The Journal of African History Podcast

• David Wilson on fisheries management in Lake Malawi

  In this episode, David Wilson (University of Strathclyde) joins guest host Ayodeji Adegbite (Brown University) to discuss the Open Access article, "Colonialism, Governance, and Fisheries: Perspectives from Lake Malawi," co-authored with Milo Gough, Bryson Nkhoma, Elias Chirwa, Charles Knapp, Tracy Morse, and Wapulumuka Mulwafu. Wilson details how this article—situated at the intersection of environmental science and historical research—sheds light on both the history and contemporary dynamics of natural resource governance in Africa and beyond. He explains the development of two parallel fisheries regimes in late colonial Malawi: a colonial system marked by exclusionary, centralized decision-making, and an indigenous regime grounded in place-based knowledge, local customs, beliefs, and practices. The latter regime, led by Senior Chief Makanjira, yielded sustainable outcomes, in contrast to the colonial regime, which failed to achieve similar results. The conversation further explores the methodological challenges faced by the authors, highlighting how knowledge hierarchies continue to shape natural resource management, and gives practical recommendations for collaborative models in natural resource governance across Africa.

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• Muoki Mbunga on the moral logics of Mau Mau fighters

  Muoki Mbunga (Tufts University) joins East Africa editor Michelle Moyd to discuss his newly published open access article, “Who Deserves to Die? The Moral Logic of Mau Mau Killings in Colonial Kenya, 1952–56.” In their conversation, Mbunga details how his novel use of the captured documents of Mau Mau guerrillas enabled him to explore the ways that Kikuyu ritual and traditions were deployed and shaped by the realities of the asymmetrical conflict. By examining the perspectives of fighters themselves on why, who, and how to kill, Mbunga makes an important contribution to the rich historiography on the conflict in 1950s Kenya. The open access article is available online and in print issue 65/3 of the JAH. 

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• John Aerni-Flessner on border violence amd diplomacy in Southern Africa

  In this episode, John Aerni-Flessner (MSU) joins editor Moses Ochonu (Vanderbilt) to discuss the article, "Lesotho and the QwaQwa Ski Resort, 1975–82: Border Disputes and South Africa's Increasingly Deadly Responses," co-authored with Chitja Twala (Limpopo). John details how a proposed ski resort in QwaQwa served as a site for adjoining Lesotho — despite its economic dependence and comparative military weakness — to hone a foreign-policy opposed to South African apartheid. He further details how this approach engendered brazen raids from the South African military, a harbinger of the escalating violence which would wash over the border states and within homelands and townships over the 1980s. The conversation further explores the coming of age of postcolonial African diplomacy, novel strategies for securing documentary evidence in South Africa, and the value of collaborative work in historical research and writing. The Open Access article is available here.

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• Peter Vale on the pre/history of DRC’s neoliberal moment

  In this episode, Peter Vale (Harvard) joins editor Marissa Moorman (Wisconsin) to discuss his research on the political economy of early postcolonial Congo. He details how the Mobutu government charted a course between policies and rhetoric extolling economic nationalism, on one hand, and moves to promote financing and investment from abroad, on the other. Vale complicates conventional narratives of the periodization and drivers of neoliberal policies in the nation: he describes how Congolese thinkers, politicians, and publics interacted with and shaped processes of economic liberalization, privatization, and decentralization in the years before ballooning state debts, exacerbated by energy crises, led to the embrace of structural adjustment policies favored by lending institutions. Vale’s open access article, entitled “Between Economic Nationalism and Liberalization: Ideas of Development and the Neoliberal Moment in Mobutu’s Congo, 1965–74,” features in issue 65/1 of the JAH.

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• Sarah Van Beurden on the work of historians in public debates

  In this episode Sarah Van Beurden (OSU and SAR) joins editor Michelle Moyd (MSU) to discuss her History Matters piece, coauthored with Gillian Mathys (Ghent), unpacking the experience of working as historian experts engaged to write a report for a Belgian parliamentary commission tasked with examining the nation’s colonial past. Van Beurden details both the challenges and opportunities presented by engaging in such fraught and expressly political work. She offers insights into the ways that the report’s authors confronted problematic but widely held assumptions about the past, its meaning, and the sorts of work that historians do. And she draws lessons from this work – and the legacy of similar historical commissions in Belgium dating back to the early twentieth century – to make a powerful case for the utility of professional historians engaging in public debates. Van Beurden and Mathys’s open access article, entitled ‘History by Commission? The Belgian Colonial Past and the Limits of History in the Public Eye’, features in issue 64/3 of the JAH.

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