Dr Kudakwashe Chitofiri

Kudakwashe Chitofiri is an Economic historian whose work has focused on urban history, protest history and music, political violence and migration in Zimbabwe. He is currently an AfOx Oxford Department of International Development Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford, as part of the Africa Oxford Visiting Fellowship Programme.   

Kudakwashe is currently a Research Associate with the Rhodes University African Studies Centre and a recipient of the prestigious African Humanities Program Postdoctoral Fellowship. He earned his PhD in Africa Studies from the International Studies Group, University of the Free State, South Africa before working as the head of the department of historical studies at the National University of Lesotho. He has also working as a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe, the National University of Lesotho and taught at the University of Zimbabwe’s Economic history department.    

Kudakwashe has research interests in urban history, social movements and protest. His research focuses on sexuality and male perceptions of sexually transmitted illnesses, including HIV and AIDS in Harare, Zimbabwe. He examines the colossal vulnerability around male sexuality in urban Zimbabwe and how such vulnerability shaped male sexuality and perceptions of Sexual Health.    

While at the University of Oxford, Kudakwashe’s research project, ‘Male Health and Well-being in Harare, Zimbabwe: A historical and gendered analysis of urban sexual Health’ it investigates the indignity of African male pride caused by living in a segregated and controlled urban environment. This project will explore the blurring of belief in masculinity within the realities of the colonial and post-colonial city. 

• “Immigrants and criminality in Johannesburg: Problematising the immigration/ crime nexus in Johannesburg, South Africa.” Forthcoming in Southern Journal for Contemporary History
• “‘Law and Order Must Take Precedence over Everything that has to do with the Native:’ The African ‘Location,’ Control and the Creation of Urban Protest in Salisbury, Colonial Zimbabwe, 1908-1930,” in The Historian, Issue 81.2, June, 2019.
• “The Consequences of Violent Politics in Norton, Zimbabwe,” The Roundtable, 99: 411, 673- 686. “The Consequences of Violent Politics in Norton, Zimbabwe,” book chapter in S Chan and R Primorac (eds.), Zimbabwe since the Unity Government, Routledge, London, 2013.
• “‘Fighting for justice and freedom of my people through music.’ Protest singing and Zimbabwe: The case of Leonard Zhakata and Hosiah Chipanga,” South African Journal of Languages (SAJAL), Vol. 37 (1), 2017.2
• "Settlers, Rhodesians and Supremacists: White Zimbabwean Authors and the Zimbabwean Land Conflict," Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 49(1) 3–28, 2018.
• “ Victimhood and the Persistence of Conflict: A Case Study Of the cyclic nature of Political violence in Norton, Zimbabwe”: in Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2022, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00219096221092108
• “When should we expect a Reasonable Return on our Investment Mr. Rhodes?” The British South Africa Company Shareholders and the Profit Motive in Southern Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 46 (1), July 2021