Charles van Onselen

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Professor Charles van Onselen is a researcher and historian, based at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He resides in Johannesburg.

He was formerly employed at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he headed the Institute of Advanced Social Research. He is a well-known critic of Afrikaner nationalism.

His most notable published work is The Seed is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, a South African Sharecropper 1894-1985 (Oxford: James Currey, 1996). The book was described as a 'detailed and compelling history of the effect of South Africa's land laws on one man and his family'. ^[1] He received the Alan Paton Award for the book in 1997. He is also well known in academic circles for his two volume pioneering social and economic history of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century Rand, New Nineveh and New Babylon.

Also wrote "Small Matter of a Horse The Life of 'Nongoloza' Mathebula, 1867-1948" [Ravan Press, 1984]; The story of Nongoloza has further repercussions in the South African prison gang myths as described in the excellent "The Number" by Jonny Steinberg.

His latest work is titled The Fox and the Flies and is published by Jonathan Cape an imprint of Random House. The Fox and the Flies provides an accessible and fascinating social, political, and economic history of the Atlantic underworld during the first half of the 20th century. The book tracks the life of Joseph Silver, whom van Onselen argues is Jack the Ripper.