Heidi Holland - Columnist and Author

Her column appears every fortnight in Johannesburg's The Star newspaper and is syndicated to the Independent Newspaper Group - Pretoria News, the Cape Argus and The Mercury in Durban.

South African-born Heidi Holland has worked as a journalist in southern Africa for over 30 years. Reporting for African as well as international newspapers, magazines and television documentaries, she has researched and written about Africa's liberation movements and about the people of the continent, its cities and belief systems.

Her books include the internationally acclaimed DINNER WITH MUGABE - The untold story of a freedom fighter who became a tyrant (Penguin) 2008. http://www.dinnerwithmugabe.com

100 Years of Struggle: Mandela's ANC (Penguin) 2012 is Heidi's latest book. Despite South Africa's ruling party having achieved democratic freedom from apartheid in 1994, rampant unemployment, income distribution as skewed as anywhere on earth, catastrophic corruption, inferior education and lingering racial tensions cast shadows that lengthen with each passing year.

Her first book was THE STRUGGLE: A history of the African National Congress (Collins) 1990. Written when the ANC was banned in South Africa, it went on sale simultaneously in the UK, USA and Germany during the week that Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa.

BORN IN SOWETO- Inside the heart of South Africa (Penguin) 1994 was published during South Africa's first democratic election. Then came AFRICAN MAGIC - Traditional ideas that heal a continent (Penguin) 2001, which was recently re-released and is about African religious beliefs. FROM JOBURG to JOZI -Stories about Africa's infamous city (Penguin) was co-edited by Adam Roberts and published in 2003 and again in 2010. It was followed by THE COLOUR OF MURDER - One family's horror exposes a nation's anguish (Penguin) 2006, in which the author asked herself the tough question: Where does racism reside now that the language used to signpost it has changed?

Born in 1947, Heidi Holland was raised on a tobacco farm in the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Spoonfed predudice with her breakfast cereal, like all whites raised in the region, she has studied throughout her life to comprehend and conquer racism.