Department of Sociology
People

Departmental Chairperson and Associate Professor

Qualifications: MSocSc (UKZN), PhD (SU)
Position: Departmental Chairperson; Associate Professor
Research interests: Gender Identities, Sexualities, Gender Violence among Children and Young People, Schooling, Qualitative Research
Email: emayeza@uwc.ac.za

Biography

Emmanuel Mayeza, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of the Western Cape. He is a C2 NRF-rated researcher. He is currently interested in qualitative research with young people, specifically focusing on the constructions of gender identities and sexualities from early years. He is also doing research on gender violence and interventions against it in and around educational spaces in South Africa. Prof Mayeza invites students interested in researching the following themes: gender identities, sexualities, gender violence among children and young people, schooling, qualitative research. Follow Prof Mayeza's scholarship on the following platform: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4551-7399

Selected publications

  • Mayeza, E, Bhana, D, Janak, R. and Ngidi, N.D.  (2026). Sexual sanctions and solidarity: Heterosexual schoolgirls’ negotiations of cisheteronormativity in two South African high schools. South African Review of Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1080/21528586.2026.2618103.
  • Mayeza, E. (2025). Youth Masculinities. In: Blair, E. and Deckman, S.  (eds.), The Sage Encyclopedia of Education and Gender (Vol. 2, pp. 886-891). SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071926697.n283.
  • Mayeza, E. (2025). Reflections on a critical child-centred ethnography toward learning gender and sexuality in primary school. In: Prioletta, J., Davies, A. and Smith, K. (eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Early Childhood (pp. 139–150). Bloomsbury Publishing.
  • Mayeza, E. (2025). Rape culture. In: Cover, R. and Newman, C. E. (eds.), Elgar Encyclopedia of Queer Studies (pp. 311–314). Edward Elgar Publishing.
  • Mayeza, E and Mosia, S (2024). Vulnerable and resilient masculinities among schoolboys heading homes in South Africa. Boyhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 17(1): 41–59. https://doi.org/10.3167/bhs.2024.170104
  • Mayeza, E (2024). Homophobic Violence in African Primary Schools. In: Allen, L. and Rasmussen, M. L. (eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Sexuality Education (pp.1– 9). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95352-2_97-1
  • Mayeza, E (2023). ‘He calls me babe, he says I’m sexy’: Girls, boys and sexualities in the early years. In: Bhana, D.; Xu, Y.; & Adriany, V. (eds.), Gendered and Sexual Norms in Global South Early Childhood Education: Understanding Normative Discourses in Post-Colonial Contexts (pp. 16–33). Routledge. 10.4324/9781003211600-2
  • Ngidi, ND and Mayeza, E (2023): Adultification, Neglect, and Sexual Abuse at Home: Selected Narratives of Orphaned Girls in KwaMashu, South Africa, Children & Society, 37(6):2087-2101. https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12691
  • Mayeza, E (2022): Rape culture: sexual intimidation and partner rape among youth in sexually diverse relationships, Sexualities. 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/13634607221144618
  • Mayeza, E (2022): LGBTPQ Youth Negotiating Access to Sexual Health Education and Resources in a Rural South African University, Journal of Homosexuality. 69(8): 1449-1465. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2021.1912559

Academic Staff

Qualifications: D.Phil. (UCT), M.Phil. cum laude (UPE)
Position: Professor; Master's and Doctoral Coordinator
Research interests: Identity and Difference (including whiteness), Ideology, Democracy, Postcolonialism
Email: cvdwesthuizen@uwc.ac.za

Biography

Christi van der Westhuizen is Professor of Sociology at the University of the Western Cape, a C1 NRF-rated researcher and a former Visiting Professor at Leipzig University, Germany (2022-2023). She currently serves as Acting Deputy Dean: Research in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. As a transdisciplinary scholar interested in ideology and the mobilisation of identity and difference in colonial and postcolonial contexts, with a focus on South Africa, Prof Van der Westhuizen has published widely, both academically and popularly. Prof Van der Westhuizen is the Lead Principal Investigator of the multi-country, South-North ‘Repairing Sociality, Safeguarding Democracy’ research consortium, funded by the Trans-Atlantic Platform. She is a regular media columnist and political analyst in South African and international media.

Website: https://www.social-repair.org
Facebook: christivanderwesthuizen.5

Selected Publications
Monographs

  • Van der Westhuizen, C, 2017. Sitting Pretty: White Afrikaans Women in Postapartheid South Africa. Scottsville: UKZN Press.
  • Van der Westhuizen, C, 2007. White Power & the Rise and Fall of the National Party. Cape Town: Zebra Press. (Long-listed for the Sunday Times Alan Paton Non-Fiction Award.)

Edited volumes

  • Blum, C, Van der Westhuizen, C and Engel, U (eds) (2026). The Routledge Handbook of Social Cohesion in Africa. Oxon: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003473657
  • Van der Westhuizen, C, Maqabuka, Q, Mkhize, N, Magoqwana, B and Holtzman, G (eds) (2025). In the Belly of the University: Challenging Institutional Cultures in Higher Education. Gqeberha: Mandela University Press. https://doi.org/10.52779/9781067212919
  • Van der Westhuizen, C., Dube, S., and Jolobe, Z. (eds.), 2023. The D-Word: Perspectives on Democracy in Tumultuous Times. Gqeberha: Mandela University Press. https://doi.org/10.52779/9781998959051
  • Hunter, S., and Van der Westhuizen, C. (eds), 2022. The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness. Oxon: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429355769.

Articles

  • Van der Westhuizen, C (2026). ‘White Aspiration in South Africa: The Intersectional Nexus of Ordentlikheid and the Making of Afrikaner Whiteness’. Gender Questions 13(2): 1-20. https://doi.org/10.25159/2412-8457/19474 
  • Van der Westhuizen, C, 2024. ‘Democratic Constitutionalism against the paradoxes of neoliberal, populist and post-socialist entanglements.’ Law & Critique 35: 535–551. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-024-09405-5
  • Van der Westhuizen, C, 2023. ‘Populism as African Fascism? Examining the Economic Freedom Fighters in Postapartheid South Africa.’ Africa Today 69 (3): 2-25. https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.3.01
  • Van der Westhuizen, C, 2023. ‘From the leader or from the led? Populist xenophobia in South Africa’. Comparativ Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und Vergleichende Geschellschaftsforschung 33(4): 460-479. https://www.comparativ.net/v2/article/view/3398

Book chapters

  • Van der Westhuizen, C, (2026). ‘South Africa’s Postcolonial Right-Wing: Authoritarian Populism as Anti-Liberal ‘Revolutionary Politics”’. In: Kalb, D and Bello, W. (eds) Backlash - The Global Rise of the Radical Right. London: Pluto Press.
  • Van der Westhuizen, C, (2026). ‘Is Social Cohesion the Panacea for Populism?’ In: Blum, C, Van der Westhuizen, C and Engel, U (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Social Cohesion in Africa. Oxon: Routledge.
  • Van der Westhuizen, C and Sikrweqe, O, 2025. ‘Doing difference differently in communities: Empowering students through critical self-reflection’. In: N Duncan, V Roos and J Pillay (eds.). Community Psychology: Global Crises, Local Realities, and Action. Cape Town: Juta. 304-326.
  • Van der Westhuizen, C and Zondani, S, 2024. ‘Revitalising the Humanities: Un/disciplining Sociology and Cultural Studies in South Africa’. In: Belluigi, D.Z. and Keet, A. (eds) Emancipatory Imaginations: Advancing Critical University Studies. Stellenbosch: SunPress. 172-199.
  • Van der Westhuizen, C, Dube, S and Jolobe, Z, 2023. ‘Beyond Democracy’s Travails Towards Just Inclusion: Re-membering the Demos’. In: C. van der Westhuizen, S. Dube, and Z. Jolobe (eds.), The D-Word: Perspectives on Democracy in Tumultuous Times. (1-15) Gqeberha: Mandela University Press. 1-15. https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2G_6EAAAQBAJ&pg=GBS.PR14&hl=en

Qualifications: BSW (Social Work), MPhil (UCT), PhD (SU)
Position: Senior Lecturer; Honours Coordinator
Research interests: Sociology of Education, Science, and Technology; Construction and Performance of Social Identities; Practice of Social Research
Email: tmakhetha@uwc.ac.za

Biography

Dr Trevor Makhetha is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology. He holds a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) and an MPhil specialising in Criminal Justice from the University of Cape Town, and a PhD in Sociology from Stellenbosch University. Makhetha's research interests include: (i) sociology of education (with a focus on schooling communities; schooling inequalities in south africa; early childhood learning; and social justice/ anti-oppressive pedagogies), (ii) construction and performance of social identities (with a focus on how race, masculinities, sexuality, and age intersect), (iii) practice of social research (with a focus on de/anti-colonial research methodologies, research ethics with vulnerable and "at risk” populations, such as children and youth). Makhetha invites students interested in researching any of the above-mentioned themes. Follow his scholarship at https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7742-0618.

Selected publications

Position: Lecturer; Postgraduate Coordinator
Qualifications: PhD
Research interests: Human-animal interactions, posthumanism, intersectionality and speciesism, environmental justice.
Email: sspicer@uwc.ac.za

Biography

Sharyn Spicer is a lecturer in Sociology at the University of the Western Cape. She has taught first years, co-ordinated the undergraduate programme for many years, as well as the postgraduate programme (2023 – 2025). She launched a new interdisciplinary postgraduate Human Animal Studies (HAS) module in 2020 called Animals, Society and the Environment. It was funded and supported by a grant from the Animals and Society Institute (ASI) in the US and is currently the only module of its kind at a South African university. Her latest research focuses on the relationships, interactions and entanglements between humans and other animal species. She also runs TUFCAT, a UWC-based animal welfare project. When she’s not at her desk, you will find her trapping feral cats for sterilisation or caring for the animals at her farm-based sanctuary.

Publications

  • Obuaku-Igwe, C, McArthur (Makgetha), T, Spicer, S, and Rabe, M, 2024. Collective autoethnographic reflections on curriculum innovation in the discipline of Sociology: Covid-19 and beyond. In: Ralarala, MR, Pillay, S, Bock, Z, and Kaschula RH (eds.), Unlocking the Chains of Knowledge: Understanding the Challenges, Remaking Pedagogies, and Curriculum Renewal. Stellenbosch: SUN PReSS. 66-92.
  • Tucker, L., Agbonika, S., Le Roux, M., Spicer, S, Lewis, H & Grigg, R (2023) "Africa". In: Lewis, H., & Grigg, R. (Eds). Dogs in Schools: Pedagogy and Practice for Happy, Healthy, and Humane Interventions (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003257073

Position: Lecturer; Undergraduate Coordinator
Qualifications: BSocSci, BSocSci Hons, MSS (RU)
Research interests: Care Work, Sociology of Health, Labour Studies
Email: mqawekazi@uwc.ac.za

Biography
Dr Qawekazi Maqabuka works as Lecturer in Sociology at the University of the Western Cape. She completed her PhD on healthcare justice, communicative injustice and health policy failure at Nelson Mandela University. An award-winning lecturer, she received the Emerging Excellent Teacher of the Year award of both the Faculty of Humanities and Nelson Mandela University in 2020.

Publications

Edited volumes

  • Van der Westhuizen, C, Maqabuka, Q, Mkhize, N and Magoqwana, B (eds) (2025). In the Belly of the University: Challenging Institutional Cultures in Higher Education. Gqeberha: Mandela University Press. https://doi.org/10.52779/9781067212919

Articles

  • Magoqwana, B., Maqabuka, Q., & Tshoaedi, M. (2019). “Forced to care” at the neoliberal university: Invisible labour as academic labour performed by Black women academics in the South African university. South African Review of Sociology, 50(3-4), 6-21.
  • Mkhize, N., Maqabuka, Q., & Magoqwana, B. (2021). Pedagogy of incoko: Challenges in adapting conversational forms as a praxis of student care and engagement in the context of digital learning in South Africa. Anthropology Southern Africa, 44(3), 109-122.

Book chapters

  • Maqabuka, Q, Nomalanga Mkhize, N and Magoqwana, B (2025). Designed to be Unequal: Institutional Differentiation and the Entrenchment of Educational Inequality in the Post-Apartheid University System. In: Van der Westhuizen, C, Maqabuka, Q, Mkhize, N and Magoqwana, B (eds). In the Belly of the University: Challenging Institutional Cultures in Higher Education. Gqeberha: Mandela University Press.

Qualifications: MA (cum laude) (Wits)
Position: Associate Lecturer
Research interests: Race and racialised structures, whiteness studies, political economy, wealth and income inequality, student politics and social movements in South Africa
Email:nomabaso@uwc.ac.za

Nonkululeko Mabaso’s work focuses on the reconfiguration of economic power, with particular attention to elite wealth formation, corporate influence and the persistence of racialised inequality in democratic South Africa. She is especially interested in how structures of whiteness, capital, and institutional power continue to shape economic and social life. Ms Mabaso is a PhD candidate in Development Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. She welcomes Honours and MA students who share her research interests.

Position: nGap Lecturer
Qualifications: BA, Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), BA Hons, MA(RU)
Research interests: Sociology of Higher Education; Intersectional Feminism, Identity; Transformation and Decolonial Studies
Email: ivezi@uwc.ac.za

Biography
Indiphile Vezi is an nGAP lecturer in Sociology at the University of the Western Cape and a PhD candidate in Sociology at Rhodes University. She holds an MA in Development Studies from Rhodes University. Ms Vezi's research interests include: Sociology of higher education/higher education studies; feminism; identity (race, gender and class); and (iv) transformation and decolonial studies. She invites students interested in researching any of the above mentioned themes.

Research Associate

Qualifications: PhD (University of Portsmouth, UK); MSc (London School of Economics and Political Science, UK); BSc (University of Greenwich, UK)
Position: Research Associate
Research interests: Cybercriminal networks, cybercrime, digital deception, fraud victimisation, psychological manipulation, anti-colonial criminology, socio-technical harms.
Email: suleman.lazarus@gmail.com

Biography

Dr Suleman Lazarus is a Research Associate of the Department of Sociology. He serves as an Associate Editor for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) journal Digital Threats: Research and Practice and is a Visiting Fellow at the Mannheim Centre for Criminology, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and an Honorary Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Portsmouth. Most of his research examines the social, psychological, and transnational dynamics of cybercrime, with an empirical focus on Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Cambodia, and the United Kingdom. For further details see:

Selected Publications

Administrative Staff

Qualifications: BA (UWC), BTech (CPUT)
Position: Administrator

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