Siphokazi Magadla


Siphokazi Magadla is a South African feminist, political scientist, academic, author and public intellectual. She is currently a professor in the Department of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University serving as Head of department. Her work focuses on gender, citizenship, armed struggle, memory, and post-apartheid politics in Southern Africa. She is the author of Guerrillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa. Magadla was a Fulbright Scholar,and doctoral grantee of Social Science Research Council.

Early life and education

Magadla holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political and International Studies and Journalism and Media Studies, as well as an Honours degree in Political and International Studies from Rhodes University. She earned a Master's degree in International Affairs from Ohio University in the United States through the Fulbright programme before completing her doctorate in 2017 at Rhodes University.

Academic career

Magadla is an Associate Professor of Political and International Studies at Rhodes University and Head of department. Her work focuses on African feminist political thought, gendered dimensions of political violence, militarism, memory, post-apartheid politics, and South African foreign policy.
Magadla authored Guerrillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa in 2023 and 2025 with the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press and Routledge respectively. She has also published in peer-reviewed journals, including the African Journal on Conflict Resolution, The Johannesburg Review of Books and Sage Journals. She also serves as a mentor to emerging scholars on the SSRC and the Harry Frank Guggenheim African Fellowship

Journalism and public writing

Magadla is a frequent contributor to regional and international media. She has written opinion and analysis pieces for Al Jazeera, addressing South African politics, governance, and post-apartheid social dynamics.
Her writing has also appeared in the Mail & Guardian, Pambazuka News, Thought Leader, and The Johannesburg Review of Books where she engages questions of gender, nationalism, liberation history, and contemporary political debates.

Guerrillas and Combative Mothers Review

Guerrillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa examines women's participation in South Africa's liberation movements and challenges dominant masculinist narratives of armed struggle. It has been reviewed in academic and literary platforms, including, Taylor & Francis Online, Kujenga Amani, and ACCORD.
Taylor & Francis Online situates Magadla's work within historical and feminist scholarship on South Africa's armed liberation struggle, engaging its analysis of women's participation and its contribution to existing historiography, noting that the book presents a wide range of women's experiences in South Africa's armed struggle, highlighting both their critical roles in exile and on the home front.
Kujenga Amani notes that the book foregrounds the life histories of forty women involved in South Africa's armed struggle, emphasizing their often‑overlooked roles as guerrilla fighters and “combative mothers” and arguing that their experiences are essential to understanding the broader liberation narrative.
In its review, ACCORD notes that the book draws on forty women's life histories to illustrate how female combatants from various armed formations navigated the apartheid struggle and later the complexities of military integration and post‑conflict transitions.

Awards and recognitions

  • Magadla's book Guerrillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa was a joint winner of the Academy of Science of South Africa Humanities Book Award in the Established Scholar category in 2025.
  • The National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Award for Best Non-Fiction Monograph in 2024.Guerrillas and Combative Mothers was awarded the Rhodes University Vice-Chancellor's Book Award in 2024.

Selected Publications

  • Guerrillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa. Routledge, 2025.
  • "Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa: New Perspectives on Gender and Liberation". African Journal on Conflict Resolution, 2024.
  • "Guerrillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa". South African Historical Journal, 2024.
  • Guerrillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa.University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2023.
  • "Thirty years of Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Revisiting Ifi Amadiume’s questions on gender, sex and political economy", Journal of Contemporary African Studies, vol. 39, no. 4, 2021, pp. 517–533.
  • "Theorizing African Women and Girls in Combat: From National Liberation to the War on Terrorism", by Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso and Toyin Falola, The Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020..
  • "A Renegade called Simphiwe: The Wounded Hero", Journal of Political Science, vol. 50, no. 3, 2015..