Michigan State University Associate Professor of History Dr. John Aerni-Flessner publishes article

Dr. John Aerni-Flessner, an Associate Professor in the Residential College of Arts and Humanities and the Department of History at Michigan State University, recently published “Lesotho and the QwaQwa Ski Resort, 1975-82: Border Disputes and South Africa’s Increasingly Deadly Responses” in The Journal of African History. The article, co-written with Chitja Twala of the University of Limpopo, explores the proposed building of a ski resort in 1975 in the QwaQwa Bantustan which bordered Lesotho. 

Due to Lesotho’s diplomatic and military reactions, the planned resort was never constructed. The article examines the protracted dispute and suggests that the failed ski resort helped bring about the era of South African raids into neighboring states, starting with the Maseru Massacre of 1982. This foreshadowed the apartheid regime’s growing willingness in the 1980s to use military force against both township residents and neighboring Southern African countries. 

Read the article here.