Tag: Wits University Press

Queer Mozambique offers a wide-ranging exploration of Mozambique’s distinctive cultures of sexual and gender dissent and fluidity. It traces these histories from the mine compounds of the late nineteenth century to the current LGBTIQ+ movement. It also examines the formation of new sexual and gender identities, including those of the manas trans women.

Bloke of All Ages offers refreshing new insights into the works of one of South Africa’s most important literary, intellectual and artistic figures, William Bloke Modisane. Moreover, it highlights the resilience of his work. The book situates his intellectual and cultural contribution within the historical context of South African creative arts.

Southern Imagining questions and reshapes influential northern imaginative norms. The book examines how tales of mythical southern lands shaped global perceptions of these worlds. It also explores the environmental consequences of these imaginings. In doing so, Southern Imagining invites readers to inhabit the globe differently.

Darker Shade of Pale traces early twentieth-century Jewish migration from the Russian Empire to colonial South Africa. It tells this complex story through the life of one man. Blending personal memoir with historical inquiry, Deborah Posel reveals the hidden costs of uprooting. These costs include dislocation, ambition, shame and the sting of failure in a settler colony.

Clawing Back draws on a rich ethnography of the human relationships at the centre of the redistribution of wealth. The book shows how people use wages, welfare and debt to build social relations and market futures. They also use these resources to engage with the state and to convert between commodified and non-commodified relationships.

Drawing on a rich archive of colonial photography, Hlonipha Mokoena explores how images of African policemen and nightwatchmen in colonial South Africa challenged traditional narratives of oppression.

Digital capitalism promises progress, development and an end to the planetary crisis. Through a Marxist lens, contributors interrogate the implications of heightened technological innovation on employment, weak market democracies, climate change and labour power dynamics. They also explore alternatives for emancipatory futures in a digitalised world.

An ethnographic account details the experiences and resistance of displaced communities affected by the expansion of coal mining operations in post-apartheid South Africa. It also offers a critical analysis of the legal and policy frameworks that enable their exploitation.

Reflections on race, language, colonial, postcolonial and decolonial knowledge projects that explore the pitfalls and possibilities that face South African universities and a post-apartheid generation inventing the future of knowledge.

The National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) is a flagship South African public health organisation, and this book, by its first executive director and virologist Dr Barry Schoub, paints a portrait of its development, despite many challenges, towards becoming an internationally renowned partner in the struggle for global health.