Editorial

Abstract

This issue of the Southern Journal for Contemporary History comprises two parts. The first is a Dossier entitled “Reframing African Monetary History: A Southern African Perspective”. This collection of new and innovative research on African monetary history results from a workshop, themed “Money and Monetary Institutions in Africa”, that took place at the University of the Free State on 13 and 14 September 2022. The workshop was financially supported by the Young Scholars Initiative (YSI) and the International Studies Group (ISG) of the University of the Free State. The dossier comprises an introduction and three papers, each exploring an exciting aspect of Zimbabwe’s economic and financial history. Tinashe Takuva and Bernard Kusena present a detailed history of the Land and Agricultural Bank of Southern Rhodesia, which became, “a useful tool to promote settler hegemony in Southern Rhodesia” between 1924 and 1963. Geraldine Sibanda’s paper describes monetary developments in Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980 to 2022, detailing the “Economics of Mistrust” in the country. Finally, Jabulani Shaba’s article is set in a more recent period of Zimbabwe’s history, between c.1990 and 2019. In his article, Shaba explores the role of women in the artisanal gold mining industry in Zimbabwe’s Mazowe District, “focusing on the everyday lives of women and value exchanges in artisanal gold mining spaces”.