Yale University, PhD '20

BIOGRAPHY

Thuto Thipe is an Assistant Professor of African History in the Department of History. Her research focuses on social and legal history of 19th and 20th century South Africa. Her manuscript in progress, Black Freehold: Landownership in Alexandra Township, tells the story of the history of land ownership in Alexandra Township, near Johannesburg, from its founding in 1912 to 1979 when the state had stripped black land owners of their freehold land ownership and forced removals had largely displaced Alexandra residents. It moves from the examination of individual buildings and yards to a structural analysis of the Township and its development to show how different elements of land ownership rights combined to produce a dynamic, black-controlled Township that was at odds with colonists’ view of black people’s social and political place in South African society. The disruption that black people’s freehold land ownership in Alexandra caused to white supremacist order drove the South African state to invest enormous financial resources and political capital in dismantling black freehold rights, physically demolishing large parts of the Township, and forcibly moving tens of thousands of people from Alexandra in efforts to destroy the social realities that residents produced under freehold. 

She holds a PhD in History and African American Studies from Yale University, Masters in Gender Studies from the University of Cape Town, where she also held positions as a lecturer and researcher, and BA from Macalester College.