John Aerni-Flessner

John Aerni-Flessner grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and earned a bachelor’s degree in history with a secondary education certificate from Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. He taught high school in Lesotho and in Kwethluk, Alaska—a Yup’ik community—before going to graduate school. Earning an MA and Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in African History, he taught at SUNY Cortland in Upstate New York before joining the School of RCAH at MSU.

His most recent book was published by the Cape Town-based Africa Institute of South Africa and was entitled White Gold and Thirsty Communities: The Cold War, Apartheid, and the Lesotho Highland Water Project. The book documented the 20 years of negotiations around the massive dams in the Lesotho highlands that supply Johannesburg with water. It also documents how big infrastructure projects both build big dreams in people and often propel disappointment when these dreams do not come to fruition. It explains how a project generally seen as an engineering and diplomatic success has also bred heavy protests in both Lesotho and South Africa.

He has researched and written extensively on youth, nationalism, development, borders, and decolonization in Lesotho. John’s first book, Dreams for Lesotho: Independence, Foreign Assistance, and Development, drew on research in London, Washington D.C., and Pretoria (South Africa), but most of it came from archives in Lesotho. He has also conducted extensive oral histories with Basotho in Lesotho, as well as American volunteers through programs like the Peace Corps. He has articles relating to the history of development in Lesotho in the Journal of African History and International Journal of African Historical Studies. He co-edited the volume (with MSU-Ph.D.-graduate Leslie Hadfield) in the IJAHS on “Localizing the History of Development in Africa.” He also wrote a piece on refugee smuggling and women in rural Lesotho published in Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies.

He has also written extensively on histories of the border and borderlands between Lesotho and South Africa. This has been a collaborative project with colleagues based in South Africa and Lesotho, and many of the publications from this have been co-authored, reflecting the collaborative process used to collect research information. This has included articles that have appeared in the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth Studies looking at how individuals and states in the late colonial and early independence period defined and utilize citizenship and passports, a piece in the South African Historical Journal examining how narratives about the theft of animals like cows and sheep have shaped border histories, and an article in the Journal of Southern African Studies looking at how conflicts over the drawing of borders in the apartheid era allowed smaller states in southern Africa to counter the economic and political power of the South African regime. John is co-editor of a book examining border histories and their ramifications for people trying to cross them that was published in 2023.

John worked with Drs. Nthabiseng Mokoena-Mokhali (National University of Lesotho) and Charles Fogelman (University of Illinois) to revise the Historical Dictionary of Lesotho. The 3rd edition was published in late 2023.

John writes for southern African media outlets on the politics of development in Lesotho, and on the political scene. His author pages are here: https://africasacountry.com/author/john-aerni-flessner and https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/johnaerniflessner/

He comments on Twitter/X and on Bluesky about Lesotho and Southern African politics, history, and development at @LesothoJohn and https://bsky.app/profile/lesothojohn.bsky.social

In the School of RCAH, John has taught courses on Global Slavery, Music and Popular Culture in 20th Century Africa, Malcolm X in Lansing, Urban Renewal in Lansing, Language and Culture in Lesotho, the History of Public Health in Africa, and an examination of Decolonization. He also teaches in the Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities program and has a courtesy appointment in the Department of History where he can help advise graduate students. He was a 2020 recipient of MSU’s Teacher-Scholar Award.