Tag: Wits University Press

Shortly after the giant bronze statue of Cecil John Rhodes came down at the University of Cape Town, student protesters called for the decolonisation of universities. It was a word hardly heard in South Africa’s struggle lexicon and many asked: What exactly is decolonisation?

The radio in Africa has shaped culture by allowing listeners to negotiate modern identities and sometimes fast-changing lifestyles. Through the medium of voice and mediated sound, listeners on the station – known as Radio Bantu, then Radio Zulu, and finally Ukhozi FM – shaped new understandings of the self, family and social roles.

Native to the Kalahari Desert, Hoodia gordonii is a succulent plant known by generations of indigenous San peoples to have a variety of uses: to reduce hunger, increase energy, and ease breastfeeding. In the global North, it is known as a natural appetite suppressant, a former star of the booming diet industry.

To dress is a uniquely human experience, but practices and meanings of dress vary greatly among people. In a Western cultural tradition, the practice of dressing ‘properly’ has for centuries distinguished ‘civilised’ people from ‘savages’.

What are democracies meant to do? And how does one know when one is a democratic state?’ These incisive questions and more by leading political scientist, Steven Friedman, underlie this robust enquiry into what democracy means for South Africa post 1994.

So much has been written on xenophobia in South Africa, and yet so few have listened with care and precision to the voices of the ordinary people at the coalface. This book unsettles so many old assumptions, like who is host and who visitor, who belongs and what indeed it might mean to belong at all. It does this simply by creating a space in which people bare witness to their lives.