Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study
Martin Plaut is the former Africa Editor of BBC World Service News. His research interests are: Civil Rights, Colonies & Colonization, emigration & immigration, International Relations, Modern History, Political Institutions, Socialism, Communism. He is the author of Understanding Eritrea: Inside Africa’s most repressive state, Hurst, October, 2016 and Promise and Despair: The first struggle for a non-racial South Africa, 1899 – 1914, Jacana Media, 2016.
BSoc Sce, University of Cape Town
BA (Hons), University of the Witwatersrand
MA, University of Warwick
Archive documents reveal the US and UK's role in the dying days of apartheid
Jul 22, 2019 13:37 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
It is a quarter of a century since the end of apartheid in South Africa. But its easy to forget how complex, difficult and violent the birth of full democracy really was. This was particularly true in KwaZulu-Natal, where...
Qatar’s conflict with its neighbours can easily set the Horn of Africa alight
Jun 21, 2017 16:44 pm UTC| Insights & Views
It began as a squabble between Arab allies, but the standoff between Qatar and its neighbours is threatening to engulf the Horn of Africa. When Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and the Maldives...
Europe’s wall against African migrants is almost complete
May 03, 2017 09:12 am UTC| Insights & Views
A deal signed in Italy with tribes operating in southern Libya may be the last element of the barrier the EU has been constructing to exclude Africans from Europe. To seal the southern Libyan border means to seal the...
Johannesburg in a time of darkness: Ivan Vladislavić’s new memoir reminds us of the city’s fragility
Labour can afford to be far more ambitious with its economic policies – voters are on board
Sudan: civil war stretches into a second year with no end in sight