Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Loren B Landau, Co-Director of the Wits-Oxford Mobility Governance Lab, University of the Witwatersrand

Marches, Mozambicans murdered, state-sponsored evacuations, a nationally televised presidential address. Anti-immigrant mobilisation has again drawn the world’s attention to South Africa. The continental backlash threatens tourism, trade, diplomacy and investment opportunities in Africa’s largest economy, and is derailing its constitutional democracy.

Many citizens demand the country restore its sovereignty – the state’s ability to govern itself and determine its own laws within its borders – by tightening border controls. Parties promise to deliver walls, raids and deportations.

What these popular debates over sovereignty and border control overlook is that politics is not defined on the borders. It comes from control over resources and production. In South Africa’s past, this was mines. Now it is cities, townships, and the infrastructure that connects them. This is where the country’s political future is being forged. This is where sovereignty is being lost. And the state is helping to make this happen.

Over the past 20 years, we have investigated the politics of migration and xenophobia in South Africa. Together we founded Xenowatch and the Mobility Governance Lab to document incidents of xenophobic discrimination and evaluate strategies to promote secure mobility and social cohesion.

In a paper published in 2022 we argued that xenophobic mobilisation in South Africa was not merely a grassroots phenomenon by frustrated communities. Nor is it the result of a “third force” or external actors out to embarrass the country. Rather, we argue, it is a political enterprise co-produced by vigilante groups and the state through acts of commission and omission. These include failing to censure those who exclude through violence and other forms of illegal conduct. It also includes migration policies and practices that demonise those from other countries.

This has resulted in the state consistently legitimising and rewarding the criminal conduct of vigilante groups.

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Read more: Anti-foreigner violence in South Africa is easily sparked: what hasn’t been done to deal with it

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Our research shows that xenophobic discrimination has become a feature of post-apartheid South Africa’s socio-political landscape. We argue that the only interventions capable of disrupting xenophobic mobilisation are those that lower, or ideally eliminate, its political, economic and social benefits. This must include holding people accountable for their actions, consistent and impartial application of the law to address both illegal migration and criminal vigilante exclusion of migrants, and joint efforts by the state and civil society to counter anti-migrant mobilisation.

On the ground

Our investigations show that in townships, “community development” associations run protection rackets determining who can live, build, or conduct business in their “communities”. They work in collaboration with local police to remove unwanted people.

Elected leaders often look away or embrace them to win votes. This is not about enforcing law or creating opportunities for all. It is not about immigration control. It is about using social division to extract resources and build power. There is often strong local support for these measures and those leading them. However, they are illegal and institutionalise state complicity in extractive violence that weakens, rather than enforces, the rule of law.

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Read more: South Africa’s anti-migrant campaigns use the language of democracy: why that’s dangerous

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From mid-2025, Operation Dudula – an anti-immigrant social movement that has now registered as a political party – and March and March – a self-described “grassroots” civic organisation focused on illegal immigration – systematically blockaded public health facilities, denying migrants access to at least 53 clinics across KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Gauteng provinces.

The South African Human Rights Commission found that despite engagement with the Department of Health and the National Commissioner of Police (both of which committed to intervening) vigilante conduct continued. In some instances the police refused to take statements from victims.

Despite court rulings interdicting Operation Dudula, the unlawful operations continued across the country.

Without state enforcement, court orders are only paper. Rather than being sanctioned, March and March confirmed that it had

an agreement with the SAPS (South African Police Service) and Metro Police, which don’t interfere with them.

A co-authored political enterprise

Between 2022 and 2025, Xenowatch recorded 406 verified incidents resulting in 75 deaths. This translates into an average of 102 xenophobic discrimination incidents per year.

In 2025 alone, 151 incidents were recorded. In the first five months of 2026, a further 22 verified incidents were recorded. Of the 22 incidents, 14 were violent attacks that largely followed anti-migrant protests in some parts of the country.

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Read more: South Africans are far less tolerant of migrants than before – hotspots, drivers and solutions

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The recent attacks resulted in at least four people dead and hundreds displaced. Despite this, officials regularly argue this is “normal” criminality. In 2008, 2010, and again in 2026, there have been accusations of a third force determined to undermine the country’s successes or punish it for its positions on Israel and Russia.

Rather than intervene effectively, the government has addressed the rise of these political formations with a National Action Plan on Racism and Xenophobia. It contains almost no plan. Rather than marshal state resources against the anti-immigrant campaigns, it focuses on education and public events intended to foster goodwill and social cohesion. Debates and dialogues are welcome. But they do little to erode the power of gangsters and criminal networks.

When the state has acted, it helps reinforce precisely the kind of political fragmentation and profit taking it purports to prevent. Its largest police operation to protect foreigners – Operation Fiela – resulted in police demanding additional bribes from migrants, a loss of economic activity and tax revenue, and only a small reduction in immigrant numbers.

All this was done in the name of restoring citizens’ faith in the immigration system. There were winners: not immigrants or citizens, but law enforcers who line their pockets and boost their operational budgets.

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Read more: South Africa has a plan to fight prejudice. But it’s full of holes

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A recent meeting convened at the official seat of government, the Union Buildings, provides another example. On 25 May 2026, senior government ministers convened a high-level meeting with the leadership of March and March and other organisations “to address illegal immigration and the rise in anti-immigration protests in the country”.

In our view, granting groups like this access to the highest political office lends them legitimacy and gives them a place in the South African political system. Their words are broadcast on national television and radio stations. Their ultimatums come to represent legitimate political demands.

The state may temporarily quell crises. But it emboldens these groups to carry on. The results are a politics of fragmentation and self-made laws.

What needs to be done

Protecting South Africa’s constitutional democracy requires three things done simultaneously.

First, genuine accountability for perpetrators: not symbolic arrests, but prosecutions that result in meaningful consequences for instigators and perpetrators.

Second, consistent and impartial enforcement of the rule of law to address both illegal migration and criminal vigilante exclusion of migrants.

Third, the building of political will and muscle by the state and civil society, to hold politicians accountable when their rhetoric or conduct emboldens exclusionary violence and practices. This is not an issue of migration management and border control. It is one of sovereignty and law.

Civil society organisations are already pursuing litigation and winning cases in court. But court orders flouted with impunity are not victories; they are further evidence of the problem. Without the political muscle to hold the state accountable for its complicity, the co-creation of exclusion will continue.

– Xenophobia in South Africa: state’s complicity with gangs and vigilantes is threatening its ability to govern
– https://theconversation.com/xenophobia-in-south-africa-states-complicity-with-gangs-and-vigilantes-is-threatening-its-ability-to-govern-285280

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Robert T. Nyamushosho, Assistant Professor, Queens College, CUNY

For more than a century, Great Zimbabwe has stood at the centre of a powerful story about the Zimbabwe culture. This remarkable African civilization flourished in southern Africa during the Middle Ages, constructing more than 200 dry-stone palaces, locally known as madzimbahwe (houses of stone).

These towering monuments, immense gold wealth, and an array of exotica including glass beads and glazed ceramics from distant lands, have often been interpreted as proof that southern Africa’s early states were ruled by authoritarian kings. Leaders who exercised near-absolute control over their subjects.

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Read more: Zimbabwe’s house of stone: the gallery that showcases a famous sculpture tradition

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In archaeology textbooks, museum exhibitions, and even political discourse, the image of Great Zimbabwe – rivalled in size and grandeur only by the Egyptian pyramids – has often been reduced to one of a despotic African kingdom ruled from above by divine kings.

This idea about African civilisations has often been mobilised to excuse modern forms of political despotism. But what if this story about the Zimbabwe culture is wrong – or at least incomplete?

Our new research in Mberengwa in south-central Zimbabwe is starting to challenge these long-held assumptions.

As an anthropological archaeologist, I use both excavated remains and the study of human cultures to understand how societies organised themselves. Far from revealing a rigid, centralised political system, evidence from Mberengwa suggests the opposite. Governance within the Zimbabwe culture may have been far more collective and negotiated than imagined.

Rather than monuments built solely through coercion, we may instead be looking at societies where power flowed through multiple layers of community organisation. Where ordinary households retained significant autonomy.

This challenges simplistic views. It reveals a more diverse history of governance that included consultation, negotiation and collective decision-making.

How we got here

For decades, archaeology has interpreted the Zimbabwe culture through outdated evolutionary models. These frameworks portrayed African societies as hierarchical, with kings monopolising wealth, labour and political authority.

Great Zimbabwe, Mapungubwe and Khami were viewed as capitals of centralised states in southern Africa. Rulers were assumed to have commanded vast territories, controlled mining and long-distance trade. They compelled subjects to build monumental stone architecture.

This interpretation was deeply shaped by colonial thinking. Early European historians and anthropologists often portrayed African rulers as tyrants ruling through fear, superstition and violence. The Zulu king Shaka, for example, was cast as the archetypal African despot. Similar assumptions were later projected backwards onto Iron Age civilisations like Great Zimbabwe.

Colonial scholarship like this helped to justify colonial domination.

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Read more: Shaka Zulu is back in pop culture – how the famous king has been portrayed over the decades

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In these narratives, monuments and massive stone walls could only have been built through forced labour directed by authoritarian elites.

Across the world, archaeology has increasingly challenged these simplistic models. Research in places like Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia and the Niger Delta now shows that complex societies were not always governed through top-down domination. Many ancient states relied on consensus-building, shared authority and cooperative systems of governance.

Southern Africa has lagged behind in this intellectual shift. Interpretations of Great Zimbabwe continue to suffer from what has been called a “neo-evolutionary hangover”. The persistent assumption that political complexity must automatically mean centralised despotism.

What Mberengwa reveals about power

Mberengwa, in Zimbabwe’s mineral-rich south-central region, has long been framed as peripheral to Great Zimbabwe. Archaeologists assumed its communities fell under the control of rulers at Great Zimbabwe, over 100km away. But ongoing excavations and surveys reveal something more complicated.

Mberengwa contains numerous settlements – both walled and unwalled – some dating to the same period as Great Zimbabwe. These sites contain evidence of farming, metallurgy, mining, hunting and long-distance trade. They also reveal multiple centres of political authority rather than a single centralised state.

What’s striking is how political organisation appears to have operated across several levels of society. At the grassroots were the misha (homesteads) of ordinary families. These were not politically insignificant spaces. Archaeological evidence suggests households managed their own livestock, agriculture, craft production and local affairs with considerable autonomy.

Above the homestead was the dunhu, or ward, which brought together clusters of households. Here, cooperative labour systems such as nhimbe played a central role in social life. Communities came together voluntarily to plough fields, build houses, herd cattle, and conduct hunting expeditions.

At the territorial level was the nyika, overseen by rulers known as madzimambo (kings). But even here, power appears to have been negotiated rather than absolute. Oral traditions and ethnographic evidence from precolonial Shona societies suggest that rulers governed alongside advisory councils. They worked within systems of customary law and communal expectations.

Several Shona proverbs emphasise this political ethic. “Dare haritongwi nepfumo” means a court is not governed by a spear. “Ane ziso rimwe haatongi” warns that a person with one eye cannot govern fairly. Such philosophies suggest consensus and accountability were central to governance.

Rethinking the dry-stone walls

This perspective forces us to reconsider the monuments themselves.

The dry-stone walls of Zimbabwe culture sites have often been interpreted as symbols of elite power. But architectural analysis from Mberengwa reveals something else. Many walls were built using different styles and degrees of craftsmanship, often within the same structure.

This doesn’t indicate a centrally controlled labour force. It suggests multiple groups contributing collaboratively to construction over time. There’s also little evidence for armies or policing systems needed to control coerced labour. In societies where people could relocate, coercion would anyway have been difficult to maintain.

Communal labour traditions offer a more plausible explanation. Just as communities gathered for agricultural work, monumental construction may also have emerged through cooperative participation. This suggests social obligation, political loyalty, and collective identity.

This doesn’t mean these societies were perfectly egalitarian (democratic). There were rulers, hierarchies and inequalities. Royal residences stood above ordinary settlements, and political authority clearly mattered. But hierarchy is not the same thing as tyranny.

Archaeological discoveries from Mberengwa indicate the existence of multiple autonomous centres of power. Sites such as Chumnungwa and Mundi contained royal burials, political insignia, gold artefacts and monumental architecture. They’re comparable to finds at a supposed centre like Great Zimbabwe.

The emerging picture is one of overlapping and competing polities. These were connected through trade, kinship, ritual and shared traditions.

Why this debate matters

The way we interpret the African past shapes how African political systems are understood in the present.

Unfortunately, some of those assumptions continue to echo today. By portraying despotism as historically “natural” to Africa, they normalise authoritarianism in the modern era. But archaeology tells a more complicated story.

Mberengwa suggests that political life within the Zimbabwe culture was dynamic, layered and collective.

That possibility deserves far greater attention. Not only for understanding the past, but for imagining African political futures beyond the shadow of authoritarianism.

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The African Archaeology Hub at Queens College collaborates with colleagues from the National Museums of Zimbabwe, Oxford University, the Field Museum, the Midlands State University, Great Zimbabwe University, and the local communities of Mberengwa.

– Great Zimbabwe: debunking the myth of tyrants and forced labour
– https://theconversation.com/great-zimbabwe-debunking-the-myth-of-tyrants-and-forced-labour-283990

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria

Adolph Johannes Brand was born on 9 October 1934 in Cape Town. He would become better known as Dollar Brand and then Abdullah Ibrahim, an artist of mixed ethnic descent who personified the city’s multiculturalism and represented it on the world’s stages.

He went to school in District Six, a municipal inner city area with residents of diverse backgrounds. Due to the enforcement of apartheid it was declared a “white area” in 1966 and the community was removed by force in 1982. It was the creative ambience in which he started to play piano aged seven.

A bebop-inspired jazz musician performing as Dollar Brand, he had his first musical successes in the mid-1950s. He became Abdullah Ibrahim when converting to Islam in 1968, and his deep religious spirituality was an essential ingredient to his music.

Ibrahim’s more than 70 records received numerous prestigious awards. His deep spirituality, solemn dignity and soul has also been captured in the documentary films A Brother with Perfect Timing in 1987 and A Struggle for Love in 2005.

As a political scientist of southern Africa, I have written about Ibrahim as a defiant public intellectual, placing his work within his unique worldviews.

He personified the special brand of multiple identities and belief systems, consolidated and transmitted over generations among a variety of descendants in the urban settings at the Cape. His spirituality was not only a source of resilience but also defiance, his humanity political without any need for ideology.

In search of genuine expressions through music, he became an icon of a counter-world to the apartheid regime, taking sides by being and living up to what he was.

The early years

In 1959 he began to play in the Sophiatown-based band Jazz Epistles with other South African legends Kippie Moeketsi, Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Johnny Gertze and Makaya Ntshoko. They recorded Jazz Epistle Verse One as the first black South African jazz LP record.

In 1962 Ibrahim left for Europe, touring (with Gertze and Ntshoko) as The Dollar Brand Trio. In Switzerland the South African jazz vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin put them in contact with Duke Ellington. Together Ellington and the Trio made two recordings (including Benjamin on the second one).

The Trio entered the circuit of international jazz festivals and toured Europe. In 1965 Ibrahim and Benjamin married and moved to New York, where he played at the Newport Jazz Festival. He continued close collaboration with Duke Ellington and interacted with some most renowned jazz musicians of the time.

Despite his international fame, he never forgot where he came from. Mandla Langa, a writer who was the African National Congress-in-exile’s cultural attaché in Europe, has observed:

He could have lost all connection with South Africa, but he chose not to.

A personal experience illustrates the point: when performing in West Berlin in the mid-1970s, a few exiled Namibians living there visited him backstage before the concert. When on stage to play before a packed auditorium, he stopped after intonating a few notes on the piano. Turning around, he looked at the group and declared, “Ek speel net vir julle.” (I only play for you).

Mannenberg and Cape jazz

A turning point in Ibrahim’s career (then still mainly known as Dollar Brand) – and a watershed for South African musical history – was his short return to South Africa during the mid-1970s.

Mannenberg, a 14-minute track capturing the atmosphere of the Cape Flats, was recorded in June 1974 in one take as an act of collective improvisation. It was released on the album Mannenberg – Is Where It’s Happening.

As historian John Edwin Mason observed, its unique combination of musical vocabularies and idioms, rooted in South Africa, yet aware of international trends, helped to make it “the most iconic” composition in South African jazz history.

Within a year it sold more copies than any other South African jazz album. Being subsequently performed by some of the band’s members at political protest gatherings, it became a song of resistance and resilience. A fellow jazz musician from District Six declared it “the most powerful anthem of the struggle in the 1980s … which had no words, it simply referred to a series of styles of music that was influenced by black culture”.

These were automatically associated with being free, to have an identity. Ibrahim’s fusion of melodies in his improvisations resembled a mixture of American jazz with local genres such as marabi and mbaqanga, but also langarm, vastrap and ticky draai. This blend is known as Cape jazz. More recordings followed with African Herbs (1975), Banyana – Children of Africa and Black Lightning (both 1976).

Triggered by the Soweto uprising of 16 June 16 1976, Ibrahim declared his support for the African National Congress and returned to New York. In 1978 he released Anthem for the New Nation. Another milestone became African Marketplace, recorded in 1979 with a 12-piece-band – ranked as number 70 in a list of The 100 Jazz Albums that Shook the World.

Returning home

A legend in his own lifetime, Ibrahim returned to South Africa after he met the newly-released Nelson Mandela 1990 in Germany, who told him to come home. In 1994 he performed with a symphony orchestra on occasion of Mandela’s inauguration as president. Mandela reportedly referred to him as “our Mozart”.

In 1999 Ibrahim founded an academy for South African musicians in Cape Town, where he also initiated the Cape Town Jazz Orchestra, launched in 2006. In 2016 he performed with Hugh Masekela for the first time since 1960, reuniting the legendary Jazz Epistles to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Soweto uprising.

A solo piano recording was released in 2008 as Senzo (meaning ancestor in Chinese and Japanese, and a nod to his father’s name, Senzo, which also means creation in South Africa’s Nguni languages). As a review in All About Jazz ended:

Abdullah Ibrahim is a true inheritor of the ancestral name.

Upon release of The Balance in 2019, his first album after five years, The Wall Street Journal titled: A Jazz Master Continues to Grow.

In 2024 he released his final recording, an expansive and critically acclaimed double album called 3.

A legacy beyond music

Ibrahim has been a midwife to musical expressions under apartheid, which were a form of resistance based on one’s own human dignity, self-respect and confidence as protest against oppression and discrimination. He did this without noise, rather – like his personal habitus – calm, steadfast and determined, resting in himself.

He contributed to a new culture under – and after – apartheid. Abdullah Ibrahim played a significant role in the creation of something new. There will be no other like him.

– Pianist Abdullah Ibrahim crafted a magnificent new culture for South Africa
– https://theconversation.com/pianist-abdullah-ibrahim-crafted-a-magnificent-new-culture-for-south-africa-155059

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Edwin Mutyenyoka, Senior Researcher, Arnold Bergstraesser Institute

Kenya hosts nearly a million refugees, mainly from South Sudan and Somalia. Many of them have been living in refugee camps for decades.

Now, the country is attempting a major shift in refugee policy. The Kenyan government and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) developed the Shirika Plan, launching it in March 2025. The policy aims to move refugees away from long-term encampment and integrate them in society.

Drawing on their research on refugee governance and migration in Kenya, Edwin Mutyenyoka and Franzisca Zanker explain the opportunities and challenges the plan presents for refugees and host communities.

What is the Shirika Plan?

The Shirika Plan seeks to shift refugee management away from a camp-based system largely overseen by the UN towards a government-led model centred on inclusion into the local economy. The plan is a by-product of Kenya’s Refugee Act of 2021, which seeks to include and protect refugees better.

The plan builds on the success of two pilot models: the Kalobeyei Integrated Socio-Economic Development Plan and the Garissa Integrated Socio-Economic Plan. They showed that refugee inclusion can strengthen both refugee and host economies.

The Shirika Plan will convert camps into county-administered municipalities. There will be investment in roads, water systems, healthcare and education in places that host refugees. Developments are designed to serve refugees and host communities.

The plan is closely aligned with the UN’s refugee frameworks. These encourage governments to move beyond emergency assistance and towards allowing refugees to work, use public services and contribute to local economies.

The plan’s six pillars include sustainable economic development and climate action.

Implementation is expected to take place in three phases and requires an estimated US$943 million.

The first phase (2025-2028) is the transition period. It lays the foundations: putting regulatory and policy frameworks in place and turning camps into municipalities. There’s an emphasis on building local capacity too.

The second phase (2029-2032) is the stabilisation period. It will evaluate the transition, and strengthen institutional capacity and financial management. This phase will also build on peaceful co-existence between refugees and host communities.

The final phase (2033-2036) – the resilience period – aims to fortify financial structures, diversify revenue and build the resilience of communities. This is to reduce dependence on external support.

Why does Kenya need such a plan?

Kenya has become a major destination for both forced and economic migrants in the region. This is due, in part, to the country’s relative political and economic stability. A higher Human Development Index, vibrant secondary economy and a largely welcoming host society have created a good environment for refugees.

Kenya was home to 954,851 refugees and asylum seekers in 2025. This makes it the fifth biggest host in Africa and 13th largest in the world.

Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps in the northern region are home to over 800,000 refugees and asylum seekers between them. They are two of the biggest shelters for forced migrants in the world.

Most of the refugees in these camps – mostly from Sudan and Somalia – have lived there for up to 30 years.

In addition, surveys by organisations such as the Mixed Migration Centre and IOM Kenya estimate that between 100,000 and 200,000 refugees – mostly not registered – live in cities like Nairobi and Mombasa.

Kenya has gone through significant challenges, however, between the Refugee Act of 2021 and the launch of the Shirika Plan in 2025. A severe economic crisis ignited fierce protests and put mounting pressure on public services. In addition, humanitarian aid cuts, both globally and in Kenya, have been swift and severe.

Rather than relying on repeated emergency appeals, the Shirika Plan aims to attract development financing, while reducing tensions between refugees and host communities through shared access to services and economic opportunities.

This reflects a broader shift towards linking emergency assistance with longer-term economic and social inclusion.

The plan also offers a chance to address protracted displacement by making camps obsolete, while enhancing local development in remote areas.

What happens next?

The next challenge is implementation. The first years of the Shirika Plan are vital to show it can actually work.

In the first phase, planned initiatives centre on expanding livelihood opportunities, strengthening local services and improving coordination between humanitarian and development actors. Financing will be critical for success.

Kenya has secured substantial international support for refugee-hosting and economic integration. This includes a Sh155 billion (US$2 billion) loan from the World Bank in 2024 that requires Kenya to integrate 400,000 refugees into the economy by 2027.

For Kenya, the plan is a complete change of policy direction, away from a focus on security concerns and threats to close refugee camps. Closure threats happened most recently in 2021 but were quashed by the high court in 2024.

The emphasis is now on inclusion, local development and burden-sharing.

Success will depend not only on funding, but on the government’s ability to deliver tangible benefits for both refugees and host communities.

What are the risks?

First, the Shirika Plan relies on a system of differentiated assistance. This means support is tailored to refugees’ levels of need rather than provided equally to everyone. However, misconceptions of preferential treatment risk fuelling tensions between different refugee groups.

Second, moving vulnerable refugees out of camps could create new challenges. Many have spent years with limited access to education, jobs and public services. Competing in open labour markets could be particularly challenging for refugees who have long lived under UNHCR-operated enclosures.

Third, although more than 75 public engagement forums have been held across Kenya, some refugee and host-community representatives report feeling excluded from the design of the plan and broader decision-making processes. Concerns have also been raised about public awareness, accountability and oversight mechanisms. This is a worry as public support is vital to the plan.

Fourth, funding shortfalls are a risk to the plan. Supporting programmes aimed at building capacity during the transition period require consistent financial investments.

Where does this leave the plan?

The alternative – continuing to confine nearly a million people to underfunded camps – carries far greater risks than the challenges outlined above.

As the wheels of the Shirika Plan start turning, there is a need to invest in the municipalities hosting refugees.

A gradual reduction in UNHCR’s direct role should also create greater space for refugee-led organisations, whose local knowledge and community ties are useful to identify needs and support integration efforts.

– Kenya wants to close refugee camps: the promise and risks of its ambitious new plan
– https://theconversation.com/kenya-wants-to-close-refugee-camps-the-promise-and-risks-of-its-ambitious-new-plan-283486

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Andreas Scheba, Associate Professor, University of the Free State

South Africa faces a housing backlog of at least 2.6 million units, for more than 12 million people. The state supply of new, subsidised housing has declined over the past decade and the government’s housing policy is shifting.

It sees the private sector as becoming the main provider of “affordable housing”. The market, according to the Banking Association of South Africa, is households earning up to R34,400 gross per month (US$2,111). Yet most residents in South African cities earn far less than that. (The national median household income in 2023 was R7,980 or US$490.) Much more affordable accommodation is therefore needed.

We are housing and urban scholars based in South African and Austrian universities, who have conducted extensive research on how housing ideology, policies and practices shape urbanisation.

In this article we draw on research we have done on social rental housing in South African cities and in Vienna, Austria. We don’t suggest the policies should be the same. After all, these are very different places. But a side-by-side look can be useful.

Vienna is often considered the capital of social housing. About 43% of the Viennese housing stock is state-subsidised rental housing, including municipal-owned flats and apartments run by limited-profit housing associations.

South African cities have seen a massive roll-out of state-sponsored, low-density ownership housing, but the housing backlog and informality continue to grow. Delivery of subsidised rental housing and higher-density, mixed-income apartments has remained slow.

We believe at least three aspects of Vienna’s social housing policy have potential for South African cities:

• sustained political commitment – policies, laws and regulations backed up by adequate financial and institutional investments

• a pro-active and market-shaping state

• making social housing part of the urban fabric and the public consciousness.

Sustained political commitment

Vienna’s large social housing stock is the result of a century of political commitment and investment in housing as a human right, recognising its powerful role in improving workers’ welfare and building integrated cities.

For the city, housing was never just a revenue-generating asset. Dating back to the Red Vienna period (1919–1934), interrupted by Austro-fascism and the Nazi regime, the social democratic city government has made housing central to its urban welfare politics. Especially subsidised rental housing.

Housing projects were considered part of social infrastructure, together with public facilities (clinics, transport, education), outdoor spaces, social amenities (creches, laundries, libraries), art, and employment opportunities.

Colloquially called “people’s palaces”, social housing apartment blocks symbolised the political promise of providing high-quality living to working-class people.

The city planted subsidised rental in all areas to promote social mixing.

Proactive and market-shaping state

Translating this political commitment into results required a capable and active state. It demanded a government that shaped land and property markets to maximise public value.

Vienna has taken an active role in social housing delivery, whether as a direct provider, regulator or collaborator. And, unlike many other cities in Europe, it never sold off its own municipal housing stock in the late 20th century.

The city currently manages over 220,000 rental apartments, accommodating a quarter of the total urban population. This makes Vienna the largest public landlord of social housing in Europe. After a period of non-expansion, it decided a decade ago to resume investment in rental stock.

A key element of its policy is the use of private capital and third sector (neither state nor profit-driven) organisations to promote the delivery of affordable rental accommodation. So-called limited-profit housing associations – private, cooperative, or non-profit entities – provide apartments at cost-based, regulated prices.

These organisations plan, develop and manage social housing accommodation and are bound to the Austrian Limited-Profit Housing Act. This law says any surpluses must be reinvested in building new rental housing.

Regulation includes rental caps, indefinite-term contracts and quality assurance requirements.

The city’s Fund for Housing Construction and Urban Renewal is a professional property management company, governed by a trust chaired by the city council. It buys, manages and releases land for state-subsidised housing construction and subsidises urban renewal projects. Active land management and a social housing zoning law allow affordable land to be designated for state-subsidised housing.

Working closely with city departments, especially planning and infrastructure, the entity acquires, prepares and releases land for social housing.

Another vital role is organising developers’ competitions, which function as a quality assurance mechanism. Interdisciplinary juries assess competing proposals according to four criteria: economy, architecture, ecology and social sustainability. Development rights are then awarded to the highest-quality project consortium.

Financing is a mix of federal and regional subsidies, loans, and earmarked contributions. For example the housing subsidy levy is a payroll-based contribution shared equally between employers and employees.

Social fabric of social housing

Social housing in Vienna is central to the overall housing system rather than a safety net for the poorest. Income thresholds are set to include large parts of the population and support social mixing.

Barriers for newcomers are still in place: they must live in the city for two years before they can access municipal housing. But renting remains a secure form of tenure that is widely accepted by the population.

Quality sustains this broad-based appeal. Social housing offers attractive, well-designed living environments.

This process draws on a deep pool of expertise, within the municipal administration and among non-profit housing providers, planners, academics and independent advisors.

Social housing is spread across Vienna rather than pushed to the periphery. People from different backgrounds live side by side.

Reflections for South Africa

Vienna’s experience provides a useful point of reference for reflecting on how social housing delivery could work in South Africa’s cities.

Firstly, social rental housing should be understood as an urban and economic policy. Its benefits go far beyond providing shelter, as it can make the city a more egalitarian, inclusive and productive space. It can improve workers’ welfare, reduce poverty, and promote socio-economic mobility.

As such, it deserves greater political commitment and resources from all spheres of government.

Secondly, getting results requires the state to actively shape property and land markets for public value. The City of Vienna has never just focused on enabling private-sector development. It shows what municipalities can achieve when they strategically use their assets, regulatory powers and resources to get public value from private investments.

Third is the importance of embedding social housing into a city’s social fabric.

The key is to appreciate social rental housing as shared wealth. Not to idealise individual property ownership. The public has to understand the benefits of well-located, higher-density, subsidised rental accommodation.

It also requires tapping into the technical, financial, organisational and other expertise across sectors and spaces in South Africa. Residents, housing justice movements and civil society organisations all have something to offer.

– South Africa is short of 2.6 million homes: Vienna’s approach to social housing offers useful lessons
– https://theconversation.com/south-africa-is-short-of-2-6-million-homes-viennas-approach-to-social-housing-offers-useful-lessons-282638

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Roos van der Haer, Assistant professor of International Relations at the Institute of Political Science, Leiden University

According to Unesco, around 250 million children (16%) globally are out of school although they are of an age to be at school in their countries. Available evidence suggests that out-of-school numbers are extremely high in conflict-affected countries, though the exact number is hard to quantify. For example, in the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Eritrea, more than 50% of primary school-age children are not going to school.

Research has long shown that conflict disrupts education. But armed groups do not all operate in the same way. Some use tactics that directly target children, such as recruiting child soldiers or committing sexual violence against minors. These tactics do more than create general insecurity. They directly threaten children’s safety and wellbeing.

We are a group of researchers who work on understanding the human consequences of conflict. In our recent publication on warfare’s impact on schooling, assessing 30 sub-Saharan African countries, we argue that this distinction between general violence and child-targeted tactics is key to understanding school enrolment decisions.

When children are targeted by armed groups, parents and caretakers reassess safety and the risk that they are willing to take. In some cases, schools may no longer be seen as safe spaces, and the risk of sending children to school, especially younger or more vulnerable children, can feel too high.

We show that when armed groups use child recruitment or sexual violence, the impact of conflict on school enrolment is much more severe than conflicts in which these tactics are not used. They also widen existing inequalities, especially for girls.

These new findings highlight a point that’s often overlooked: education systems cannot function if children do not feel safe. Protecting schooling in conflict settings therefore goes beyond rebuilding infrastructure. It requires addressing the threats that keep children out of classrooms.

Evidence from 700,000 potential school starters

Our study used nationally representative data from 59 Demographic and Health Surveys across 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa conducted between 2010 and 2021. In total, this covered almost 700,000 children of the age that should have been starting primary school during this period. We combined this information with detailed data on where and when armed conflict occurred, and whether child soldier recruitment and sexual violence against minors took place within 25km of where children lived in the year before they were due to start school.

The results confirm a pattern many might expect: children living in areas affected by conflict are less likely to start school. But the effect is much stronger when conflict involves tactics that target children, such as recruitment and sexual violence.

In areas where children are recruited into armed groups, school enrolment falls by about 3.2% compared to children living in conflict-affected areas where this tactic was not used.

In places where they are exposed to sexual violence, the decline is even larger, around 9.5%.

These effects are not the same for all children. Girls are hit especially hard. Their likelihood of enrolling in school drops by roughly twice as much as that of boys. This is true even in contexts of child soldier recruitment – an issue often thought to mainly affect boys.

Fear, risk and parental decision-making

Why do these types of violence have such strong effects on school enrolment?

Although we cannot test this directly, anecdotal evidence suggests that fear plays a central role. When armed groups that are known to recruit children or commit sexual violence against them are active in the area, parents may begin especially to see the journey to and from school as unsafe. In some cases, it is not only the journey but also the schools themselves that are considered to be unsafe, as they are targeted or occupied by armed groups.

For example, in South Sudan in 2014 armed groups attacked schools and forcibly recruited more than 100 pupils into their ranks. In other cases, children have been exposed to sexual violence during or after school attacks, or while travelling to and from school. One stark example comes from early March 2017, when a militia attacked a school in the Congolese province of Luiza, beating male students and raping several schoolgirls.

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Read more: Why we did it: the Kenyan women and girls who joined Al-Shabaab

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In these contexts, fear can decrease the willingness of children to go to school. For example, a witness of a Boko Haram attack on a school in Buni Yadi, Nigeria, told the interviewer:

After the attack, I went home. I was too afraid and decided not to go back. I told my parents I would never go back to school. They were also too afraid.

Parents and caretakers are affected too. For example, after more than 200 schoolgirls were abducted from Chibok in northern Nigeria by Boko Haram in 2014, a local parent-teacher association leader told journalists that the attack

has left families traumatised and entire communities living in fear that if their children went to school, they might never return home.

When insecurity increases, these existing challenges can tip the balance, making schooling feel like a less safe or less realistic option, especially for daughters. Girls are often perceived as particularly vulnerable during times of insecurity. At the same time, they often face additional barriers to education, such as early marriage and household responsibilities.

Implications

Our findings add an important layer to how we understand the relationship between conflict and education. It is not enough to know whether conflict is present or how intense it is in terms of casualties. What also matters is how conflict is carried out, and whether children are directly targeted.

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Read more: 9 million Ethiopian children have been forced out of school: what the government must do

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For policymakers and international organisations, this has clear implications. Many efforts to support education in conflict-affected areas focus on rebuilding schools, providing learning materials or improving access. These are crucial steps, but they are not enough on their own.

If children are not going to school in the first place, it is often because families do not feel it is safe to send them there. This means that protecting education also requires establishing and implementing policy that decreases child recruitment and sexual violence in conflict settings. It requires safe routes to and from school, and addressing gender-specific barriers.

– Conflict hits schooling hardest where children are the target – study
– https://theconversation.com/conflict-hits-schooling-hardest-where-children-are-the-target-study-283595

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Mbali Sunrise Dhlamini, Lecturer on the New Generation of Academics Programme (nGAP) in African Language Studies, University of the Western Cape

It’s 50 years since the Soweto uprising in South Africa. On 16 June 1976, tens of thousands of young black South Africans protested against being taught in the Afrikaans language (alongside English) at school.

At the time, under apartheid laws, language, ethnicity and race were all treated as characteristics that defined identity and belonging. Geographic settlement (the artificial system of homelands) added another layer of ethnolinguistic affiliation.

In the case of language, the government designated Afrikaans, now spoken by 10.6% of the population, and English, now spoken by 8.7% of the population, as the two official languages. African languages – spoken by 78.6% of the population at present – had no official status except in the homelands.

These policies made languages political:

• black South Africans regarded Afrikaans as the language of the white oppressor

• English was seen as the language of education, advancement and opportunities

• African languages were maintained as carriers of cultures and ethnic identities.

Each African language of a homeland was linked with ethnic affiliation. This embedded the idea that if one spoke isiZulu (the language), for example, one identified as umZulu (a Zulu person) and one was meant to live in KwaZulu (the “homeland”).

The homelands were abolished in 1994 and nine provinces were created. These provinces, however, still promote official African languages based on their first language dominance in the previous homelands.

As scholars of African languages, it’s our view that the manufactured notions of ethnic allegiance and belonging continue to bar the promotion of African languages in the country.

In a recent paper we looked at the distribution and teaching of languages at South African universities.

We found that English and Afrikaans remain interprovincial languages and are offered across South African universities. African languages still primarily determine the university and province in which prospective African language students can study.

The results suggest that the apartheid pattern of language use hasn’t been broken in the democratic era.

African languages at universities

Our research involved interviews with 10 academics in African language departments. We approached eight South African public universities that offered any of the four official South African isiNguni languages (isiZulu, isiXhosa, siSwati, isiNdebele). These can be classified as varieties of the same language. The research participants were lecturers who taught these languages.

Apartheid policies used language and ethnic affiliation to determine admission to universities in the homelands. So we enquired about the language policies of universities today, especially for admission to study African Languages.

We also asked about the language varieties that the academics accepted for learning, teaching and assessment.

English and Afrikaans are offered in South African universities across the provinces.

But a student’s own language still matters for admission to study an African language. When deciding who to accept, university African languages departments use the African language the applicant studied as a home language in grade 12.

The National Language Policy Framework for Public Higher Education Institutions, published in 2020, supports the provincial language distribution. So do institutional language policies.

Some languages favoured over others

African language courses are taught based on the first languages that the students and most of the lecturers speak.

English and Afrikaans courses at the same institutions accommodate students and lecturers who speak different first languages.

This linguistic setup creates another layer of inclusion and exclusion for African languages in the democratic era. The findings revealed that African languages that many people speak as first languages enjoyed priority over African languages that a minority speak. For example, isiZulu (spoken by 24.4% of the population) and isiXhosa (spoken by 16.3%) were offered by seven of the eight universities in our study. Just one of the eight universities offered isiNdebele (spoken by 1.7%) and siSwati (2.8%).

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Read more: Zulu vs Xhosa: how colonialism used language to divide South Africa’s two biggest ethnic groups

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We found that some academics accepted only the standard language version of the isiNguni language that they taught in their own classrooms. They argued that their teaching practices were guarded by the rules of the standard language. They said this promotes a “pure” and “correct” language variety. Other academics said they accepted all language varieties of the isiNguni languages in their classrooms. They acknowledged that students’ linguistic profiles at universities have changed in the last few decades. Hence, they said their approach was based on respect for all students’ language rights, preservation of all African language varieties, and promotion of student engagement and belonging in the classroom.

Some academics were still upholding the standard language ideology that the apartheid government imposed in the learning and teaching of African languages. Others were opting for approaches that recognise what students actually speak.

Promoting African languages

Based on our findings we recommend the following:

• African languages should be promoted at a national rather than provincial level.

• Higher education institutions should develop their own system of benchmarking language proficiency instead of relying on grade 12 certificates.

• Official African languages should incorporate standard and non-standard language varieties.

• African languages that are official in some provinces should be taught as second languages in provinces where they are not official. For instance, although Xitsonga first language speakers are concentrated in Limpopo, the language could be taught as a second language in KwaZulu-Natal. Similarly, siSwati could be taught as a second language in the Free State.

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Read more: What one university’s 30-year transformation reveals about Afrikaans and language planning in South Africa

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This would achieve several goals.

Firstly, it would encourage collaboration between African language scholars across the country. It could break silos in the promotion of African languages.

Secondly, African languages could cross provincial borders just like English and Afrikaans. This might change how languages are perceived.

Thirdly, African languages would be accessible to everyone instead of just language experts and their first language speakers.

This could enhance training of teachers, particularly for the advancement of mother tongue-based bilingual education. And it would preserve African language varieties, regardless of the number of their speakers and official status.

Overall, changing the teaching of African languages to avoid the provincial pattern would promote language inclusion and social cohesion.

– Want to learn a South African language? Your options are limited – here’s why
– https://theconversation.com/want-to-learn-a-south-african-language-your-options-are-limited-heres-why-284961

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Kobus Maree, Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Pretoria

Thirty-two years after South Africa became a democratic state, the futures of millions of young people in the country are shaped to a large degree by uncertainty, exclusion, poverty and discouragement. As one lens on this scene, unemployment in the age group 15-34 borders on 46%.

I am an educational psychologist who has done 35 years of research on the career-life stories of young people growing up in contexts marked by extreme poverty, exclusion, inequality and disadvantage. These hardships shape their career development and views of the ever-changing world of work.

I have encountered many young people who have bottled up and eventually internalised repeated experiences of disenchantment, rejection and “failure”. Some have dropped out of education, lacking support. Others have completed their schooling only to learn that marks and qualifications alone could not open doors to successful futures. In many instances, in their environments, unemployment and unemployability have become normalised.

Yet many show resilience, adaptability and determination to find work and to construct meaningful lives.

In a recent journal article, I described an intervention which involved career counselling for a group of 51 disadvantaged black South Africans, aged around 27. They had experienced poverty, unemployment, social exclusion, and limited access to educational and occupational opportunities. I wanted to assess whether counselling could help them use their resilience as a resource. Could it improve their adaptability? And if so, how?

The results showed positive change for most participants following the programme, though the outcomes were uneven.

Structural barriers to finding work remained formidable. Nevertheless many participants developed a stronger sense of agency, hope, adaptability and future orientation. The intervention appeared to help them tell their career-life stories in new ways, with purpose, self-understanding and a shift towards taking action.

These findings underscore the importance of a counselling approach that helps young people recognise and mobilise their strengths, and convert their most significant developmental challenges into assets that benefit both themselves and their communities.

The intervention

In September 2020, the group of young, unemployed, rural South Africans took part in structured career conversations and reflections guided by researchers and career development practitioners. In a workshop and group discussions, we recorded their career interests, strengths and areas for development. They also thought about how their future careers could transform their early life challenges into something positive and empowering.

They explored fields of study aligned with their individual profiles and aspirations that could help them experience meaning, fulfil a sense of purpose and contribute existential value to their career-lives. To this end, they conducted in-depth analyses of occupations associated with their selected fields.

Participants then received guidance on managing emotions, stress and study techniques.

The aim was to elicit themes about their conscious knowledge about themselves and their subconscious insights.

A recurring theme in their reflections was personal development and motivation. Inspiration to work hard, and overcoming adversity, were part of this theme.

They showed a growing awareness of the attitudes, beliefs and competencies necessary to achieve their career-life goals. Their awareness of the need to be adaptable increased. So did their understanding of employment and economic growth realities. They reported increased confidence in defining and achieving their career and life goals. They developed greater clarity about the meaning they wished to find in their work, the contribution they hoped to make to others through their work, and the deeper existential purpose that gives direction to both their work and their lives.

Career adaptability

The intervention used a method called Career Construction Counselling. This is essentially a way to help people come up with their own advice instead of being told what to do. Through reflecting on their own stories, they think of what steps they can take towards their future working life.

This approach is consistent with findings from our career construction and narrative career counselling research. This suggests that reflecting on and reconstructing personal life stories can enhance self-understanding, agency, career adaptability and future planning. Studies have shown that people who actively engage with their own narratives are often better able to identify meaningful career directions, clarify their self- and career identity, identify appropriate study fields, articulate their mission and vision, and develop strategies for navigating future transitions.

The approach emphasises adaptability, which has four elements:

• concern (do I have a future?)

• control (who is responsible for my future?)

• curiosity (what do I want to achieve in my future?)

• confidence (can I succeed?).

A year after the intervention, the participants reported back.

Their scores for career adaptability had improved somewhat. The area of strongest improvement was their career confidence.

I concluded that narrative-based career construction counselling can strengthen career clarity, adaptability, and self-directed action among severely disadvantaged unemployed youth.

However, lasting change also requires systemic intervention. Not only is career counselling scarce in South African schools; traditional approaches are often culturally mismatched and fail to empower disadvantaged youth.

Resilience

I’ve noticed that people often speak of resilience as if it’s an end point in itself.

I believe resilience may be understood not as the culmination of coping but as a preparatory phase in the movement from passive endurance towards what the psychologist Mark Savickas calls active authorship (“active mastery”). My belief draws on life design (people actively shaping their careers and lives by constructing meaning, adapting to change, and aligning work with personal values and identity) and career construction perspectives.

From this perspective, the crucial shift lies in supporting young people to move beyond “withstanding” adversity towards re-authoring their experiences.

– Young, South African and unemployed: finding direction starts with knowing yourself – counsellor
– https://theconversation.com/young-south-african-and-unemployed-finding-direction-starts-with-knowing-yourself-counsellor-283796

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Maria Suriano, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand

While many men are remembered as heroes of political struggles, women seldom get enough attention. Vesta Smith is a good example. She fought for South Africa’s liberation from white minority rule, called apartheid.

Historian Maria Suriano has written a biography of this activist. With the 50th anniversary of the momentous 1976 Soweto youth uprising in mind, we asked her to tell us about the woman affectionately known as Ma Vesta.

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Why is Vesta Smith important?

Vesta Smith was a community activist who dedicated her life to the anti-apartheid struggle, social justice, non-racialism and gender equality.

She participated in key events in South Africa’s history, attending the Congress of the People in 1955, where the Freedom Charter was adopted, and the historic 1956 Women’s March. Two decades later, during the Soweto uprising, Ma Vesta became a trusted mentor to younger militants.

Her political work happened largely outside formal politics. It was grounded in building non-racial and inter-generational networks of care and solidarity. She hid students in her home while they were on the run from the security police and supported the families of political prisoners. She paid the price with four months in prison.

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Read more: What is apartheid? New book for young readers explains South Africa’s racist system

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Ma Vesta’s story contributes to efforts to uncover the radical ideas, practices and key figures behind the students’ protests. These helped pave the way for South Africa’s democratic transition and continue to echo in today’s student struggles for decolonisation.

Ma Vesta’s passionate, community-based activism matters because it reveals the importance of “everyday politics” – the small acts of resistance, often outside official politics, that foster personal and collective emancipation.

This invites us to reconsider the dominant narrative of the liberation struggle, long centred on prominent male leaders and party strategies.

Who was Vesta Smith?

Born in Johannesburg in 1922, she was forcibly relocated in 1941, along with her mother and sisters, to Noordgesig. She lived there until her passing in 2013. Segregation laws governing residential areas reserved this small section of Soweto for poor townspeople classified as “coloured”.

She was born into a stable family. Her father, Stephen Mpama, moved in the circles of Johannesburg’s Black intelligentsia. Her early life was marked by hardships after his premature death in 1927. Inner-city cosmopolitanism shaped her non-racialism, and daily racial discrimination informed her refusal to be subservient to white people.

From the late 1960s to the mid-1990s she worked consecutively for the South African Council of Churches, the South African Committee for Higher Education and the Legal Resources Centre. Although formally an administrator, at these progressive organisations Ma Vesta relentlessly pursued social justice by mobilising her broad political networks.

In the 1980s she connected legal advocacy to Black townships through advice centres, while participating in key anti-apartheid campaigns. After 1994 and the first democratic elections, she advocated for women’s empowerment and poverty alleviation in the townships.

What are the key takeaways?

Drawing on personal conversations with those who knew Ma Vesta and on archival sources, private papers and press coverage, the book is structured around four key themes.

First, her activism was grounded in her faith – fighting injustice was a spiritual duty. Her work within the Young Women’s Christian Association from the 1960s onwards pioneered the idea that Christianity and political activism should be intertwined.

Second, Ma Vesta’s politics were non-sectarian. Although aligned with the African National Congress (ANC) resistance movement, she was a “bridge-builder”. She connected the struggles of the 1950s to those of the 1970s and 1980s as well as activists across generations, townships and ideologies.

Third, non-racialism was central to her political work. The formal and informal, secular and religious connections she forged over time reflected this belief. In the 1970s, her rejection of apartheid categories matched the Black Consciousness Movement. The book traces her friendships and shifting relations with white liberals, alongside her understanding of her Blackness.

Fourth, looking beyond prominent leaders reveals the pivotal yet under-recognised contributions of Black women who worked on the ground. What dominant historical accounts leave out about everyday politics deserves closer examination.

What was her impact on young militants?

During the 1976 uprising Ma Vesta emerged as one of the senior activists who provided practical help, political guidance and emotional support to student activists. This was regardless of their political affiliation.

Many young militants who encountered her in 1976 and afterwards describe her as a formative influence. She helped shape their political thinking and sustained them through difficult times.

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Read more: Travel as activism: 6 stories of Black women who refused to ‘stay put’ in apartheid South Africa

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She built networks with fellow anti-apartheid activists across generations. This brings into view a political world of friendships and mutual support. What emerges is a collective political biography, but also an intimate portrait. Locating her in Noordgesig extends our understanding of June 1976 beyond its epicentre in Soweto.

Why has she been overlooked?

Ma Vesta’s absence from academic and popular accounts of the liberation struggle reflects broader patterns in how this history has been written.

First, scholarship has focused mostly on male leaders, their strategies and political organisations. It has overlooked community activists and organic intellectuals, particularly Black women outside formal leadership structures. Ma Vesta’s politics were not defined by rigid allegiances. So, figures like her are harder to categorise and less visible in such accounts.

Her erasure may also be attributed to her refusal to accept racialised politics and apartheid racial classifications (black, white, coloured, Indian). This sits uneasily with recent efforts to celebrate iconic struggle figures from coloured communities as “coloured”, a framing she herself would have rejected.

Lastly, she was disillusioned with the unfilfilled promises of the ANC government that won democratic power in 1994. This may have also contributed to her being marginalised.

It’s important to restore Vesta Smith to her rightful place in South African history. Not as a footnote to more famous figures, but as a central example of how grassroots activists can become extraordinary agents of change and liberation.

But recovering this story is not only about correcting the historical record and advancing epistemic justice. It also speaks to pressing contemporary concerns. Her Christian-based activism offers a counterpoint to the recent resurgence of narrow identity politics in the country.

During South Africa’s first major xenophobic attacks in 2008, she called a Johannesburg radio station to question assumptions of national superiority over other Africans. She never grew tired of addressing issues of social justice.

Her commitment to community empowerment after 1994 is also a reminder that the democratic transition was only one step in the struggle for equality and dignity. Above all, her life shows that transformation is often driven by those who work in the background.

– Ma Vesta Smith: why this unsung activist matters 50 years after the Soweto uprising
– https://theconversation.com/ma-vesta-smith-why-this-unsung-activist-matters-50-years-after-the-soweto-uprising-280319

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Suleman Lazarus, Visiting Fellow, Mannheim Centre for Criminology, London School of Economics and Political Science

Forced labour in cybercrime might call to mind scam compounds in south-east Asia. A growing body of scholarship, journalism and policy attention has entrenched that stereotype. Images of fortified compounds, armed guards and confiscated passports are shaping how courts worldwide interpret cybercriminal participation.

But new research challenges that template. There are different kinds of coercion.

Physical coercion is visible: locked doors, armed guards, confiscated documents. Spiritual or psychological coercion is invisible: the fear of consequences no one can see, but many believe. One restrains the body. The other restrains the mind. The outcome is the same.

I have studied the sociocultural dimensions of cybercrime for over a decade, with particular expertise in online fraud, digital deception, cybercriminal networks, human trafficking and the experiences of fraud victims.

In my most recent work as a cybercrime researcher I looked at a cybercrime training academy in Nigeria, one of the underground schools that recruit and train young men in digital fraud. In a recent study on coercion I show how control, pressure and exploitation can operate within these illicit training spaces.

For the research I drew on three sources: conviction case files (court judgments, charge sheets, witness statements, exhibits); conversations with three officers directly involved in the investigation and prosecution; and courtroom observations of all 12 defendants’ proceedings.

I found that west African cybercrime is not always a free choice.

Understanding what drives recruitment into cybercrime academies is not a defence of fraud, which does great harm. It is a precondition for dismantling it.

What is a hustle kingdom?

Internet fraudsters use the term “hustle kingdoms” to describe their own illicit schools. Our analysis of Nigerian conviction case files, supplemented by ethnographic research and officer interviews, revealed that hustle kingdoms are semi-structured cybercrime academies, operating covertly in Nigerian and Ghanaian cities. They have hierarchies, curricula, and a governing authority known as the “chairman”. Learners are trained in hacking, romance fraud and business email compromise schemes. No upfront fees are charged. Instead, a percentage of scam earnings is extracted later, creating a debt-like arrangement from day one.

Recruits are typically young men aged 16 to 32, most with only secondary education. They enter through social networks, via friends, relatives, or opportunistic recruiters. One 18-year-old explained simply:

I did not pay any money to join the academy.

These academies did not emerge randomly. When formal routes to education and employment are blocked, young people seek alternatives. A sociologist, Robert K. Merton, calls this “innovation”: pursuing culturally endorsed goals, such as financial success, through illegitimate but accessible means.

Hustle kingdoms exploit that gap deliberately, offering free training where universities charge fees that most families cannot afford. Poverty, youth unemployment, and absent social welfare systems are the soil in which these schools grow.

Coercion without chains

These findings come from my analysis of 12 Economic and Financial Crimes Commission case files, specifically witness statements and court testimony in Nigeria. Hustle kingdom learners were not locked up, yet they could not leave. Movement was restricted to narrow, authorised purposes. Communication with the outside world was banned. Food was provided, but money and information about earnings were withheld. One 25-year-old recalled being told that food was free, calls were not permitted, and his percentage would only be disclosed after money was collected.

An 18-year-old learner is recorded in the case files as saying:

We were warned not to leave or contact anyone during the training. The chairman swore that both the person and their family would suffer lasting spiritual harm.

This is layered control, not visible captivity. Each mechanism reinforces the others. Isolation prevents learners from verifying whether threats are real. Financial dependency removes the practical means to exit. Spiritual intimidation seals the architecture.

The spiritual threats centred on juju, a traditional west African practice with deep roots in healing and community life. Within the hustle kingdom, however, it was deliberately weaponised.

The chairman invoked juju oaths to bind learners to compliance. Because belief in ancestral spiritual power is widely shared, these threats carry genuine coercive weight. Scholars describe this as “escapelessness”: the belief that nobody evades spiritual consequence. Similar dynamics have been documented in Nigerian sex-trafficking networks operating across Europe, including Italy and France.

Policy and justice implications

Comparing the case file evidence against existing frameworks on trafficking and coercion, we identified four areas where current responses fall short. Current criminal justice frameworks tend to draw a binary: either someone is a voluntary offender, or a trafficked victim. The hustle kingdom evidence does not fit neatly into either box. Learners entered with aspirations. They also faced escalating constraints that restricted exit, communication and economic autonomy. Participation shifted along a continuum, from initial aspiration toward gradual entrapment.

Treating individuals as fully voluntary offenders carries real costs. Sentences may be disproportionate to the actual agency. Victim-offender overlap goes unrecognised. Rehabilitation programmes designed for willing offenders miss the mark entirely. They assume the participant chose freely. A learner who entered under spiritual threat, financial dependency and restricted movement has a fundamentally different profile. The programme addresses the wrong problem.

The evidence supports more differentiated responses to cybercrime participation across west Africa:

Sentencing: Judges should weigh evidence of movement restrictions, communication bans and spiritual threats when assessing culpability, not dismiss them as cultural colour.

Rehabilitation: Practitioners must learn to identify coerced participants at the assessment stage. Spiritual intimidation is a real constraint on agency.

Prevention: Effective intervention must address structural drivers, including youth unemployment, blocked educational access, and the absence of social safety nets.

Law enforcement: Property owners who lease premises to cybercrime academies without due diligence are indirect enablers. Legislation should extend accountability beyond direct participants.

Why this matters now

Cybercrime is one of Africa’s most rapidly expanding criminal threats, generating estimated annual losses of US$3 billion continent-wide. Similarly, cybercrime enforcement is accelerating across Africa south of the Sahara. Classification decisions made today will harden into judicial precedent. If coercion is only recognised when it looks like a south-east Asian scam compound, constrained actors across west Africa will be sentenced as if they had chosen freely.

Understanding it better could make sentencing proportionate and rehabilitation effective. The structural conditions that feed recruitment into these academies also need to be addressed.

– Forced labour in West African cybercrime academies: how fear traps young men
– https://theconversation.com/forced-labour-in-west-african-cybercrime-academies-how-fear-traps-young-men-283661