History Department - Stellenbosch University

02/10/2026

This week our Honours class presented their research projects for the last time before they hand in their dissertations two weeks from today.

29/09/2026

Congratulations to our colleague Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa for being re-elected last Friday to Council, the highest governing body of Stellenbosch University. He gained a majority vote from permanent academic staff who were invited to elect a member from their ranks for a two-year term.

14/09/2026

Please sign this open petition in support of our colleague Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa, whose passport has been revoked by the Zambian government.

Overturn the cancellation of the passports of Dr. Sishuwa Sishuwa and other Zambians

14/09/2026

The Journal of Southern African Studies has issued a statement in support of our colleague Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa, who is also a member of the JSAS Editorial Board, following the revocation of his passport by the Zambian Government.

The Editorial Board of the Journal of Southern African Studies (JSAS) is deeply concerned that the Zambian government has cancelled the passport of Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa, a member of the JSAS Editorial Board and Senior Lecturer in History at Stellenbosch University. We urge the Zambian authorities to rescind the decision and respect our colleague’s right to free movement and freedom of expression.

22/08/2026

Our colleague Dr Este Kotze is spending a term at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, working on her research project 'Church and Charity: The Dutch Reformed Church and changing conceptions of poverty in South Africa'.

Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften

21/08/2026

Today was Doctoral Day, when our PhD students present the fruits of their research. Prizes for best presentation Imani Emmanuel Phiri on women brewing b**r in Zambia, runner up Tapiwa Vincent Mutasa on the legislation surrounding s*x work in Zimbabwe, and most expert chair, Brian Maregedze.

14/08/2026

Do voters in African democracies prioritise the economy over rights and freedoms? Our colleague Dr Sishuwa told Al Jazeera that while hunger is a major factor, it is not the bedrock of their concerns. In Zambia's election, the spectrum of voters' needs is much wider than food.

Zambia's President Hakainde Hichilema boasts about the economic rec...

04/08/2026

Our own Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa presented the departmental seminar today on the constitutional crisis that was narrowly averted following the death of Zambian President Michael Sata. While the constitution provided for the succession of the then Vice President, Guy Scott, cabinet minister Edgar Lungu - who had been appointed acting president while Sata was travelling for medical treatment - made a bid for power. The title of the talk: ‘Why then were we fighting for self-rule… if we can let a white man rule us?’ echoes the words of a Lungu supporter arguing that Scott's race and foreign parentage made him ineligible. The attorney general ruled that Lungu's bid for power was illegal and possibly treasonous, and Scott became acting president until the following election. Sishuwa's paper, coauthored with Duncan Money, argues that while institutions matter when it comes to securing peaceful alternation of power, elite-level individual leadership is decisive particularly in cases of contested succession.

31/07/2026

Congratulations to Amy Rommelspacher, one of our former PhD students, on the publication of her latest article. By a happy coincidence, together with Jabulani Shaba's article this makes two articles by Stellenbosch PhDs both in the same issue of JSAS, both dealing in different ways with women and work.

The male-breadwinner model is at the centre of feminist research as well as research into women and work in the past. While there is much scholarly debate about the mechanisms of the model, the rea...

29/07/2026

Congratulations to our former PhD student Jabulani Shaba on this new publication in the Journal of Southern African Studies - based on a chapter from Jabulani's PhD thesis supervised by Prof. Sandra Swart.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Mazowe district of Zimbabwe, this article analyses how women navigate multi-layered toxic landscapes within artisanal gold mining. The article sho...