David Welsh

David Welsh was born in Cape Town and educated at the Universities of Cape Town and Oxford. He joined the teaching staff of UCT in 1963 and retired in 1997 as Professor of Southern African Studies in the Department of Political Studies. He is currently Professor Extraordinaire in the Department of Political Science at Stellenbosch University. He has published widely on South African issues, and on ethnicity and politics in other divided societies. He has authored two books, The Roots of Segregation and (with F van Zyl Slabbert) South Africa’s Options, and nearly 100 articles and chapters in academic books and journals, as well as other publications. David died in 2023.

Author's books

The Rise and Fall of Apartheid – final high res cover

The Rise and Fall of Apartheid

From Racial Domination to Majority Rule

Did white South Africa crack, or did its leadership yield sufficiently and just in time to avert a revolution? The transformation has been called a miracle, belying gloomy predictions of race war in which the white minority went into a laager and fought to the last drop of blood. Why did it happen? Professor Welsh views the topic against the backdrop of a long history of conflict spanning apartheid’s rise and demise, and the liberation movement’s suppression and subsequent resurrection.

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