Peter Swanepoel
Peter Swanepoel is a postgraduate researcher in history at the University of Johannesburg, focusing on the politics and institutions of South African cycling under apartheid. He is funded by the Wellcome Trust (University of Toronto), and is affiliated locally with UJ’s History Department under the supervision of Professor Thembisa Waetjen. Swanepoel co-authored a book with Henning van Aswegen, The Daisy Spy Ring: How South African Intelligence Agents Infiltrated and Disrupted the SA Communist Party (Naledi, 2025). He also writes on politics, history, and society more broadly.
Articles By This Author
Why killing Khamenei was justified
For too long, incremental pressure on Tehran failed to change its conduct at home and abroad. The recent strikes that killed Ayatollah Khamenei were not lawless or reckless. They were justified.
“Linked to” does not mean what you think it means
Earlier this year, South Africans were again presented with crime data showing that certain interventions were “linked to” reductions in violent crime. Depending on where
The comfort of doing something
Why personal sustainability rituals don’t scale There is a quiet unease that sits underneath a lot of contemporary climate concern. Many people care deeply. They
China eliminated poverty and the West doesn’t know how to respond
China says it has eliminated extreme poverty. The Western reaction has been evasive in a way that is hard to miss once you start looking
Iran: On the political economy of global moral attention
Why some crises mobilise the world while others fade into silence The disparity between the scale of suffering in certain conflicts and the level of
Elon Musk and the institutional limits of liberal democracy
Public debate about Elon Musk rarely escapes caricature. He is alternately framed as a near-messianic innovator dragging a stagnant civilisation forward, or as an erratic
Venezuela: The Seduction of Outcome-Based Morality
Why moral clarity does not justify discretionary power. There is little difficulty in condemning the regime that presided over Venezuela’s collapse. Over more than two
Sandra Laing and the Zombie of Race Classification
How post-apartheid South Africa inherited the logic it claims to reject The government rightly condemns apartheid’s racial classification as primitive, even laughable, while continuing to
The Trump-Mamdani meeting: the problem isn’t hypocrisy, but devaluation
When the photographs emerged of Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani meeting in the Oval Office — smiling, shaking hands, exchanging compliments — I spent days
The Iran factor: what’s really holding Gaza’s ceasefire together
The peace deal holding Gaza together right now works for a reason most people don’t understand: Arab states fear Iran more than they care about