Witsies with the writing edge: August 2025
- Wits Alumni Relations
Catch up on a round-up of recent titles from alumni authors.
NON-FICTION
How Not To Mess Up Online
by Emma Sadleir and Rorke Wilson
Penguin 2025
Emma Sadleir (BA 2006, LLB 2008) is the continent’s leading digital-law specialist and published her first book Selfies, Sexts, and Smartphones (Penguin, 2017) for every teenager (and their parents). But a mere seven years later, the digital world has advanced at such a furious pace that everyone must navigate “AI, deep fakes, misinformation, and so much more.” In addition, there are plenty of legal pitfalls.
Sadleir is co-founder of The Digital Law Company, an organisation that offers legal advice and education around digital media. She recently played a pivotal role in taking on Meta to permanently remove more than 30 Instagram handles and WhatsApp channel accounts posting graphic pornography involving schoolchildren and provide information about who is behind them. This book covers legislation about “cyberbullying, sexting, sextortion, addiction, online safety, deep fakes, mental health, privacy, reputation, misinformation, scams, AI, ChatGPT and plagiarism” in the South African context.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI: The African Edge
by Arthur Goldstuck
Pan Macmillan 2025
Journalist, author and tech commentator Arthur Goldstuck (BA 1984) is considered the doyen of technology reporting and an expert on all things digital. This is a follow-up to his guide of artificial intelligence (AI), published in 2023 but through a lens of human roles as well as global advances “with distinctly African realities”.
He asks: “Did you know that AI helped South Africa to win the 2023 Rugby World Cup? That Africa led the way in small language models? That AI has been supporting farmers in Kenya for the last decade?”
This book brings AI from the perspective of local and international teachers, coders, executives and artists. Some of Goldstuck’s examples include tracing how farmers can track bee movements and musicians can experiment with machine-made beats. “This book explores how everyday people across the African continent are shaping – and being shaped by – the rise of machine intelligence,” according to the publisher.
Indenture Aesthetics
by Jordache A Ellapen
Duke Press 2025
Jordache A Ellapen (BA 2005, MA 2006) is currently an associate professor of Black Studies at the University of Rochester in the United States. In addition to his Wits degrees in dramatic arts, he has a master’s in cinema studies from New York University and a doctorate at Indiana University in Bloomington.
In Indenture Aesthetics, Ellapen examines the visual and performance art practices of feminist, queer, femme, and gender-nonconforming Afro-Indian and South African black artists to understand the paradoxes of freedom in contemporary South Africa, including Witsies such as Lebohang Kganye and Reshma Chhiba (BA FA 2005, MA 2013). Ellapen shows how the development of an Afro-Indian identity after generations of indentured labour and segregation troubles persistent racial hierarchies and highlights the role of the aesthetic in crafting a blueprint for coalitional building across difference in contemporary South Africa.
Practical Guide to Administering Construction Contracts (1 Ed)
by Uwe Putlitz and Peter Barnard
Lexis Nexis 2025
Retired architect and professional project manager Uwe Putlitz (BArch 1975, MSc Building 1985) wrote from George to tell Alumni Relations that the idea for this free practical guide emerged during 必博娱乐,比博娱乐网址. He is a former CEO of the Joint Building Contract Committee (JBCC) from 2011 until 2019 during which time he was intimately involved in the redrafting of the JBCC’s Standard-form Contracts, dealing with ±2000 “frequently asked questions”, and presenting courses in the appropriate use of JBCC Contracts to ± 5000 delegates. This handbook captures Putlitz’s insider’s view and covers every step of administering building construction contracts from project inception through to the resolution of any disputes.
Putlitz was an external examiner for the School of Architecture and a visiting lecturer for the School of Construction Economics and Management, dealing with construction technology, professional practice, and construction contract law, including the four recognised standard-form contracts, dealing with contractual claims, and how to avoid disputes.
As an avid nature lover, he has adapted the skills of looking at birds or tree identification to make this guide “intelligible for emerging and sophisticated contractors, seasoned developers and professional consultants” as well as students across architecture, building science, civil engineering, project and property management and quantity surveying.
FICTION
Not Another Samoosa Run!
Nadia Cassim
Kwela 2025
As a graduate from the School of Architecture and Planning, Nadia Cassim (BSc URP 2008, BSc Hons URP 2009), has exhibited her fine art talents through paintings in two solo shows and in 2023 her artwork When Blood Ties Become Blood Chains was featured in the Ake Review.
In 2012, she founded IRTIQA, a modern Muslim women’s magazine, which she led for eight years. In 2023, she was selected for the Bosberg Books Writing Residency. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies published by Modjaji Books, Brittle Paper, Umuofia Arts and Books Festival, Mirari Press and Short. Sharp. Stories.
Not Another Samoosa Run! is her first novel in which 27-year-old Tasneem carries a heavy burden as a divorcee in a close-knit Muslim Indian community. A recent News24 review says the novel “does not dismiss faith; rather, it critiques the ways in which cultural expectations are often misrepresented as religious obligations, a conflation that continues to limit and harm.”
The Finish Line
by Gail Schimmel
Pan Macmillan, 2024
Johannesburg-based Gail Schimmel (BA 1995, LLB 1997) is the CEO of South Africa’s Advertising Regulatory Board. Her first book was a children’s book Claude & Millie (Tafelberg 2007) and she later went on to produce eight further novels: Marriage Vows (Kwela 2008), Whatever Happened to the Cowley Twins? (Kwela 2013), The Park (Pan Macmillan 2017), The Accident (Pan Macmillan 2019), Two Months (Pan Macmillan 2020), Never Tell a Lie (Pan Macmillan 2021), Chasing Marian (Pan Macmillan, 2022) and Little Secrets (Pan Macmillan, 2024).
The protagonist of her latest novel is Brenda, who has always worked hard to fit. Her close friendship with Denver has been an ongoing presence in her life and “has always offered friendship, worthy competition … and simmering resentment”.
Schimmel describes the novel in three words: friendship, betrayal and drama. “We all present a perfect front, we all pretend to be perfect, happy people. But everyone has drama and something going on underneath. I’d like to think that’s what my books do, they like to look at what’s going on underneath,” she says.