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A history of Anthropology Southern Africa
1870s to 1920s
Henri-Alexandre Junod, 1863 to 1934
A Swiss missionary turned ethnographer whose study of the Tsonga and Ronga peoples culminated in The Life of a South African Tribe, 1912.
Winifred Hoernlé, 1885 to 1960, and Radcliffe-Brown
1921 to 1923
Founded social anthropology as a university discipline at UCT and Wits, bringing a rigorous sociological approach built on kinship and social system.
1926 to 1936
Werner Eiselen, 1899 to 1977
Founded a separate volkekunde tradition at Stellenbosch, rooted in racially structured classification, later shaping apartheid policy.
From 1929
Monica Wilson, 1908 to 1982, and Hoernle's women scholars
Hellmann, Kuper and Krige produced internationally acclaimed ethnographies combining tradition with social change, reshaping South African anthropology.
1949 Onward
Archie Mafeje, 1936 to 2007, and the exile years
Apartheid forced Schapera, Gluckman and African ethnographers like Mafeje into exile, though his Langa study with Wilson remained a landmark on urban township life.
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