Journal of Southern African Studies

A child salvaging through the refuse in Botswana

📢 New Article!

Do rural and poorer communities lack climate change awareness?

Drawing on fieldwork in South Africa and Botswana, Ahrens challenges this assumption, showing that communities often display nuanced and thoughtful understandings of climate impacts.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The African Heads of States and Governments pose during African Union (AU) Summit for the agreement to establish the African Continental Free Trade Area in Kigali, Rwanda, on March 21, 2018.

📢 New Article!

How did South Africa shift from customs duties to income & consumption taxes?

Freytag & Siebrits examine two revenue transitions, post 1910 & in the 1990s, showing how tax structures evolved & how trade liberalisation reshaped government revenue.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The Kromme Dam in the Eastern Cape on March 07, 2017 in Kareedouw, South Africa

📢 New Article!

Is the water emergency in Nelson Mandela Bay a climate crisis or a governance failure?

Umejesi and Cheteni examine competing explanations behind “day zero” fears and what’s really driving the region’s water insecurity.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Francois Pienaar and Nelson Mandela after South Africa won the 1995 Rugby World Cup

📢 New Article!
How has the history of South African sport been written, and by whom?
This article by Colin Bundy traces three phases in the historiography, showing how politics shaped the field and how scholars have worked to reclaim the history of black sport.

Mababe village in northern Botswana, Southern Africa, June 2024.

📢 New Article!

How can Botswana strengthen climate adaptation amid drought, erratic rainfall, and rising temperatures? Faimau and Basimane explore national frameworks, media, and Indigenous & Traditional Knowledge in building climate resilience.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

West Street, Durban, mid-1970s

📢📢 New article! How did academics in Durban help shape anti-apartheid knowledge production? Robert Morrell explores the emergence of Agenda and Transformation, linking the 1973 Durban moment to research-driven activism and intellectual decolonisation.

ishortn.ink/Agenda

Enjoying @jimmy-pieterse.bsky.social’s article on campus radio in South Africa

New article by @jimmy-pieterse.bsky.social.

Radio Tuks Logo

📢 New article! Campus radio in Pretoria emerged under apartheid-era restrictions, with the SABC dominating broadcasting. Tracing Radio Tuks from the late 1970s to democracy, this article reveals how UP students contested media power in a changing SA.

ishortn.ink/campus-radio

Destruction in Mozambique following Cyclone Idai

📢 New article! How can sociolinguistics strengthen disaster resilience? Sarita Monjane Henriksen's article on Mozambique argues that leveraging national languages in early-warning systems is critical for effective risk communication in multilingual contexts. ishortn.ink/article

Construction of Sasol One.

📢📢New article! How did apartheid South Africa weather the 1973–74 oil crisis? Despite sanctions, no oil reserves, and global recession, the immediate impact was limited. This article explores why, and how the crisis was turned into political capital.

l1nq.com/sv0oJ

Dr Garikai Chaunza

Congratulations to Dr Garikai Chaunza, a postdoctoral fellow and part-time lecturer at Rhodes University, who has been awarded the Colin Murray Award for the project 'Silencing Gukurahundi Victims: State Repression and the Erosion of Peace Journalism in Zimbabwe’.

#jsas #colinmurray #gukurahundi

Free Education? Promises and Policy in South African Higher Education Funding since 1994 University funding, and in particular funding for students, has been a challenge in South Africa since the transition to democracy in 1994. In 2015–16 it came to the fore during extensive protests ...

📢📢📢In this new paper, Genevieve Klein examines the policy context within which the #FeesMustFall protests took place, showing how the ANC and the state created high expectations in the university sector but failed to increase funding to meet these expectations.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A Crooked Path to Apartheid Education: Segregating the University of Natal, 1936–1959 This article examines the implementation of a form of segregated higher education at the University College of Natal (later the University of Natal) between 1936 and 1959. It argues that this progr...

In this new article, Anne Heffernan examines the implementation of segregated higher education at the University College of Natal between 1936 and 1959, and shows how the university was pivotal in shaping early Apartheid educational policy in South Africa
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

‘A small measure of fairness’: Black South Africans and the Courts, 1919–1938 During the 1920s and 1930s, black South Africans were subjected to a large number of discriminatory laws. African leaders of the time decried both this and the iniquities Africans faced when dealin...

New article alert!! Michael Eastman and Harvey M Feinberg examine the extent to which black South Africans were able to get impartial hearings in the courts during the 1920s and 30s, as well as the factors that made this possible
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Malawian Democracy Beyond Patrons and Clients: Distribution in Parliamentary Elections and the Moral Grounds of Democratic Relationships The distribution of cash, resources and campaign materials is a characteristic feature of elections in Malawi and across Africa. Scholars, commentators and international bodies often describe these...

Congratulations to Sam Farrell for winning the 2025 Terence Ranger prize.. The prize is awarded to the best article by a first-time author in the Journal of Southern African Studies in the previous year. Please click the link below to access the article www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Journal of Southern African Studies Publishes leading research concerning the history, economics, sociology, demography and anthropology of Southern Africa.

Applications are now open for the 2025 Colin Murray Award. Deadline: 30 September 2025. The award supports post-doctoral researchers to carry out original ‘engaged field research’ in Southern Africa. Please see the link below for more details jsas.blog

In this new article, Liam James Kingsley examines the health services and infrastructure in SWAPO exile camps and analyses the significance of international aid in the provision of medical care, as well as the process by which it was procured www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

New article alert!! In this article C. Cramer & J. Sender analyse evidence on the effects of investments in high-value agricultural exports, in this specific case, the production of blueberries, on the well-being of poor women in Bojanala District, South Africa
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

In this new article, Martin L. Boston explores how the South African edition of Drum magazine covered the South African singer, Miriam Makeba, prior to and as she left South Africa for the world’s stage in 1959, and into the mid-1960s.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Ciskei’s Demise and the Tricky First Decade of Reintegration into the Eastern Cape Province Studying the end years of South Africa’s black homelands and their enduring legacies is essential to grasping some of the governance challenges and socio-political obstacles that have characterised...

New article alert!! Luvuyo Wotshela's study outlines the trials that faced the Ciskei homeland in the democratic transition through to the first decade of its reintegration into the ‘new’ South Africa and its incorporation into the Eastern Cape Province.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Fallen Heroes and First Peoples: Memory Composition Among Two Ex-Military Communities in South Africa The apartheid-era South African Defence Force’s most notorious units, 31 Battalion and 32 Battalion, were composed of African troops. With the onset of Namibia’s 1990 independence, these soldiers a...

Delighted to share the publication of my article "Fallen Heroes and First Peoples: Memory Composition Among Two Ex-Military Communities in South Africa" in @jsas-journal.bsky.social

It is open access and freely available at the link below.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Crash Narratives and Accidental Archives: Rethinking Road Safety in South Africa This article considers the implications of historicising road safety in contemporary South Africa. It offers a critical interrogation of the ‘epidemiological turn’ evident in recent global road saf...

New article alert!! In this study, Rebekah Lee uses ‘crash narratives’ to shed light on the wider historicised and contested dynamics around the nature and meaning of road danger and accidental death in South Africa. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

If you're at #ecas2025 in Prague & have a Southern Africa paper you'd like to publish, senior editor @justinpearce.bsky.social & chair Rebekah Lee are here. We'll be at the Meet the Editors event Friday 17.30-19.00, at the T&F stand in the Arts Faculty 3rd floor. Or message us via the ECAS website.

Enjoyed talking about the relationship between MPLA soldiers & ANC liberation fighters in 1980s Angola: more difficult than the official declarations of solidarity would suggest. I argue it fuelled the 1984 MK mutiny.
The article will be published in @jsas-journal.bsky.social early next year.

The Hostel Peace Initiative: Rethinking Violence and Peace at the End of Apartheid In August 1992, one of the most remarkable peace initiatives was launched in South Africa when two warring migrant worker hostels began negotiating for a truce. The residents of the African Nationa...

New article alert!! In this article, Franziska Rueedi examines the Hostel Peace Initiative in the greater Johannesburg areas during the final years of Apartheid and uses it to shed new light on the democratic transition in South Africa
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Apartheid’s Moral Scaffolds: Personhood and the Making of Difference from Below along the Southern African Frontier This article explores how moral communities that emerged along frontiers of settlement in southern Africa mediated colonial categories of difference. The existing literature’s emphasis on assimilat...

New article alert!! In this article, Khumisho Moguerane uses Noni Jabavu’s ethnographic writing to explore how moral communities that emerged along frontiers of settlement in southern Africa mediated colonial categories of difference
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Load Shedding Experience, Gender and Morality in Zambia, 2015–2024 The overdependence of Zambia’s energy sector on hydroelectricity exposes the country to significant vulnerabilities in times of drought brought about by climate change. People often experience thes...

New article alert!! In this article, James Musonda draws on ethnographic research on the Zambian Copperbelt to explore load shedding from 3 angles: people’s everyday experiences, gender implications, and load shedding as a moral critique of the government www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Beyond the Borders of Lesotho: The Basutoland Congress Party’s Transnational Connections and its Political and Ideological Pragmatism, 1952–1970 This article contributes to the literature on international and transnational connections of liberation movements in southern Africa. It examines the understudied history of the Basutoland Congress...

New Article alert!! In this article, Matteo Grilli examines the transnational connections of the Basutoland Congress Party from 1952 to 70. He reveals the pragmatic approach of BCP leader, Ntsu Mokhehle, to the different political models and ideologies www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

History, Histories and Historians - BZS RD25 Join BZS RD25 for lively debate on the writing of Zimbabwe's history over past years, and be introduced to exciting new scholarship. This is a two day, hybrid event, in-person at St Antony's College,...

Join the BZS research day for a lively debate on the writing of Zimbabwe's history at St Antony's College, University of Oxford. This will be a hybrid event - sign up using this link
www.eventbrite.com/cc/history-h...