South African authors celebrated

The Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) is pleased to announce the 2025 Humanities Book Prize Awards winners.  These awards recognise and celebrate outstanding scholarly contributions to humanist knowledge and intellectual discourse in South Africa.

ASSAf Humanities Book Award (Established Scholar Category) 2025 – Joint Winners

Prof Hugo ka Canham – Riotous Deathscapes

Professor Hugo ka Canham has been awarded the 2025 ASSAf Humanities Book Award for his book Riotous Deathscapes.

In this groundbreaking work, Canham introduces “Mpondo theory”—a framework rooted in indigenous and Black ways of knowing—by exploring the amaMpondo people’s resilience in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. He examines the intersections of life, death, and systemic oppression, emphasising ancestral connections and the natural world as sites of resistance.

Praised for its originality and interdisciplinary depth, Riotous Deathscapes weaves oral histories, historical narratives, and radical Black intellectual traditions. It challenges capitalist land ownership notions, offering a powerful counter-narrative to Western paradigms.

The Review Panel described the book as “an extraordinary piece of scholarship that develops a theory of living and dying rooted in indigeneity without resorting to essentialism.”

Hugo ka Canham is a writer and professor at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences, University of South Africa. He directs the Centre of Excellence for Black Planetary Studies. He studies the phenomenology of black life at the margins of human value, suffering and death. His work is invested in dismantling the binaries between humans and the natural, multispecies world. It may be understood within the transdisciplinary framework of Black Planetary Studies.

Prof Siphokazi Magadla – Guerrillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa

Professor Siphokazi Magadla has been awarded the 2025 ASSAf Humanities Book Award for Guerrillas and Combative Mothers, an in-depth examination of women’s participation in South Africa’s armed struggle (1961–1994) and their post-apartheid lives.

Based on interviews with 40 former female combatants, the book explores their political awakenings, military roles, and contributions to the democratic transformation of the military. It challenges male-dominated narratives and highlights the gendered dimensions of the anti-apartheid struggle.

The Review Panel praised it as “a stellar work of enormous significance”, offering new insights into gender and liberation movements. They remarked, “It repositions Black women at the centre of the armed liberation movements, confronting male-centric viewpoints.”

Prof Siphokazi Magadla is an Associate Professor of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University. Her work focuses on war, militarism, gender, and African feminisms. She serves on the editorial boards of the International Feminist Journal of Politics and the Journal of Southern African Studies, as well as the advisory boards of the Feminist Reimagining of International Studies (FeRIS) series at Bristol University Press and the Women and Gender in Africa series at the University of Wisconsin Press. Additionally, she mentors emerging scholars through the Social Science Research Council’s Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowship and the Harry Frank Guggenheim African Fellows Programme.

Honourable Mentions

• Isabel Hofmeyr (Dockside Reading: Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House) – Professor Emeritus, University of the Witwatersrand and Global Distinguished Professor, New York University.
• Sandra Swart (The Lion’s Historian) – Professor and Chair, Department of History, Stellenbosch University.

Awarded biennially, the ASSAf Humanities Book Prize celebrates exemplary contributions to the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Performing Arts. In 2024, 52 nominations were received for books published in 2021, 2022, and 2023.

The awards continue to highlight the depth and excellence of South African humanities research, recognising works that challenge, inspire, and contribute to global intellectual discourse.