Browsing Kronos: Southern African Histories by Issue Date
Now showing items 1-9 of 9
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Israel, Paolo (History Department, University of the Western Cape, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: This article engages a historical reconstruction of the formation of Makonde revolutionary singing in the process of the Mozambican liberation struggle. The history of ʻUtopia liveʼ is here entrusted to wartime genres, marked by heteroglossia and the use of metaphor, and referring to moments when the ʻspace of experienceʼ and the ʻhorizon of expectationʼ of the Struggle were still filled with uncertainty and the sense of possibility. Progressively, however, singing expressions were reorganised around socialismʼs nodes of meaning. Ideological tropes, elaborated by Frelimoʼs ʻcourtlyʼ composers, were appropriated in popular singing. The relations between the ʻpeopleʼ and their leaders were made apparent through the organization of the performance space. The main contention of the article is that unofficiality, heteroglossia, metaphor and poetic license, although they feature in genres that have been marked out as ʻpopularʼ in academic discourse, are by no means intrinsically ʻpopularʼ. Much on the contrary, they are the first victims of populist modes of political actions, that is, of a politics grounded on a concept of ʻpeopleʼ. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/102 Files in this item: 1
IsraelUtopia2009.pdf (3.176Mb) -
Groenewald, Gerald (Univ. of Johannesburg) (Published by History Department, University of the Western Cape, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: This article uses the career of Hendrik Oostwald Eksteen at the Cape between 1702 and 1741 to illustrate the mechanisms free burghers could use to create wealth in an economically restrictive environment. By making use of the concept of entrepreneurship and its attendant issues, the article describes Eksteenʼs rise to fortune and prestige through his exploitation of a combination of economic opportunities afforded by Cape Townʼs position as a port servicing passing ships. Crucial to Eksteenʼs later success was his successful use of the opportunities provided by the monopolistic alcohol retail market at the Cape. Eksteenʼs initial success in this arena provided him with a capital base to pursue other opportunities in agriculture, fishing and meat provision, making him the wealthiest man at the Cape by the 1730s. The article also illustrates how Eksteenʼs upward mobility was linked to his use of social capital and the cultivation of large social networks through kinship. It demonstrates, furthermore, that economic success was wound up with social power and prestige. In using the biography of Eksteen, the article argues for the importance of economic history in the study of the early modern Cape, but calls also for a study which links economic developments with social and cultural ones through a focus on individual entrepreneurs. Shown, too, is the fact that the existing conception of the rise of a Cape gentry in the eighteenth century needs to be revised to take into account the role of entrepreneurship, the urban foundations of wealth creation, as well as the role of the free black community in this process. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/99 Files in this item: 1
GroenewaldEntrepreneur2009.pdf (260.7Kb) -
Nasson, Bill (Stellenbosch University) (Published by History Department, University of the Western Cape, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: This article, an expanded version of a 2008 public lecture, explores the life and times of Adolph Gysbert ʻSailorʼ Malan, a South African who rose to prominence as a combatant in the 1940 Battle of Britain and who, after his post-war return to the Union, became a notable personality in liberal reform politics. A classic Anglo-Afrikaner empire loyalist or ʻKingʼs Afrikanerʼ, Malan became ʻSailorʼ through his interwar merchant marine service, joining the Royal Air Force in the later 1930s. An exceptional fighter pilot, his wartime role as an RAF ace in defending Britain turned him into a national hero, a migrating loyal Springbok who had sprung selflessly to the defence of Great Britain. Subsequently, as an ex-serviceman, Malan drew on his wartime sensibilities and beliefs to return to political battle in his home country, in opposition to post-1948 Afrikaner nationalism and its apartheid policies. The mini-biography of Sailor Malan analyses several key life-story elements, including his seafaring apprenticeship, British wartime identity and combat experience, and troubled relationship with post- 1945 South Africa as a gradualist liberal. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/101 Files in this item: 1
NassonSailor2009.pdf (3.678Mb) -
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) -
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) -
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) -
Worden, Nigel (Univ. of Cape Town) (Published by History Department, University of the Western Cape, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: This article analyses two separate cases of public violence which took place in Cape Town in the summer of 1772/3. At surface level they appear to be very different in character. One was a scrap among low-ranking soldiers who were playing cards at a shoreline outpost. The other was a formalised challenge between two captains of the VOC return fleet as they were lunching with the Governor, which resulted in a death and the flight of the murderer. Yet closer analysis suggests common ritualised codes of behaviour that intriguingly reveal how violence, masculinity and notions of honour operated at all social levels within the town. Both cases were complex and coded social conflicts, rooted in northern European early modern social beliefs and practices as transferred to a colonial context. However, none of these perpetrators of violence was viewed sympathetically by the VOC authorities at the Cape. By contrast, the assailant Captain who had escaped back to Europe was able to successfully appeal to the VOC directors in the Netherlands. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/100 Files in this item: 1
WordenViolence2009.pdf (167.1Kb) -
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) -
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)
Now showing items 1-9 of 9