Kronos: Southern African Histories

Search within this community and its collections:

Browse by

By Issue Date
Authors
Titles
Subjects

Kronos: Southern African Histories is published annually by the Dept of History and the Centre for Humanities Research at UWC. It is an accredited South African journal that aims to promote and publicise high quality historical research on southern Africa. The journal also encourages comparative studies and seeks to break new ground in its dynamic integration of visuals and text.

Collections in this community

Kronos, 35 (2009)
Kronos, 36 (2010)

Recent Submissions

Laughing with Sam Sly: The cultural politics of satire and colonial British identity in the Cape Colony, c. 1840-1850

Holdridge, Christopher (University of Cape Town) (Published by History Department, University of the Western Cape, 2010)

[more]

[less]

Abstract:

This article examines Sam Sly’s African Journal (1843–51), a literary and satirical newspaper published by William Layton Sammons in Cape Town. It contends that the newspaper utilised satire to forge British cultural affinity in the colony, as well as to encourage and preserve the conservative social boundaries of propriety and family values espoused by white middle-class colonists. This differed from the more widely studied position of satire as a subversive challenge to the established order, with Sammons avoiding sexually explicit, scandalous humour or overt attacks on personal character. In a period of growing white consensus, the African Journal’s use of satire in the 1840s formed part of the cultural politics of establishing bourgeois values through the medium of appreciation of British literature and popular culture. Satire in Sam Sly’s African Journal thus functioned ideologically to extend British cultural dominance and affinities, and to preserve and instil white bourgeois moral codes. Although much satire was shorn of the racial reality of the Cape Colony, seeking to replicate an impression of metropolitan whiteness, those satires that focused on race derided the Khoikhoi and Xhosa as incapable of achieving equality with whites, drawing on growing anti-humanitarian sentiment in the Cape. The African Journal’s popularity, however, diminished in the face of the anti-convict agitation of 1848–50, when colonists opposed the landing of ticket-of-leave convicts from Ireland as an impediment to the goal of representative government, through petitions and boycotting supplying to the government. Satirising these measures as a radical betrayal of British loyalty, Sammons’s support dwindled owing to his criticism of popular feeling.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10566/206

Files in this item: 1

HoldridgeLaughing2010.pdf (4.079Mb)

Family law and "the great moral public interests" in Victorian Cape Town

Malherbe, Vertrees C.(University of Cape Town) (Published by History Department, University of the Western Cape, 2010)

[more]

[less]

Abstract:

In the wake of the mineral revolution, and the Cape Colony’s attainment of responsible government, Cape Town’s population doubled in the nineteenth century’s latter years. Its largely British ruling class, seeing opportunities for wealth and a greater significance in empire and world, sought to construct a social order conducive to those goals. Faced with increasing ethnic heterogeneity, gender imbalance due to the numbers of male immigrants, and frustration in combating the endemic poverty and slums, city fathers and their closest colleagues – doctors, clergy – perceived the way forward in terms not of extending rights but of moral reform. This article carries the ongoing investigation of family life and law in Cape Town through the Victorian period. It examines legal enactments and social developments where they impacted on marriage, divorce, concubinage and related matters, with particular reference to the welfare of children and those born out of wedlock.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10566/205

Files in this item: 1

MalherbeFamilyLaw2010.pdf (257.8Kb)

Not quite fair play, old chap: The complexion of cricket and sport in South Africa

Nasson, Bill (Stellenbosch University) (Published by History Dept, University of the Western Cape, 2009)

[more]

[less]

Abstract: This review essay explores the racial and social divides that have permeated cricket in South Africa.

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/105

Files in this item: 1

NassonCricket2009.pdf (131.5Kb)

Contestations over knowledge production or ideological bullying? A response to Legassick on the workers' movement

Sithole, Jabulani (Univ. of KwaZulu-Natal) (Published by History Dept, University of the Western Cape, 2009)

[more]

[less]

Abstract:

The key characteristic of the vast amount of literature on the South African workers ʼ movement in the post-1973 period is the denial that the class and national struggles were closely intertwined. This denial is underpinned by a strong ʻantinationalist currentʼ which dismisses the national liberation struggle as ʻpopulist and nationalistʼ and therefore antithetical to socialism. This article cautions against uncritical endorsement of these views. It argues that they are the work of partisan and intolerant commentators who have dominated the South African academy since the 1970s and who have a tendency to suppress all versions of labour history which highlight these linkages in favour of those which portray national liberation and socialism as antinomies. The article also points out that these commentators use history to mobilise support for their rigidly held ideological positions and to wage current political struggles under the pretext of advancing objective academic arguments.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10566/104

Files in this item: 1

SitholeContestations2009.pdf (184.4Kb)

Land distribution politics in the Eastern Cape midlands: The case of the Lukhanji municipality, 1995-2006

Wotshela, Luvoyo (Univ. of Fort Hare) (Published by History Dept, University of the Western Cape, 2009)

[more]

[less]

Abstract:

Since its initiation, South Africaʼs post-apartheid land reform programme has generated extensive analysis and critique that in turn has yielded a body of scholarship. Discussion revolves around the official policy of the programme, the challenges associated with its implementation and its reception at local levels. It cannot be overstated that much of the discourse on the formulation of the programme itself commenced in the dying years of apartheid, through a series of workshops, policy conferences, research projects and publications. Prompted by glaring disparities in the countryʼs social and living conditions and primarily by entrenched imbalanced landownership, contemporary land reform dialogue has a well-built backdrop. What, however, is our understanding of local community politics that played perceptible roles in triggering land redistribution and facilitating patterns of settlement? This article gives some insight into a veiled history of interplay between community mobilisation politics, governance and official land reform policy in the Lukhanji municipality of the Eastern Cape during South Africaʼs transitional years of 1995 to 2006. After outlining how land redistribution was initially driven by forces operating outside government action, the article proceeds to illustrate the frailty of the government land redistribution accomplishment. Moreover, it demonstrates the complex nature of a rural setting that has arisen from community-facilitated and incipient government land redistribution achievements in the area.

URI:

http://hdl.handle.net/10566/103

Files in this item: 1

WotshelaLand2009.pdf (520.8Kb)

Kronos: Southern African Histories

UWC Research Repository

Kronos: Southern African Histories

Browse by

Collections in this community

Recent Submissions

Search Research Repository

Browse

All of Research Repository

This Community

My Account

Statistics