‘Blurred Frontiers – New Perspectives on southern Africa and its Border Sites’

This project was concerned with the history of frontiers in southern Africa.  It applied the methodology and historiography of Border Studies to this domain in the field of African History.  It grouped three different Swiss institutions  (universities of Basel and Zurich and the Basler Afrika Bibliographien) in a research partnership with two universities in South Africa (Rhodes university, Grahamstown and the University of the Western Cape). Several scholars were associated with the project in their individual capacities.  Research findings were exchanged in three workshops (two in Basel and one in Cape Town) that drew scholars from several African and European universities. The Angolan-Namibian border constituted the major geographical concern of the project although several scholars examined the borders shared by Botswana and Mozambique with South Africa as well as ‘internal borders’. The project alerted students to the benefits of looking at the ‘border’ as a specific lens for the historian, viz. as an approach that is both transnational and multicultural and that views borderlands as spaces in which the controls of the state are subjected to a range of challenges.  The project showed that these challenges (from veterinary concerns to various ‘grey’ or illegal activities) have a long history in southern Africa.

Prof. Leslie Witz
Institutions of Public Culture
Department of History
University of the Western cape
Private Bag X17
Bellville 7535
South Africa
http://www.uwc.ac.za/arts/history

Prof. Patrick Harries
Department of History
Centre for African Studies
University of Basel
Hirschgässlein 21
4051 Basel Switzerland
http://www.unibas-zasb.ch