Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
JOSEPH EID/AFP via Getty Images
The global realignment triggered by the end of the Cold War and Gorbachev’s reforms ushered in a period of transition on the African continent.
Image by Liz Whitter courtesy of Wits University Press
Wits University Press is one of only 15 active university publishers in Africa – crucial for scholarship about the continent.
Detail of a photo of Lilian Ngoyi making a speech in 1960.
Azola Daniel/Wikimedia Commons
The pioneering role she played, and the sacrifices she made, extended well beyond the famous 1956 Women’s March.
The late former Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos.
Agência Brasil, used under Creative Commons Licence
The political skill to turn situations to his advantage, rather than any ability to mobilise people, made Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders.
Books are often targeted when they are sympathetic to the oppressed.
Eskay Lim / EyeEm via Getty Images
A scholar of literature sees striking parallels between contemporary book bans in the US and those that took place in South Africa during apartheid.
Family members wash away blood at the scene of a shooting in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, where seven people were shot dead in May.
Brenton Geach/Gallo Images
The study highlights the flimsy boundaries between different forms of violence: torture and extrajudicial punishment, lawful arrest, and an unlawful kidnapping.
Francis Wilson: an academic who never fitted easily into any school of thought or belonged in anyone’s camp.
Photo courtesy UCT News
He used his powerful research to promote social change for justice in South Africa.
Land ownership in South Africa remains skewed towards white farmers.
David Silverman/via Getty Images
Land reform had not been held back by the constitution but by capacity constraints and a lack of political will.
Subsidies for black farmers would deliver an inclusive sector and correct past racial biases.
Getty Images
Subsidies for black farmers in South Africa would build a new ‘crop’ of commercially oriented farmers.
Antjie Krog from a detail of the cover for the book ‘n Vry vrou (a free woman).
Human & Rousseau
The famous writer turns 70 this year. She is driven by how South Africans see and hear one another.
Detail of a photo of Can Themba at Drum magazine.
Photo Jürgen Schadeberg courtesy Wits University Press
Abundantly talented and flawed, apartheid-era writer Can Themba wasn’t afraid to put his body on the line for a story.
27 April 1994: South Africans vote in the nation’s first free and democratic general election.
Photo by Brooks Kraft LLC/Sygma via Getty Images
Freedom Day needs to be used by South Africans to renew their commitment to correcting their country’s faults.
Canada’s residential school system has had a lasting effect on First Nations communities.
Blake Elliott | Shutterstock
When a patriarchal society is combined with a history of colonialism, women in that country are at heightened risk of gender-based violence.
Many researchers are interested in the genetic history of the Khoe-San.
Dana Al-Hindi
The South African Khoe-San communities are no strangers to exploitative research. One research team is trying to provide genetic ancestry results to community members. But they still face many challenges.
The 2013 strike over wages by farm workers in South Africa’s Western Cape.
Photo by Nardus Engelbrecht / Gallo Images / Getty Images
Inequality in organisations is difficult to shift because they are entrenched by the status quo.
Anatomist and anthropologist Matthew Drennan in his anthropology laboratory at the University of Cape Town in 1931.
Cape Argus, 27 August 1931
Scientists themselves seemed to be unaware that their lack of comment on the absurdity of apartheid was a statement in itself.
Demonstration for the rights of the Uyghurs in Berlin, 2020.
Leonhard Lenz, Wikimedia Commons
Is history really a triumphant march of progress? It depends on your point of view.
Chief Emeka Anyaoku, a global icon with local roots.
Photo by Jekesai Njikizana/AFP via Getty Images
The former secretary-general of the Commonwealth represents the true essence of a public intellectual and leader; his sense of duty defines his legacy.
Photo by James Andanson/Sygma via Getty Images
Makeba, who would have turned 90 on 4 March 2022, was a hugely influential artist and an icon of African liberation and identity.
Former South African president Nelson Mandela on his 91st birthday in 2009.
Media24/Gallo Images/Getty Images
The death of Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 2021 has triggered renewed frustrations over the elusiveness of a “new” South Africa.