📢 New Issue! JSAS Volume 52, Issue 1 This issue explores politicised identities, extraction and environmental change, and new histories of liberation movements across southern Africa, with articles spanning Mauritius, Mozambique, Angola, Namibia and Lesotho. www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjss20/c...

Journal of Southern African Studies

Volume 52, Issue 1 of Journal of Southern African Studies

tandfonline.com

📢 New Article! How do women experience toxicity in artisanal gold mining? @jabulanishabazw.bsky.social examines women's encounters with mercury in Zimbabwe's Mazowe goldfields, showing how toxicity extends beyond pollution to gendered labour and survival. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Article! What can stories of wandering spirits tell us about social change? Zwane explores haunting narratives in post-apartheid KwaNdebele, arguing they reveal changing kinship, migration and the enduring importance of family and ritual. Read here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Article! How did UNITA emerge as Angola’s third liberation movement? Höring and Ribeiro revisit UNITA’s founding, revealing the alliances, negotiations and rivalries that shaped its emergence between 1964 and 1966. Read here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Article! Can constitutions protect diversity without freezing identity? Ramtohul examines Mauritius’s Independence Constitution, arguing that while it promoted political stability, it also entrenched identities that continue to shape nation-building. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Article! Do extractive mega-projects create development or deepen inequality? Mattioli compares mining in Tete & LNG development in Cabo Delgado, showing how communities experienced dispossession, organised resistance & challenged extractivist development www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Article! How do liberation movements continue to shape politics after conflict ends? Whang revisits the history of Lesotho’s Liberation Army, arguing it was more than a proxy force & tracing its lasting impact on Lesotho’s political landscape. Read here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Article! How did ideas travel across liberation movements during the Cold War? Wetzel traces the journey of the Frelimo Youth League from Soviet classrooms to Mozambique’s liberation struggle, showing how political realities shaped which ideas endured. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Best conference ever? #Zimbabwe & Zimbabweans have such a central place in Southern African historiography that having #SAHS in Harare was a necessary acknowledgement of that. Wonderful finally to meet so many people, mostly Zimbabwean, whom I've worked with virtually but never met in person. 1/5

Justin Pearce@justinpearce.bsky.social · last mo.

Only in Zimbabwe do you see trees this colour. In Harare with the rest of the delegation from Stellenbosch to #SAHS2026

2/5 Particularly good to meet Methembe Hadebe & launch the special issue of @jsas-journal.bsky.social to which we both contributed: 'Liberation Armies' Imagined Futures in Southern Africa'. We even made it onto ZBC News! Read the special issue here: www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjss20/5...

📢 New Article! Who gets remembered in liberation histories? Mazarire traces ZANU’s Ghana-trained insurgents, examining how some fighters became central to liberation memory while others faded from view. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Launching JSAS special issue 'Liberation Armies' Imagined Futures in Southern Africa' at #SAHS2026 in Harare. L to R chair Diana Jeater, author Methembe Hillary Hadebe, author and issue co-editor Justin Pearce with Methembe's two books. Read the issue here: www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjss20/5...

📢 New Article! How did ideas travel across liberation movements during the Cold War? Wetzel traces the journey of the Frelimo Youth League from Soviet classrooms to Mozambique’s liberation struggle, showing why some ideas took hold while others failed. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Article! How did women shape liberation struggles beyond activism and military roles? Ntombela examines the intellectual work of ANC and PAC women in exile, showing how organising, writing & political debate helped redefine ideas of women’s emancipation. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Article! How did women soldiers reshape military culture during Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle? McGregor, Alexander and Hadebe examine women’s training in ZPRA, revealing how female recruits challenged martial masculinity during the liberation war. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Special Issue! How did southern Africa’s liberation armies imagine the future? Drawing on oral histories, memoirs & struggle archives, this SI explores how soldiers shaped ideas about freedom, gender, politics an&d solidarity from the 1960s to the 1980s. www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjss20/5...

📢 New Article ‘The Herero claim it for themselves alone’ In this article, Hogan examines the growth, evolution & eventual decline of the UNIA in South West Africa from 1921-1924. Read the full article here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Article! “Reading is the weapon.” Arianna Lissoni examines the role of books, libraries and political education in MK camps in Angola, showing how reading helped shape MK as a political army. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Article! How did ZAPU’s liberation army emerge? Jocelyn Alexander traces how nationalist youth in 1960s Rhodesia, shaped by repression, revolutionary ideas and transnational military networks, came to imagine armed struggle. Read the article here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Article! What did solidarity look like on the battlefield during Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle? Munguambe examines how Frelimo & ZANU soldiers fought side by side in Rhodesia, showing how differing military cultures created both friction and co-operation www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Issue! JSAS 51.5 brings together research on storytelling, power and resource politics across Southern Africa, from sport history and tax reform to farm violence, tourism and liberation struggles. Explore the issue and David Everatt's editorial here: www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjss20/5...

Journal of Southern African Studies

Volume 51, Issue 5 of Journal of Southern African Studies

tandfonline.com

The data was kindly provided by Krige Siebrits, co-author of an article on the history of income tax and customs in South Africa in @jsas-journal.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Replacing Customs Revenue with Taxes on Income and Domestic Consumption: The South African Experience

The world is currently witnessing two contrasting economic policy experiments. On the one hand, President Donald Trump aims to replace other tax revenues with tariff revenues. All empirical evidenc...

tandfonline.com

Mining taxes in South Africa as a % of overall revenue and in absolute terms. Two things stand out: a massive increase in the 1930s as the gold industry boomed, and a big increase after 1948 as the apartheid government sought new revenues to pay for harsher racial segregation.

📢 New Article! What happens when liberation movements fight in someone else’s war? @justinpearce.bsky.social examines MK’s time in Angola, showing how tensions with FAPLA & competing political visions shaped their alliance and contributed to the 1983–84 mutiny. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The first issue of JEAS volume 20 is now online! www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjea20/2...

New article connects Angolan & South African Cold War historiographies, examining the incompatible views of malcontent MPLA & ANC troops who fought on the same side during ANC exile in Angola, particularly on the question of whether UNITA were compatriots or foes. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

‘In my territory you have to do something’: MK, FAPLA and the War against UNITA

Camps in Angola were crucial training grounds for the South African liberation army Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) from the late 1970s and through the 1980s, a period when the Angolan state army, FAPLA (Po...

tandfonline.com

Succinct early history of gold in Southern Africa and the role of long-distance connections in this article. The decision by the Fatimid rulers of Egypt to make gold currency their standard measure of value in 969 caused huge demand for gold in southeast Africa: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Turning South African History Upside Down: Ivory and Gold Production, the Indian Ocean Trading System and the Shaping of Southern African Society, 600–1900 AD

A focus on the colonial period has created a foreshortened history of South Africa which has been further blinkered by the reification of national boundaries. This perspective has limited the under...

tandfonline.com

📢 New Book Review What does mining waste reveal about the limits of the state? Gabrielle Hecht’s “Residual Governance” examines how apartheid-era extraction continues to shape environmental injustice & why redress remains so difficult. Read Leah Burch’s review: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New Book Review Why does mob justice persist in post-apartheid South Africa? Karl Kemp’s “Why We Kill” argues that vigilantism reflects not only state failure, but deeper social frustrations, wounded pride, & demands for justice. Read Vartavarian’s review: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Awards nominations are open for African Politics! Please share widely! @jsteend.bsky.social @stephaniewanga.bsky.social @evlieb.bsky.social @africasacountry.bsky.social @jsas-journal.bsky.social @chinemeluokafor.bsky.social @thelauram16.bsky.social @woldense.bsky.social

African Politics Conference Group@africanpoliticscg.bsky.social · 5mo ago

The call for 2026 APCG Award Nominations is live! The deadline for nominations is May 1st. Nominate scholars for Best Dissertation, Best Graduate Student Paper, Distinguished Africanist, Best Article and Best Book! www.afpol.org/blog/2026-ap...