The beautiful thing about history is that it can help us develop a more complex understanding of the things we consider natural in our daily lives. People like to believe that their languages have ...

South Africa’s powerful Xhosa and Zulu nations sealed an important union as Nelson Mandela’s great-grandnephew and King Goodwill Zwelithini’s daughter wed. The marriage ceremony of Tembu Chief Nfundo ...

Even while living in exile, thousands of miles from South Africa, Mazisi Kunene wrote poetry from home. Epic poems that explain the cycles of creation and destruction, the wisdom of the ancestors, the ...

IN 1991 AMERICAN audiences had an introduction to Xhosa, one of South Africa’s most click-filled languages, when Miriam Makeba (pictured) appeared on “The Cosby Show”. When the celebrated South ...

There was a traffic snarl-up in the streets leading to the Anglican Cathedral in Umtata in the Eastern Cape as the cavalcade of top-of-the-range luxury vehicles accompanied by wailing sirens whisked ...

Jochen S. Arndt received funding from the Social Sciences Research Council, American Historical Association, and Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa. The beautiful thing about ...