Advisory Committee

Ali Khangela Hlongwane was a researcher in the History Workshop at Wits University from 2019 to 2022 where he remains an Associate of the History Workshop and coordinator of the Soweto History and Archives Project (SHAP). Hlongwane has published on the public histories of the 1976 uprisings: The Road to Democracy in South Africa, Volume 7: Soweto Uprisings-New Perspectives, Commemoration and Memorialisation, 2017. He is co-editor of Soweto 76 Reflections on the liberation struggles Commemorating the 30^th Anniversary of June 16, 1976, (2006); co-author of Public History and Culture in South Africa: Memorialisation and Liberation Heritage Sites in Johannesburg and the Township Space, (2019).  Co-editor of Public History, Heritage and Culture in South Africa: The Struggle Continues, (2021). His recent publications are Lion of Azania A biography, (2021) and We Must Return Home Armed or Unarmed The Biography of John Nyati Pokela  91921 – 1985) With Selected Speeches and Writings, (2021).

Arianna Lissoni is a researcher at the Wits History Workshop and part of the ‘Global Soldiers in the Cold War: Making Southern African Liberation Armies’ project. Her research and publications focus on the history and politics of the liberation struggle. She has co-edited the books: One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Liberation Histories Today (2012), The ANC between Home and Exile: Reflections on the Anti-Apartheid Struggle in Italy and Southern Africa (2015) and New Histories of South Africa’s Apartheid Era Bantustans (2017); and co-authored Khongolose: A Short History of the ANC in the North West Province from 1909 (2016).

Boitumelo Tlhoaele is an associate lecturer in the Curatorial, Public and Visual Cultures department at the University of the Witwatersrand. She is also a Doctoral Fellow at the Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation, Stellenbosch University. Her research interests explore the intersections between jazz and art, working with music and visual archives within the context of curatorial practices. She holds an MA in Heritage Studies (University of the Witwatersrand). Her curatorial projects include the exhibition, Leeto: A Sam Nhlengethwa Print Retrospective (2019) amongst others.

She is an Associate Professor of history at the University of the Witwatersrand. She specialises in African popular culture, print cultures and life history writing. She has published on various aspects of Tanzanian history: Swahili newspaper writings, fashion and social change, women’s participation in the liberation struggle, independent publishing and Pan-Africanism, the links between popular music, modernity, community-building and anti-apartheid solidarity, and the relations between Tanzanians and South African exiles. She is currently working on the biography of the late Ma Vesta Smith, an anti-apartheid community activist who spent most of her life in Noordgesig, Soweto. The title of this research is “Ma Vesta Smith and the everyday politics of liberation”.

Nieftagodien holds the Chair in Local Histories, Present Realities at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), where he is also the director of the History Workshop. His interests center on aspects of popular insurgent struggles, public history, youth politics, and local history. He is currently investigating the history of the Congress of South African Students, the leading student organisation in the struggle against apartheid and heads the public history initiative, the Soweto History and Archives Project. Among his publications are: The Soweto Uprising; Alexandra – A History & Ekurhuleni – The Making of an Urban Region (co-authored with Phil Bonner); One Hundred Years of the ANC & Struggles in Southern Africa: New Perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union, 1919-1949 (co-editor).

Sekibakiba P. Lekgoathi is an Associate Professor of History at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg where he started lecturing in January 2000. He is a widely published scholar on topics as diverse as Ndebele ethnicity; the SABC’s Radio Lebowa, subversion and listenership; Radio Ndebele/Ikwekwezi FM, language development, ethnic separatism, and democracy; and the ANC’s Radio Freedom, its audiences and international solidarity. His work also covers issues around the politics of knowledge production and the relationship between white anthropologists and black research assistants in Southern Africa, and popular struggles and resistance against apartheid in rural and urban South Africa. Lekgoathi has co-edited the book Guerrilla Radios in Southern Africa: Broadcasters, Technology, Propaganda Wars, and the Armed Struggle (R&L and Wits University Press, 2020).

Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu (University of South Africa) Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu is professor of history at the University of South Africa, and executive director at the South African Democracy Education Trust. He has an MA in history from the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, and a PhD in history from the University of the Witwatersrand. He is co-author of the book Public History and Culture in South Africa: Memorial- 37 isation and Liberation Heritage Sites in Johannesburg and the Township Space (2019), and editor[1]in-chief of The Road to Democracy in South Africa multi-volume series.

Tshepo Moloi is a senior lecturer in the department of History at the University of Johannesburg. He obtained his MA and PhD in History from the University of the Witwatersrand. Moloi is the co-editor of Guerrilla Radios in Southern Africa: Broadcasters, Technology, Propaganda Wars, and the Armed Struggle and the sole author of Place of Thorns: Black Political Protest in Kroonstad Since 1976. He has also contributed chapters in the various volumes of The Road to Democracy in South Africa under the auspices of the South African Democracy Education Trust (SADET). Moloi is the editor of New Contree Journal and president of the Southern African History Society. His research interests include histories of liberation struggle in South Africa, with a particular focus on youth and student politics and underground work.