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South Africans seem to be fascinated with the way in which spying is entwined in the country’s politics.
Today’s gang violence on the Cape Flats can’t be divorced from Cape Town’s history of forced removals.
EQRoy/Shutterstock/Editorial use only
Given the framework within which removals under the Group Areas Act took place in Cape Town, a social disaster was inevitable.
Harold Wolpe showed how poor rural areas subsidised low wages of migrant workers’ wages.
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During the apartheid period in South Africa – 1948 to 1994 – a lively intellectual culture of opposition emerged on some of the country’s university campuses and within the broader anti-apartheid movement…
Raymond Louw, right, with then deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, middle, and veteran journalist Mathatha Tsedu in 2015.
GovernmentZA/Flickr
Raymond Louw will be remembered as a man of unbending principle.
Oromo children saved from slavery.
Supplied by author
Book adds a great deal to our understanding of how children were ensnared into the Indian Ocean slave trade.
Between 1963 and 1969 Robert Sobukwe spent six years of near-complete solitary confinement on Robben Island.
Book cover
A collection of prison letters provides a peek into the suffering of South African liberation hero, Robert Sobukwe.
One of the Boer concentration camps.
Photographical Collection Anglo-Boer War Museum, Bloemfontein SA
A British Conservative MP has brought concentration camps during the South African War back into the spotlight.
General assimilatory practices can leave pupils feeling isolated.
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There are several ways to deal with discrimination, from initiating national dialogues to training teachers to identify their own biases.
South African liberation struggle icon Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
EPA-EFE/Jon Hrusha
Controversy around Winnie Madikizela-Mandela continues in death as it did in life.
UCT will honour Sarah Baartman by naming a hall after her.
Wikimedia Commons
Sarah Baartman’s name can be elevated to the highest point of the University of Cape Town’s campus, but if her legacy isn’t built into each classroom and interaction the honour is hollow.
Pik Botha played a central role in the intricate talks that eventually led to Namibia’s independence.
Foto24/Nasief Manie
Pik Botha defended apartheid and South Africa’s occupation of Namibia, but in the end helped end both.
Malagasy people take part in famadihana, the ritual of the dead, to honour their ancestors.
Tee La Rosa/Flickr
Africans have steadfastly responded to oppression through culture.
Anti-apartheid cleric Trevor Huddleston, centre, with South African liberation struggle icons Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela in 1991.
EPA/Stringer
Bishop Huddleston’s criticism of Enoch Powell’s incendiary “Rivers of blood” speech was both a history lesson and a call to action against racism.
Winnie Madikizela achieved a lot before she met Nelson Mandela.
Kim Ludbrook/EPA
Reducing Madikizela’s entire life and legacy to her relationship with Mandela has more to do with patriarchal tropes about powerful women than reality.
Limpopo Province, South Africa. Who owned this land?
Flickr/mifl68
In practice, land expropriation in South Africa will be a matter of deciding which descendants of the dispossessed are entitled to it.
South African President Jacob Zuma and Tobeka Madiba, his fifth wife, celebrate their traditional wedding with a dance.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
Both South Africa’s courts and its legislature have failed to do their bit in creating a culturally diverse society.
Steve Biko in 1977.
EPA/Sowetan
The ANC has worked hard to monopolise the history of the anti-apartheid struggle – meaning transformational figures are being left out.
EPA/Jon Hrusa
Today’s ANC is in terrible shape – but it wasn’t Jacob Zuma who put it on the wrong track.
Slaves’ stories are not commonly known. But historical archives hold a clue to individual lives.
Nic Bothma/EPA
It is possible to trace the links between patriarchy, violence, gender roles, and the state further into the past. It’s also possible to trace the ongoing resistance to these by some women.
During his 1966 visit to South Africa, US Senator Robert F Kennedy met with ANC leader Chief Albert Luthuli.
Shoreline Productions
Fifty years ago US Senator Robert F Kennedy visited South Africa. A new documentary about RFK’s visit puts the spotlight on an important part of the country’s history.