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Open research questions in South African History and Culture

68 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 4,727 South African History and Culture papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • A primary limitation of this research is its necessary reliance on secondary data, which precludes the incorporation of contemporary lived experiences and grassroots dynamics. To advance this field, future, high-impact research must prioritize empirical fieldwork. Specifically, multi-province or cross-tribe comparative studies employing mixed-methods research (qualitative and quantitative interviews) are needed to explore how socio-economic empowerment, political participation, and tribal identity are negotiated and perpetuated at the community level. Such studies should also explore these dynamics through cross-border comparisons to better understand the regional resilience of these colonial ethnic constructs. On digital tribalism, social media (WhatsApp, X/Twitter, Facebook) reinforces identity-based echo chambers and mis/disinformation (observed during South Africa’s 2024 elections) eroding trust and intensifying polarization; future research should employ digital ethnography and platform data access to align online narratives with offline ethnic cleavages. While desk‑based, the ubuntu–CRT synthesis uniquely proposes theory‑informed pathways for identity repair and institutional redesign—signposting priorities for future fieldwork (multi‑province ethnographies), mixed‑methods testing, and policy pilots that assess cohesion outcomes in former homeland areas (Poole et al., 2021; Ewuoso & Hall, 2019).

    Examining the long-term effects of Apartheid’s Tribal Classification on ethnic tensions and political fragmentation in post-apartheid South Africa · 2026 · DOI

  • 22nd May 2020), musician and composer of Guinean Mandinka origin has allowed millions to experience the kora harp lute with which he accompanied his song and popularized this instrument as well as the musical tradition of the West African griots, while the obviously related mvet harp zither is scarcely known today.

    Afrikai citerák · 2021 · DOI

  • During the struggle against apartheid, at a time when traditional union activity relied on workers’ structural bargaining power, it was not always a safe option and institutional power was lacking, advice offices contributed to the labour movement by building workers’ associational power and aiming at development of strong trade unions.

    The Changing Role of Worker Advice Offices in South Africa, from 1970s to the Present · 2017 · DOI

  • Research limitations/implications – One limitation of the study relates to the dearth in official records about Australian women teachers in concentration camps given that; not only are Boer War-related records generally difficult to source; but also that even the existent data is incomplete with many chapters missing completely from record.

    “Among the Boer Children” · 2016 · DOI

  • His partial shift in emphasis from race to culture in his relatively sparse ethnological writings of the early to mid-1930s was prompted by another German mentor, the linguist Diedrich Westermann (1887–1956), rather than by South African liberal scholars like Isaac Schapera.

    Fathering<i>volkekunde</i>: race and culture in the ethnological writings of Werner Eiselen, Stellenbosch University, 1926–1936 · 2015 · DOI

  • This paper makes an initial contribution to reconceptualizing the bases of the ANC's political dominance and sheds light on an understudied aspect of its political and cultural orientation.

    Crafting Dominance: Political Power and the Marketing of the African National Congress · 2015 · DOI

  • Two decades on from 1994 seems an appropriate time to take stock of what has been achieved and where we have fallen short of our own expectations, and identify what remains to be done in South Africa.

    Memory and forgetting: How meta-narratives about the past overshadow the future · 2014

  • The transnational character of the anti-apartheid struggle is mostly absent from nationalist historiographies, while little is known about the daily lives of those who made up the ranks of MK, their interactions with host communities, and the implications of having a large, predominantly male army – with their feelings, longings and frustrations – stationed outside South Africa's borders for three decades.

    Married to the ANC: Tanzanian Women's Entanglement in South Africa's Liberation Struggle · 2014 · DOI

  • While the South African systems are unmistakably modeled after Bogotá's Transmilenio, whose accomplishments have been touted as the low-cost, high-quality transport solution, the process through which other Southern cities influenced the circulation of BRT remains underexplored.

    The Politics of Policy Circulation: Unpacking the Relationship Between South African and South American Cities in the Adoption of Bus Rapid Transit · 2014 · DOI

  • He addresses three interlinked questions: has post-apartheid memory work only scratched the surface of the country's pain and alienation; does the really hard work remain to be done; and to what extent are the failures of the post-apartheid project failures of memory? These questions are addressed along five lines of enquiry: metarrative, access to information, healing, reconciliation and learning.

    Featured Commentary: Nelson Mandela, Memory, and the Work of Justice · 2012 · DOI

  • In an insightful review of South African culture studies, Karin Barber argued a decade ago that while South African culture studies of the early post-apartheid era closely followed the model of British cultural studies, two of the British school’s characteristics were lacking in the South African studies, i.

    Anthropology and the Study of Popular Culture: A Perspective from the Southern Tip of Africa · 2012 · DOI

  • Labor's contribution in this regard was premised on a view of liberation that was not limited to the achievement of political rights and civil liberties, but crucially included a discourse of social citizenship enabled by expectations for employment creation, redistribution and decommodification of social provisions.

    Wage Labor and Social Citizenship in the Making of Post-Apartheid South Africa · 2007 · DOI

  • Further investigation of the database (SA Knowledgebase) revealed that Afrikaans articles are confined mostly to the humanities (and to a lesser degree the social sciences) and are published in a small number of journals.

    Afrikaans as wetenskapstaal in Suid-Afrika · 2005

  • Several explanations are offered as to why the SDF has failed to seize power and effect social-democratic change in the country and why the party displays a lack of consensus on the so-called 'Anglophone problem'.

    Opposition and social-democratic change in Africa: The Social Democratic Front in Cameroon · 2004 · DOI

  • Violence, in its physical and discursive shape, forged individual memories that remain torn with pain, anger, distrust, and open questions; collective memories that left few spaces for ambiguity; and official or public histories tarnished by their political agendas or the very structures—and sources—that produced them.

    ‘I Saw a Nightmare . . .’: Violence and the Construction of Memory (Soweto, June 16, 1976) · 2000 · DOI

  • But what were the forces pushing for comprehensive segregation? Who contributed to the framing of the Bill? Was there a preconceived scheme to impose a master plan for internal urban apartheid? Our inability to answer these questions stems from the fact that the creation of 'group areas', usually considered to lie at the very core of urban apartheid, has not yet been studied by scholars.

    Comprehensive segregation: the origins of the group areas act and its planning apparatuses · 1992 · DOI

  • The literature reveals some characteristic weaknesses too, quite apart from limitations of source materials: the market for knowledge remains imperfect, and specialists often fail to incorporate work which is available; and their analysis is frequently limited by a reluctance to make use of theories of the firm and of accounting techniques.

    Big Business in African Studies · 1987 · DOI

  • 139 PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIRS hostility between the two major parties goes much deeper than the some- times simulated fury of the Commons: the "club" atmosphere is lacking in Lesotho, and nobody was altogether surprised when the Leader of the Opposition was imprisoned by the Government in 1966.

    AFRICAN WESTMINSTER? THE PARLIAMENT OF LESOTHO · 1969 · DOI

  • Does this account for the fact that in South Africa the State is not regarded aa the enemy of the individual but aa a sword or a crutch in his hand, or perhaps even aa his property ? I have already suggested that the duties of property are insufficiently understood and that few attempts have yet been made to d e c t a more equal distribution of incomes or to protect the economically weak.

    THE COMPARATIVE SOCIOLOGY OF SOUTH AFRICA1 · 1937 · DOI

  • Local excursions will be arranged, and when conditions in Europe again turn towards the normal we shall endeavour to establish annual tours for students and teachers of geography Inquiries have led to the opinion that such a scheme will be welcomed and will receive considerable support from the various It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the authorities concerned.

    A South African Geographical Society · 1917 · DOI

  • It examines the understudied history of the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) and its transnational connections in Africa and outside the continent.

    Beyond the Borders of Lesotho: The Basutoland Congress Party’s Transnational Connections and its Political and Ideological Pragmatism, 1952–1970 · 2025 · DOI

  • Black women remain disproportionately disadvantaged in the post-apartheid university, and the family milieu as a key site of intersectional inequalities remains under-researched.

    Beyond access: Intersectional challenges for Higher Education success in South Africa · 2025 · DOI

  • The journal's beginnings were modest, limited to a website and the efforts of its founding editor, Andrew Offenburger, who started Safundi a year after finishing his undergraduate studies.

    Comparisons and connections: thirty years of democracy in South Africa and twenty-five years of <i>Safundi</i> · 2024 · DOI

  • While a large scholarship on the various aspects of ‘offline’ xenophobia in contemporary South Africa has been produced, the recent intensification of online xenophobic activism during the pandemic remains an under-researched topic.

    ‘Put South Africans First’: Making Sense of an Emerging South African Xenophobic (Online) Community · 2023 · DOI

  • This phenomenon of organisations that have formal structures and leaders that are primarily formed to target immigrants in South Africa is still emerging and therefore little has been written on the topic, making it an under-researched area.

    South Africa enters the second wave of xenophobic violence: the rise of anti-immigrant organisations in South Africa · 2023 · DOI

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68 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 4,727 South African History and Culture papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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