tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/bantu-28443/articlesBantu – The Conversation2023-03-29T15:02:28Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2011542023-03-29T15:02:28Z2023-03-29T15:02:28ZAncient DNA is restoring the origin story of the Swahili people of the East African coast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516781/original/file-20230321-2514-xlebqo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=278%2C16%2C2537%2C1926&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How are people today related to those who lived centuries ago in the Swahili civilization? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/eQ6o77">The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The legacy of the medieval Swahili civilization is a source of extraordinary pride in East Africa, as reflected in its language being the official tongue of Kenya, Tanzania and even inland countries like Uganda and Rwanda, far from the Indian Ocean shore where the culture developed nearly two millennia ago.</p>
<p>Its ornate stone and coral towns hugged 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) of the coast, and its merchants played a linchpin role in the lucrative trade between Africa and lands across the ocean: Arabia, Persia, India, Southeast Asia and China.</p>
<p>By the turn of the second millennium, Swahili people embraced Islam, and some of their grand mosques still stand at the UNESCO World Heritage sites of <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1055/">Lamu in Kenya</a> and <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/144">Kilwa in Tanzania</a>.</p>
<p>Self-governance ended following Portuguese colonization in the 1500s, with control later shifting to the Omanis (1730-1964), Germans in Tanganyika (1884-1918) and British in Kenya and Uganda (1884-1963). Following independence, coastal peoples were absorbed into the modern nation-states of Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516769/original/file-20230321-2560-1pocur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="old color map of a hilly island with a town on one side" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516769/original/file-20230321-2560-1pocur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516769/original/file-20230321-2560-1pocur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516769/original/file-20230321-2560-1pocur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516769/original/file-20230321-2560-1pocur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516769/original/file-20230321-2560-1pocur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516769/original/file-20230321-2560-1pocur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516769/original/file-20230321-2560-1pocur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Swahili island settlement of Kilwa, in present-day Tanzania, grew over centuries to be a major coastal city and trading center.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-the-11th-century-the-island-of-kilwa-kisiwani-was-sold-news-photo/1354431211">Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So who were the Swahili people, and where did their ancestors originally come from?</p>
<p>Ironically, the story of Swahili origins has been molded almost entirely by non-Swahili people, a challenge shared with many other marginalized and colonized peoples who are the modern descendants of cultures of the past with extraordinary achievements.</p>
<p>Working with a team of 42 colleagues, including 17 African scholars and multiple members of the Swahili community, we’ve now published the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05754-w">first ancient DNA sequences from peoples of the Swahili civilization</a>. Our results do not provide simple validation for the narratives previously advanced in archaeological, historical or political circles. Instead, they contradict and complicate all of them.</p>
<h2>Colonization affected how the story was told</h2>
<p>Western archaeologists in the mid-20th century emphasized the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/1174314">connections of the medieval Swahili to Persia and Arabia</a>, sometimes suggesting that <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/1672964">their impressive achievements</a> could not have been <a href="https://www.publicmedievalist.com/recovering-medieval-africa/">attained by Africans</a>.</p>
<p>Post-colonial scholars, including one of us (<a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5NehBh4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Kusimba</a>), pushed back against that view. Earlier researchers had inflated the importance of non-African influences by focusing on imported objects at Swahili sites. They minimized the vast majority of locally made materials and what they <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/905641508?oclcNum=905641508">revealed about African industry and innovation</a>.</p>
<p>But viewing Swahili heritage as primarily African or non-African is too simplistic. In fact, both perspectives are byproducts of colonialist biases.</p>
<p>The truth is that colonization of the East African coast did not end with the departure of the British in the middle of the 20th century. Many colonial institutions were <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Plundering_Africa_s_Past/qCBxNhZxSPMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Destruction+of+Swahili+Heritage&pg=PA201&printsec=frontcover">inherited and perpetuated by Africans</a>. As modern nation-states formed, with governments controlled by inland peoples, <a href="https://africaworldpressbooks.com/the-swahili-idiom-and-identity-of-an-african-people-by-alamin-m-mazuri-and-ibrahim-noor-shariff/">Swahili people continued</a> <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253210548/plundering-africas-past/">to be undermined</a> politically and economically, in some cases as much as they had been under foreign rule.</p>
<p>Decades of archaeological research in consultation with local people aimed to address the marginalization of communities of Swahili descent. Our team consulted oral traditions and used ethnoarchaeology and systematic surveys, along with targeted excavations of residential, industrial and cemetery locations. Working with local scholars and elders, we unearthed materials such as pottery, metal and beads; food, house and industrial remains; and imported objects such as porcelain, glass, glass beads and more. Together they revealed the complexity of Swahili everyday life and the peoples’ cosmopolitan Indian Ocean heritage.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516767/original/file-20230321-3114-lin1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="woodsy setting with a stone wall enclosing an area with grave stones" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516767/original/file-20230321-3114-lin1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516767/original/file-20230321-3114-lin1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516767/original/file-20230321-3114-lin1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516767/original/file-20230321-3114-lin1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516767/original/file-20230321-3114-lin1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516767/original/file-20230321-3114-lin1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516767/original/file-20230321-3114-lin1g3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">For generations, Swahilis have maintained matrilineal family burial gardens such as this one in Faza town, Lamu County.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chapurukha Kusimba, 2012</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ancient DNA analysis was always one of the most exciting prospects. It offered the hope of using scientific methods to obtain answers to the question of how medieval people are related to earlier groups and to people today, providing a counterweight to narratives imposed from outside. Until a few years ago, this kind of analysis was a dream. But because of a <a href="https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/why-i-wrote-book">technological revolution in 2010</a>, the number of ancient humans with published genome-scale data has risen from nothing to <a href="https://reich.hms.harvard.edu/allen-ancient-dna-resource-aadr-downloadable-genotypes-present-day-and-ancient-dna-data">more than 10,000 today</a>.</p>
<h2>Surprises in the ancient DNA</h2>
<p>We worked with local communities to determine the best practices for treating human remains in line with traditional Muslim religious sensitivities. Cemetery excavations, sampling and reburial of human remains were carried out in one season, rather than dragging on indefinitely.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516773/original/file-20230321-2318-sfwzc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="black and white drawing of a skeleton on its side" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516773/original/file-20230321-2318-sfwzc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/516773/original/file-20230321-2318-sfwzc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516773/original/file-20230321-2318-sfwzc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516773/original/file-20230321-2318-sfwzc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516773/original/file-20230321-2318-sfwzc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516773/original/file-20230321-2318-sfwzc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/516773/original/file-20230321-2318-sfwzc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=297&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A detailed line drawing captures the way one person’s remains were discovered during cemetery excavation at Mtwapa in 1996.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eric Wert, 2001</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our team generated data from more than 80 people, mostly elite individuals buried in the rich centers of the stone towns. We will need to wait for future work to understand whether their genetic inheritance differed from people without their high status. </p>
<p>Contradicting what we had expected, the ancestry of the people we analyzed was not largely African or Asian. Instead, these backgrounds were intertwined, each contributing about half of the DNA of the people we analyzed.</p>
<p>We found that Asian ancestry in the medieval individuals came largely from Persia (modern-day Iran), and that Asians and African ancestors began mixing at least 1,000 years ago. This picture is almost a perfect match to the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/kilwa-chronicle-sultan-list-swahili-culture-171631">Kilwa Chronicle</a>, the oldest narrative told by the Swahili people themselves, and one almost all <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3171745">earlier scholars had dismissed</a> as a kind of fairy tale.</p>
<p>Another surprise was that, mixed in with the Persians, Indians were a significant proportion of the earliest migrants. Patterns in the DNA also suggest that, after the transition to Omani control in the 18th century, Asian immigrants became increasingly Arabian. Later, there was intermarriage with people whose DNA was similar to others in Africa. As a result, some modern people who identify as Swahili have inherited relatively little DNA from medieval peoples like those we analyzed, while others have more.</p>
<p>One of the most revealing patterns our genetic analysis identified was that the overwhelming majority of male-line ancestors came from Asia, while female-line ancestors came from Africa. This finding must reflect a history of Persian males traveling to the coast and having children with local women.</p>
<p>One of us (<a href="https://reich.hms.harvard.edu">Reich</a>) initially hypothesized that these patterns might reflect Asian men forcibly marrying African women because similar genetic signatures in other populations are known to <a href="https://nautil.us/social-inequality-leaves-a-genetic-mark-237027/">reflect such violent histories</a>. But this theory does not account for what is known about the culture, and there is a more likely explanation.</p>
<p>Traditional Swahili society is similar to many other East African Bantu cultures <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/45341518">in being substantially matriarchal</a> – it places much economic and social power in the hands of women. In traditional Swahili societies even today, ownership of stone houses <a href="http://www.siupress.com/books/978-0-8093-3397-4">often passes down the female line</a>. And there is a long recorded history of female rulers, beginning with Mwana Mkisi, ruler of Mombasa, as recorded by the Portuguese as early as the 1500s, down to Sabani binti Ngumi, ruler of Mikindani in Tanzania as late as 1886.</p>
<p>Our best guess is that Persian men allied with and married into elite families and adopted local customs to enable them to be more successful traders. The fact that their children passed down the language of their mothers, and that encounters with traditionally patriarchal Persians and Arabians and conversion to Islam did not change the coast’s African matriarchal traditions, confirms that this was not a simple history of African women being exploited. African women retained critical aspects of their culture and passed it down for many generations.</p>
<p>How do these results gleaned from ancient DNA restore heritage for the Swahili? Objective knowledge about the past has great potential to help marginalized peoples. By making it possible to challenge and overturn narratives imposed from the outside for political or economic ends, scientific research provides a meaningful and underappreciated tool for righting colonial wrongs.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: We removed an archival photo that was not representative of Swahili dress.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201154/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chapurukha M. Kusimba received funding for this research from the Field Museum of Natural History, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Scholars Program, and the National Geographic Society.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Reich received funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the John Templeton Foundation and the Allen Discovery Center program, a Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group advised program of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.</span></em></p>The first ancient DNA sequences from peoples of the medieval Swahili civilization push aside colonialist stories and reveal genetic connections from the past.Chapurukha Kusimba, Professor of Anthropology, University of South FloridaDavid Reich, Professor of Genetics and of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/672692016-11-15T17:10:58Z2016-11-15T17:10:58ZGhana University row re-ignites debate about Mahatma Gandhi’s racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/143877/original/image-20161031-15788-il2znt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mahatma Gandhi figurine at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in Vienna.The call to remove his statute from the University of Ghana has reignited debate about his legacy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The statue of Mahatma Gandhi is to be <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.gh/index.php?id=358">removed</a> from the University of Ghana campus after a campaign by academic staff based on claims that the Indian leader was a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/22/petition-calls-for-gandhi-statue-to-be-removed-from-ghana-university">racist</a>. Politics and society editor Thabo Leshilo asked Suraj Yengde about the controversy.</em></p>
<p><strong>Is the claim that Gandhi was racist valid?</strong></p>
<p>Yes. The respected book, <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=26014">The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire</a> by academics Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, provides proof that Gandhi was not only racist but also sexist, misogynist, casteist, supremacist and a patriarch.</p>
<p>He displayed a contemptible attitude towards black Africans. He held the Indian to be “much superior, in capacity, reliability and obedience, to the average Kaffir”, as quoted in <a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL002.PDF">The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (p. 50-51)</a>. He constantly opposed integration of blacks and Indians and loathed the classification of Indians with the “Kaffir race”, also in The Collected Works (<a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL001.PDF">p. 364</a>). (“Kaffir” is a derogatory term used to refer to black South Africans.) He found it “insulting” to be “placed in the same category with the Native” (<a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL004.PDF">p. 220</a>).</p>
<p>Gandhi assumed that the natives were “barbarians” and that they were “yet being taught the dignity and necessity of labour” (<a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL001.PDF">p. 367</a>). On various occasions Gandhi successfully petitioned for separation of Indians (in the Collected Works again, here on <a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL001.PDF">p. 368-9</a>) from the black Africans claiming the inferiority of blacks. </p>
<p>For example he wrote in an open letter (<a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL001.PDF">p. 193</a>): </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gandhi opposed inter-race relations, such as between an Indian man and a black woman. In his Gujarati version of <a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL010.PDF">Indian Opinion</a> (December 2, 1910) he admitted in inadvertently that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some Indians do have contacts with Kaffir women. I think such contacts are fraught with grave danger. Indians would do well to avoid them altogether (p. 414). </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He believed that “the white race in South Africa should be the predominating race” (<a href="http://www.gandhiserve.org/cwmg/VOL003.PDF">p.255-6</a>). </p>
<p>Gandhi’s patriarchy, sexism and misogyny are also well documented. He regarded women as manipulating creatures who invigorated fanciful phallic desires in men, squarely blaming women for the incidents of domestic violence, Rita Banerji writes in her book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Power-Defining-History-Societies/dp/0143064711">Sex and Power: Defining History, Shaping Societies</a>.</p>
<p>He apparently believed that women who were raped or sexually abused or whose “purity is violated” should consider suicide “through sheer will force”, according to Sujata Patel in <a href="https://www.academia.edu/323750/Construction_and_Reconstruction_of_Woman_In_Gandhi">Construction and Reconstruction of Woman In Gandhi</a> (page 278).</p>
<p>Gandhi was deplorable towards oppressed castes – spiritually and politically. He believed the caste and the <a href="https://global.britannica.com/topic/varna-Hinduism">varna system</a> to be the foundation of an ethical society, thus promoted separation based on caste vigorously. This translated into the public practices too, where he was on guard to snatch away the rights of “untouchables” for self-emancipation obtained via <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4398052?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">separate electorates</a>. </p>
<p>Many people have written about Gandhi’s bigotry, including some among his over 1,000 English <a href="http://www.vinaylal.com/ESSAYS(Gandhi)/nak7.pdf">biographers</a>.</p>
<p><strong>This does not accord with the image of Gandhi as a great leader and a canonised pacifist. How are we to understand the discordance?</strong></p>
<p>Gandhi is now an institution. His biographical image is reproduced so much that he continues to influence leading global moments and leaders. American President Barack Obama, for example, does not miss any opportunity to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/01/25/obama-long-inspired-by-gandhi-visits-his-memorial-in-india/">mention him</a> when referring to India. </p>
<p>Human rights advocates idolise Gandhi. His statues are all over the world. This works well for India’s diplomats and makes their job easy. Simply having a Gandhi photo on a office wall or his bust donated to some school or university institutionalises the Indian government’s presence in the foreign society. Something similar happened in Ghana but it was met with a backlash.</p>
<p>Gandhi was a unifying model but not a great leader. He certainly united India, at least the Hindu India, with his influence in the Indian Congress. But the moral leadership he is accorded seems suspect on closer examination. Indian jurist, economist and reformer Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar’s account exposes the Gandhi’s injustice against <a href="http://www.ambedkar.org/ambcd/41A.What%20Congress%20and%20Gandhi%20Preface.htm">“untouchables”</a>. </p>
<p>Gandhi’s <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/thrill-of-the-chaste-the-truth-about-gandhis-sex-life-1937411.html">relationship with women </a> has also been severely criticised. He held the disturbing view that women were simply the reproductive organs of society - <a href="https://sexandpower.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/">good only for bearing babies</a> and that the women who used contraceptives were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jan/27/mohandas-gandhi-women-india">whores</a> that had an itch for sexual pleasures. </p>
<p>Gandhi demeaned women. He had disturbing views on the biology of women. He held the periodical menstrual cycle to be a “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Power-Defining-History-Societies/dp/0143064711">distortion of a woman’s soul by her sexuality</a>”.</p>
<p>Gandhi was also at odds with the liberal tradition of tribals (the indigenous Indians, also known as Adivasi) who consider intimacy between men and women as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705691/#ref7">liberating</a>. He thus excluded tribals from positions of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Power-Defining-History-Societies/dp/0143064711">responsible leadership</a>. </p>
<p><strong>What is the significance of Ghana leading the charge against Gandhi in this way?</strong></p>
<p>Ghana has a special place in African history as the first country to gain independence from colonial oppression. Inspired by Kwame Nkrumah’s pan-Africanist ideology, Ghana became a beacon of light for independence movements across Africa. Its freedom had a snowball effect of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2168387?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">colonial liberations</a> in Africa. </p>
<p>With their anti-Gandhi stance, Ghananian academics are leading the charge in determining the contemporary-modern history of Africa by disowning historical cults unfavourable to Africa. The Indian government’s choice of the symbol of Gandhi for its encroachment into Ghana’s campuses appears to have been a mistake.</p>
<p>Ghana is an important player in international and African politics. Its diaspora is well represented in the western hemisphere. This augers well for the spread of the message of the Ghananian academics. This will find resonance with the marginalised Indian groups such as the Dalits, Sikh and others.</p>
<p>The move by Ghana’s academics has certainly alarmed the government of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/06/ghana-academics-petition-removal-mahatma-gandhi-statue-african-heroes">Ghana</a>. If this movement were to take effect in other African countries it might force the Indian state to reconsider Gandhi as its export symbol to Africa, in a way that is cognisant of the continent’s long history of suffering. </p>
<p>Although Ghana is taking the lead against Gandhi, his racism is not lost to South Africans, as Desai and Vahed wrote in <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=26014">The South African Gandhi: Stretcher-Bearer of Empire</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Suraj Yengde does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mahatma Gandhi is one of the most influential personalities in history, celebrated for his advocacy of non-violent resistance. But his dark side is now receiving increased attention.Suraj Yengde, Associate, Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/668132016-10-31T18:50:33Z2016-10-31T18:50:33ZSouth Africa has made progress, but deprivation still bears apartheid scars<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/142662/original/image-20161021-1796-137hk4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nelson Mandela came to power in 1994 with a promise to redress historical in equalities in South Africa</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Decades of discriminatory policies have left deep scars across South Africa’s social landscape, creating one of the <a href="http://www.ujuh.co.za/piketty-south-africa-is-among-the-worst-in-inequality-scales/">most unequal</a> and polarised societies in the world. It’s been 22 years since the party of Nelson Mandela came to power with a promise of reversing the racial deprivations. How successful has the ANC been?</p>
<p>Our <a href="http://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2015/wp172015">study</a> examines the enduring spatial and racial dimensions of poverty and deprivation in South Africa. We took a multidimensional approach to assess progress. This enabled us to reflect the reduction in deprivation attributable to the improved affordability and expanded coverage of government services. </p>
<p>Previous studies have tracked poverty trends over segments of the post-apartheid period. None have considered multidimensional deprivation over the past two decades. We developed a poverty index with nine dimensions of deprivation. These included education, employment, dwelling type, overcrowding, access to electricity, water, telephone, sanitation and refuse collection. </p>
<p>Using this multidimensional index as well as census data our analysis found that there was a remarkable improvement in deprivation levels between 1996 and 2011. There is evidence of redress taking place. But it also finds that geography and race continue to play an important role in explaining patterns of deprivation in the post-apartheid South Africa.</p>
<h2>History of deprivation</h2>
<p>During the colonial and apartheid era the government restricted the geographical settlement choices and freedom of movement of black South Africans. These policies were also accompanied by large regional discrepancies in government spending, entrenching the association between place and poverty.</p>
<p>The resulting strong racial dimension and distinct spatial footprint of poverty have impeded post-apartheid change and mobility by magnifying the social distance between the deprived and the affluent. In South Africa, deprived households are largely black or coloured and tend to live on the periphery of the cities and towns. </p>
<p>The racial divide is further deepened by its association with cultural and language divides. In many countries in the world dimensions such as race, income and geography tend to coincide and overlap. But these cuts run far deeper in South African society where the divisions were engineered by discriminatory policies and legislation.</p>
<h2>Investment to improve equity</h2>
<p>The South African government has invested significant effort in improving equity. Interestingly the <a href="http://wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/seminar/Lichtenstein2013.pdf">earliest reforms</a> predated the official end of apartheid. In the 1970s the apartheid government started to equalise social spending by race and area. </p>
<p>More policy <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2012-10-26-00-the-day-apartheid-started-dying">reversals</a> followed in the 1980s. Further reforms were introduced following the official fall of apartheid in 1994. </p>
<p>Aiming to redress apartheid inequalities, Nelson Mandela’s post-apartheid government reorganised the provincial structures. The new government decentralised the bureaucracy and approved budgetary shifts to favour weaker and more deprived provinces. </p>
<p>These initiatives radically <a href="http://www.poa.gov.za/news/Documents/NPC%20National%20Development%20Plan%20Vision%202030%20-lo-res.pdf">improved</a> access to key services. Between 1996 and 2011: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>The share of individuals with access to electricity improved from 44.5% to 74.6%; </p></li>
<li><p>Access to clean water increased from 57.4% to 74.6%; </p></li>
<li><p>Access to pit latrines or flush toilets improved from 81.9% to 92.8%; </p></li>
<li><p>Access to formal housing has risen from 63.5% to 79.8%; and</p></li>
<li><p>The share of individuals with access to regular refuse removal increased from 48.1% to 61.8% over the same period. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Despite these strides inequality remains a deeply entrenched feature of South Africa’s social landscape. Race and geography still serve as markers of deprivation and poverty.</p>
<p>Analysis of the 1996 and 2011 Census also confirms trends reported elsewhere that shows that there has been sluggish growth in employment. This highlights that social mobility is constrained. </p>
<h2>Poverty and deprivation by race and area</h2>
<p>South Africa has nine provinces. Levels of deprivation has narrowed between them in the last 20 years. Understanding how this happened provides an important window into understanding the enduring legacy of apartheid.</p>
<p>Two decades ago there was a notable divide in average deprivation levels between three provinces – the Western Cape, Gauteng and the Northern Cape – compared with Limpopo and the Eastern Cape. The Western Cape, Gauteng and the Northern Cape did not include significant parts of apartheid era “homelands”, areas assigned for settlement of black South Africans along ethnic lines. Homelands were characterised by inadequate public service delivery and a lack of infrastructure during the apartheid period. They were marked by extreme poverty and lagged behind the urban “townships” (suburbs often on the periphery of cities that were designated for black settlement during the apartheid period).</p>
<p>Our analysis provides encouraging evidence of effective redress in the post-apartheid period. The indices show a sharp fall in deprivation levels across all provinces. Additionally, we see evidence of catching up and a narrowing of the geographical gap. Three of the poorest provinces, Eastern Cape, Limpopo and the Free State, exceeded the average improvement in the index.</p>
<p>It is encouraging that there has been progress across all dimensions and well as geographies. While aggregate deprivation is still high, deprivation in terms of the dimensions we measured has improved most in those that were neglected historically. There is a narrowing of the gap between the poorest and most affluent provinces over this time period. </p>
<h2>Still a long way to go</h2>
<p>Despite progress the legacy of apartheid remains highly visible in the patterns of deprivation with enduring gaps particularly between black and white and between former “homeland” provinces and others.</p>
<p>The colour divide is very marked. White South Africans are unlikely to suffer much deprivation regardless of which provinces they reside in. In contrast, black South Africans experience multiple forms of deprivation that varies considerably by province.</p>
<p>Although there has been progress in the post-apartheid era, the enduring impact of race and race-related characteristics remain. This work resonates with the widespread frustration with the current system, manifesting in <a href="http://www.polity.org.za/article/the-reasons-behind-service-delivery-protests-in-south-africa-2009-08-05">protest action</a>. Much remains to be done and we need to have a public conversation about how we accelerate transformation and social justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66813/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronelle Burger receives funding from the National Research Foundation</span></em></p>South Africa has made remarkable progress in redressing its historically and mainly race based deprivations but a lot still needs to be done.Ronelle Burger, Professor of Economics, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/609762016-06-15T09:31:13Z2016-06-15T09:31:13ZStrategic lessons South Africa’s students can learn from the leaders of 1976<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126544/original/image-20160614-22383-bci5v9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Soweto schoolchildren protest against Afrikaans in 1976.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.aamarchives.org/file-view/category/44-apartheid.html?start=20">Anti-Apartheid Movement Archive, Bodleian Library, Oxford UK</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This month forty years ago, thousands of Soweto school children took to the streets to <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">protest</a> the racism and inadequacy of Bantu Education. That moment has come to symbolise the role that young people have played and can play in shaping South Africa’s political discourse. It remains a touch point for student activists today. </p>
<p>The marches in June 1976 took shape around a unifying issue of immediate importance to the students: the imposition of Afrikaans as a teaching medium in black classrooms, whose curriculum was dictated by the then Department of Bantu Education. </p>
<p>Images from the march are filled with posters proclaiming “<a href="http://www.gutenberg-e.org/pohlandt-mccormick/archive/detail/DSCN2080.jpg.html">To Hell With Afrikaans</a>” and “<a href="http://www.gutenberg-e.org/pohlandt-mccormick/archive/detail/DSCN1817.jpg.html">Vorster and Kruger are rubbish</a>”. This refers to John Vorster, the prime minister of South Africa and one of apartheid’s architects, and his police minister <a href="https://www.google.co.za/search?q=jimmy+kruger&rlz=1C1CHWA_enZA634ZA634&oq=Jimmy+Kruger&aqs=chrome.0.0l6.804j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">Jimmy Kruger</a>. </p>
<p>The juxtaposition of these claims is an important one. It speaks to how Soweto children began to straddle the space between local and immediate concerns and a national political agenda. This enabled them to transcend the issues of their classrooms and rejuvenate the struggle against apartheid on a national, and indeed international, scale.</p>
<p>Forty years later South Africa is again in the midst of a political movement led by students - this time on university campuses across the country. Today’s student activists are often compared to the generation of 1976. In mass marches through Johannesburg and Pretoria the form of their protest has prompted the <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/fee-must-fall-protest-reminiscent-1967-uprising">comparison</a>. </p>
<p>In their articulation of ideologies like <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/The_meaning_of_Black_Consciousness_by_Ranwedzi_Nengwekhulu.pdf">Black Consciousness</a> they echo some of the key thinkers of that period. But their <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-student-protests-are-about-much-more-than-just-feesmustfall-49776">protests</a> remain largely constrained by the campuses on which they happen. In light of these struggles, it is useful to consider how the students of 1976 tackled similar problems.</p>
<h2>The Afrikaans issue</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://africanhistory.about.com/od/apartheid/a/AfrikaansMediumDecree.htm">Afrikaans Medium Decree of 1974</a> declared that in black schools across South Africa Afrikaans must be used equally with English as a medium for teaching non-language subjects like mathematics and social sciences. </p>
<p>Students and teachers alike struggled to teach and learn in a language for which they were ill-trained and ill-equipped with textbooks and other materials. </p>
<p>Historian Helena Pohlandt-McCormick has written that the Afrikaans medium policy “<a href="http://www.gutenberg-e.org/pohlandt-mccormick/PM.c5p3.html">embodied everything that was wrong with Bantu Education</a>”. She points to its disregard of sound pedagogy, and, more importantly, of the voices of the parents, teachers, and learners on whom it was imposed. </p>
<p>By the middle of the 1976 school year, students had organised themselves in individual protests. Many focused on the imposition of Afrikaans, others addressed student-teacher relations and corporal punishment at individual schools.</p>
<p>They were inspired and encouraged to connect these issues to the broader political system by a range of influences in their homes, communities, and classrooms. Among these were university students who had been “conscientised” through the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/definition-black-consciousness-bantu-stephen-biko-december-1971-south-africa">Black Consciousness Movement</a> and expelled from rural “bush” universities during waves of protest in 1972 and 1974. The most prominent of these was <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abram-ramothibi-onkgopotse-tiro">Ongkopotse Tiro</a>.</p>
<p>After Tiro was expelled from the University of the North (today the <a href="http://www.ul.ac.za/">University of Limpopo</a>, outside Polokwane), where he was a prominent student leader and Black Consciousness proponent, he took up a job teaching history at Morris Isaacson High School in Soweto.</p>
<p>Though he was fired in 1973 and killed in exile in Botswana in 1974, some of his students, including <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/teboho-tsietsi-mashinini">Tsietsi Mashinini</a>, became key leaders in the 1976 uprising. </p>
<h2>Addressing structural oppression</h2>
<p>Tiro and other young teachers encouraged their students to connect the particular grievances of their own situation – the inequities and injustices of Bantu Education – to the structural oppression meted out by the apartheid state. </p>
<p>This was a lesson students brought to their organisation of the protests on 16 June, and one that played an increasingly important role in the weeks and months that followed. Students in the Soweto Students Representative <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/soweto-students-representative-council-ssrc">Council</a> (which compromised many of the student leaders who had organised the June 16 march) called for their parents to stay away from work, and to boycott white-owned shops and products. By August the committee focused its energies on organising a student and worker stay away for the end of the month. According to Sibongile Mkhabela, a member of the SSRC, this was intended to achieve </p>
<blockquote>
<p>more than only a march. […] This was the day to hit the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Open_earth_and_black_roses.html?id=MP4wAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">white economy</a>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A few months later students rallied their families to participate in a Black Christmas to mourn those who had been killed by police since June. </p>
<h2>June 16 forty years later</h2>
<p>University students of 2015-16 have some key things in common with their 1976 predecessors. They have changed the tenor and shape of political discussion around education in South Africa, more effectively than any other single movement since 1994.</p>
<p>They have re-interrogated the ideologies that animated students in 1976. Their engagement with <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-bikos-black-consciousness-philosophy-resonates-with-youth-today-46909">Black Consciousness and Biko</a>, with <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-fanon-continues-to-resonate-more-than-half-a-century-after-algerias-independence-43508">Fanon</a> and with <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">pan-Africanism</a> has led to a movement to <a href="https://theconversation.com/decolonising-the-curriculum-its-time-for-a-strategy-60598">decolonise</a> universities’ faculty and curricula. </p>
<p>But today’s students have struggled to move their activism beyond universities. Not withstanding significant gains in the movement to end the exploitative practice of <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-01-13-three-reasons-why-feesmustfall-protests-will-continue">outsourcing jobs on campuses</a>, for which the Fallist movements of 2015-16 deserve a great deal of credit, student movements today have yet to create enduring alliances with workers outside the university, or with school students. </p>
<p>Beyond shared ideology, the 1976 generation, and, perhaps even more so, the university students of the early 1970s who taught and inspired them, may offer some strategic lessons. </p>
<p><em>The author is co-editor of <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/students-must-rise/">Students Must Rise: Youth Struggle in South Africa Before and Beyond Soweto ‘76</a> published by Wits University <a href="http://witspress.co.za/">Press</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60976/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Heffernan's position is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She observed and participated in the October-November 2015 FeesMustFall protests. </span></em></p>Forty years after the students uprisings of 1976, South Africa is again in the midst of a political movement led by students.They have changed the tenor and shape of political discussion around education.Anne Heffernan, Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow NRF Chair: Local Histories, Present Realties., University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.