(2018). Somali Oral Poetry and the Failed She-Camel Nation State: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Deelley Poetry Debate (1979–1980), by Ali Mumin Ahad. African Historical Review: Vol. 50, “Bantustan States”, pp. 189-191.

ABSTRACTIn this article, I present a story about South African Marxist and activist-scholar Neville Edward Alexander. As historians, social scientists and intellectuals embedded in the humanities, a part of the job we have awarded ourselves or that we assume to be part of our disciplinary reasoning, our intellectual orbit, is to bring to life the periods that, and the people about whom, we reflect. This we do through writing and telling stories, often constructed with a “moral message” of sorts. In these acts of writing and story-telling, objectivity plays a disputed and a precarious role, and misrepresentations could be conscious or unwitting. The lack of objectivity in bringing to life the period and the people we talk about in our stories, in our exaggeration and our understatement about what we have read, about what we have heard, and then about what we write, is part of an academic’s narrative. These human traits of exaggeration and understatement can lead to historical error. In this early exploration of seeking answers to the questions, “Who is Neville Alexander?” and “What can we learn from his writings?” I offer two anecdotes about the man. My proposition is that overcoming historical error does not rest exclusively with factual verification. It has to factor in an appraisal of the ideological intention or even political wish of the people telling the stories, in written texts and orally, and of the interlocutors’ context that we recover in our historical studies. In writing this preliminary sketch of Alexander, I take a detour into higher education issues, particularly the field of doctoral studies, and I paraphrase some of the concerns that have been raised by Alexander. I conclude this introductory study with some thoughts on Alexander’s contributions to social change, to “race,” and to language policy and multilingualism.

(2016). Africa’s Long Road since Independence: The many histories of a continent. African Historical Review: Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 107-109.

(2016). The road to democracy in South Africa, volume 6 [1990–1996], parts 1 and 2. African Historical Review: Vol. 48, No. 1, pp. 165-168.

(2016). Eden’s exiles: one soldier’s fight for paradise. African Historical Review: Vol. 48, No. 1, pp. 155-157.

(2016). The walking Qur'an: islamic education, embodied knowledge, and history in West Africa. African Historical Review: Vol. 48, No. 1, pp. 178-181.

ABSTRACTThis article examines which factors contributed to farmers using land more productively in the past. The article argues that the process behind productivity improvements is strongly associated with, although not confined to, a transition to commercial farming. By focusing on Black farmers who were successful in making this transition, the paper hopes to provide a clear, historically-rooted perspective on the prospects for eradicating the on-going racial divisions within the South African farming sector. The paper starts by defining the concept ‘commercial farming’ and then outlines the challenges that make this type of economic orientation difficult to adopt, as well as pointing to the factors that make some farmers more capable of becoming commercial than others. By reviewing what we know about the ways in which Black farmers responded to economic opportunities – as well as to political and social obstacles – the article provides fresh insight into the factors behind these successes and concludes by assessing the implications of this approach for land reform policy in South Africa.

ABSTRACTHow did insurance markets in the settler economies of Australia and South Africa develop? This paper investigates the establishment of the local insurance industries in two settler economies in the wake of the absence of comparative studies in the emergence of insurance markets in the periphery. The paper compares conditions in these settler economies and notes the innovative role of local entrepreneurs. British insurance companies extended operations into the British colonies, but local interests emerged to challenge their dominance. Innovations in organisational form, product offerings and distribution channels afforded local entrepreneurs a competitive advantage in the life market. Collusion in the fire market restricted innovative practices and retained foreign control. This article explains the agency of local entrepreneurs in the emergence of insurance markets in two settler societies at the end of the nineteenth century. This historical development path has notable implications for the current development of insurance markets in Africa.