BREAKING BREAD, a memoir

270pp., paperback, Johannesburg, 2024

Jonathan Jansen on growing up in a loving, evangelical family on the Cape Flats, his school years, becoming the first of his generation to go to university, teaching high school and becoming an academic in post-apartheid South Africa.

"For those who admire Jonathan Jansen for his flaming courage in confrontational truth-telling, this engrossing memoir is a treat – heart tugging and richly crammed with Jansen’s quirks and humour and griefs. It is more than an account of how a vulnerable, impassioned young man gained the stature and authority Jansen now wields; it is an account of our country's history, the grievous failings of the past, and perhaps more sadly, even, those of the present, but also the hope that hard work, principled action, commitment to justice, and above all, education, given boldly but humbly to the younger generation, offer to us all." Judge Edwin Cameron

"What a powerfully South African story Jonathan Jansen shares with us here. He writes with a combination of elegance, empathy, compassion and insight such as few others can. Our deep thanks to him." Professor Crain Soudien

Jonathan Jansen is currently Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Education at the Stellenbosch University. His many books include Corrupted, a study of chronic dysfunction in South African universities; As By Fire, the end of the South African university; co-author (with Cyrill Walters) of The Decolonisation of Knowledge, radical ideas and the shaping of institutions in South Africa and beyond and editor of Decolonisation in Universities: The politics of curriculum.