Did anyone notice the editor's emendation at the end of the article:
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Editors’ note: This essay has been updated to reflect the fact that while Tolkien may be considered South African by measure of his birthplace, he moved to England as a toddler.
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This quite literally shows the author did not do her research and based her diatribe on a false presentiment of Tolkien's view of his citizenship. He was British as a toddler living in South Africa, and he remained British for the rest of his life. His parents were British and only moved to South Africa based on his father's bank promotion. He did not consider himself any more a South African than he did a German based on his Prussian heritage. Therefore, the comment by Stuart Hall:
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“But when I tried to apply contemporary literary criticism to these texts, my ascetic South African language professor told me in a pained tone that this was not the point of the exercise.”
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Would be impertinent at best, and a wholesale fabrication at worst, because I have never read anywhere that Tolkien referred to himself at anytime as South African. This would be particularly egregious because the quote allegedly was made in the 1950s. I could not imagine Tolkien himself or any of his students referring to him as "South African".