Christi van der Westhuizen

Prof Christi van der Westhuizen is Associate Professor heading up the Research Programme at the Centre for the Advancement of Non-Racialism and Democracy (CANRAD), Nelson Mandela University. She is a former Visiting Professor at the Institute of African Studies and the Research Centre Global Dynamics (ReCentGlobe) at Leipzig University, Germany, and currently serves on the scientific advisory board of ReCentGlobe.

Christi’s sole authored books are White Power & the Rise and Fall of the National Party (2007) and Sitting Pretty: White Afrikaans Women in Postapartheid South Africa (2017) and, as co-editor, the volumes The D-Word: Perspectives on Democracy in Tumultuous Times (2023) and the Routledge International Handbook of Critical Studies in Whiteness (2022). Her media columns, funded by the Open Society Foundation for South Africa (OSF-SA), were collected in the volume Working Democracy: Perspectives on South Africa’s Parliament at 20 Years (2014), mentioned in evidence led before the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture in 2021.

Christi’s political analysis has appeared in local and global outlets (TV, radio, print and online), and she is a regularly invited speaker on issues of race, gender, and democracy, among others. Sitting Pretty was the featured book in the daily reading slot on SAfm radio station in 2022-2023, read by Fiona Ramsay.

Before moving full-time into academia, Christi’s career straddled the media, not-for-profit, and research sectors. Her professional life started as a journalist at the anti-apartheid newspaper Vrye Weekblad. The first woman to become senior correspondent in parliament for Beeld newspaper, she received two awards for her environmental reporting and political analysis. She has held research associateships with the universities of Cape Town, Free State and KwaZulu Natal. Her Doctorate in Sociology, specialising in Critical Diversity Studies, is from the University of Cape Town.