Liam Richard May
South African historian. Founder of Volkskild
A historian based in Pretoria, working on the political and social history of southern Africa from the colonial period to the present. Founder and director of Volkskild, a cultural and heritage organisation dedicated to the serious study of South Africa’s colonial past and the preservation of the European colonial diaspora’s heritage.
Fragmented Nations: A History of the Bantustans
The first comprehensive narrative history of the ten African homelands that almost became countries.
For nearly forty years, the South African government attempted to organise the political life of its African majority into a constellation of separate ethnic-national homelands. By the time the project collapsed in 1994, it had cost the state hundreds of billions of rands, displaced more than three million people, and produced a body of human-rights violations whose consequences continue to shape the country today.
Fragmented Nations traces this project from its colonial origins in the seventeenth century to its dissolution in 1994 and its continuing residues.
About Liam Richard May
Liam Richard May is a South African historian based in Pretoria. He was born in Cape Town on 3 January 1999, matriculated in 2017, and worked for several years in the agricultural sector while beginning his military training.
His historical work focuses on the political and social development of southern Africa from the colonial period to the post-apartheid era. His first book, Fragmented Nations: A History of the Bantustans, is the first comprehensive narrative history of the ten African homelands that almost became countries. A second volume, on the application of the homelands system to South West Africa under South African administration, is in preparation.
Service and training
Liam’s military path began informally in 2018, with foundational military basics in 2019, before progressing to a specialist selection course in 2021–2022, where he trained alongside senior figures from the country’s special forces community. He currently serves as a Captain and registered reservist, completed an officers’ refresher course in 2025 in preparation for a pending promotion, and had planned to commence studies at the Royal Military Academy in Brussels in the latter half of 2026 — an ambition deferred by a back injury sustained during a long-distance walk earlier that year. He continues with self-directed military and leadership study while undergoing treatment.
Public life
From the 2021 local government elections until late 2024, Liam served as a municipal councillor in Mbombela (Nelspruit) for the Freedom Front Plus, and stood as a parliamentary candidate at the 2024 national election. He raised concerns within the party about candidate selection and internal financial conduct, and was expelled in late November 2024. The matter remains unresolved.
His departure marked a shift from party politics to a broader public role. In September 2024 he walked from the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria to the White Cross Monument outside Polokwane in commemoration of South African farmers killed in farm attacks, carrying both the Transvaal Republic flag and the Afrikaner Freedom Flag. In December 2024 he walked from Nelspruit to Pretoria, arriving at the Voortrekker Monument in time for Geloftedag, to draw attention to the meaning of the vow taken before the Battle of Blood River. In February 2026 he set out on a planned 1,500-kilometre walk through the heartland of the former Transvaal, accompanied by a small ox-wagon-styled cart, intended to build toward a wider unity campaign across the country. The walk was halted at Balmoral when his back gave way. He intends to resume the journey in 2027.
Volkskild
Liam is the founder and a director of Volkskild (“People’s Shield”), an apolitical cultural and heritage organisation dedicated to the study of southern African colonial history and the preservation of the heritage of the European colonial diaspora. Membership opens at the end of May 2026, with the official launch in September.