ash Sarkar tackles the obvious question: how did we get here? Her essential conclusion is that we have allowed ourselves to become victims in a classic case of misdirection. Instead of confronting the big issue of our day – the unprecedented transfer of wealth from ordinary citizens and consumers to the very rich, the huge corporations and the oligarchs we have allowed ourselves to become sucked into a phony game of grievance politics. The whole concept of “culture wars” has been deliberately stoked to redirect attention away from the structural causes of our current economic hardships towards more nebulous feelings of cultural resentment. In this scenario, various minority groups are blamed for all the world’s ills.

An obvious example is the transgender issue, where the sexual leanings of a tiny minority of society are blown out of all proportion and presented as a form of contagion which will undermine the moral welfare of the majority. In a similar vein, we have the promotion of conspiracy theories, like the Great Replacement narrative – so popular amongst alt-right groups – which postulates that there is some sort of sinister plot to replace slow-breeding whites with immigrants from other racial groups.

Politicians like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage have become experts at whipping up fear and speculation and turning these once-fringe issues into mainstream ones. Other politicians have displayed a similar cynicism and hypocrisy. While professing concern for the poor, they are willing partners in a system that continues to enrich the extremely wealthy.

To an extent, the left has made it easier for them. Rather than looking at the larger issues facing society, they have become obsessed with policing what people say and whether it can be construed as an assault on someone’s personhood. Society has become divided into narrow subcultures, each defending its own turf. We have become mired in niche controversies.

At the other end of the spectrum, right-wing culture warriors seized on this to promote the vision of a ‘forgotten’ majority who have been socially gagged and culturally marginalised because of this focus on minority rights. As the author notes, the most trifling of conflicts get framed within much weightier battles of values, ideologies or identity positions with hundreds of talking heads pontificating about them”(she cites the case of Will Smith slapping the comedian Chris Rock)

Sarkar is a spry, pithy and impressively agile critic, and her well-argued book is very much a call to arms. While not suggesting that we ignore the injustices of racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, her main point is that we need to be aware of the tectonic economic and geopolitical shifts that are taking place all around us. At a time when ordinary citizens struggle with financial, health and housing insecurity, a huge wealth grab is taking place right under our noses, which erodes our rights and threatens to impoverish us still further…

A Fiscal Fiasco: Cartoons for March and April 2025

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Faced with skyrocketing debt, an underperforming economy, and unrealised forecasts, Finance Minister Enoch Gondongwana returned to the drawing board after his 2025 Budget, which proposed a 2% VAT increase, was rejected.

Following its poor performance in the 2024 general election, the ANC announced a new reconfigured leadership structure in KwaZulu-Natal – a move which caused a rise in tensions within the party because it favoured President Ramaphosa’s allies.

With some of the Government of National Unity’s (GNU) partners opposing it, Finance Minister Enoch Gondongwana’s proposed budget, which included a controversial VAT hike, faced significant parliamentary challenges due to the ANC’s lack of a majority.

In response to the US government’s expulsion of South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, President Cyril Ramaphosa claimed he was not deterred by the recent tensions between the two countries. He believed the historic relationship would “outlive the current bumpy patch.”

EFF leader Julius Malema ignited fresh controversy after leading the “Kill the Boer” struggle song at a Human Rights Day rally. This time, US President Donald Trump entered the fray, lambasting South Africa in a strongly worded statement, thus stoking an already tense atmosphere between the two countries following the recent expulsion of the SA Ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool.

Against the backdrop of President Trump’s punitive tariffs against South Africa, the GNU came unstuck over the National Assembly’s vote on the Budget’s fiscal framework.

Winds of accountability swept through Msunduzi City Hall as a high-level intervention team, led by former Finance MEC Ravi Pillay, began its work.

Just weeks after publicly welcoming a provincial investigation into Msunduzi Municipality and calling for the “best investigators”, Mayor Mzimkhulu Thebolla asked for the probe to be halted…

In response to mounting pressure against it, the Treasury issued an overnight statement announcing that Finance Minister Enoch Gondongwana would be reversing the decision to hike VAT.

Book Reviews

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Published by Bedford Square

When the First World War broke out, there were few, amongst the thousands who enlisted who could have foreseen the new type of modern warfare they would face. Chlorine gas, explosive artillery shells, rapid-fire machine guns and other heavy weapons were to inflict carnage on a scale never witnessed before. By the end of the first year, the war had become more or less static with the opposing armies facing each other in trenches which stretched from the Belgium Coast, across France, to the Swiss border. Numerous massive offences were launched, by both sides, but the toll of human life and suffering was out of all proportion to any gains made

As the war dragged on, many soldiers, living in appalling conditions and forced to the limits of their endurance, developed “shell shock”(known today as PTSD). Crippled in mind and body, some were sent back to Britain for treatment. Amongst them, were two men who would become renowned for their war poems, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. The story of the friendship that sprang up between them while receiving treatment at Craiglockhart War Hospital, in Scotland, has been told before (not least in Pat Barker’s superb re-imagining Regeneration, which won the Booker Prize), but Glass both broadens the scope and provides new insights into it.

Outwardly, the two were very different. Tall, aristocratic, athletic and a keen huntsman, Sassoon had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His reckless bravery in the face of the enemy had earned him a Military Cross, as well as his nickname “Mad Jack”. For his part, Owen was a good foot shorter, shy, hesitant and with a stammer. He also came from a much more humble, lower middle-class, background than the patrician Sassoon.

Despite his heroics, Sassoon, would, as the war progressed, develop an increasing ambivalence to both the nature of the conflict and the direction it was taking. Invalided back to England, with a sniper’s bullet through his chest, he decided to make an act of ‘wilful defiance’ by refusing to return to military duties. Worried by what he saw as his friend’s naivete, the poet Robert Graves intervened and used his influence to get Sassoon declared ‘mentally unbalanced’, thus avoiding the possibility of seeing him imprisoned for his actions. Eager to avoid a scandal, the military authorities were only too happy to go along.

At the time of their meeting, Sassoon was already an established poet and it took Owen – who was a big admirer – some time to pluck up the courage to show his poems to him. A warm friendship would grow out of this initial encounter. Under Sassoon’s creative and constructive criticism, Owen’s genius flourished. Both refused to glorify the war, as so many civilian poets, were doing but insisted on showing it in all its harsh reality. As Owen wrote: “My subject is War and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity.”

The two poets were fortunate to be sent to Craiglockhart, an enlightened institution not dominated by the antiquated and hidebound thinking that characterised much of the military hierarchy (it is shocking to think of the number of men who were shot by firing squad for supposed cowardice}. Both Doctor William Rivers (who treated Sassoon) and Doctor Arthur Brock (Owen) disapproved of painful practices like electric shock therapy, cold-water ducking and convulsion-producing drugs. Instead, they relied on Freudian forms of analysis. Rather than indicating a lack of moral character or being a sign of weakness, they realised that the men’s mental breakdowns were often a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. In many cases, their treatments were successful but they then found themselves in the morally ambiguous situation of being forced to send the men back to the very conditions that had caused their breakdown in the first place.

In this compelling and captivating account, author Glass shows, with a novelistic vividness, how the initial patriotism and idealism the war engendered soon lost its edge, as the soldiers, who fought in it, came to terms with a new style of war fought on an unprecedented scale. More than a straight biography, he uses the lives of the main characters (and those of others who were treated at the hospital, such as the author and journalist,s Max Plowman) as a plank in a fascinating study of the war that was supposed to end all wars.. His telling characterisations evoke not only the agony and seeming pointlessness of much of it, but the profound effect it had on both the men who fought in it and those who tried to help them deal with the trauma and the emotional scars it left.

Published by Yale University Press

At the time of the collapse of the old Soviet Union, there was a general mood of optimism in the West, coupled with a belief that democracy and market capitalism had triumphed over one-party states and socialism and would, in future, prevail against any autocratic challenges. And with more democratic elections being held than ever before that certainly did appear to be the case. Alluring as this assumption is, the evidence actually points in the opposite direction – over the last decade or so our hard-won liberties have become steadily eroded and the world has become less, not more free. Everywhere, democracy is on the back foot.

One of the reasons for this – as the authors demonstrate in this carefully researched, sharp and utterly convincing book – is because the despots have adapted their strategies and learnt how to use democracy against itself, finding ways to manipulate and “win” elections even though they may not enjoy majority support. In so doing, they are able to give themselves a veil of legitimacy while reinforcing their grip on the countries they rule. As such, elections have become a useful tool for them – “…so long as autocrats can tightly control the political process, their regimes have a better chance of survival if they hold elections and rig them than if they avoid holding elections altogether.”

Russia’s Vladimir Putin is the past master at this. The various methods he and other power-hungry world leaders have used to hold onto their positions form the core subject matter of this book. Many of the tactics (gerrymandering, voter-buying, political violence, ballot-box stuffing etc) have been around for a long time (although they have become far more fine-tuned) but the new digital tools of hacking, spreading misinformation online and social media manipulation have all presented fresh opportunities to play dirty, especially as it is often hard to track down the sources. The Cambridge Analytica scandal and the allegations of Russian involvement in Donald Trump’s first election campaign are but two recent high-profile examples of rigging through the control of information. There is an irony in this – the digital revolution was initially widely hailed as a great democratising force.

Probably the most worrying aspect of all this is that these “counterfeit democracies” are not a minority – rather, they now constitute the majority of states. The implications are obvious. Once elections become corrupted, political rights collapse, civil liberties decline, and responsive government disappears. Instead of advancing the equal rights and freedoms of the people, those in high office come to regard government as a means to preserve their own status and privileges.

We should be under no illusions as to the scale of the problem. With America (especially under Trump) less willing to promote democracy abroad, and Europe focusing on its own problems, China is increasingly setting the world agenda, and they are certainly not committed to pushing pro-democracy reform.

There is still some hope though. Having clearly laid out the dangers facing democracy, the authors marshal practical evidence from across the globe to show ways we can push back against the rising tide of authoritarianism and restore, protect and strengthen the electoral system. It is advice we can ill afford to ignore.