Zaakiyah Rabbaney

Zaakiyah is a PhD candidate in department of Environmental Humanities South. Her research interests include climate change politics, anti-black historical processes, industrial extractivism, and threats to habitability under a changing climate.

 Zaakiyah’s current research, under the Critical Zones Africa South and East (CzASE) Project, focuses on the industrial attacks on the Phillipi Horticultural Area (PHA), a space of extreme significance to Cape Town’s food sovereignty. Her research questions how sand and soil move in and out of the PHA, and how these material shifts, through prospected silica sand mining, shape and reshape food networks, socio-economic outcomes, and justice in an increasingly uncertain climate. It seeks to explore the entanglements that exist with the soil, with a relational materiality and systems approach.

Zaakiyah’s other research interests include renewable energy transitions in South Africa, cycles of threat and violence in abandoned informal spaces, and spatial, energy, and climate justice. Look forward to her 2025 publication, “Unjust Transitions: The Case of Old Coronation, Mpumalanga.””