EDITORIAL

From the Editor

This issue marks the beginning of my term as Editor-in-Chief. I want to thank Julie Parle for her excellent work over the years in steering this journal during the time of Covid-19 to the present. Under her editorship, the editorial team was expanded, and a more streamlined referencing system was introduced. The journal's international profile was enhanced by it being indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), which, as stated in the last editorial, directs readers to more than 20, 000 open access journals across 136 countries and more than 9, 500, 000 articles published in 80 languages. This makes Historia more accessible beyond South African borders.

A decision was taken at the 2024 Historical Association of South Africa (HASA) annual general meeting at Rhodes University, Makhanda, that the journal would no longer be circulated in hardcopy. Therefore, Historia, 1, 69, 2024 is the first digital-only issue. Historia is accessible via the University of Pretoria's Open Journals Platform and SciELO, and remains searchable via Sabinet, too. We have moved our article submission facility to the University of Pretoria's journal management platform and are decommissioning our Gmail account. To submit articles, please visit https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/historia/about/submissions. As usual, we rely on page fee charges to ensure the sustainability of the journal. The maximum page fee charges are clearly stated on our website (https:/ hgsa.co.za/historia/) and all fees received go towards journal production, including layout, copy editing, and a myriad of other tasks.

Congratulations to the recipients of the HASA's Johan Bergh Historia Award for 2023 in recognition of their contribution to the study of History at third-year level. They are Mahadi Monyane (North-West University); Frances Collopy (University of Cape Town); Nonkululeko Xaba (University of Johannesburg); Gemma Mills (University of Pretoria); Rosalynd Dally (University of Stellenbosch); Pieter Swart (University of the Free State); and Erin Judith Ryan (University of the Witwatersrand).

In addition to the 2023 HASA Presidential address by Karen Harris, this issue features diverse topics. Wessel Visser covers water-borne diseases and sanitation in Beaufort West Municipality, and Marius Lukasiewicz analyses the South African Republic (ZAR)'s participation in the 1899 Paris Exposition Universelle. Also in this issue is Jill E. Kelly's account of biographies and backstories of those involved in the creation and afterlives of oral accounts of the Mdluli past in KwaZulu-Natal, and Shokahle R. Dlamini's examination of the history of maternal and child welfare in colonial Eswatini. Finally, Refiloe Dhladhla reviews Melissa Diane Armstrong's An Ambulance on Safari: The ANC and the Making of a Health Department in Exile and Barend van der Merwe reviews Ruhan Fourie's Christian Nationalism and Anticommunism in Twentieth-Century South Africa. I would like, therefore, to thank the editorial team and the reviewers who made this issue possible.

Clement Masakure, May 2024