12 Days of Christmas book giveaway – Day 7

DECEMBER is finally here, and with it, come the Christmas carols, decorations and end-of-year parties.

But sometimes, it can be difficult to get into the holiday cheer. And with many still recovering from the economic pitfalls of lockdown, rising fuel prices and the ever-looming load-shedding, Caxton Local Media, in partnership with several prominent publishing houses, will be running 12 book giveaways to stir up the festive spirit.

This is our own twist to the 12 Days of Christmas. And while this is traditionally supposed to run from December 25 to January 5, we thought we would start out our December with a ‘12 Days of Giveaways’!

Day seven is for our readers who enjoy some non-fiction novels – from an in-depth look into money laundering and drug money in the banking world to a glimpse into populism and how the phenomenon has developed.

Simply fill in the competition form below to stand a chance to win!

Too Big to Jail, Chris Blackhurst, Pan Macmillan, ISBN: 9781529065046

Across the world, HSBC likes to sell itself as ‘the world’s local bank’, the friendly face of corporate and personal finance. And yet, a decade ago, the same bank was hit with a record US fine of $1.9b for facilitating money laundering for ‘drug kingpins and rogue nations’. In pursuit of their goal of becoming the biggest bank in the world, between 2003 to 2010, HSBC allowed El Chapo and the Sinaloa cartel, one of the most notorious and murderous criminal organisations in the world, to turn its ill-gotten money into clean dollars and thereby grow one of the deadliest drugs empires the world has ever seen.

How did a bank, which boasts ‘we’re committed to helping protect the world’s financial system on which millions of people depend, by only doing business with customers who meet our high standards of transparency’ come to facilitate Mexico’s richest drug baron? And how did a bank that had been named ‘one of the best-run organisations in the world’ become so entwined with one of the most barbaric groups of gangsters on the planet?

Too Big to Jail is an extraordinary story brilliantly told by writer, commentator and former editor of The Independent, Chris Blackhurst, that starts in Hong Kong and ranges across London, Washington, the Cayman Islands and Mexico, where HSBC saw the opportunity to become the largest bank in the world, and El Chapo seized the chance to fuel his murderous empire by laundering his drug proceeds through the bank. It brings together an extraordinary cast of politicians, bankers, drug dealers, FBI officers and whistle-blowers, and asks what price does greed have? Whose job is it to police global finance? And why did not a single person go to prison for facilitating the murderous expansion of a global drug empire?

In the Name of the People; Tendai Biti, Nic Cheeseman, Christopher Clapham, Ray Hartley, Greg Mills, Juan Carlos Pinzón and Lyal White, Pan Macmillan, ISBN: 9781770108172

Shaken by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and staggering after the Covid-19 pandemic, the global political order is entering a new era of volatile uncertainty that may roll back the gains of the last century.

Open democracies, where opponents respect one another even as they contest for power, are under threat from the rising tide of populism. In this stark new world, political opponents are enemies to be destroyed by fake news, and independent institutions are being used as tools to perpetuate power.

In societies as diverse as Argentina, the Philippines, Tanzania and Hungary, populists have taken power, promising to restore accountability to the people. But, once in office, they have sought to hollow out democracy and to demonise the opposition as they hold onto power and oversee the economic decline of their countries.

In the Name of the People examines populism from its Latin American roots to liberation movements in Africa and the rise of a new European nationalism. At its most virulent, populism has destroyed democracies from the inside out, causing social instability, economic catastrophe and, in some cases, authoritarian repression. In other cases, such as in South Africa, populism is a rising threat as strong constitutional guarantees of democratic accountability come under fire.

The authors analyse 13 countries across the globe to understand how populism is evolving into a threat to free and open societies, addressing questions such as: Where is populism taking us? Is there hope of a return to rational policy-making? Is the world doomed to descend into ever-greater conflict?

*T&Cs – The winner will be selected by Caxton Local Media. Competition entries close on Monday, December 12. The winner will be notified via telephone. The winner will be required to collect their copies from the Highway Mail office at 115 Escom Road, New Germany, Pinetown. 

This competition has ended. :(