Botswana's parliamentary democracy features a weak parliament that is ineffective in law making and executive oversight. Conventional explanations emphasise a dominant party system that emerged following independence, lack of operational independence from the executive, and the poor capacity of parliament as factors that undermine its effectiveness. Using a novel dataset that is based on interviews

Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress, is reputed to have been a largely ineffective guerrilla army which hardly challenged the apartheid war machine. Instead, thi...

Kavango Zambezi (KAZA) is the world’s largest terrestrial Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA), covering vast regions of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Elephants and other specie...

Why is it that South Africa’s ‘land question’ is so stubbornly resistant to resolution? This think piece re-examines 30 years of debate, concentrating on the disjuncture between the discourses of p...

Many ethics review bodies now routinely recommend the use of written consent forms as the default method of obtaining informed consent, including for research conducted in African countries. Althou...

This article focuses on two interlinked trends in public memory in Mozambique: the rise of alternative heroes and parallel invocations of seemingly incompatible heroes, particularly as they relate ...

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 50, No. 1, 2024)

Scholars acknowledge the importance of geological knowledge in the growth of South Africa’s mining industry. While this acknowledgement extends to the analysis of the rise of eMalahleni (formerly k...

The history of black labour at the South African gold mines has conventionally been punctuated by three great African strikes, in 1920 (often obscured by the great white mine-worker strike of 1922)...

This article uses historical and climatological methods to recontextualise the first decade of Dutch settlement at the Cape, 1652–62. It draws on weather data contained in the Journal of Jan van Ri...

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 50, No. 1, 2024)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 50, No. 1, 2024)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 50, No. 1, 2024)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 50, No. 1, 2024)

The global campaign against apartheid South Africa has been viewed as one of the most successful examples of international solidarity activism in the 20th century. Scholars examining how anti-apart...

Social conditions in post-apartheid South Africa have been widely seen as marked by persistent and often racialised inequalities. The country has also been viewed through the prism of crisis, in ec...

This study employs an explorative case study methodology, which utilises interviews, historical analysis and observations to identify and analyse the local powers and politics that influence large-...

This article examines the career of the South African undercover agent Craig Williamson in the 1970s and 1980s, arguing that the violent acts of men like Williamson must be analysed in terms of the...

Drawing on five years of intermittent ethnographic work at Kariba, I discuss the impoverishment of the Tonga of Mola chiefdom in the context of escalating human–wildlife conflict and frequent droug...

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 49, No. 5-6, 2023)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 49, No. 5-6, 2023)

This article examines the history of black women’s Christian activity in the East Bank location of East London (also known as Duncan Village) in the early years of apartheid. Oral, textual and phot...

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 49, No. 5-6, 2023)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 49, No. 5-6, 2023)

This article considers popular political mobilisation in East London prior to the launch of the Defiance Campaign in the city in 1952, which ignited a racial war. It suggests that the failure of th...

Narratives of political and community struggles often privilege the role of men, painting them as the faces of the struggle. Yet, women have been (and continue to be) active participants who have f...

When the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of 1996/97 was tasked with investigating gross human rights violations from 1 March 1960 to 1994, there was a presumption that apart...

This concluding overview explores themes which provide background to the four articles in the part special issue on popular protest in the Eastern Cape, with a special focus on East London. As thes...

After the South African War (1899–1902), state-makers’ efforts to control ‘dagga’ was controversial on several fronts. But ‘dagga’ also proved a moving target for official classification. Was it a ...

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 49, No. 5-6, 2023)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 49, No. 5-6, 2023)

Historical studies of migration have largely ascribed the configuration of masculinities in Botswana to male labour migration. This discourse is beyond dispute. As a paradigm, however, it has obscu...

Fairtrade International (FTI) is an international certificatory body that seeks to restructure market relationships to support marginalised producers. In order to do this, FTI sells certified produ...

Based on interviews with 43 serving members at four Public Order Police units, this article highlights the perspectives of officers involved in arguably the most contentious and visible aspect of S...

In the 1930s the colonial authorities in Zimbabwe set aside geographical areas where Africans were allowed to purchase land. Despite having private property rights to land, a rare occurrence among ...

In August 1970, four senior African National Congress members – Flag Boshielo, Castro Dolo, Victor Ndaba and Bob Zulu – vanished during their clandestine return to South Africa from exile in Zambia...

This article endeavours to awaken a scholarly interest in the origins and early history of tennis in the city of Cape Town and the Cape Colony more broadly. By drawing on newspaper accounts and oth...

In response to the low numbers of women in elected positions of power, Tanzania reserves special seats for women in parliament and local governance structures. Consequently, the special seats syste...

Rwanda’s mid 2021 military intervention meaningfully degraded the capability of the jihadist insurgents terrorising northern Mozambique. Rwanda’s early battlefield achievements were due to a combin...