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Even though the Mozambique Revolutionary Committee (Coremo) was Mozambique's second largest liberation movement, historians have neglected its role in the struggle for Mozambican independence. This neglect has resulted in an imbalanced understanding of how Mozambicans fought to overthrow Portuguese colonial rule throughout the second half of the 20th century, including how Mozambican liberation movements navigated the precarious exile environment. By retracing and examining Coremo's relations with Joseph Mobutu's Congolese government and the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), this article adds to the growing literature on competing anti-colonial movements during Mozambique's liberation struggle. Coremo's relationship with these two actors is intertwined with and was founded on the earlier relations that Paulo Gumane's reconstituted National Democratic Union of Mozambique (Udenamo) had established with the FNLA and Cyrille Adoula's Congolese government. Reconstructing the story of this relationship deepens our understanding of the different transnational and transregional strategies that smaller liberation movements like Coremo employed in exile. The story of Coremo's relations with Kinshasa and the FNLA highlights the importance of and difficulties in establishing support structures in the context of competitive liberation politics. The history of these long-standing relations also adds to our understanding of the formation and development of working relationships between lusophone African liberation movements, which have traditionally focused on the Conference of Nationalist Organisations of the Portuguese Colonies, and brings to our attention the role of alternative African support hubs in southern Africa's liberation struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews four books on South African, southern African, and African history that are suitable for university teaching. The books address the challenges faced by university lecturers in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and provide insights on engaging students and addressing historical complexities. The books cover a range of topics, including modern South African history, the history of southern Africa, and the themes of childhood and youth in African history. They offer comprehensive and well-researched accounts, highlighting the importance of understanding the region's history in comprehending its present and future. The books provide valuable resources for students and researchers interested in African history. [Extracted from the article]

This article analyzes how and why the apartheid government and white South African society assisted white refuge seekers fleeing from the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo to South Africa in July 1960. It argues that race-based solidarity shaped how white South Africans responded to Congo's white refuge seekers, generating a momentary but widespread sense of responsibility for their well-being. This article shows how the government's reaction to these refuge seekers informed its regional and national political strategy to maintain white minority rule. The South African government's racial solidarity with Congo's refuge seekers overlapped with a desire to bolster white population numbers and depict South Africa as a bastion of white refuge. Its reaction to Congo's refuge seekers therefore emphasizes how racial, regional, and national politics can work together to shape refugee policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Pan Africanist Congress’ (PAC) participation in the so-called Congo Alliance and its operations in what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1963 and 1964. The alliance represented an attractive opportunity for the PAC to receive much needed political, financial, and military support to set up and maintain its operations in exile. It also held out the chance to establish regional connections with other liberation movements that could assist the PAC in the launch of its armed struggle. However, the PAC’s inefficient logistical organisation, lack of leadership on the ground, and growing factionalism, combined with the Congolese government’s instability and inadequate commitment, made the PAC’s Congo operations a short-lived affair. This article outlines the formation and demise of the PAC’s Congo mission. Although brief and ending in failure, the PAC’s participation in the Congo Alliance is nonetheless symbolic of the early exile experiences of southern African liberation movements - particularly the benefits of establishing working alliances, the importance of transnational networks in maintaining operations, and the overall difficulties of life in exile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 11 July 1960, the governor of Katanga, Moïse Tshombe, announced that his province would secede from the newly established Republic of Congo. Soon after Tshombe's announcement, the white minority government of apartheid South Africa was accused by some political leaders and commentators of having formed an ‘unholy alliance’ with the secessionist state of Katanga, which lasted from 1960 to 1963. This alliance, described contemporaneously as a conspiracy between South Africa, Portugal, the Central African Federation and Katanga, was understood to have been intended to protect southern Africa's white settler societies from the spread of African independence and to safeguard the region's mining interests. The unholy alliance hypothesis has, however, never been substantiated. Based on archival material from South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, this article examines the ‘unholy alliance’ between South Africa and Katanga – it asks how and why the South African government operated as a regional power and decided to support the secession of Katanga. The article concludes that Pretoria acted on its own in a more cautious and ad hoc manner than claimed by the unholy alliance hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]