Journal of Southern African Studies

The JSAS editorial board has decided not to continue posting on this platform. The conversations will continue on Facebook, LinkedIn and Bluesky and we look forward to seeing you there. Thanks for your continuing interest in JSAS.

📢 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. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

📢📢 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

📢 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

📢 New article! How can sociolinguistics strengthen disaster resilience? @SaritaMonjane'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

📢📢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

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

‘Entirely free and at liberty to engage their services as they may think fit’? Recaptured African Adjudication and Freedom at the Cape Colony, 1806–1834, by Benjamin Crous doi.org/10.1080/030570… @BenjaminCrous @Stell_History #slavetrade #CapeColony

📢📢New article alert!! Genevieve Klein examines the policy context within which the #FeesMustFall protests happened, showing how the ANC & the state created high expectations in the university sector but failed to increase funding to meet the expectations tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

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 tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

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 in the 1920s and 30s, as well as the factors that made this possible tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

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 tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

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

The JSAS editors were sad to learn of the sudden death of Martin L. Boston aged only 41. Boston was Assistant Professor at California State University & editor in chief of the journal African and Black Diaspora @ABD_Journal. Our condolences to his family - may he rest in peace.

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 tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

JSAS board member Deborah James pays tribute to James Ferguson whose writing was 'both prolific & deeply considered': his view of development as an 'anti-politics machine' in #Lesotho, & disillusionment after 'expectations of modernity' on the #Copperbelt blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/20…

New article alert!! 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 tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

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. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

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. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…