Twenty years on from the fall of apartheid in South Africa, veteran analyst and activist John S. Saul explores the liberation struggle, placing it in a regional and global context. Saul looks at how initial optimism has given way to a sense of crisis following soaring inequality levels and the massacre of workers at Marikana.

With chapters on South Africa, Tanzania, and Mozambique, Saul investigates the reality of southern Africa’s post-“liberation” plight, drawing on the insights of Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral, and assessing claims that a new “precariat” has emerged.

Saul examines the ongoing “rebellion of the poor,” which has shaken the region and may signal the possibility of a new and more hopeful future.