THE NIGHTWATCHMAN, representing black men in colonial South Africa

214pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Wits University Press, Johannesburg, 2025

ISBN: 9781776149353

An illustrated collection of essays on African men in colonial uniforms as a subject of portraiture.

"In a creative and illuminating look at the role of African men in colonial armies and police forces, Hlonipha Mokoena makes a compelling argument about why these men served in institutions bent on the oppression of African societies. To call them mercenaries, Mokoena argues, is to miss the complexity and density of the motivations that shaped their actions; it is to miss the ways in which these men carved out opportunities in colonial settings." Jacob Dlamini, Associate Professor, Department of History, Princeton University

"Mokoena invokes the figure of the nightwatchman to drive a project of moving through and beyond colonial abjection. Exploring the traces of aestheticised bodies, sartorial choices, desire and curiosity in provocative and oblique ways, the book rocks our sense of the possibilities of the available archive." Carolyn Hamilton, Professor, Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town

Hlonipha Mokoena is Director of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She is the author of Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual.