Land reforms are an important mechanism for addressing inequalities in society. While addressing South Africa’s racialised land inequalities remains crucial, new forms of class inequality are produced through land reform, with the well-off becoming predominant as beneficiaries. This article focuses on elite capture in land redistribution and analyses land-reform outcomes in South Africa’s state land

The Ndau society in the Zimbabwe–Mozambique borderland has seemingly been neglected by colonial and post-independence governments. Exclusion from the mainstream economies of the region by the Zimbabwean and Mozambican governments has forced the Ndau to rely largely upon themselves to survive in the remote, poverty-stricken borderland. This survival practice means that many borderland residents embrace

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Ahead of Print, 2023)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Ahead of Print, 2023)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Ahead of Print, 2023)

In post-2000s Zimbabwe, artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) has become one of the major economic activities that provides income and livelihood opportunities to millions of people. The article attempts to make sense of how such mining activities intertwined with the country’s political economy and became implicated in shaping the dynamics of local and national politics. Taking the case of

This article discusses the insecurity challenges faced by irregular Zimbabwean immigrants as well as mitigatory strategies they deploy to survive in an informal settlement in Pretoria East, South Africa. Globally, immigrants (especially irregular immigrants) have been and continue to be viewed and treated as societal and state security threats in the host societies. In response to this perceived or

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Ahead of Print, 2023)

This article explores how Zambian mine workers used the courts and a protest campaign to resist predatory lending by Stanbic Bank. Given that debt repayment was done directly from their salaries, these workers were not necessarily advocating debt refusal or default. Neither did they expect the courts to rule in their favour. Rather, they sought to resist the bank’s arbitrary changes to the terms of

The Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU[PF]) regime’s survival strategies have been misleadingly presented as relying mainly upon political violence. This neglects analysis focusing on the ZANU(PF) regime’s non-violent survival strategies, which have also been key to its longevity. While a growing body of literature discusses ZANU(PF) non-violent strategies, including patriotic

This article examines changing attitudes to afternoon and evening meals during the Zimbabwean crisis between 1997 and 2020. It uses household food economics in Harare’s high-density suburbs as an entry point into the historiography of the Zimbabwean crisis. By focusing on the management of household economics, the article analyses the affordability, typologies and naming of some meals or relishes that

This article traces the post-presidency experiences of Malawi’s first head of state, Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, from 1994 to 1997. Most of what has been written about him has concentrated on his time as an active politician, starting from the late 1950s, when he led the struggle against British colonial rule, and when he was the country’s head of state, from 1964 to 1994, focusing on both domestic and

Pressure in the Cape Colony parliament for disfranchising policies was primarily instigated by the Afrikaner Bond. The Bond’s initiatives were based on prejudice against Africans and amounted to an attempt at weakening the influence of English-speaking politicians with the belief that many of them were in parliament because Africans voted for them. An attempt was made through the Parliamentary Voters’

With the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa, a shift has taken place in the organisation of xenophobia as xenophobic activism has adapted to the pandemic and increasingly moved ‘online’. While a large scholarship on the various aspects of ‘offline’ xenophobia in contemporary South Africa has been produced, the recent intensification of online xenophobic activism during the pandemic remains

This article investigates the historicity of Gideon von Wielligh’s collection of /xam folklore, history, and observational accounts published predominantly in Afrikaans during the early 20th century. Von Wielligh’s collection is often portrayed as suspect in relation to the ‘great’ /xam archive, namely that of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd – with accusations of plagiarism a common charge. Through a

The role of religion in political parties has been under-researched in South Africa. This study develops a novel theoretical framework for analysing political parties’ use of religion, which distinguishes between parties’ orientation towards religion (that is, religious or secular; inclusive or exclusive) across three domains: state law, the institutional rules of the party, and the informal norms

The fast-track land reform programme in Zimbabwe radically transformed the country’s agrarian structure from one dominated by white-owned, large-scale farms to one dominated by a large group of black family farmers. Since 2017, a set of explanations has emerged that attempts to explain processes of social differentiation in the countryside. These explanations are predominantly informed by a materialist

There are renewed global efforts to make wildlife conservation the foundation for broad-based economic development. This article looks at these tendencies in the ‘Kruger to Canyons’ (K2C) biosphere region in South Africa, encompassing the Kruger National Park and adjacent settlement areas and reserves. Various forms of the wildlife economy have a long history in this region. However, it is increasingly

Recent historical work on global health and the threat of infectious disease in Africa has looked at the ecology of infections, disease trajectories, colonial interventions and the impact of disease on local communities in varied geographic landscapes and cultural responses. A particularly valuable avenue of analysis has explored racial prejudices of colonial anti-syphilis programmes, largely looking

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 5, 2022)

In 2018, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced his government’s intention to pursue land expropriation without compensation. In a country where wealth and poverty still run largely along apartheid-era racial lines, this policy is widely associated with transferring white-owned agricultural property to landless and impoverished blacks. As with preceding land reform policy, expropriation

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 5, 2022)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 4, 2022)

In highland Madagascar, people often let social relations drift into a ‘dormant’ state. Within this state, people refrain not only from interaction, but also from further defining the nature of social relations. This ‘dormant’ state, which may last for a considerable time, reflects cultural norms of social interaction and, as this article argues, needs to be considered when aiming for a better grasp

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 4, 2022)

This article examines how Namibians recalled colonisation by Germany (1884–1915) under subsequent South African colonial rule (1915–90). Focusing on Herero communities and political leaders between 1915 and the beginning of an armed struggle in 1966, it argues that invoking the first colonial occupation became an idiom that allowed the Herero to challenge the continued depredations of settler colonialism

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 5, 2022)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 5, 2022)

This article analyses the decline and near collapse of local government in South Africa through a political and legal lens. Given the paralysis of constitutionally envisaged political accountability procedures in the post-Mbeki period, residents and local businesses have increasingly resorted to courts and chapter 9 institutions, in addition to local organisation, protest and a range of direct actions

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 5, 2022)

The South African government presented its strategy for rolling out vaccinations against Covid–19 in 2021 as a comprehensive plan designed by technocratic experts working with the country’s leading scientists. This imagery built on the government’s prior claims that its responses to Covid over the previous year ‘followed the science’. In 2021, as in 2020, this framing functioned ideologically to justify

Going to drive-ins became a popular pastime in Cape Town during the 1960s and 1970s, although most were restricted to white audiences. Towards the end of this period, however, the arrival of television and emerging cinemas in ‘Coloured’ areas pushed white cinema owners throughout the city to apply for permits for mixed-race audiences and to transform the white-only status of their venues. This article

During the interregnum between the announcement of the election results in March 1980 and the independence ceremony in April, approximately 16,000 workers staged wildcat strikes across Zimbabwe. While previous scholarly analyses have focused on the failure of these strikes to catalyse a sustained movement, this article reads them as timely enactments of the workers’ vision of decolonisation during

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 3, 2022)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 3, 2022)

In this article, I explore the different ways in which educated young people in urban Mahajanga experience and anticipate social relationships. Taking rumours of betrayal as my starting point, I shed light on the ambivalent nature of friendship and commensality. While both phenomena echo Malagasy values encompassing solidarity and sharing, they also contain the threat of switching into dangerous territory:

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 4, 2022)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 4, 2022)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 4, 2022)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 4, 2022)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 4, 2022)

Finding new ways to address oppressive pasts has been a prominent theme in South African nonfiction since the end of apartheid, writers often seeking to explore personal and collective implication and guilt. The legacies of oppression and discrimination spill over into the South African present of social and economic inequality. This article examines four autobiographical texts that address notions

The institutions of higher-level education founded by British missionaries in 19th-century Madagascar were concentrated in Antananarivo, in the Ambohijatovo district of the upper town. Young people from town and country received instruction in religious matters as well as more specialised teaching geared towards science, medicine, literature, economics and geography and, in consequence, developed an

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 2, 2022)

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 3, 2022)

Imagined as a colony of settlement and an entrepôt of trade, France’s first outpost in the Indian Ocean began in 1642 in a region of south-east Madagascar called Anosy. The settlement lasted 32 years. The abandonment of Fort Dauphin, as it become known, in 1674 and the shift of French Indian Ocean empire toward South Asia and île de Bourbon has obscured the scale, nature and astounding impact of the

Industrial copper production is a major driving force of the Zambian economy. As such, it is seen by the Zambian people as a key vehicle for national development. Until the 1990s, the mining industry in Zambia was controlled by Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM). The mines were subsequently privatised, a process which was facilitated through a series of ‘development agreements’. One of these mines

Among the most explicit ideas and norms of desired, pro-social behaviours in modern Malagasy society is the rhetoric around, and longing for, ‘fihavanana’, a term that can be roughly translated as ‘solidarity’. It features therefore as a very prominent aspect of relationality in Madagascar, serving as a means of control and of conflict resolution and also as a guarantee of peace. Yet there is another

Zambia obtained its independence from British colonial rule in 1964. While significant portions of historiography focus on how the struggle was predominantly fought by men, some more recent literature examines the various ways in which women contributed to the movement. This paper re-examines women’s participation in the anti-colonial movement of the 1950s and early 1960s by taking a cue from the development

Climate change is a vast global relationship made manifest by experiences of variability in local weather conditions. In the South African context, this reality is inextricably tied to historical land dispossession and politics around land reform. Art offers new conceptual vocabularies for understanding and responding to entanglements between land issues and climate change in the country. This article

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 3, 2022)

Why are so few women being elected to positions of leadership in Zimbabwe? This article provides insights into the barriers that women face getting elected. In documenting the experiences of 11 female candidates who ran in the July 2018 elections in Harare, the article argues that intersectional axes of discrimination based on gender, age, class, party identification and marital status became significant

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 3, 2022)

This article follows the call in decolonial research to recognise other ways of knowing. It explores a specific kind of knowledge: namely, what we describe as ‘counterhegemonic civilising discourses’, or everyday efforts by the ex-colonised to civilise the ex-coloniser. In the article, we analyse Mozambican workers’ discursive attempts to teach what they see as ‘proper’ or ‘moral’ behaviour to Portuguese

This article explores agrarian labour relationships between the pilot Smallholder Gowe Irrigation Scheme, the contiguous dryland farming community and TILCOR/ARDA’s core irrigation estate in Sanyati, Zimbabwe, from 1967 to 1990. It is an analysis of the emerging smallholder cotton irrigation agriculture and the contradictions between this process and the labour requirements of the estate sector. The

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 3, 2022)

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has emerged as a key technique for resource governance across much of southern Africa. While it was seen early on in its inception in many countries as a virtual panacea for sustainable development, its success has waned over time. While the predominant literature points to a number of reasons for diminished benefits, I argue in this article that

This article explores a history of self-organisation among the Basotho traders in Lesotho’s colonial and post-colonial commerce from the 1870s to the 2010s. Using historical sources, the article argues that Basotho’s forms of self-organisation – voluntary business associations and co-operatives – are indispensable in their persistent struggle for economic democracy. Under colonial (1870s–1966) and

Published in Journal of Southern African Studies (Vol. 48, No. 2, 2022)

The largely cordial relationship between Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa, established in the 1890s, instantly turned hostile at Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. This reconfiguration, marked by Harare’s termination of diplomatic contact with Pretoria, was due to divergent ideologies between apartheid South Africa and the black majoritarian Zimbabwean government. Shying away from the orthodox