tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/sharpeville-massacre-28319/articles
Sharpeville massacre – The Conversation
2024-01-04T15:31:23Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/220558
2024-01-04T15:31:23Z
2024-01-04T15:31:23Z
Peter Magubane: courageous photographer who chronicled South Africa’s struggle for freedom
<p><a href="https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/tributes-magubane-continue">Peter Sexford Magubane</a>, a courageous South African photographer whose images testify to both the iniquity of apartheid and the determination and devotion of those who brought about its demise, <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2024-01-02-peter-magubane-photographer-who-documented-apartheid-dies-aged-91/">passed away</a> at 91 years of age in early January 2024.</p>
<p>Magubane leaves behind a vast archive of extraordinary images, many of which continue to be the signature images of some of the worst atrocities committed by the apartheid regime.</p>
<p>The photographer suffered <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/peter-sexford-magubane">great losses</a> during apartheid. In 1969 Magubane spent 586 days in solitary confinement. In 1976 his home was burnt down. He miraculously survived being shot 17 times below the waist at the funeral of a student activist in Natalspruit in 1985. His son Charles was brutally murdered in Soweto in 1992. </p>
<p>Despite the pain and suffering he witnessed and experienced, Magubane’s photographs testify to the hope that is at the heart of the struggle for a just world.</p>
<h2>Witness to momentous events</h2>
<p>Magubane grew up in Sophiatown, a mixed-race area around 5km from the centre of the city of Johannesburg. He not only witnessed, but also took part in, many of the most significant events in modern South African history. </p>
<p>He was 16 years old when the white supremacist <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/national-party-np">National Party came to power in 1948</a> and he came of age as the state introduced a series of repressive laws implementing the system of apartheid. These laws were to shape the course of Magubane’s life. </p>
<p>They included the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/group-areas-act-1950">Group Areas Act (1950)</a>, which dictated where people were permitted to live based on the colour of their skin, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/DC/leg19500707.028.020.030/leg19500707.028.020.030.pdf">the Population Registration Act (1950)</a>, which classified all South Africans by race, and the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01828/05lv01829/06lv01852.htm">Native Laws Amendment Act (1952)</a>, which required all Black South Africans to carry a “passbook”. Referred to as the “dompas”, the document was used to control and restrict the movement of black South Africans. </p>
<p>In 1955, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/destruction-sophiatown">Sophiatown was demolished</a>, and its 60,000 residents were forcibly removed. Magubane’s family were forced to relocate to Soweto. His images focusing on life in the township were later to form the subject of several of his books. </p>
<p>In 1952 the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/defiance-campaign-1952">Defiance Campaign</a> saw widespread non-violent resistance to the hated dompas across the country. It was in this incendiary political atmosphere that Magubane found his calling as a photographer. </p>
<p>In 1954, Magubane began working at <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/drum-magazine">Drum magazine</a> as a driver. The magazine, founded in 1951 and modelled on picture magazines like <em>Life</em> and <em>Picture Post</em>, was to take the lead in changing how Black South Africans were represented in the media. Within three months Magubane had taken up a position as a darkroom assistant. He soon began to work as a photographer under the tutelage of <em>Drum’s</em> chief photographer and picture editor, <a href="https://www.jurgenschadeberg.com/">Jürgen Schadeberg</a>. Magubane rapidly secured his place as one of the great photojournalists of his generation, alongside <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/alfred-khumalo">Alf Kumalo</a>, <a href="https://baha.co.za/">Bob Gosani</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ernest-cole">Ernest Cole</a>. </p>
<p>By the mid-1950s, it became mandatory for Black women to carry passes and in 1956, 20,000 women, united under the banner of the Federation of South African Women, marched in protest to the seat of government, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/1956-womens-march-pretoria-9-august">the Union Buildings in Pretoria</a>. Magubane documented this march and continued to pay close attention to the central role of women in the struggle against apartheid throughout his career. Many of these images are collected in his 1993 book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Women-South-Africa-Their-Freedom/dp/0821219286">Women of South Africa: Their Fight for Freedom</a>.</p>
<p>Between 1956 and 1961, Magubane took photographs of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/treason-trial-1956-1961">Treason Trial</a>, which saw 156 national leaders tried for high treason after the adoption of the Freedom Charter at the <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/story/what-happened-at-the-treason-trial-africa-media-online/bQVR8md1REM3Iw?hl=en">Congress of the People in Kliptown in 1956</a>. Among the accused were leading members of the African National Congress and of the Congress Alliance, including Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, Helen Joseph, Ruth First and Bertha Mashaba. </p>
<p>During this period Magubane was arrested four times and frequently harassed and assaulted by the police. </p>
<p>He was one of the photographers who documented the immediate aftermath of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville Massacre</a> on 1 March 1960. On that day more than 7,000 people gathered outside a police station at Sharpeville, a place not far from the city of Johannesburg, to protest against being forced to carry passbooks. Arriving without their passes, their intention was to give themselves up for arrest. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/david-goldblatt-photographer-who-found-the-human-in-an-inhuman-social-landscape-98984">David Goldblatt: photographer who found the human in an inhuman social landscape</a>
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<p>Police officers opened fire and shot 13,000 bullets into the crowd. Official records stated that 69 people were killed, and over 300 wounded, although <a href="https://theconversation.com/sharpeville-new-research-on-1960-south-african-massacre-shows-the-number-of-dead-and-injured-was-massively-undercounted-217828">recent reports</a> suggest the casualties were much higher.</p>
<p>Magubane’s photograph of a seemingly endless row of coffins receding into the distance, awaiting burial, their dark wooden surfaces almost white in the sun’s glare, conveys the terrible magnitude of the massacre. Alongside the coffins are a priest in white robes and hundreds of mourners dressed in dark suits. A woman in a black dress stands near the mass gravesite and holds a white cloth to her mouth in a gesture of profound grief. </p>
<p>The image is both chilling and portentous – as curator Okwui Enwezor has <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Fall-Apartheid-Photography-Bureaucracy/dp/3791352806">noted:</a></p>
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<p>the events of that day produced the picture of the funeral as one of the central iconographic emblems of the anti-apartheid struggle. </p>
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<p>Magubane’s images of Sharpeville were published in <em>Life</em> magazine and played a key role in bringing the brutality of the apartheid state to global notice. </p>
<p>On 16 June 1976, young people of Soweto <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">rose up in protest against being forced to learn in Afrikaans</a>. Magubane convinced the students of the importance of producing a visual record of the struggle. </p>
<p>Photographs he took that day were published as a <a href="https://www.protestinphotobook.com/post/june-16-the-fruit-of-fear">book</a>, Soweto 1976: The Fruit of Fear, to commemorate the terrible events that took place that day, when the police killed between 400 and 700 protesters and injured thousands more. </p>
<p>Among the many powerful images Magubane made at that time is a photograph of two women walking in a dusty street, their faces displaying signs of terrible pain. One of the women has a large tear in her abdomen, an open wound that forms a dark hole at the side of her body. Her slender hands are beautiful, and their perfect smoothness accentuates the brutal rupture where her skin has been broken. </p>
<p>The immediacy of the image is striking and is all the more remarkable with the knowledge that the bullet that pierced the young women’s body had just narrowly missed Magubane’s face. </p>
<h2>The archive</h2>
<p>Magubane published more than 20 books. In 2018 his work <a href="https://proto.a4arts.org/products/on-common-ground-2018">was exhibited</a> in a major retrospective, On Common Ground, alongside that of another renowned South African photographer, <a href="https://www.plparchive.com/david-goldblatt-main/">David Goldblatt</a>. </p>
<p>In 1999, Magubane <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/peter-magubane-timeline-1932">was awarded</a> the Order of Meritorious Service by President Nelson Mandela, <a href="https://southafrica.co.za/peter-magubane-receives-the-order-of-meritorious-service-silver-class-ii-from-president-nelson-mandela.html">who stated</a>: </p>
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<p>For his bravery and courage during the dark days of apartheid, Peter became a beacon of hope not only to thousands of journalists all over the world but also to millions of people across our country.</p>
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<p>He received <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/peter-magubane-timeline-1932">numerous awards</a> for his work, including the Robert Capa Award (1986), Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mother Jones Foundation (1997), the ICP Cornell Capa award (2010), and several honorary doctorates. He served as Nelson Mandela’s photographer from 1990 to 1994.</p>
<p>Magubane’s indomitable spirit and compassionate vision live on through his work. <em>Hamba kahle.</em> (Go well.)</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220558/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kylie Thomas 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>
Magubane’s photographs testify to the hope that is at the heart of the struggle for a just world.
Kylie Thomas, Senior Researcher and Senior Lecturer (Radical Humanities Laboratory, University College Cork), NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/204818
2023-05-10T13:24:09Z
2023-05-10T13:24:09Z
Namibia and South Africa’s ruling parties share a heroic history - but their 2024 electoral prospects look weak
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524080/original/file-20230503-15-wxlrrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Presidents Hage Geingob, left, and Cyril Ramaphosa at the Union Buildings in Tshwane.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Namibian president Hage Geingob used his <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/president-cyril-ramaphosa-state-visit-president-hage-geingob-republic-namibia-20-apr-2023">recent state visit</a> to South Africa to also address a meeting of the national executive committee of the governing party, the African National Congress (<a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/">ANC</a>). This underscored the ANC’s historic ties to Namibia’s governing party, South West Africa People’s Organisation (<a href="https://www.politicalpartydb.org/wp-content/uploads/Statutes/Namibia/Namibia_Swapo_1998.pdf">Swapo</a>).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.iol.co.za/the-star/news/no-phala-phala-talk-between-ramaphosa-and-hage-geingob-2ca0db5e-074f-44d2-838f-05f39fd54b2c">According to President Cyril Ramaphosa</a>, who also heads the ANC, the party had a “wonderful engagement” with Geingob, who <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DrHageGeingob/">posted on Facebook</a>:</p>
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<p>As former liberation movements, we learn from one another, a manifestation of the deep bonds of solidarity formed during our struggle against oppression.</p>
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<p>As political scientists and sociologists, we both followed individually and jointly the performance of the two organisations since the days of the liberation struggles. We have continuously analysed and commented on trends in their governance of the countries.</p>
<p>In our view, the nostalgic reminiscences of the parties’ days as liberation movements serve as a heroic patriotic history turned into a form of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056244.2018.1500360">populism</a>. Such romanticism uses the merits of the past to cover failures in the present. It also is a potential threat to the achievements of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000203971404900105">constitutionalism</a>. </p>
<p>Geingob’s visit came at a time when both governments under the former liberation movements, Swapo and the ANC, face an erosion of their political legitimacy. With elections in 2024 <a href="https://www.eisa.org/calendar2024.php">in both countries</a>, their challenges are similar.</p>
<p>Both face tough choices about how best to handle the challenges when entering the election year. They have, since moving into office, disappointed expectations, not least in their <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-31-years-after-independence-namibians-arent-in-a-festive-mood-157151">failures</a> to fight <a href="https://www.ufs.ac.za/docs/default-source/news-documents/opinion_politicsandcorruption_gb1.pdf?sfvrsn=3cd06c20_0">corruption</a>. Voters in South Africa and Namibia will in 2024 pass their verdict at the ballot boxes.</p>
<p>How they perform will shape the future of democracy in both countries.</p>
<h2>History with lasting bonds</h2>
<p>South African-Namibian relations have a special history. </p>
<p>After the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I">first world war</a>, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Treaty-of-Versailles-1919">Treaty of Versailles</a> officially ended the war between Germany and the Allied powers. It turned the German colony South West Africa into a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/mandate-League-of-Nations#ref13450">C-mandate of the new League of Nations</a>. Its administration was delegated to South Africa. It effectively <a href="https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/item/9690/thesis_hum_1997_getz_tr.pdf?sequence=1">annexed</a> the territory and <a href="https://www.unmultimedia.org/avlibrary/asset/2040/2040311/">entrenched apartheid</a>. </p>
<p>This led the national liberation movement <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/SWAPO-Party-of-Namibia">Swapo</a> to take up arms. Recognised by the UN General Assembly as the
<a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/189617?ln=en">“sole and authentic representative of the Namibian people”</a>, Swapo and the ANC, which had likewise launched an armed struggle, became <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/Thula_Simpson_abstract.pdf">close allies</a>. Both received <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40283233?seq=8">wide international support</a>.</p>
<h2>From liberation movements to governments</h2>
<p>Under UN supervised elections <a href="http://archive.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/arc/2225_89.htm">in November 1989</a>, Swapo obtained an absolute majority (58%). Independence was proclaimed on 21 March 1990. The date was chosen by the elected Constituent Assembly in recognition of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Sharpeville-massacre">the Sharpeville massacre</a> in 1961 – when apartheid police murdered 69 unarmed black people protesting against being forced to carry <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ApartheidMuseumSA/posts/heres-what-a-dompas-which-literally-means-dumb-pass-looked-like-during-the-apart/10157134498674628/">identity documents</a> controlling their movement. Released only weeks earlier from prison, Nelson Mandela attended the ceremony as the <a href="https://kapweine.ch/en/independence-from-namibia/">celebrated guest of honour</a>.</p>
<p>Apartheid in South Africa came officially to an end through the result of the first democratic elections in 1994. Like Swapo, the ANC emerged as the <a href="https://www.eisa.org/wep/sou1994results1.htm">majority party (62.7%)</a>. It indicated the success of the democratic settlements in both countries that Swapo and the ANC led processes leading to the drawing up of final constitutions. These embedded accepted democratic principles: free and regular elections, independent judiciaries, bills of fundamental human rights, and the separation of powers of the three branches of government.</p>
<p>Since then, both countries have continued to rank among the top African democracies. Regular elections were largely free and fair. Judiciaries have remained independent and have served as a check on executive power. Both parties initially increased their majorities. Crucially, however, the parliaments dominated by <a href="https://ippr.org.na/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/IPPR%20Opinion%20No%2021%20-parliament.....pdf">Swapo</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-parliament-fails-to-hold-the-executive-to-account-history-shows-what-can-happen-192889">ANC</a> have failed to hold governments to account on major issues.</p>
<h2>Popularity in decline</h2>
<p>Support for the ANC peaked at nearly 70% in the third democratic election <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40607814">in 2009</a>, but by the 5th election <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-africas-2019-general-election-post-analysis">in 2019</a>, it had fallen to 57.5%. Even this was regarded as a triumph, put down to the personal <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-za/cyril-ramaphosa-popular-amongst-south-africans-political-parties-questionable">popularity of its latest leader, Cyril Ramaphosa</a>.</p>
<p>In the run-up to the elections in 2024, surveys predict the ANC will lose its absolute majority, and be forced to <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/234405/south-africa-shock-poll-shows-anc-heading-towards-2024-coalition/">form a coalition to remain in power</a>. It is also anticipated that it will lose its majority <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/mercury/news/anc-prospects-are-dim-for-2024-elections-c5f442f2-7913-454d-a38f-e041e475a2db">in several provinces</a>. It may even lose Gauteng, the country’s economic hub, and KwaZulu-Natal. It has long lost control of the Western Cape to the opposition <a href="https://www.eisa.org/pdf/JAE9.2Africa.pdf">Democratic Alliance</a>.</p>
<p>In Namibia, Swapo has fared comparatively better. By <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2014-12-02-namibias-swapo-win-elections-geingob-voted-as-president/">2014</a>, it had consolidated its political dominance into a whopping 80% of votes for the National Assembly, and 86% of votes for its directly elected <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290429183_From_Nujoma_to_Geingob_25_years_of_presidential_democracy">presidential candidate Hage Geingob</a>. But the National Assembly and presidential elections <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00358533.2020.1717090">in 2019</a> marked a turning point. With 65.5% the party lost its two-third majority.</p>
<p>For both, ANC and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352737011_Namibia's_Regional_and_Local_Authority_Elections_2020_Democracy_beyond_SWAPO">Swapo</a>, the loss of control over the regional, provincial and <a href="http://democracyinafrica.org/democracy-beyond-swapo-in-namibia/">local levels of government</a> has turned politics into a matter of alliances, with shifting coalitions. Politics has become a negotiated commodity.</p>
<p>Principles are regularly traded for power, eroding the trust which citizens place in politicians and democracy. For all that they continue to dominate central government. But, their dominance is being steadily eroded by their lacklustre performance in power and failures in delivery of basic services. <a href="https://f3magazine.unicri.it/?p=402">State capture</a> has become a form of governance.</p>
<h2>2024 and the limits to liberation</h2>
<p>It is too early for any reliable predictions regarding the 2024 election results. While many assume that the ANC will lose its absolute majority, it has an uncanny ability to defy expectations. But even if it squeaks home, its credibility is likely to be further damaged. Unless he is shuffled aside by the ANC (a possibility whispered quietly in dark corners as the brightness of his image dims), Ramaphosa is likely to remain in office as South Africa’s president. But he could be <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-votes-in-2024-could-a-coalition-between-major-parties-anc-and-eff-run-the-country-204141">compelled to lead a coalition government</a>.</p>
<p>Swapo’s electoral prospects seem less bleak, even though it is thought that the opposition will make gains. Geingob’s two terms as state president ends. <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2023/03/13/namibian-president-names-netumbo-nandi-ndaitwah-woman-successor//">Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah</a> Swapo’s first female candidate, might become the head of state. But in both countries, those holding office will face an uphill battle.</p>
<p>Numerous <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/limits-to-liberation-in-southern-africa">analyses</a> have explored how former liberation movements in southern Africa have failed the ideals of the liberation struggle when in power, even becoming undemocratic and increasingly corrupt. They have transited <a href="https://www.thebrenthurstfoundation.org/news/when-liberation-movements-don-t-liberate-and-what-africans-can-do-about-it/">from dominance to decline</a>. In many ways, this was to be expected.</p>
<p>Few parties can retain power for decades without losing their popularity. Yet in southern Africa, liberation movements’ loss of popularity is combined with accusations that they have betrayed the promises of freedom. They have <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589346.2017.1282337">displayed a democratic deficit</a>. By dismissing accountability for the lack of delivery they have squandered their trust and support. </p>
<p>How Swapo and the ANC respond to any further decline will define the future of democracy. Opposition parties are expected to play an increasing role. But the former liberation movements might benefit from their <a href="https://www.eisa.org/pdf/JAE5.1Chiroro.pdf">fragmentation and dilemma</a>. After all, opposition parties have so far offered <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-voters-are-disillusioned-but-they-havent-found-an-alternative-to-the-anc-171239">little if any credible alternatives</a> which promise more well-being for the ordinary people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204818/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber is a member of Swapo since 1974. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall 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>
How Swapo and the ANC respond to any further decline in electoral support will define the future of democracy in both countries.
Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria
Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197550
2023-02-02T14:56:20Z
2023-02-02T14:56:20Z
Travelling while black: 7 South African travelogues you should read
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507054/original/file-20230130-24-ngiuuv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Khadija Farah/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Travel writing in Africa is often associated with colonial ventures of the past or white adventure pursuits of today. But <a href="https://whatsonafrica.org/african-and-african-diaspora-travel-writing-ten-books-and-narratives-for-your-shelf/">Africans</a> themselves have long produced captivating travel texts in oral and written forms. We need to look beyond narrowly western or white accounts as travel writing is produced <a href="https://www.cntraveller.com/gallery/diversity-in-travel-writing">across the world</a> by an <a href="https://www.bulldozia.com/always-elsewhere/">extensive</a> <a href="https://tabishkhair.co.uk/other-routes-1500-years-of-african-and-asian-travel-writing">range</a> of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52951219-the-passport-that-does-not-pass-ports">writers</a>. <a href="https://panoramajournal.org/">Literary</a> <a href="https://www.fortunatetraveller.com/">ezines</a> (electronic magazines on the internet) dedicated to diverse travel writing are thriving. </p>
<p>That said, the cultures and literatures of travel from Africa have long been under-recognised by mobility studies. Exposing structures and norms that privilege white travel, as well as centering the voices of those on the move who haven’t traditionally been counted as travellers, are important aspects of “decolonising travel”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-passport-rankings-show-that-the-world-is-opening-up-but-not-for-everyone-197341">New passport rankings show that the world is opening up – but not for everyone</a>
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<p>The “travelling while black” movement foregrounds racial danger and discrimination around travel, while illuminating distinctive experiences that black travel brings. With this telling phrase as its title, Kenyan writer and analyst Nanjala Nyabola’s <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/travelling-while-black/">ground-shifting book</a> explores multiple dimensions of being a mobile African woman.</p>
<p>As a literary scholar of these books, I’ve recently published a <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/3/article/873424">research paper</a> that explores how a range of contemporary popular travelogues by black South Africans offer fresh, often provocative, perspectives. The travelogues, mostly focusing on exploring Africa (including South Africa itself), bring to life the places visited and celebrate the acts of travel – while also reflecting deeply on what the travel means.</p>
<p>Travel in South Africa is no straightforward subject. It takes on heightened significance in the light of the country’s history of colonialism and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>. Apartheid, South Africa’s institutionalised system of segregation, attempted to limit or force black mobility and to regulate black travel in intensive ways.</p>
<p>In post-apartheid South Africa, much has been in flux. While race-based mobility laws are no longer in place, questions of black movement, border crossings and belonging are peaking. In many of the travelogues in my research, the writers reflect on how history, race, nationality, gender and other factors affect travel.</p>
<h2>1. Vagabond by Lerato Mogoatlhe</h2>
<p>Journalist <a href="https://africanofilter.org/people/lerato-mogoatlhe">Lerato Mogoatlhe</a>, loved on social media as <a href="https://twitter.com/MadamAfrika">Madam Afrika</a>, shares her action-packed experiences of travelling to 21 African countries over five years in her debut book <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/lerato-mogoatlhe-travel-memoir-africa-vagabond/">Vagabond: Wandering Through Africa on Faith</a> (2019). </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with a map of Africa and an illustration of a mosque" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506636/original/file-20230126-24850-s1jqfx.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Blackbird Books</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>She dedicates her adventures to “those who had gone before”, including her grandparents “who could only travel in their dreams”. What motivates her is the “freedom to wander from place to place and the possibility of knowing the world beyond what’s around my corner”. </p>
<p>She sees travel on the continent as giving her “the opportunity to experience being black and African without disguising or denying myself to fit in”.</p>
<h2>2. Niq Mhlongo’s blog</h2>
<p>Along with tales of book hustles, visa hassles, local brews and astounding sights, novelist <a href="https://www.newframe.com/niq-mhlongo-and-the-return-of-the-short-story/">Niq Mhlongo</a> reflects on how the past and present connect through journeying in his energetic <a href="https://johannesburgreviewofbooks.com/2018/10/01/city-editor-niq-mhlongo-overstays-his-visa-in-dar-es-salaam-morogoro-and-mbeya/">travel blog</a>. </p>
<p>On his 4,459km trip through Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, he emphasises that African travel enables the retracing of “the history of our people that has not been properly documented or told”.</p>
<h2>3. Hardly Working by Zukiswa Wanner</h2>
<p>A multi-country African journey with the thrills and spills of public transport is the story of novelist Zukiswa Wanner’s <a href="https://www.thedailyvox.co.za/delightful-roadtrip-with-zukiswa-wanner-hardly-working-shaazia-ebrahim/">Hardly Working: A Travel Memoir of Sorts</a> (2018) – on one level. She is also on the road to teach her son about the continent beyond the realms of “a textbook”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with a woman standing with her hands in her pockets against a rural setting" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506638/original/file-20230126-35179-azfpam.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Letter Media</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a child of exiled South African and Zimbabwean parents, she has been transnationally mobile since childhood, but imbues this trip with special importance. It marks her 40th birthday and four decades since the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">1976 Soweto uprising</a>. </p>
<p>Through her journeying, she powerfully links up personal and historic milestones to reflect on her own life and a nation that hasn’t lived up to its post-apartheid promises.</p>
<h2>4. Reclaiming Home by Lesego Malepe</h2>
<p><a href="https://shewritespress.com/portfolio/lesego-malepe/">Reclaiming Home: Diary of a Journey through Post-Apartheid South Africa</a> (2018) is by author and scholar <a href="https://shewritespress.com/portfolio/lesego-malepe/">Lesego Malepe</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A dirt road through a rural landscape" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506639/original/file-20230126-24850-kdgr2l.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">She Writes Press</span></span>
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<p>She returns from decades in the US to criss-cross the country of her birth over 11 months. </p>
<p>During apartheid “the many discriminatory laws made travel for a black person very difficult”, so she explores every corner of South Africa for herself and in memory of her brother. </p>
<p>As a political prisoner on <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/916/">Robben Island</a> off Table Bay, Cape Town, for 22 years, her brother was taunted by the view of Table Mountain and all that lay out of reach.</p>
<h2>5. Rainbow Nation, My Zulu Arse by Sihle Khumalo</h2>
<p>Travel writer <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/author/sihle-khumalo">Sihle Khumalo</a> takes to the road to write his first book about his native South Africa in <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/rainbow-nation-my-zulu-arse/9781415209547">Rainbow Nation, My Zulu Arse</a> (2019). While he is known for his upbeat approach (his brawny debut was <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/dark-continent-my-black-arse/9781415200360">Dark Continent, My Black Arse</a> in 2016), he starts this journey at apartheid’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville</a> massacre site in contemplative mode. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A road with a zebra, a rainbow and a map of Africa" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506641/original/file-20230126-11748-jkxflr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1184&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Umuzi</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>He strikes a note of “looking back” as “part of moving forward” and connects his travel to historical sites, among others, to try and grasp where the country’s headed. </p>
<p>Khumalo’s book is far from solemn though. It rants and raves across the spectacular terrain of nine provinces, bringing to life dusty towns, forgotten communities, bright lights and open horizons. </p>
<p>He accentuates that travel is “about being greedy for new experiences that can never happen if you do not move your sorry ignorant naïve self from one point to the other”.</p>
<h2>6. Blacks Do Caravan by Fikile Hlatshwayo</h2>
<p>Equally ambitious, but striking a different note, is author and businesswoman <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/travel/black-woman-changing-the-colour-of-camping-12006193">Fikile Hlatshwayo</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A landscape with a van and a caravan parked on the side of the road" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=874&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506642/original/file-20230126-12-561nnd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1099&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jacana Media</span></span>
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<p>Her <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/blacks-do-caravan/">Blacks Do Caravan</a> (2016) is based on an extended family adventure, providing an inspirational, full-colour guide to 60 camp sites across South Africa and neighbouring Eswatini. </p>
<p>Before becoming a tourism champion, she had grown up with the idea that camping was “purely for white people”. Travel has a vital role to play in “breaking down barriers and stereotypes”, says Hlatshwayo.</p>
<h2>7. Those Who Travel Meet Themselves</h2>
<p>In a similar vein, writer Michelle van Onna Green-Thompson edited a booklet of stories, <a href="https://bridgebooks.co.za/products/those-who-travel-meet-themselves-an-anthology-of-travel-stories-celebrating-freedom-editor-michelle-van-onna-green-thompson?variant=42680634966274">Those Who Travel Meet Themselves</a> (2018).</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506643/original/file-20230126-35457-6yb4mn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with an illustration of a woman with long hair and various images of flies, clouds and a woman behind her" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506643/original/file-20230126-35457-6yb4mn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506643/original/file-20230126-35457-6yb4mn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506643/original/file-20230126-35457-6yb4mn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506643/original/file-20230126-35457-6yb4mn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506643/original/file-20230126-35457-6yb4mn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506643/original/file-20230126-35457-6yb4mn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506643/original/file-20230126-35457-6yb4mn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Poetree Publications</span></span>
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<p>In it she casts herself and fellow millennial travel contributors as “door openers” in 21st century South Africa. </p>
<p>Knitting together travel and life trajectories, she encourages young black South Africans to grab hold of horizons denied to earlier generations. </p>
<p>She links encountering new “spaces” to discovering “pages” of life.</p>
<h2>Claiming spaces</h2>
<p>These vibrant, varied South African writers embrace the open road. Far from needing to “justify their movements”, which tends to be the case for black travellers, as historian <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2016/04/the-myth-of-the-african-travel-writer">Christabelle Peters</a> highlights, they bring irrepressible stories of touring for its own sake. They claim spaces and places as black travellers, as movers and shakers.</p>
<p>At another level, these travelogues don’t miss a chance to explore their mobility as a form of time travel and of human expression. The past is never far away as they think of those who didn’t have the same freedoms. At the same time, they assess how much the country they call home has “travelled” from its past, as well as towards imagined post-apartheid futures. Many of the writers reflect, too, on what it means to visit South Africa as a black person from other African countries, as borders tighten and attitudes sharpen.</p>
<p>For these contemporary writers, who take themselves and their readers on transporting journeys, there’s no turning back.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197550/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janet Remmington has received funding in the past from Oppenheimer Memorial Trust and the National Research Foundation of South Africa.</span></em></p>
These vibrant writers embrace the open road and claim spaces that were denied them during apartheid.
Janet Remmington, Research Associate, Humanities Research Centre (and African Literature Department, University of the Witwatersrand), University of York
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197647
2023-01-20T08:37:06Z
2023-01-20T08:37:06Z
Ernest Cole: South Africa’s most famous photobook has been republished after 55 years
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505098/original/file-20230118-7572-54i5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Men wait for at a railway station for transport to a mine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ernest Cole/© Ernest Cole Family Trust/Courtesy Wits Historical Papers/Photography Legacy Project</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Photographer <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ernest-cole">Ernest Cole</a> was born in 1940 in the Pretoria township of Eersterust, just before <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> was formally introduced in South Africa in 1948. </p>
<p>He was 20 when thousands of people gathered outside a police station in Sharpeville township to protest against being forced to carry <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">pass books</a> by the white minority government. On that day at least 69 people were shot dead, hundreds were injured, and a state of emergency was declared. The <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville Massacre</a> is <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sharpeville-9780199642441?cc=gb&lang=en&">regarded</a> as a turning point in the struggle for liberation in South Africa. It marked the beginning of a decades-long period in which images of human rights abuses in South Africa would rarely be out of the international news. </p>
<p>Cole’s images were prominent in this coverage. But, unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not focus on documenting protests. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with the words " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=834&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505101/original/file-20230118-21-1vsl2y.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1048&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aperture Foundation</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Instead, Cole produced hundreds of photographs that portrayed the structural violence of apartheid in fine detail. He aimed to publish these images in a photobook that he intended to circulate internationally. In 1966, Cole left South Africa on an exit permit. He would never return. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.protestinphotobook.com/post/house-of-bondage">House of Bondage</a>, Cole’s unflinching and comprehensive indictment of apartheid, was published in 1967 in the US and then in the UK. When it first appeared, the photobook was banned in South Africa but some of its images found their way back into the country through resistance publications. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/santu-mofokeng-master-photographer-who-chased-down-shadows-131065">Santu Mofokeng: master photographer who chased down shadows</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>The book is now widely available again, with a <a href="https://aperture.org/books/ernest-cole-house-of-bondage/">new edition</a> on the market. It returns Cole’s profound visual essay to the public eye and draws attention to his incisive critique of the violence of everyday life under apartheid.</p>
<h2>A landmark book</h2>
<p>After leaving South Africa, Cole continued to work as a photographer in the US and spent time in Sweden. By the 1980s, House of Bondage was out of print. The whereabouts of the photographs he produced in the US in the 1960s and 1970s – some commissioned by the Ford Foundation and the United States Information Agency – remained unknown. Then, in 2017, at least part of his archive was located in Sweden and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/photographer-ernest-cole-bondage-and-freedom-discovery-trove-negatives-game-changer-ivor">returned</a> to Cole’s family.</p>
<p>The resurfacing of more than 60,000 negatives as well as other documents, including notebooks, has led to the publication of the new edition of Cole’s landmark book by the <a href="https://aperture.org/about">Aperture</a> Foundation.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young man with a small beard and wearing a jacket looks directly into camera, unsmiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505104/original/file-20230118-19-9q9860.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ernest Cole.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Ernest Cole Family Trust/Wits Historical Papers/Photography Legacy Project</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It includes three new introductory essays, but the core of the book remains unchanged, a deliberate, relentless journey through the broken world apartheid made. It’s divided into 15 sections including The Mines; Police and Passes; Education for Servitude; <a href="https://ocula.com/art-galleries/goodman-gallery/artworks/ernest-cole/heirs-of-poverty-from-house-of-bondage/">Heirs of Poverty</a>; and Banishment, all seen through Cole’s unblinking eye. </p>
<p>The new edition also contains a section of previously unpublished images that Cole appeared to have intended for House of Bondage, but may have omitted in order not to detract from the work’s primary message. This section, Black Ingenuity, includes 30 photos of musicians, dancers, artists and boxers. They convey how spaces of sociality and creativity were forged in spite of apartheid. </p>
<h2>The homecoming</h2>
<p>A selection of the material returned to the Cole family has been digitised and made <a href="https://www.plparchive.com/ernest-cole-main-page/ec-archive/">available online</a> by the <a href="https://www.plparchive.com">Photography Legacy Project</a> and the <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/historicalpapers/">Historical Papers Research Archive</a>. </p>
<p>Among Cole’s hundreds of letters and press cuttings is a tattered notebook of handwritten observations about the hardships of black life under apartheid. In this small book Cole chronicles the experiences of those he met during his quest to exhaustively document South Africa’s dehumanising “crucible of racism”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An old-fashioned notebook with spiral spine bears neat cursive handwriting that tells of the struggle by a family to send their boys to school." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505140/original/file-20230118-9302-tgt5v8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cole’s notebook.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Ernest Cole Family Trust. Courtesy Wits Historical Papers/Photography Legacy Project</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cole reveals himself to be a gifted journalist with a keen eye for the particular and the archive reveals the extensive research that went into making House of Bondage. His careful notes include the stories of mothers, workers and teachers … How a young man lost his passbook and was too afraid to report it and so could not write his exams. Why there are no desks and chairs for the children at school. How a woman has only ever been able to buy a single skirt for herself during her entire working life. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A policeman in old-fashioned uniform puts a hand on the shoulder or a young man in worker's clothes. Men in suits look on idly, hands in their pockets." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505131/original/file-20230118-17-xmdvne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=462&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 young man is stopped for his pass book by police.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ernest Cole/© Ernest Cole Family Trust. Courtesy Wits Historical Papers/Photography Legacy Project</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cole spent decades as a stateless person and, tormented by the racism he endured in South Africa as well as in the US and Europe, suffered <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/ERNEST%20COLE-gunilla.pdf">psychological breakdowns</a>. From the mid-1970s, he was homeless and spent time living in the subways in New York and occasionally at a shelter or the houses of friends. He died of pancreatic cancer in exile in 1990. </p>
<h2>A better world</h2>
<p>In his essay in the new edition of House of Bondage, anti-apartheid activist and poet <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/mongane-wally-serote-1944">Mongane Wally Serote</a> observes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>No matter the very dire challenges of being poor, discriminated against, and being, by law, objects of exploitation and oppression, the people in the photographs by Ernest Cole claim life and living.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He cuts to the heart of Cole’s project: the imperative to make a better world. He argues that to see these images is not only to be reminded of the brutality of apartheid but to be shocked into recognising how the structural violence of the past lives on: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Of course, the question which must follow after seeing the horror depicted in Cole’s photographs is: why, why if there are human beings living in horror, have those conditions not been challenged and changed? Why, why are those conditions so persistent?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At least part of the answer to Serote’s lament lies in the fact that those responsible for engineering and implementing the iniquitous apartheid system have never been held to account. Cole’s book is a powerful reminder not only of what apartheid was, but of the work that remains to be done in order to dismantle the house of bondage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197647/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kylie Thomas 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>
Cole was a master of portraying the violence of apartheid through scenes of everyday life.
Kylie Thomas, Senior Researcher, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/174471
2022-01-10T15:48:43Z
2022-01-10T15:48:43Z
Historian offers comprehensive and up-to-date take on South Africa’s Communist Party
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439822/original/file-20220107-33062-bo50di.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African President Cyril Ramaphosa addresses a meeting of the SACP in 2015. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS: Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Communist Party of South Africa was formed in July 1921. To mark its centenary last year, renowned South African historian Tom Lodge <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/tom-lodge-red-road-to-freedom/jssb-7247-ga90?referrer=googlemerchant&gclid=CjwKCAiA5t-OBhByEiwAhR-hm6OaW-KlOjRMByLvjvPZIQ1L1hYLP6oNj2xHlUqMgskisxFlC9cR5RoCBkUQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">published</a> Red Road to Freedom: A history of the South African Communist Party, 1921-2021.</p>
<p>It’s a welcome addition to the literature on the oldest communist party in Africa.</p>
<p>Most of the existing literature on the Party is about its early history until 1950. Some of the books were written by party members such as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/eddie-roux-time-longer-rope-review">Eddie Roux</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/class-and-colour-south-africa-1850-1950-h-j-and-r-e-simons">Jack and Ray Simons</a>, and <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/bunting-brian/kotane/index.htm">Brian Bunting</a>. </p>
<p>In the last two decades, a number of publications on the Party or leading members appeared. <a href="https://jacana.co.za/author-2/eddy-maloka/">Eddy Maloka</a> wrote two publications, <a href="https://monthlyreview.org/press/alan-wieder-morning-talk/">Alan Wieder</a> concentrated on Joe Slovo and Ruth First, while <a href="http://ukznpress.bookslive.co.za/blog/2015/02/16/steven-friedman-explains-why-the-contribution-of-harold-wolpe-is-still-relevant-today-video/">Steven Friedman</a> concentrated on Harold Wolpe. Some (auto)biographical publications or memoirs also appeared in this period on <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1200391.Slovo">Joe Slovo</a>, Govan Mbeki, Chris Hani, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347815776_The_Fabric_of_Dissent_Public_Intellectuals_in_South_Africa">Mzala</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/anc-spy-bible-a-real-life-south-african-thriller-but-too-much-left-unsaid-134803">Moe Shaik</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Bram_Fischer.html?id=V4oFAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">Bram Fisher</a>.</p>
<p>Most of the publications are chronologically organised and few take a thematic approach. Policy analysis and exegesis are in most instances largely absent. A good example is what the party meant by its notion of <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/colonialism-of-a-special-type-lives-on">“colonialism of a special type”</a>. First formulated in 1950 and included in the party’s 1962 party programme, it remains a major ideological pillar of the party. </p>
<p>But its ideological and strategic implications aren’t explored. This includes explaining how the approach enabled a merger between socialism and liberatory nationalism, how it underscored the two-stage revolutionary strategy of a national democratic revolution followed by a socialist revolution, and for justifying the Tripartite Alliance between the party, the African National Congress and the trade union federation (first Sactu and later Cosatu).</p>
<p>Also largely absent is a history of the more recent developments, as well as a political analysis of the party’s role between 1960-1990 and as part of government since 1994. </p>
<p>Lodge’s book fills some of these gaps. It is therefore academically and historically very important. Eddy Maloka, also an author on the party’s history, assessed its value as follows (on the book cover):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tom Lodge takes us on a century-long tour of the history of the South African Communist Party, through the fractal coastline of this party’s ideological evolution, to the hinterland of its organisational dynamics and relations with other actors. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The Cold War</h2>
<p>The Communist Party of South Africa was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/suppression-communism-act-no-44-1950-approved-parliament">banned in 1950</a> by the new National Party (NP) government, which believed that the Soviet Union’s support for it would exploit South Africa’s domestic politics for its own purposes. After the party reestablished itself underground as the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1953, and after its ally, the African National Congress (ANC) was also banned by the apartheid regime in 1960, a close alliance between them developed. </p>
<p>After the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> in 1960, followed by the banning of the ANC and other liberation organisations, and when the NP government refused to convene a national convention in 1961, leaders in the party and a number of prominent ANC leaders (but not the ANC’s President Albert Luthuli) decided to establish an armed wing, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">Umkhonto we Sizwe</a>. Its first sabotage acts were launched on 16 December 1961. </p>
<p>The resort to armed struggle and the party’s involvement in the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, brought the two movements much closer together during their time in exile.</p>
<p>The members of Umkhonto we Sizwe’s High Command were arrested in 1962 in Rivonia, a Johannesburg suburb. They were busy with Operation Mayibuye as a blueprint to stage a revolutionary insurrection in South Africa. They included Party members such as Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Ahmed Kathrada and ANC leaders like Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. They were charged with sabotage (and not treason) and therefore did not receive the death penalty but very long prison sentences.</p>
<p>If one looks at the Umkhonto we Sizwe accused in the Rivonia trial in 1963, most of them were also members of the Party.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men field questions at a press conference while seated with their backs to Communist Party posters" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former South African Communist Party leaders Joe Slovo, left, and Chris Hani in Soweto in 1991.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Walter Dhladhla /AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During most of the Cold War, the South African Communist Party’s close alignment to the Soviet Union and to the ANC, pulled the liberation struggle in South Africa into the global ideological camps of the Cold War, in the same way as the movements in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and other liberation wars. In this respect, the South African Communist Party was often regarded as the power behind the ANC’s throne.</p>
<p>The 30 years in exile were divided between establishing bases in African countries, training Umkhonto we Sizwe mainly in Angola and establishing international relations with many continents. The Party’s main base was in London but with close relations especially in the Eastern bloc. Peace processes in Southwestern Africa and the demise of the Soviet Union as its main sponsor, created new opportunities for dialogue and radical political changes.</p>
<p>After its unbanning in 1990 together with the ANC, the relationship continued but its nature changed dramatically. The liberatory strategy changed from targeting the National Party government, to being the government itself. Party leaders became members of that government.</p>
<h2>What’s covered, and what’s not</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/tom-lodge-1256885">Tom Lodge</a> is a trained historian. Most of his early publications were good historiographies. He joined the University of the Witwatersrand’s Department of Political Studies and in the 1980s, and testified for the defence in several ANC trials. He published extensively on the ANC’s politics, and later also on elections.</p>
<p>This book is a return to his earlier works. In the more than 500 pages (excluding the end notes, index and bibliography) and in nine chapters, he presents the most extensive history of the South African Communist Party.</p>
<p>The first six chapters are focused on the period until 1950, and the last three chapters cover the last 70 years.</p>
<p>There are some areas and issues that could have done with more attention. For example, deeper political analysis of the latest 30 years after the Party was unbanned and decided to become a “mass party” as opposed to membership on invitation, as well as its role in the ANC governments. This would provide more insight into the party’s political approach.</p>
<p>In addition, the Party’s ideological evolution deserves special attention. For example, its 1962 party programme, “The Road to South African Freedom”, can be linked to the ANC’s Morogoro programme (1969), “The Strategy and Tactics of the South African Revolution”. The two documents created a common approach to their revolutionary strategy, which is very important for understanding their longstanding alliance. But Lodge only briefly discusses this on pages 354-355. </p>
<p>Another omission in my view, concerns Joe Slovo’s paper “Has Socialism Failed?” (1990). It is mentioned on page 457 but its implications for the party’s reassessment of its ideological position after the fall of the Berlin Wall were not considered. More recently, the Party has revised “The South African Road to Socialism” (2007, 2012) as its programme. It receives more attention than the other programmes on page 479 but it does not explain how a communist party in a multiparty democratic dispensation sets out a vision for itself.</p>
<p>Chapter 9 distinguishes itself from the others and presents a political analysis of the party dynamics, such as its choice to participate independently in elections. It includes brief references to the party’s milestones but a more in-depth discussion could have addressed the shortcomings of the older publications.</p>
<p>For readers who want a comprehensive, up-to-date and accessible publication on the South African Communist Party, this is without any doubt the best one. As a Wits academic, Lodge, who now is associated with Limerick University in Ireland, had many personal experiences with people and events discussed in this book. It was therefore not merely a research or academic exercise for him.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174471/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dirk Kotze 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>
The resort to armed struggle brought the Communist Party and the African National Congress much closer together during their time in exile.
Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Science, University of South Africa
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/157150
2021-03-30T13:24:56Z
2021-03-30T13:24:56Z
Book sheds light on apartheid South Africa’s hidden massacre
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391671/original/file-20210325-17-wha636.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C271%2C519%2C314&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A demonstration in Red Square (since renamed Freedom Square) in the Johannesburg suburb of Fordsburg, South Africa, 6th April 1952. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Jurgen Schadeberg/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Appalling atrocities occurred under the flag of apartheid as the white minority government sought to impose a racist system on the majority of South African citizens. Many of the atrocities were subsequently investigated by the Truth and Reconciliation <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Commission</a> and are now seared into public memory.</p>
<p>But not all. One of the more notable gaps in the country’s collective memory is a massacre that took place in 1952. It was never officially investigated and few people know about it.</p>
<p>I set about trying to rectify this in my <a href="https://www.takealot.com/bloody-sunday/PLID71785711">book</a>, <em>Bloody Sunday: The nun, the Defiance Campaign and South Africa’s secret massacre</em>. After seven years’ extensive research, I have written an account of what happened on 9 November 1952, in what was then East Bank Location, now called Duncan Village. This is an area that was set aside for black people in East London, a medium-sized town in the south east of the country. </p>
<p>The book is about the life, death and memorialisation of Sister Aidan Quinlan, an Irish nun and medical doctor, who lived and worked in Duncan Village and was murdered on that fateful day. Based on multiple archival and oral sources, the book breaks the silences surrounding the violence – on both sides. In the words of historian Jacob S. Dlamini, who wrote an endorsement for the book, it is</p>
<blockquote>
<p>about the need for South Africans to learn to listen to voices from the past in order to re-imagine the telling of their haunted history. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>9 November 1952</h2>
<p>On the day in question police armed with batons, .303 rifles with fixed bayonets, revolvers and military sub-machine (Sten) guns dispersed a meeting in East Bank Location (Duncan Village) that had been organised by the East London branch of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League. The police later admitted to killing eight people and injuring 27. </p>
<p>In retaliation, mobs of mainly young people spread through the area, looting and burning symbols of white control. They also killed two white people who happened to be in the area. An insurance salesman was beaten to death with sticks. Sister Aidan, who is believed to have driven into the area to help the wounded, was stoned, stabbed, and burned to death in her car. Her body was also mutilated. </p>
<p>The police responded by rampaging through the area in troop carriers for hours, shooting at people and into houses. Informed but unofficial estimates of the death toll ranged from over 80 people killed immediately to over 200 if one counted those who died later. </p>
<p>Bodies were buried secretly by relatives who feared being implicated in the murders of the two white people.</p>
<p>The government in Pretoria dispatched the Minister of Justice, C.R. Swart, to East London. Following his visit there was a clampdown on media reporting. And the government and East London City Council rejected calls for a commission of inquiry. The massacre became a secret.</p>
<h2>The context</h2>
<p>The killings took place at the height of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/defiance-campaign-1952">ANC’s Campaign of Defiance</a> against Unjust Laws. The campaign, which began on 26 June 1952, involved ANC volunteers flouting discriminatory laws, inviting arrest and choosing to be jailed rather than pay a fine. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391354/original/file-20210324-13-1cwpt5m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391354/original/file-20210324-13-1cwpt5m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391354/original/file-20210324-13-1cwpt5m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391354/original/file-20210324-13-1cwpt5m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=897&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391354/original/file-20210324-13-1cwpt5m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391354/original/file-20210324-13-1cwpt5m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391354/original/file-20210324-13-1cwpt5m.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1127&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ANC has claimed that its membership grew from 7,000 to 100,000 in the <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/from-protest-to-challenge-volume-2-hope-and-challenge-1935-1952/">campaign</a> and it was brought to an end only because of the government’s repressive measures including the banning, arrests and charging of leaders, and new, heavier <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01828/05lv01829/06lv01855.htm">penalties</a>. </p>
<p>However, in October and November 1952, there were outbreaks of violence across the country. Scores, maybe hundreds, of people were killed by police and six white people were murdered in mob retaliation. </p>
<p>The events in East London were the last and most violent – and politically embarrassing to the ANC. Sister Aidan ran a clinic for black people and the savage mutilation of her body shocked white and black communities alike. The ANC distanced itself from all the “outbreaks”. Nelson <a href="https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/nelson-mandela/long-walk-to-freedom/9780759521049/">Mandela</a>, who was volunteer-in-chief, said they “had nothing whatever to do with the campaign”.</p>
<p>In the wake of the tragic events in East London the Defiance Campaign came to an end in the eastern Cape and limped to closure elsewhere in the country.</p>
<p>I argue in my book that by disassociating itself from the riots, the ANC missed an opportunity. It could have – but did not – place on public record a massacre alleged to be larger than the<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sharpeville-9780192801852?cc=gb&lang=en&"> Sharpeville</a> massacre eight years later in which 69 people were killed. </p>
<p>There were a number of reasons for the silence. One was due to the fact that the ANC leaders who might have spoken out were banned and in hiding elsewhere in East London at the time and fled the town afterwards. Another is that the police did not allow journalists into the area so there was no one to record what happened. </p>
<p>In contrast, a <em>Drum</em> reporter and photographer attended the Sharpeville protest and captured what happened in iconic reports and photographs.</p>
<p>Half a century later another opportunity was missed when the ANC tasked the Truth and Reconciliation Commission with investigating gross human rights violations of the apartheid era from 1 March 1960. This left 12 years of apartheid rule – and the tragic killings during the Defiance Campaign – unexplored. The <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/legal/bill.htm">limitation</a> was set in the belief that the worst atrocities of apartheid occurred after that date and because the commission needed to complete its work as speedily as possible. </p>
<h2>Remembering the massacred</h2>
<p>While Sister Aidan’s death has been memorialised in East London in recent decades, there has been no formal memorialisation of the black people who died that day. I hope that my book <em>Bloody Sunday</em> will help to fill that gap.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mignonne Breier received research grants from the Henry Nxumalo/Taco Kuiper Fund for Investigative Journalism (2019), the Academic and Non-Fiction Authors' Association (ANFASA) in 2016, the National Research Foundation (NRF) Incentive Funding for Rated Researchers (2012 to 2017) and was awarded a three month fellowship at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in 2018. </span></em></p>
When the Truth and Reconciliation was mandated to investigate human rights violations from March 1960, that left twelve years of apartheid rule unexplored.
Mignonne Breier, Honorary Research Associate, School of Education, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/157695
2021-03-30T13:23:48Z
2021-03-30T13:23:48Z
South Africa needs to address the lingering legacy of its police using excessive force
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391883/original/file-20210326-19-18fdex1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African Police Service march to disperse students blocking traffic in Johannesburg, in March. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michele Spatari / AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa has a painful history of police using excessive force against protesters. In one of the worst incidents under the apartheid government 69 protesters were shot in cold blood by police outside a police station <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">in Sharpeville in 1960</a>.</p>
<p>One of the legacies of that terrible day is that no one was held to account. No one was ever held criminally responsible or civilly liable for the deaths. Instead of identifying, naming and holding responsible those who shot protesters, the apartheid state brought <a href="https://idep.library.ucla.edu/sharpeville-massacre">charges of public violence </a> against 70 residents of Sharpeville who were part of the protests.</p>
<p>The protests were against the <a href="https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/dompas">identity documents</a> the apartheid regime forced black people to carry, <a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/project-event-details/2">restricting their movements</a>.</p>
<p>A quarter of a century later South Africans need to be reminded of the past they seek to leave behind. When he signed into law the <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/images/a108-96.pdf">Constitution of the Republic of South Africa</a>, 1996, President Nelson Mandela chose to do it at Sharpeville. To him the constitution was brought into being <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/history/MEDIA/PRESIDEN.PDF">by an</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>unshakeable determination that respect for human life, liberty and well-being must be enshrined as rights beyond the power of any force to diminish.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the hard truth is that excessive use of force, impunity and efforts to circumvent transparency remain features of policing in South Africa.</p>
<h2>Systemic</h2>
<p>Earlier this month a young man, Mthokozisi Ntumba, was <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-03-12-mthokozisi-ntumba-know-the-man-who-was-killed-in-the-wits-protest-crossfire/">shot dead by a policeman in Johannesburg</a>. At the time the police were confronting a student protest. Ntumba was passing by. </p>
<p>Following the shooting the minister of police, Bheki Cele, characterised the police action as an <a href="https://www.702.co.za/articles/410978/it-s-a-sad-situation-cele-says-after-mthokozisi-ntumba-s-killing">unexplainable exception</a>. In a radio interview he said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I can’t explain it, it is something without an inch and has no grain of explanation in it. Somebody, for me, just went crazy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But his statement negates the extent and underlying systemic nature of police brutality. Here are just a few examples from across South Africa, over the last decade.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>In February 2011, Bongani Mathebula, 21 years old, was <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/opinion/2021-03-12-shirley-de-villiers-deadly-violence-is-hardwired-into-saps-dna/">shot and killed</a> in crossfire, as police fired on protesters in Ermelo, a town in the Mpumalanga province. </p></li>
<li><p>On 13 April 2011, Andries Tatane, a 33-year-old father of two, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2011-04-18-police-under-fire-after-ficksburg/">was shot and killed</a> with a rubber bullet during a service delivery protest in Ficksburg, a small town in the Free State province. </p></li>
<li><p>At Marikana, a platinum mining town in the North West province, on 16 August 2012, <a href="https://justice.gov.za/comm-mrk/docs/20150710-gg38978_gen699_3_MarikanaReport.pdf">police shot and killed 34</a> striking mineworkers. </p></li>
<li><p>In 2015, Lucas Lebyane, a 15-year-old boy, was <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2015-02-27-police-kill-boy-in-mpumalanga-protest/">shot dead</a> during a service delivery protest, demanding that the Bushbuckridge local municipality, a rural area in Mpumalanga province, provide them with water.</p></li>
<li><p>In July 2020, Leo Williams, a 9-year-old boy, <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2020/08/17/leo-williams-the-laingville-boy-shot-in-service-deliery-protest-dies">was shot</a> during a service delivery protest in Laingville, St Helena Bay, a coastal town in the Western Cape province, and died later in hospital. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>These are but a few examples based on anecdotal media reporting. But incidents of police excess are much more prevalent. This is known from annual reports of the <a href="http://www.ipid.gov.za/">Independent Police Investigative Directorate</a>, the oversight body charged with ensuring police respect the rule of law and uphold human rights. </p>
<p>In the last two reporting cycles, the number of cases of deaths resulting from police action submitted to the oversight body (393 in 2018/2019 and 392 in 2019/2020) averaged <a href="https://static.pmg.org.za/IPID_Annual_Report_2019-2020.pdf">more than one case a day</a>.</p>
<h2>A lack of accountability</h2>
<p>The shootings listed above had two things in common: excessive use of police force, and a lack of accountability. </p>
<p>In some instances, as in Tatane’s case, those accused <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2013-03-28-court-acquits-all-seven-police-accused-of-killing-tatane/">were acquitted</a>. </p>
<p>In other cases, such as in Marikana, there were no prosecutions. In the case of Leo Williams, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2021/03/18/laingville-community-frustrated-with-ipid-probe-into-leo-williams-death">recently confirmed that investigations were continuing</a>. </p>
<p>Under the constitution, the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/chp11.html">job of the South African Police <em>Service</em> is to</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>protect and secure the inhabitants of the Republic (section 205(3)). </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But without transparency, it’s impossible to hold them to this.</p>
<p>South Africans deserve a fuller picture of the extent of police brutality and the level of accountability, especially when people die at at the hands of police. The statistics that the Independent Police Investigative Directorate provide are informative. But the focus is on its own efficiency in investigating alleged police misconduct, rather than specific cases. The information is nameless and provides no link to specific cases. </p>
<h2>Next steps</h2>
<p>This year provides an opportunity to face the challenge head on. </p>
<p>Some work has already been done. But it hasn’t been shared with the public.</p>
<p>Three years ago a panel of national and international experts put together a report that provided recommendations on addressing the underlying problems relating to public order policing, including policy, methods and training. The panel was convened on the back of a recommendation made by the <a href="https://justice.gov.za/comm-mrk/index.html">Farlam Commission of Enquiry</a> on Marikana.</p>
<p>The panel handed its <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/marikana-experts-report-points-the-way-to-better-policing">report</a> to the minister of police in 2018. It has now finally been <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/marikana-massacre-136-recommendations-by-expert-panel-for-reforms-in-saps-20210329">made public</a> by the police minister.</p>
<p>The senseless death of Mthokozisi Ntumba should make the report a pivot for an urgently needed national dialogue on issues around policing. The proposed amendment to the South African Police Service <a href="https://static.pmg.org.za/docs/120523police.pdf">Act 68 of 1995</a>, introduced <a href="https://www.saps.gov.za/newsroom/msspeechdetail.php?nid=28546#:%7E:text=The%20South%20African%20Police%20Service%20Amendment%20Bill%2C%202020%2C%20provides%20a,children%20and%20persons%20with%20disabilities">in 2020</a>, provides an excellent opportunity for such a dialogue. </p>
<p>Topics should include the <a href="https://theconversation.com/marikana-shining-the-light-on-police-militarisation-and-brutality-in-south-africa-44162">demilitarisation</a> of the police, changing the culture in the police, and building better relations with communities. The criteria and process for recruitment, ethics, equipment and leadership should also be open to debate. </p>
<p>While the immediate impetus is the use of force in response to protest, other aspects of policing should be part of the discussion. These include the high level of deaths in police custody, with 237 such cases being reported to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate in the 2019/2020 cycle.</p>
<p>The aim of this process should be to ensure that the country’s police better appreciate that they are custodians of democracy. They are there to protect the most basic right, the right to life. When they fall short due to excessive use of force, the right to know should be fully respected. Full transparency would be a milestone on the road to greater trust between the police and the people of South Africa. Full transparency will also bring about greater accountability.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157695/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frans Viljoen 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>
South Africans deserve a fuller picture of the extent of police brutality, and the level of accountability, especially when people die at the hands of police.
Frans Viljoen, Director and Professor of International Human Rights Law, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/145390
2020-09-01T14:02:25Z
2020-09-01T14:02:25Z
Jürgen Schadeberg: chronicler of life across apartheid’s divides
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355782/original/file-20200901-16-4fcxp9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jürgen Schadeberg in 1955 with trainee photographers at Drum, Peter Magubane, left, and Bob Gosani. Both became well-known photographers.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I read about <a href="https://www.jurgenschadeberg.com">Jürgen Schadeberg</a>’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/arts/jurgen-schadeberg-dead.html">death</a> while listening to Abdullah Ibrahim’s song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77tTAjFrxJM"><em>Threshold</em></a> and thought about how, in the last two years, so many of the great photographers whose work helped us to see not only apartheid’s divides, but also beyond them, have crossed the threshold from life to death. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/david-goldblatt-photographer-who-found-the-human-in-an-inhuman-social-landscape-98984">David Goldblatt</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/capturing-the-soweto-uprising-south-africas-most-iconic-photograph-lives-on-98318">Sam Nzima</a> died in 2018; <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cloete-breytenbach">Cloete Breytenbach</a>, <a href="https://www.traceyderrick.co.za">Tracey Derrick</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/herbert-mabuza">Herbert Mabuza</a> in 2019; <a href="https://theconversation.com/santu-mofokeng-master-photographer-who-chased-down-shadows-131065">Santu Mofokeng</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/john-liebenberg-masterful-photographer-of-life-and-war-in-southern-africa-132772">John Liebenberg</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/george-hallett">George Hallett</a> and Schadeberg in 2020. Collectively, their work provides us with a critical mirror with which to interrogate the catastrophe that was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>, and the long struggle to bring about its end. </p>
<p>And their photographs also make it possible to see the magic in this place, and to marvel at how hope and beauty persist in South Africa, even in the darkest of times. As historian John Edwin Mason <a href="https://johnedwinmason.typepad.com/john_edwin_mason_photogra/2014/04/j%C3%BCrgen-schadeberg.html">writes</a> of the group of photographers that Schadeberg mentored at the iconic <a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668"><em>Drum</em></a> magazine – a team that included <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ernest-cole">Ernest Cole</a>, <a href="http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/NAM/sophia/writers/gosani/gosaniS.htm">Bob Gosani</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/alfred-khumalo">Alf Kumalo</a> and <a href="https://www.newframe.com/peter-magubane-a-photographer-against-apartheid/">Peter Magubane</a> – “It’s impossible to imagine South African photography without them.” The International Center for Photography awarded the <a href="https://www.icp.org/infinity-awards/j%C3%BCrgen-schadeberg">Cornell Capa</a> Lifetime Achievement Award to Schadeberg in 2014 for his career, which spanned over six decades.</p>
<h2>Striking images</h2>
<p>I cannot look at Schadeberg’s startling photograph of Hans Prignitz performing a handstand with just one hand, precariously balanced on a rain-slicked ledge high above the city of Hamburg, half obliterated by mist, without a shiver going through me. It was taken three years after the end of the Second World War and two years before Schadeberg left Germany for South Africa, where the photographer was to play a key role in documenting the first two decades of apartheid.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man in a suit doing a one-armed handstand on a rain-wet balcony railing high above a city, his legs curling over towards the city." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355793/original/file-20200901-18-ia3ygh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hans Prignitz’s handstand on the St Michaelis Church, Hamburg, 1948.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Schadeberg’s photograph of Constance Molefe, bounding over a tennis net, racket suspended in mid-air, gives me a corresponding shudder. This time not only because she appears so close to catching her foot in the net and falling painfully to the ground, but because of the knowledge that her hopes for a career as a professional athlete will soon be dashed. <a href="http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/leg19550706028020069">The Group Areas Development Act</a> was made law in 1955, the same year the photograph was taken, and the ruinous <a href="https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/leg19531009028020047">Bantu Education Act</a> had been passed two years before.</p>
<p>The caption that accompanied the image of the tennis player in the June 1955 issue of <em>Drum</em> reads as follows:</p>
<p>“Transvaal’s little Mo – Constance Molefe, junior tennis star, who aims to take the senior title. Few African women ever reach the tennis limelight, even if they do, it’s usually at a late age. But there is today a steady flow of girl learners, under expert guidance, and we can expect a tennis boom for our ladies in the near future. Topping Transvaal’s junior is pretty Constance Molefe, a 16 year old primary schooler from Orlando. She’s fresh and young, energetic, a glutton for hard court practice, and shows remarkable ability for a girl of her age.”</p>
<p>Constance Molefe’s joyful leap towards the freedom that lay outside the ever-tightening restrictions of the apartheid state was not to be realised for 40 years. In Schadeberg’s image, she is fixed in flight, reaching for the future. The image can be seen <a href="https://www.baha.co.za/item-detail/?q=42_846">here</a> in the Bailey’s African History Archive.</p>
<p>Schadeberg took what he considered his <a href="https://flashbak.com/the-world-as-he-sees-it-an-exclusive-interview-with-legendary-photographer-jurgen-schadeberg-430449/">first “real” photograph</a> in an air raid shelter in Berlin in 1941, at the tender age of 10, and went on to produce iconic images of many of the most important individuals and events in South African history. </p>
<p>He is sometimes, incorrectly and in a manner that is somewhat patronising towards the photographers he worked alongside, referred to as “the father of South African photography”. </p>
<p>In truth, he was not much older than the photographers he trained and who, in turn, inducted him into South African life. Schadeberg was just 20 when he took up the position of chief photographer and photo editor at the newly established <em>Drum</em>. He was also one among many photographers who left Europe as a result of the war. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668">Journalism of Drum's heyday remains cause for celebration - 70 years later</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Many of those who arrived in South Africa before him, during the 1930s and early 1940s, were Jewish refugees who had no choice but to flee. They, like Schadeberg, brought along new techniques and ways of seeing that coincided with the advent of popular “picture magazines”, like <em>Life</em>, <em>Look and Picture Post</em> in the US and the UK, and <em>Drum</em> and <em><a href="https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/4208130">Zonk! African People’s Pictorial</a></em> in South Africa, which published photo-essays and provided photographers with regular work.</p>
<h2>The Drum years</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A smartly dressed male and female couple dance, hands and feet in the air, the male dancer mid-air, with their shadows against a white wall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=631&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355801/original/file-20200901-24-345xlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dancing at the Ritz, Johannesburg, 1952.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As curator and documentarian Candice Jansen has <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-10-27-00-casting-history-to-his-own-drum-beat/">noted</a>, <em>Drum</em> was just as central to the making of Schadeberg as a photojournalist as he was to the making of South African visual history. The magazine’s photographers captured images of famous and not-yet-famous people, immortalised life in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/sophiatown">Sophiatown</a> and resistance to forced removals, and recorded the new forms of popular culture – fashion, jazz and dancing – that defined what has come to be known as the <a href="https://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Drum_Decade.html?id=XfdZAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">“<em>Drum</em> decade”</a>. </p>
<p>Schadeberg worked alongside Magubane and documented the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/defiance-campaign-1952">Defiance Campaign</a> and the famous <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/1956-womens-march-pretoria-9-august">Women’s March</a> to protest against being forced to carry passes in 1956. They were both arrested (Schadeberg once and Magubane four times) for taking photographs of the <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/what-happened-at-the-treason-trial-africa-media-online/PwJS8md1REM3Iw?hl=en">Treason Trial</a>, which took place between 1956 and 1961.</p>
<p>Schadeberg and Magubane were among the photographers who documented the aftermath of the <a href="https://humanrights.ca/story/the-sharpeville-massacre">Sharpeville Massacre </a> on 21 March 1960, when police opened fire on a gathering of approximately 7,000 unarmed people who were protesting against pass laws. In just two minutes, the police shot 13,000 bullets into the crowd and 69 people were killed, most shot in the back as they were running away, and more than 300 wounded.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Aerial view of five trucks carrying rows of coffins in the centre of a field. Mourners and clergy stand at a distance on either side, alongside dozens of graves, some still empty." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355797/original/file-20200901-22-159k6ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=496&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sharpeville Funeral, 1960.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Schadeberg chartered a plane to photograph the mass funeral and took a chilling image of hundreds of mourners watching as flatbed trucks carried the coffins of those who were murdered across a field in the Phelindaba cemetery at Sharpeville. In the foreground of the image is a row of priests standing before the dark, symmetrical, empty graves. The photographer donated this <a href="https://ccac.concourttrust.org.za/works/jurgen-schadeburg-sharpeville-funeral-1960">photograph</a> to the art collection of the South African Constitutional Court.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man with greying hair leans his arm against a window sill as he gazes out through bars on the window." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355802/original/file-20200901-16-1a3o5nv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nelson Mandela in his cell, 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Jürgen Schadeberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Schadeberg is justifiably best known for his portraits of Nelson Mandela, and of jazz greats like Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela, but his oeuvre includes many images of everyday people whose stories would otherwise have gone untold. </p>
<p>The gift of the work that he created alongside his compatriots lies in their depiction of the social worlds that apartheid sought to destroy, but that live on through their photographs. <em>Hamba kahle</em> (go well), Jürgen Schadeberg, 1931-2020.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145390/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kylie Thomas 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>
The gift of his images lies in their depiction of the social worlds that apartheid sought to destroy, but that live on through the photographs.
Kylie Thomas, Research fellow, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/133325
2020-03-20T15:45:09Z
2020-03-20T15:45:09Z
How the 1960 Sharpeville massacre sparked the birth of international human rights law
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321899/original/file-20200320-22594-1ajsu75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C6%2C2005%2C1579&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Sharpeville Massacre. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Murder_at_Sharpeville_21_March_1960.jpg">Godfrey Rubens via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s been 60 years since the Sharpeville massacre, when 69 unarmed civilians were killed by armed South African police on March 21 1960. The significance of the date is reflected in the fact that it now marks the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/events/racialdiscriminationday/">International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination</a>. </p>
<p>Without the Sharpeville massacre, we may not have the international human rights law system we have today. In 1960, states had no binding international human rights obligations with oversight mechanisms. All that changed following the world’s moral outrage at the killings.</p>
<p>The story of March 21 1960 is told by Tom Lodge, a scholar of South African politics, in his book <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sharpeville-9780192801852?cc=gb&lang=en&">Sharpeville</a>. </p>
<p>On that day, demonstrations against the pass laws, which restricted the rights of the majority black population in apartheid South Africa, began in the early morning in Sharpeville, a township in Transvaal. By lunchtime, the crowd outside the police station had grown to an estimated 20,000 people. All the evidence points to the gathering being peaceful and good-humoured.</p>
<p>Just after 1pm, there was an altercation between the police officer in charge and the leaders of the demonstration. Amid confusion, two shots were fired into the air by somebody in the crowd. In response, a police officer shouted in Afrikaans <em>skiet</em> or <em>n’skiet</em> (exactly which is not clear). This translates as “shot” or “shoot”. Another officer interpreted this as an order and opened fire, triggering a lethal fusillade as 168 police constables followed his example. By the end of the day, 69 people lay dead or dying, with hundreds more injured. </p>
<h2>The power of an event</h2>
<p>In my own research on <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-idea-of-international-human-rights-law-9780198749844?cc=gb&lang=en&">international human rights law</a>, I looked to <a href="https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/law/blogs/research/an-introduction-to-laws-complexity-/">complexity theory</a>, a theory developed in the natural sciences to make sense of the ways that patterns of behaviour emerge and change, to understand the way that international human rights law had developed and evolved. One of the insights was that international law does not change, unless there is some trigger for countries to change their behaviour. </p>
<p>Significant reshaping of international law is often the result of momentous occurrences, most notably the first and second world wars. But change can also be prompted by seemingly minor events in global affairs such as the Sharpeville massacre – the so-called <a href="https://www.americanscientist.org/article/understanding-the-butterfly-effect">butterfly effect</a>.</p>
<p>The term “human rights” was first used in the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/un-charter-full-text/">UN Charter</a> in 1945. In 1946, the UN established the Commission on Human Rights, whose first job was to draft a declaration on human rights. The commission completed this task, under the chairmanship of Eleanor Roosevelt, when it finalised the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> in 1948. </p>
<p>But attempts to transform this non-binding moral declaration into a binding legal code were immediately bogged down in cold war disputes. The logjam was only broken after the Sharpeville massacre as the UN decided to deal with the problem of apartheid South Africa.</p>
<h2>Apartheid before the UN</h2>
<p>The subject of racial discrimination in South Africa was raised at the UN General Assembly in its first session, in 1946, in the form of a <a href="https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/44(I)">complaint by India</a> concerning the treatment of Indians in the country. But it was not until after Sharpeville that the UN made clear that the country’s system of racial segregation would no longer be tolerated. </p>
<p>As part of its <a href="https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/1780(XVII)">response</a>, the General Assembly tasked the UN Commission on Human Rights to prepare the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/cerd.aspx">Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination</a>, the first global human rights treaty. It was adopted on December 21 1965. The argument against apartheid was now framed as a specific manifestation of a wider battle for human rights and it was the only political system mentioned in the 1965 Race Convention: nazism and antisemitism were not included.</p>
<p>The adoption of the Race Convention was quickly followed by the international covenants on <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/cescr.aspx">Economic, Social and Cultural Rights</a> and on <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/ccpr.aspx">Civil and Political Rights</a> in 1966, introduced to give effect to the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. </p>
<h2>‘Gross and systematic’ violations</h2>
<p>As well as the introduction of the Race Convention, Sharpeville also spurred other moves at the UN that changed the way it could act against countries that breached an individual’s human rights. </p>
<p>At its inaugural session in 1947, the UN Commission on Human Rights had <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/561096?ln=en">decided</a> that it had “no power to take any action in regard to any complaints concerning human rights”. For the next two and a half decades, the commission held to this position on the basis that the UN Charter only required states to “promote”, rather than “protect”, human rights.</p>
<p>But in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre, the UN adopted a more interventionist stance to the apartheid state. As the number of UN members from Africa increased, the commission reversed its “no power to act” position and turned its attention to the human rights situation in South Africa.</p>
<p>The key developments were the adoption of <a href="http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/procedures/1235.html">Resolution 1235</a> in 1967, which allowed for the examination of complaints of “gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms, as exemplified by the policy of apartheid”, and <a href="http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/procedures/1503.html">Resolution 1503</a> in 1970, which allowed the UN to examine complaints of “a consistent pattern of gross and reliably attested violations of human rights”.</p>
<p>These resolutions established two important principles: that the human rights provisions in the UN Charter created binding obligations for member states, and the UN could intervene directly in situations involving serious violations of human rights. </p>
<p>This set the UN on the path towards the recognition of “all human rights for all”, and, eventually, the establishment of the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/hrc/pages/home.aspx">Human Rights Council</a>, and the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/UPR/Pages/BasicFacts.aspx">Universal Periodic Review</a> of the human rights performance of all states.</p>
<p>On this 60th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre, the world should remember the contingency and fragility of the international human rights law system that we so easily take for granted today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133325/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Wheatley 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>
It’s been 60 years since the massacre of 69 unarmed civilians by the South African apartheid state. Here’s how the killings changed the way the world thinks about human rights.
Steven Wheatley, Professor of International Law, Lancaster University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/125238
2019-10-18T12:44:47Z
2019-10-18T12:44:47Z
Black Consciousness in South Africa demands a much wider historical lens
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297669/original/file-20191018-56224-194znt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Steve Biko is widely considered to be the father of Black Consciousness in South Africa. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Sowetan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year marks the 44th anniversary of <a href="http://www.apartheidmuseum.org/sites/default/files/files/BIKO%203b.pdf">Black Wednesday</a>, when the apartheid regime banned 18 civic organisations in a targeted attack on media freedom and civil society. Many of these organisations were aligned to the <a href="http://azapo.org.za/about-azapo/black-consciousness/">Black Consciousness Movement</a>. The high number of organisations outlawed by the nationalist government speaks to the breadth of impact Black Consciousness had on South Africa. </p>
<p>South Africans often think with simplistic historical narratives. For example, the historical role of Black Consciousness (or BC) is primarily seen in its renewed challenge to the apartheid state in inspiring the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Soweto Uprising of 16 June 1976</a>. A fuller appreciation of its history and impact transcends this narrower focus.</p>
<p>The craft of historians has been summed up in the so-called <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/january-2007/what-does-it-mean-to-think-historically">five Cs of historical thinking</a>: context, complexity, contingency, causality and change over time. Historians apply these principles to study the past as accurately as possible. This is also known as the principle of <a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Historicism">historicism</a>. </p>
<p>Using these principles I have studied South African civil society in the late 1960s and 1970s. While this time was seen as a lull in the opposition to apartheid, closer examination emphasises the importance of ideas, debates and movements in the period.</p>
<p>My <a href="http://ukznpress.bookslive.co.za/blog/2018/05/03/black-consciousness-and-progressive-movements-under-apartheid-presents-an-intellectual-history-of-black-consciousness-in-sa-in-the-comparative-perspective-that-biko-originally-called-for/">book</a>, “Black Consciousness and Progressive Movements under Apartheid”, shows how activists drew on global movements of social change in their responses to the oppression of apartheid which they debated, often heatedly. To understand Black Consciousness historically, and its wider impacts, we need to understand this broader context. Black Consciousness changed blacks and whites. </p>
<h2>Origins of Black Consciousness</h2>
<p>Firstly, Black Consciousness emerged together with a growing global Christian challenge to apartheid. The World Council of Churches set an early benchmark at the <a href="http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.ydlwcc2079_final.pdf">Cottesloe Consultation</a> (7-14 December 1960) in response to the Sharpeville Massacre of 21 March 1960. At the Consultation the South African churches, including Afrikaans churches, effectively rejected apartheid. </p>
<p>The final statement <a href="http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.ydlwcc2079_final.pdf">read</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>all racial groups who permanently inhabit our country … have an equal right to make their contribution towards the enrichment of the life of their country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The <a href="https://www.oikoumene.org/en/about-us">World Council of Churches</a> became even further radicalised. By 1970 it authorised the first of a series of <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S0018-229X2017000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso">financial grants</a> to the banned African National Congress and other liberation movements. The influence of this Christian challenge to apartheid would be felt in many ways, not least in their financial support.</p>
<p>Secondly, my book helps to place Black Consciousness in the wave of protests that spread throughout the world in 1968. <a href="https://uct1968sitin.wordpress.com/">The sit-in</a> by white students that took place at the University of Cape Town is normally given pride of place. But the protest by black students at the University of Fort Hare in 1968 led to a wider mobilisation across South African universities.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297650/original/file-20191018-56220-19mv2je.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During their sit-in Fort Hare students sang the anthems <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/4631?lang=en">“Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika”</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/216482943/the-inspiring-force-of-we-shall-overcome">“We Shall Overcome”</a>. Their choice showed how their desire for national liberation and the influence of the Global Sixties merged. I also show how the radicals within the mainly white National Union of South African Students (Nusas) were quick to recognise the legitimacy of the challenge of Black Consciousness and pushed for a change in Nusas accordingly.</p>
<p>Thirdly, I locate Black Consciousness in the rebirth of the labour movement. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-student-organisation-saso">The South African Students’ Organisation</a> had their headquarters in Durban in the early 1970s. This placed Black Consciousness activists in close proximity to people like the philosopher <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/richard-albert-turner">Richard Turner</a> at the University of Natal and his circle of New Left activists. </p>
<p>My <a href="http://ukznpress.bookslive.co.za/blog/2018/05/03/black-consciousness-and-progressive-movements-under-apartheid-presents-an-intellectual-history-of-black-consciousness-in-sa-in-the-comparative-perspective-that-biko-originally-called-for/">book</a> points to the limits of the binary that Biko and Turner have often been cast in. </p>
<p>I argue for their common understanding of economic exploitation as the basis of apartheid. They agreed on the need for drastic structural change to address South African society’s social ills but they disagreed on how to achieve this. Pointing to Biko’s thinking on the economic rationale of apartheid unsettles the pigeonhole that he is often placed in as a theoretician of race.</p>
<p>Fourthly, my book acknowledges the tension between Black Consciousness and feminism. I show how female activists within the Black Consciousness Movement appropriated the liberation that their male comrades laid claim to. They also distanced themselves from the white feminist movement.</p>
<p>Lastly, my book evokes the metaphor of “shock waves”. I use the term to describe the impact of Black Consciousness on organisations like Nusas as well as the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03064228308533602?journalCode=rioc20">Christian Institute</a>. The Christian Institute was an ecumenical organisation that had been established by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/reverend-beyers-naude">Reverend Beyers Naudé</a> and a small group of Dutch Reformed clergy in August 1963.</p>
<p>Naudé’s contacts with Biko and the Black Consciousness activists in 1971, together with the conclusions they drew from the <a href="https://www.aluka.org/struggles/collection/SPROCAS">Study Project on Christianity in Apartheid Society</a> (Sprocas), helped change the orientation of the organisation. The first sign of this change was when the second stage of Sprocas, began funding the <a href="https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/Br1973.0376.4354.000.000.1974.18.pdf">Black Community Programmes</a>, an independent, black-run community development organisation.</p>
<p>It also established a White Consciousness Programme that acknowledged and tried to address the problem of white racism in white society. These were organisational expressions of the success of the arguments of Black consciousness. </p>
<h2>Recovering histories</h2>
<p>It is vital to study the past as “an inventory of alternatives” as the British historian, John Tosh, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/22557305/John_Tosh_-_The_Pursuit_of_History">has encouraged</a>. Although the optimism of the post-apartheid <a href="http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/3761/thesis_tshawane_n.pdf">rainbow nation</a> has long since evaporated, South Africa has important and often forgotten histories that must be recovered. The frustrations that are manipulated by populists in the country, and across the world, need to be channelled correctly. South Africans need to remember the organisational and ideological efforts of their country’s noblest daughters and sons and strive to follow in their footsteps.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125238/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Macqueen received funding from the National Research Foundation and the University of Pretoria. </span></em></p>
Black consciousness in South Africa changed blacks and whites.
Ian Macqueen, Lecturer, Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/124904
2019-10-08T14:27:07Z
2019-10-08T14:27:07Z
Buhari’s visit to South Africa eased tensions. But more needs to be done
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296020/original/file-20191008-128648-5a7rce.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of the immediate outcomes of talks between Muhammadu Buhari (left) and Cyril Ramaphosa was the easing of tensions.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There were mixed feelings among Nigerians over President Muhammadu Buhari’s state visit to South Africa because of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-a-new-narrative-could-tackle-anti-migrant-crisis-123145">recent xenophobic attacks</a> in the country. While many Nigerians disapproved of the visit, Buhari’s government <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-10-04-nigeria-in-sa-mzansi-reacts-to-ramaphosas-meeting-with-buhari/">insisted</a> that it was imperative to go ahead. Their argument was that it was vital for the two countries to continue working together.</p>
<p>The recent attacks sparked angry reactions in Nigeria. Some Nigerians called for <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2019-09-03-nigeria-calls-for-sanctions-on-sa-as-relations-flounder/">severing relations</a> with South Africa or imposing additional taxes on South African companies in Nigeria. They claimed these actions would serve as an ample response to the xenophobia and also send a signal to South Africa that xenophobia is unacceptable. </p>
<p>But others argued that there was a need to <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/201909070010.html">mend the relationship</a> so that the two countries could prevent further chaos. Buhari heeded these calls, clearly choosing to tread the path of reconciliation when he visited South Africa. </p>
<p>His visit is important for three main reasons. First, to protect the close economic ties between the countries, second, the Nigerian government wants to be seen as proactively protecting its citizens abroad and lastly because the South African government had to do something to mend fences with its important ally. </p>
<h2>The drivers</h2>
<p>One of the main drivers behind Ramaphosa’s invitation, and Buhari’s visit, was the need to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-safrica-nigeria/south-africa-nigeria-mend-relations-and-agree-trade-deals-idUSKBN1WI28I">ease tensions</a> between the two largest economies in Africa. </p>
<p>There are deep economic ties both ways. Over <a href="https://guardian.ng/news/120-south-african-companies-in-nigeria-risk-attacks/">120 South African companies</a> operate in Nigeria, ranging from mobile operators to retailers. </p>
<p>South Africa, on the other hand, is a significant buyer of Nigerian oil. There are also a <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/201909070010.html">significant number</a> of Nigerian businesspeople, professionals and other migrants in South Africa.</p>
<p>Any further escalation would not only hurt the relationship but also threaten the economies of both countries. </p>
<p>Second, the Nigerian government has been <a href="https://www.channelstv.com/2019/09/03/killings-nigerian-government-have-failed-citizens-in-south-africa-mgbo/">previously accused</a> by the Nigeria Union South Africa (NUSA) of not protecting its own citizens abroad. The visit could therefore be seen in context of addressing the displeasure of Nigerians at home and also to assure those living in South Africa that the government takes their welfare seriously. </p>
<p>For his part Ramaphosa certainly made all the right noises. He reiterated South Africa’s <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/nigerias-president-buhari-visits-south-africa-amid-tensions-over-xenophobia/a-50690234">“deep regret”</a> over the violence and assured Nigerians living in the country of adequate protection.</p>
<p>Third, the visit could also help South Africa address tensions with other aggrieved African countries. These include Rwanda, Malawi and <a href="https://time.com/5671003/what-the-xenophobic-violence-gripping-south-africa-means-for-future-of-country/">Democratic Republic of Congo</a>. All have threatened to cut ties with South Africa over the attacks.</p>
<h2>Bilateral ties</h2>
<p>Although Nigeria and South Africa are often cast as rivals, they have a strong bilateral relationship founded over the decades. This springs in part from Nigeria’s historical role in its support for the liberation struggle against apartheid. Nigeria provided support, as well as <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/south-africa-should-be-eternally-grateful-to-nigeria-7955145">financial backing</a> for the African National Congress (ANC) during its campaign against the apartheid regime. </p>
<p>For instance, after the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> in 1960, Nigeria led calls for sanctions against the apartheid regime. Under the auspices of the Organisation of African Unity, now the African Union, it championed the imposition of a trade embargo on the regime.</p>
<p>But relations haven’t always been cordial. For example, after the end of apartheid rule in 1994, South Africa put pressure on the international community to support the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/1995-11-17-the-crisis-in-nigeria">protests against military rule </a> in Nigeria especially after the execution of Ogoni activists. This enraged the ruling military government. </p>
<p>Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999. This laid the ground for a renewal of cordial relations which resulted in several bilateral arrangements. For example, in October 1999, a South Africa-Nigeria Bi-National Commission was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26664032">established</a>. Several bilateral agreements on trade and investment followed.</p>
<p>The first major international partnership was in 2000, when president Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa both attended the <a href="https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/africa/nigeria/meet0007.html">G8 meeting</a> of the world’s richest states to argue for debt forgiveness for African countries. Both leaders also played a significant role in the creation of the <a href="https://repository.up.ac.za/handle/2263/6453">New Partnership for African Development</a> (Nepad).</p>
<h2>What still needs to be done</h2>
<p>Buhari’s visit has already been judged successful by <a href="http://www.lagazzettadelsudafrica.net/index.php/current-news/6920-joint-communique-on-the-occasion-of-the-state-visit-to-south-africa-by-president-muhammadu-buhari-of-nigeria-and-the-inaugural-session-of-the-elevated-bnc-between-south-africa-and-nigeria">government</a> officials and media outlets in Nigeria. </p>
<p>But there are practical issues that must be addressed by both countries. </p>
<p>For the South African leader, there is need to act on attenuating the rhetoric that foreigners are responsible for the social ills in the country. For instance, the Mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba, has been accused of making “reckless” remarks against migrants which <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017-09-01-mashaba-da-using-xenophobia-like-trump-says-rights-group/">“may incite more xenophobic violence”</a>.</p>
<p>For his part, Buhari needs to provide assurances of protection to South African businesses in Nigeria. He needs to reassure them that Nigeria will continue to protect them and their investments. </p>
<p>Both leaders also need to work together to reduce poverty, corruption and unemployment in their countries. These are some of the key issues stoking attacks and counter-attacks in both countries.</p>
<p>Although Nigeria and South Africa are the two largest economies on the continent, both face huge problems. When it comes to the <a href="http://hdr.undp.org/en/2018-update">human development index</a> Nigeria ranked 157 last year and South Africa 113 out of 189 . On corruption, <a href="https://www.transparency.org/cpi2018?gclid=CjwKCAjwxOvsBRAjEiwAuY7L8gTSkbKPUBpQ21QOG7WewFcH1QrSgr4kMJjtcBcn5saQvKpOyu65NBoC1pQQAvD_BwE">South-Africa was ranked 73 and Nigeria 144</a> out of 180 countries surveyed last year. </p>
<p>The ability of both to work together to address the issues holding back their development would go along way in determining their future together.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124904/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olayinka Ajala 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>
Although Nigeria and South Africa are often cast as rivals they have a strong bilateral relationship
Olayinka Ajala, Associate Lecturer and Conflict Analyst, University of York
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/92187
2018-02-25T07:34:25Z
2018-02-25T07:34:25Z
The paradox of tolerance is put to the test in South Africa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207624/original/file-20180223-108150-w7zsni.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexey Skachkov/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Three days after Jacob Zuma resigned as South African president, the Afrikaans Sunday paper <em>Rapport</em> published two opinion pieces on opposing pages. The two writers, singer Steve Hofmeyr and poet Antjie Krog, <a href="https://www.netwerk24.com/Stemme/Aktueel/steve-hofmeyr-die-val-van-n-fout-20180218">dealt</a> with Zuma’s contested legacy under the combined headline <a href="https://www.netwerk24.com/Stemme/Aktueel/antjie-krog-die-val-van-n-fout-20180216">“The fall of a mistake”</a>).</p>
<p>A social media controversy erupted, but not about what they wrote. It was because <em>Rapport</em> thought it was a good idea to give a platform to Hofmeyr, an apartheid apologist and controversial far right wing singer. The editor of the newspaper <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-02-19-free-or-hate-speech-rapport-under-heat-for-publishing-steve-hofmeyrs-opinion-piece">defended</a> his decision. People on both sides of the raging debate centred their arguments around freedom of expression.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf">South Africa’s Constitution</a> states that everyone has a right to freedom of expression. This includes the freedom to receive or impart information or ideas. Like all the rights in the Bill of Rights, this right is not unlimited. Speech will not be protected if it is propaganda for war, incite violence or advocate hatred based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constituted incitement to cause harm.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www1.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2007/26.html">Constitutional Court</a>, has stated that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>freedom of expression is one of a web of mutually supporting rights in the Constitution.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Most people who subscribe to the Constitutional ideals of an open and democratic society, will jealously guard freedom of expression. And for good reason. In an open and democratic society the freedom to express ideas are <a href="http://www1.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2007/10.html">important</a>.</p>
<p>The Constitution allows for a fairly wide range of views, even if the tone seems hostile, and the <a href="http://www1.saflii.org/za/cases/ZASCA/2016/159.html">language is angry</a>. The further one moves from the private realm to the public space, the more that expression will be protected. For instance, there’s a greater tolerance for expression in <a href="http://www1.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAWCHC/2016/175.html">the political realm</a>.</p>
<p>This freedom to utter ideas also includes the freedom to receive ideas. Being able to receive a wide variety of ideas should be a democratic minimum, and in an ideal world, this will allow individuals to be pursued by reason and good argumentation. And it will enable everyone to make good choices.</p>
<h2>Context</h2>
<p>The role of the media is undoubtedly not only to hold government to account, but also to make sure that people who form opinions, are held accountable for their opinions. And one way to do it is to make sure that the facts on which opinions are based are checked.</p>
<p>So why was there uneasiness with Hofmeyr’s utterances? While he made some questionable remarks before that might not be protected under freedom of expression, the opinion piece was just that – an opinion.</p>
<p>The apprehension over giving Hofmeyr a platform went much further – he is a controversial figure, and has over the years become the pop star/poster boy for a deeply unsavoury brand of a post-apartheid yearning for the apartheid days.</p>
<p>Contextualising Hofmeyr is important. He has been entangled in a number of controversies, mostly prompted by his race baiting, <a href="https://africacheck.org/2014/07/30/comment-dodgy-stats-just-a-means-to-an-end-for-steve-hofmeyr-and-sunette-bridges/">racial victimhood</a>, <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/hofmeyrs-tweet-did-not-offend-blacks-1787350">apartheid denialism</a> and <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2010-12-07-hofmeyr-under-fire-over-racist-rant/">racist speech</a>, arguably bordering on hate speech.</p>
<p>For instance, in 1966 the UN General Assembly <a href="http://legal.un.org/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html">labelled</a> apartheid as a “crime against humanity”, yet in a recent interview Hofmeyr <a href="https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1354443/sharpeville-not-human-rights-transgression-steve-hofmeyr/">described</a> a lot of the racist policy as “brilliant”.</p>
<p>In the same interview Hofmeyr said the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a>, in which the South African police opened fire on black protesters in 1960, killing 69 people was,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>not a human rights transgression because, if you have 200 police and, coming down the road are 9 000 youths with traditional weapons and guns going off, somebody is gonna get hurt.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Hofmeyr is a prolific tweeter, which is where he does a lot of his provocation. One of his most controversial tweets <a href="https://businesstech.co.za/news/general/75672/sa-social-media-storms-in-2014/">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sorry to offend, but in my books, blacks were the architects of Apartheid. Go figure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ventriloquist and comedian <a href="http://conradkoch.co.za/">Conrad Koch</a> challenged him on Twitter, leading to a court interdict by Hofmeyr alleging “harassment”. It was <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/steves-case-against-puppet-falls-flat-1787630">thrown out of court</a>.</p>
<p>During a march against the killing of white farmers, called <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/tshisa-live/tshisa-live/2017-11-02-steve-hofmeyr-under-fire-over-old-apartheid-flag-comments/">#BlackMonday</a>, Hofmeyr proclaimed,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our new flag is atrocious! Rather get used to a diverse nation. Unity is a myth. Tolerance is everything. And a solution to this scourge is primary.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Supporters of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights will be hesitant to silence Hofmeyr in the absence of it being hate speech. At the same time they might also be reluctant that he’s given an uncritical platform from which to spew his intolerant views.</p>
<h2>Simplified opinions</h2>
<p>In an increasingly polarised society like South Africa simplified opinions should be approached with caution. And the editor of an Afrikaans newspaper with a history of propagating apartheid has an even greater duty to ensure that polarising views are adequately balanced and challenged. Even if the piece might not be hate speech.</p>
<p>Philosopher <a href="http://www.friesian.com/popper.htm">Karl Popper</a>’s <a href="http://bigthink.com/articles/the-paradox-of-tolerance">“paradox of tolerance”</a> comes to mind. He <a href="https://kottke.org/17/08/the-paradox-of-tolerance">said</a> that,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Popper the solution was not simply to suppress utterance of intolerance. Rather, intolerance should be countered with rational argument, and if that fails, to suppress such utterances by force.</p>
<p>To apply it to Hofmeyr: One should be intolerant of people who are intolerant, and in the process also be intolerant. But, if one keeps on tolerating intolerance, tolerance will disappear. The balance is fine and <em>Rapport</em>‘s editor made an error of judgement. By not giving Hofmeyr a platform, does not take his freedom of expression away. It just sends the message that his intolerance won’t be tolerated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92187/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elmien du Plessis receives funding from the National Research Fund for a project on the commons. </span></em></p>
In a society like South Africa’s that is increasingly becoming polarised, simplified opinions should be approached with caution.
Elmien du Plessis, Associate Professor of Law, North-West University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/91029
2018-02-11T08:17:45Z
2018-02-11T08:17:45Z
How Masekela’s journeys in exile shaped his music and politics
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205530/original/file-20180208-180816-733hl7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela's 30 years of exile began shortly after the Sharpeville Massacre.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lee Celano/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The world continues to pay tribute to the legendary <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hugh-masekela">Hugh Ramapolo Masekela</a> who died on 23 January 2018. His journeys have reminded us that the itineraries of South African exiles — writers, journalists, performers, photographers, and political activists — have much to offer transnational histories of anti-apartheid resistance.</p>
<p>Masekela knew some formative moments during his own long exile. Radical black internationalism, pan-Africanism and anti-apartheid resistance were all woven into the texture of his sound. Masekela traversed these universes without ever relinquishing his claims to musical autonomy and creative agency as a black artist who made a living through his art.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Remembering Hugh Masekela: the horn player with a shrewd ear for music of the day</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Masekela’s 30 years of exile began shortly after the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville Massacre</a> in March 1960. That is when the apartheid regime’s police opened fire on a group of black protesters in the township of Sharpeville, south of Johannesburg, killing 69 people.</p>
<p>The young Masekela was already a rising star in the <a href="http://www.afribeat.com/sajazz/history/sophiatown.htm">Sophiatown jazz scene</a> when he left his motherland. Once in New York, Masekela dreamed of blending into the golden era of black jazz as a virtuoso <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-bebop-2039578">bebop</a> trumpeter.</p>
<h2>Game-changer</h2>
<p>Although Masekela’s entry into the American music industry was relatively smooth thanks to the mediation of his future wife, the already exiled singer <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/miriam-makeba">Miriam Makeba</a>, his career veered away from bebop. </p>
<p>After his separation from Makeba, Masekela moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 1966 in the slipstream of the relative success of his third album <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/americanization-of-ooga-booga-mw0001304086">“The Americanization of Ooga Booga”</a> (1966). </p>
<p>This decision was a game-changer. Masekela was invited to participate in the prestigious <a href="https://montereyinternationalpopfestival.com/">Monterey International Pop Festival</a> in California in 1967. He then released his first hit and chart-blazer “Grazing in the Grass” (1968).</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela’s chart-topping ‘Grazing in the grass’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Around this time, the first signs of radical black internationalism came to the fore in Masekela’s music emerging on his 1969 album, “Masekela”, arguably the first politically direct album in his oeuvre. </p>
<p>In his 2004 autobiography Masekela defined one of the songs in the album in question, “If There’s Anybody Out There Who Can Hear Me”, as,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>a lament about police brutality, racism, and unfair imprisonment of black males, the suffering of the Vietnamese, and the conscription of innocent young men into the army to fight and kill people who had done nothing to harm them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Stylistically an American blues-rock song, it is performed from the point of view of a black South African responding to the experiences that shaped America during the late 1960s. Masekela screams “from down here below” in the hope that he will be strong enough to finish his story.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0Q9KcWcfE04?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela’s ‘If There’s Anybody Out There Who Can Hear Me’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Pan-Africanist inspiration</h2>
<p>Dazzled by the fame of “Grazing in the Grass” <a href="http://www.racpro.com/grid.php?pid=4&sid=10656&type=ht&from=chhistnet">topping the US charts</a>, the young Masekela spent much of his new fortune on drugs and alcohol. Still, he recorded two notable albums during the early 1970s in collaboration with fellow exiles, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/biography-caiphus-semenya">Caiphus Semenya</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jonas-mosa-gwangwa">Jonas Gwangwa</a>. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hugh-Masekela-Union-South-Africa/dp/B000001A6T">“Masekela and the Union of South Africa”</a> (1971) and <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/home-is-where-the-music-is-mw0000789812">“Home Is Where the Music Is”</a> (1972) both blended the sounds of South Africa with contemporary black musical production in the US. </p>
<p>In 1972 Masekela decided to travel to Africa in search of musical inspiration. His friendship with the Nigerian political activist and pioneer of <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/style/afro-beat-ma0000004495">Afrobeat</a>, <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/fela-kuti-mn0000138833">Fela Anikulapo Kuti</a>, would leave a deep imprint on him as he developed an awareness about the vibrancy of music-making on the continent. </p>
<p>During his travels through Guinea, Nigeria, Liberia, Zaire and Ghana, Masekela was exposed to energetic political debate pivoting on competing pan-Africanist agendas, anti-imperialism and the consolidation of nation-building initiatives in decolonising Africa. </p>
<p>Back in New York with the esteemed Ghanaian band, <a href="https://soundwayrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hedzoleh-soundz">Hedzoleh Soundz</a>, Masekela was able to restore his reputation. He fully committed himself to a new vision: raising awareness of contemporary African music on the other side of the Atlantic.</p>
<h2>Rumble in the Jungle</h2>
<p>With record producer <a href="http://www.stewartlevine.com/">Stewart Levine</a>, Masekela quickly went on to produce the famous <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/jun/21/soul-power-documentary-ali-frazier">“Zaire ‘74”</a> festival. This three-day black music event was intended to precede the famous boxing bout known as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/oct/15/-sp-forty-years-rumble-in-the-jungle-kinshasa-muhammad-ali-george-foreman">“Rumble in the Jungle”</a> between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali.</p>
<p><a href="http://africasacountry.com/2016/06/the-rumble-in-the-jungle/">“Zaire '74”</a> juxtaposed Black Power and Soul Power with dictator Mobutu Sese Seko’s violent campaigns to consolidate Zairean nationalism. For their part, Masekela and Levine orchestrated the event to create a deliberately crafted transatlantic dialogue between Latino, African American and continental African musical traditions.</p>
<p>The festival fell short of Masekela’s expectations of producing a “black Woodstock” in Africa, not least because boxing match was postponed due to Foreman’s injury which deprived “Zaire '74” of its function as curtain-raiser. </p>
<p>Masekela did not himself appear at the festival. Yet “Zaire '74” would be crucial in consolidating his prominence as an icon of the anti-apartheid struggle.</p>
<h2>Anti-apartheid resistance</h2>
<p>Anthems showing acute political involvement began to emerge from Masekela’s oeuvre from this point onwards. One of his most famous anti-apartheid anthems, “Stimela”, was written one gloomy evening in a Woodstock club during a drinking session back in 1971. It was recorded in March 1974 as part of Masekela’s album “I Am Not Afraid”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/650IZTWZa50?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela’s ‘Stimela’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Masekela’s opening monologue lists all the places from which labour migrants travel to Johannesburg to work in the city’s mines. The song poignantly emphasises the pain of travelling to a place from which there is no easy return. The mechanical scream of the train functions as the moment when the body of the exiled Masekela becomes a weapon of protest: with exquisite drama the voice of the displaced musician serves to introduce the artistry of his trumpet solo.</p>
<p>Over the years Masekela’s courageous voice against the injustices of apartheid was loud and clear. There are numerous examples, but we cite two.</p>
<p>“Soweto Blues” was written in the aftermath of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">1976 Soweto Uprising</a>. It was when young black people in the township rose up against the apartheid government’s directive to make Afrikaans compulsory as a language of instruction in schools. </p>
<p>Then there was the 1985 hit “Bring Him Back Home” triggered by a birthday card <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/song/bring-him-back-home-nelson-mandela-mt0004189288">smuggled</a> out of Pollsmoor Prison from then incarcerated ANC leader Nelson Mandela to Masekela.</p>
<p>In September 1990 Masekela <a href="https://www.news24.com/Books/book-extract-still-grazing-masekela-on-coming-home-from-exile-20180123">returned</a> from exile. This concluded his physical journeys. But as musicologist Lindelwa Dalamba has pointed out, addressing Masekela’s pan-Africanist musical indebtedness after his death:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The journeys that Masekela mapped for us as a nomad in exile cannot be said to have ended.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91029/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ron Levi and Louise Bethlehem receive funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP / 2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement no. 615564.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Louise Bethlehem and Ron Levi receive funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Program (FP / 2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement no. 615564.
</span></em></p>
Hugh Masekela’s itinerary-in-exile was loud and clear in his songs.
Ron Levi, Ph.D. fellow in European Research Council (ERC) project "Apartheid- The Global Itinerary: South African Cultural Formations in Transnational Circulation 1948-1990", led by Prof. Louise Bethlehem, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Louise Bethlehem, Associate professor in Cultural Studies and English, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86414
2017-10-29T11:12:40Z
2017-10-29T11:12:40Z
Remembering Hugh Masekela: the horn player with a shrewd ear for music of the day
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192191/original/file-20171027-13340-27cnqe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela performing during the 16th Cape Town International Jazz Festival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Esa Alexander/The Times</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Trumpeter, flugelhorn-player, singer, composer and activist Hugh Ramapolo Masekela <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/tshisa-live/tshisa-live/2018-01-23-breaking-legendary-musician-hugh-masekela-has-died-report/">has passed away</a> after a long battle with prostate cancer.</p>
<p>When he cancelled his appearance last year at the Johannesburg Joy of Jazz Festival, taking time out to deal with <a href="https://www.enca.com/media/video/hugh-masekela-cancels-future-shows-as-he-battles-cancer?playlist=112">his serious health issues</a>, fans were forced to return to his recorded opus for reminders of his unique work. Listening through that half-century of disks, the nature and scope of the trumpeter’s achievement becomes clear.</p>
<p>Masekela had two early horn heroes. </p>
<p>The first was part-mythical: the life of jazz great <a href="http://www.redhotjazz.com/bix.html">Bix Biederbecke</a> filtered through Kirk Douglas’s acting and Harry James’s trumpet, in the 1950 movie <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/young_man_with_a_horn/">“Young Man With A Horn”</a>. Masekela saw the film as a schoolboy at the Harlem Bioscope in Johannesburg’s Sophiatown. The erstwhile chorister resolved “then and there to become a trumpet player”.</p>
<p>The second horn hero, unsurprisingly, was <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/miles-davis-mn0000423829/biography">Miles Davis</a>. And while Masekela’s accessible, storytelling style and lyrical instrumental tone are very different, he shared one important characteristic with the American: his life and music were marked by constant reinvention. As Davis reportedly said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t want to be yesterday’s guy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Much has already been written about Masekela’s life and its landmarks: playing in the Huddleston Jazz Band in the 1950s on a horn donated by Louis Armstrong; performing in the musical <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/king-kong-musical-1959-1961">“King Kong”</a> in the 1960s and at the Guildhall and then Manhattan schools of music with singer <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/miriam-makeba">Miriam Makeba</a>; US pop successes in the 1970s and then touring Paul Simon’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/apr/19/paul-simon-graceland-acclaim-outrage">“Graceland”</a> in the 80s and 90s. </p>
<p>What is less discussed is the <a href="http://electricjive.blogspot.co.za/search?q=Masekela">music</a>, and the innovative imagination he has periodically applied to draw it fresh from the flames.</p>
<h2>Breaking new ground</h2>
<p>The Huddleston band, plus time as sideman and in stage shows, were the traditional career path for a young musician. But then Masekela broke his first new ground. With fellow originals, including saxophonist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/kippie-jeremiah-moeketsi">Kippie Moeketsi</a>, pianist <a href="https://abdullahibrahim.co.za/">Abdullah Ibrahim</a> and trombonist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/jonas-mosa-gwangwa">Jonas Gwangwa</a>, as <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/525696698/the-legacy-of-the-jazz-epistles-south-africas-short-lived-but-historic-group">The Jazz Epistles</a> they cut the first LP of modern African jazz in South Africa.</p>
<p><a href="http://tonymcgregor-tonysplace.blogspot.co.za/2008/02/jazz-epistle-verse-1.html">“Jazz Epistle: Verse One”</a> (1960) featured band compositions marked by challenging improvisation – “a cross between mbaqanga and bebop”. <a href="http://www.theartsdesk.com/new-music/south-african-sound-mbaqanga">Mbaqanga</a> is form of South African township jive and <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-bebop-2039578">bebop</a> an American jazz style developed in the 1940s.</p>
<p>Masekela had also joined the pit band and worked as a copyist for South Africa’s first black musical, “King Kong”. </p>
<p>This exposure attracted attention to his talent from potential patrons at home and abroad. Pushed by the horrors of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> when the South African police shot and killed 69 people on 21 March 1960, and pulled by donated air-tickets and scholarships, Masekela left for London, and then New York.</p>
<p>In the next two decades, Masekela’s re-visioning of his music took many forms. He found America hard, but with wife Miriam Makeba (the marriage lasted from 1964 - 1966), the production skills of Gwangwa, and the support of American singer <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/harry-belafonte-mn0000952794/biography">Harry Belafonte</a> he proactively introduced audiences to South African music and the destruction of apartheid. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=767&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/192192/original/file-20171027-13331-1wspb5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=964&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A young Hugh Masekela in the 1950s blowing his horn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Johncom</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the ironically titled 1966 live <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/americanization-of-ooga-booga-mw0001304086">“Americanisation of Ooga Booga”</a>, he demonstrated the creative possibilities of “township bop”. Masekela did this by mashing up repertoire and playing styles from the South Africa he had left and the America he had landed in. </p>
<p>But he was also looking in other directions: in collaborations with other African musicians; towards fusion (with <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-crusaders-mn0000136075/biography">The Crusaders</a>), rock (with <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-byrds-mn0000631774/biography">The Byrds</a>) and even pop at the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/16/masekela-shankar-play-monterey">Monterey Pop</a>, festival. </p>
<p>That list captures only a fraction of his projects in the 1960s. Some bore instant fruit: his 1968 single, <a href="http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=8369">“Grazin’ In the Grass”</a>, topped the Billboard Hot 100 list and sold four million copies; the previous year’s “Up Up and Away” became an instant standard.</p>
<p>In 1971, he teamed up with Gwangwa and Caiphus Semenya for another pan-African vision: <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/hugh-masekela-the-union-of-south-africa-mw0000625550">The Union of South Africa</a>. In 1972 he explored a stronger jazz orientation on <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/home-is-where-the-music-is-mw0000789812">“Home is Where The Music Is”</a> with, among others, sax player <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dudu-pukwana-mn0000210863/biography">Dudu Pukwana</a>, bassist <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/eddie-gomez-mn0000794244">Eddie Gomez</a>, keyboardist <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/larry-willis-mn0000114935/biography">Larry Willis</a> and Semenya.</p>
<h2>Sixties counterculture</h2>
<p>But as the title of “Grazin’ In the Grass” suggests, Masekela was also bewitched by other aspects of Sixties counterculture. He dated his addiction back to the alcohol-focused social climate of his early playing years in South Africa, but by the early Seventies he admitted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I had destroyed my life with drugs and alcohol and could not get a gig or a band together. No recording company was interested in me…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That depression inspired the song that achieved genuinely iconic status back home in South Africa: the 1974 reflection on migrant labour, <a href="http://www.mahala.co.za/art/curse-of-the-coal-train/">“Stimela/Coal Train”</a>.</p>
<p>Foreign critics have handed that status to other Masekela songs, such as “Soweto Blues”, “Gold” or the much later “Bring Him Back Home”. Yet powerful though those are, it is Stimela, with its slow-burning steam-piston rhythm that captured the hearts of South Africans in struggle back home, and still does today. And of course the lyrics:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s a train that comes from Namibia and Malawi /there’s a train that comes from Zambia and Zimbabwe/ from Angola and Mozambique…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Masekela said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For me songs come like a tidal wave … At this low point, for some reason, the tidal wave that whooshed in on me came all the way from the other side of the Atlantic: from Africa; from home.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Shortly afterwards, Masekela headed off to Ghana, hooked up with <a href="https://soulsafari.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/masekela-introducing-hedzoleh-soundz/">Hedzoleh Soundz</a>, and was soon back in the charts. “Stimela” received its first outing on the album <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/hugh-masekela-i-am-not-afraid">“I Am Not Afraid”</a>, with West African and American co-players including pianist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/15/arts/music/joe-sample-crusaders-pianist-dies-at-75.html">Joe Sample</a>. </p>
<p>By the mid ‘80s, the hornman was back in southern Africa, recording <a href="http://afrosynth.blogspot.co.za/2009/08/hugh-masekela-techno-bush-1984-jive.html">“Technobush”</a> at the mobile <a href="http://shifty.co.za/the-shifty-story/">Shifty Studio</a> in Botswana, and performing for the Medu Arts Ensemble with a Botswanan/South African band, <a href="http://afrosynth.blogspot.co.za/2009/08/hugh-masekela-with-kalahari-tomorrow.html">Kalahari</a>. His music shifted again: roots mbaqanga came strongly to the fore to speak simply and directly to people now openly battling the apartheid regime just across the border.</p>
<h2>Returning home</h2>
<p>After liberation and his return home, Masekela once more chose fresh directions. In 1997 he banished his addictions and began to showcase the virtuoso player he could have been 30 years earlier without the distractions of the West Coast. He fronted big European jazz bands, and benchmarked a long musical friendship with Larry Willis with the magisterial <a href="http://revive-music.com/2012/05/10/hugh-masekela-larry-willis-friends/">Friends</a>.</p>
<p>But his shrewd ear for the music of today, rather than yesterday, also took him into younger company. He collaborated with current stars – including singer <a href="http://www.thandiswa.com/">Thandiswa Mazwai</a> – often encouraging them to take centre stage. Just before the recurrence of his cancer, he was <a href="http://www.channel24.co.za/The-Juice/News/eye-surgery-forces-hugh-masekela-to-postpone-collab-with-riky-rick-20170915">planning</a> a festival collaboration with rapper Riky Rick. </p>
<p>To cap the transformation, the individualistic rebel of the 60s and 70s became an elder statesman of social activism. In 2001, he established a <a href="http://www.artlink.co.za/news_article.htm?contentID=26912">foundation</a> to help other musicians escape addiction. Once more he foregrounded the music of continental Africa, to campaign against xenophobia. And the return of his own illness became the cue to <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/10/07/hugh-masekela-encourages-men-to-get-checked-for-prostate-cancer">exhort</a> other men to get checked for prostate cancer. </p>
<p>Other South African musicians have succeeded overseas; many have made one mid-career image switch – but few have shown us, in only one person but more than 30 albums, so many of the faces and possibilities of South African jazz.</p>
<p><em>Hugh Masekela, musician, activist. Born: 4 April 1939; Died: 23 January 2018</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Masekela Playlist:</strong></p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Eq0iSZzyWhM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Blues for Hughie’ from the album, Jazz Epistle Verse One.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Kuu_EEbyreA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Unhlanhla (Lucky Boy)’ from The Americanization of Ooga Booga.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qxXZF60EPdM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The major Masekela hit, ‘Grazin in the Grass’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YTUpZ2-RQdM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela with ‘Up Up & Away’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LYOlXyv-NOU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Shebeen’ from The Union of South Africa.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TOJMClzQ294?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘The Big Apple’ from Home is Where The Music Is.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/l1fIjdUEe5c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Stimela’, a South African classic.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PGZKfIYJvJ8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Motlalepula’ from Technobush.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1n1k7NrHUpI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Hugh Masekela and Larry Willis live.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vxSm9Z3koZ0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘African Sunset’ with Thandiswa Mazwai.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9QnXNoVrR8Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Masekela in conversation with the rapper Riky Rick.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86414/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell 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>
South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela made an impact across the world during his decades-long musical career.
Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/60658
2016-06-13T09:17:14Z
2016-06-13T09:17:14Z
Soweto uprising: four decades on, South Africa still struggles with violent policing
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126261/original/image-20160613-29216-e0c2pf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A recent protest by South African schoolchildren which had to be quelled by an under-resourced police force</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>June days in South Africa can be dark, cold and short. The sun rises late and sets early. Highland frosts feel their way through blades of blemished veld; mists mask roads ahead and behind. The month brings with it the year’s mid-point and shortest day; a chance to reflect on what has been, and what may lie ahead.</p>
<p>Five days before the equinox South Africa celebrates <a href="http://www.gov.za/youth-day-2015">Youth Day</a>. Forty years ago on 16 June 1976, thousands of school children in Soweto, Johannesburg, braved the Highveld cold to protest the apartheid government’s decision that they be educated in a strange tongue: <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Afrikaans</a>. Out on the street the students were confronted by the South African Police force (SAP). Teargas was followed by gunfire. Young bodies fell; cameras <a href="https://www.google.co.za/search?q=photograph+of+hector+pieterson&rlz=1C1CHMO_en-GBZA648ZA648&tbm=isch&imgil=-nSZWu7xmToV5M%253A%253BZcLIipsW1ZziwM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.fimomitchell.com%25252Fblog%25252Fsoweto-apartheid%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=-nSZWu7xmToV5M%253A%252CZcLIipsW1ZziwM%252C_&usg=__2QMDkEQA2eQXBvR0tY9wnnDW7a0%3D&biw=1920&bih=911&dpr=1&ved=0ahUKEwiv4_fj6fTMAhVJL8AKHVIvBzMQyjcINg&ei=vmRFV6-MJ8negAbS3pyYAw#imgrc=3dkBnajiT0w66M%3A">clicked</a>. The apartheid system was shaken irrevocably.</p>
<p>Youth Day takes its name from the energy and courage of those young learners. But had the police not responded as they did, 16 June might simply be another winter’s day. Police work is practical and symbolic. Through interactions with police, the state communicates with its public. In 1976, police actions embodied the unjust, indefensible and violent state attitude towards black citizens.</p>
<p>It exposed, in ways not seen since the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville</a> massacre on March 21, 1960 the violence through which apartheid was upheld. South Africans remember June 16, 1976 because youth took to the streets, but also because police looked them in the eye and pulled their triggers. The ripples set in motion by the youth of ‘76 had by the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/youth-politics-south-africa-1980s">mid-80s</a> crippled the economy, led to <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/state-emergency-south-africa-1960-and-1980s">states of emergency</a>, public “unrest”, and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-africas-foreign-relations-during-apartheid-1948">international sanctions</a> against the apartheid regime.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126138/original/image-20160610-29209-i2z0d6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">South African children visit the Hector Pieterson memorial in Soweto outside Johannesburg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Lerato Maduna</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Nelson Mandela freed</h2>
<p>The early '90s saw <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/nelson-mandela-freed">Nelson Mandela</a> freed from prison and liberation movements <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/fw-de-klerk-announces-release-nelson-mandela-and-unbans-political-organisations">unbanned</a>. The South African Police <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02167/04lv02264/05lv02335/06lv02357/07lv02372/08lv02379.htm">re-positioned</a> itself as an objective arbiter of political tension while being accused of using undercover agents to stoke ethnic violence, at a time when the country recorded its highest ever murder rate. </p>
<p>In 1995, a year before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (<a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/truth-and-reconciliation-commission-trc">TRC</a>), the police service <a href="http://www.saps.gov.za/resource_centre/publications/police_mag/police_magazine_feb_2015.pdf">merged</a> with the 10 <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands">Bantustan</a> police agencies to form a single South African Police Service (SAPS). <a href="https://www.issafrica.org/uploads/2016-05-19-SAPS-Shake-Up-Presentation.pdf">Civilian ranks</a> replaced military, and mustard-coloured vehicles were painted cloud-white.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.csvr.org.za/wits/papers/papsapjr.htm">Training curricula</a> were revised to embrace human rights, and “<a href="http://www.csvr.org.za/index.php/publications/1462-a-review-of-community-policing.html">community policing</a>” was imported from the wealthy West. <a href="http://www.csvr.org.za/wits/papers/papbruc6.htm">Transformation policies</a> saw black members and women rising through the ranks rapidly. All the while, the TRC shone a light on the SAP’s <a href="https://www.enca.com/look-vlakplaas-apartheids-death-squad-hq">torture farms</a>, as well as on the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk-exile">detention camps</a> of the liberation movements. It exposed habits of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/09/world/apartheid-torturer-testifies-as-evil-shows-its-banal-face.html?pagewanted=all">torture</a> and <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2013/10/29/remember-the-past-and-question-the-present">murder</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126136/original/image-20160610-29238-n7o1o4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nelson Mandela and his wife Graca Machel attend a ceremony to receive the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report on October 29, 1998.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the run-up to the '94 elections, the African National Congress (ANC) believed, perhaps not unexpectedly, that once police were under an elected-ANC’s control, South Africans would accept their authority. They expected that citizens would accept the criminal law as legitimate and cease the daily violence. This violence had evolved as a product of oppression and as a tool of political resistance, security and punishment in <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-10-02-south-africas-mysterious-murder-rate/#.V1q4r7t97IV">preceding decades</a>.</p>
<h2>“Dog deals with a bone”</h2>
<p>Instead crime and violence spread, sending politicians scrambling. In 1999 then Minister of Safety and Security <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/pebble.asp?relid=2932">Steve Tshwete</a> <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/2012/12/20/police-public-order-expert-proves-a-recalcitrant-witness-at-marikana-inquiry">declared</a> that government would “deal with criminals in the same way a dog deals with a bone”. With this posturing the ANC <a href="https://www.issafrica.org/uploads/CW41Dixon.pdf">stripped law-breaking</a> of the historical, socioeconomic and political overtones through which it had <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Governing-through-Crime-in-South-Africa-The-Politics-of-Race-and-Class/Super/p/book/9781409444749">explained violence under apartheid</a>, framing “criminals” instead as bad people who threatened democracy.</p>
<p>In 2000 South Africans were shown precisely how a police dog “deals with a bone” when video emerged of four white officers and their dogs <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/30/chrismcgreal">mauling</a> three Mozambican men. It was a reminder that, like its violent crime, the horrors of apartheid policing were not snuffed out by elections.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/onmq-g2kx-o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Four white South African policemen set their dogs on three Mozambicans as a ‘training exercise’ and videotaped it. PLEASE NOTE: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC VIOLENCE.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In response to public anger over crime, the 2000s saw government increase police budgets at rates above inflation. Police ranks swelled to 200 000 and the rhetoric of police “service” was abandoned in favour of “force”. <a href="http://fromtheold.com/news/new-police-ranks-south-africa-welcome-sapf-2010040117527.html">Military ranks</a> were reintroduced in 2010 amid calls by leaders for police to “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1584641/Kill-the-bastards-South-African-police-advised.html">kill the [criminal] bastards</a>” and “<a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/police-must-shoot-to-kill-worry-later---cele-453587">shoot to kill</a>”. Some officers have been so emboldened that they have filmed and shared their shootings.</p>
<p>Even the 2012 horrors that happened at the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012">Marikana</a> mine, where police shot and killed 34 striking mineworkers, were <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbAlgo_pzVg">captured</a> on police cell phones. Scenes from that day have become as iconic as those of a dying <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hector-pieterson">Hector Pieterson</a>, photographed in Soweto 40 years ago this week. Has anything changed?</p>
<p>The SAPS is far from a perfect organisation, but it is not dysfunctional. Many SAPS officers face extreme challenges, like policing a claimed average of <a href="http://www.saps.gov.za/about/stratframework/annual_report/2014_2015/SAPS_AR_2014-15_for_viewing.pdf">40 protests a day.</a> </p>
<p>A further challenge is <a href="http://www.khayelitshacommission.org.za/images/towards_khaye_docs/3_Part_Three.pdf">patrolling</a> informal settlements without lighting or roads where murders can exceed 100 per 100 000 residents (the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/gsh/en/big-picture.html">global average</a> was 6.2 in 2012) and where residents <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/sinoxolos-boyfriend-allegedly-stabs-state-witness-20160509">fear attack from neighbours</a> if they speak to detectives.</p>
<h2>Police salary a dream</h2>
<p>In a country with a <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=7281">27% unemployment rate</a> and where 60% of workers <a href="https://africacheck.org/reports/do-60-of-south-african-workers-earn-less-than-r5000-a-month/">earn less</a> than R5 000 a month, a police starting salary of R13 000 is the kind of thing dreams are made of. Of the nearly <a href="http://www.saps.gov.za/about/stratframework/annual_report/2014_2015/SAPS_AR_2014-15_for_viewing.pdf">200 000 job applications</a> received by the SAPS in 2014/15, just 1.4% (2 827) were successful.</p>
<p>It is in this context that the job is something to be coveted. But this doesn’t necessarily produce professional, integrity-based policing. Rather, many officers –- including the <a href="http://city-press.news24.com/News/Farlams-Marikana-findings-Leading-role-players-slammed-20150628">most senior</a> –- do what they must to please their managers and present a public image of competence.</p>
<p>For some this means doing the best job they can do, <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/policeman-shares-lunch-homeless-woman-photo-goes-viral">responding</a> to people’s needs compassionately and efficiently. But for others it means <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFiCiJeQMo8">abusing sex workers</a>; shooting <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/03/14/CT-filling-station-robbery-ends-in-shooting-four-killed">without fair warning</a>; <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2009-10-17-top-cops-knew-stats-were-cooked">manipulating</a> crime data; <a href="http://www.icd.gov.za/sites/default/files/documents/IPID_Annual_Report%20_2014-15.pdf">torturing</a> criminal suspects; (allegedly) <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/pics-cops-terrorise-vyeboom-residents-2026300">assaulting</a> vulnerable villagers; even <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2015/08/25/Mido-Macia-all-eight-accused-found-guilty-of-murder">beating a man to death</a> for publicly questioning police authority – when they believe nobody is watching.</p>
<p>It’s an <a href="http://www.elections.org.za/content/Elections/2016-Municipal-Elections/Home/">election year</a> in South Africa. The opposition Economic Freedom Fighters’ <a href="http://www.economicfreedomfighters.org/full-document-2014-eff-elections-manifesto/">manifesto claims</a> that “20 years [into democracy], the police still kill people!” It promises the party will protect street vendors from “police harassment” and communities from “intimidation from the police”. That the party believes these promises will win it votes reflects very poorly on the SAPS.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/126135/original/image-20160610-29222-82412e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Policemen stand in front of the Hector Pieterson memorial during the 30th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nevertheless, more South Africans are <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0341/P03412013.pdf">satisfied</a> with police than not, even though only <a href="http://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Dispatches/ab_r6_dispatchno56_police_corruption_in_africa.pdf">49% trust</a> them. Ultimately, <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0341/P03412013.pdf">South Africans agree</a> that to address crime, government should spend money on socioeconomic interventions rather than police. Indeed, what democracy has not yet delivered is an equal country or economy, in the absence of which policing will always likely defend the status quo established by extreme concentrations of power and wealth.</p>
<h2>Volunteer for the police</h2>
<p>In my many years of working with the SAPS as a volunteer and researcher, most police action I have observed has targeted poor, black men. But one needn’t be a researcher or reservist to know this: <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/death-andries-tatane-service-delivery-protest-free-state-sparks-national-outrage">Andries Tatane</a>, who was killed by police during a service delivery protest, was black and poor, the Marikana workers were black and poor, the residents of <a href="http://www.khayelitshacommission.org.za/images/towards_khaye_docs/Khayelitsha_Commission_Report_WEB_FULL_TEXT_C.pdf">Khayelitsha</a> (one of Cape Town’s largest and deadliest townships) are overwhelmingly black and poor.</p>
<p>The tragic irony is that, despite their relatively good salaries, many police officers remain poor. Their income is stretched to support networks of vulnerable kin. So while one group of relatively poor men and women police another, a political and economic elite enjoys the fruits of a violently unjust society.</p>
<p>As such, police signal to the country’s vulnerable young men that the state does not trust them. The signals entrench divisions already established by a landscape many young people literally cannot afford the taxi fair to traverse in search of a job in a market which rejects almost half of young job-seekers. All of this happens against the backdrop a welfare system which offers subsidies to almost every category of vulnerable person but for able bodied, unemployed young men.</p>
<p>The South African Police Service is a very different organisation from its apartheid predecessor. And yet, in its actions and inactions, it is at times too easy to see similarities between them. Ultimately, one cannot reform a police service without reforming the context in which it operates. In South Africa, a broken education system continues to <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/education/2016/04/19/poor-education-traps-black-youth-in-poverty">trap the poor majority</a> in poverty.</p>
<p>Despite huge changes South Africa remains a country of stark, violence-inducing inequalities and injustices, wounds which police officers cannot heal. Instead, through their work they both shepherd and protect, criminalise and abuse the vulnerabilities and struggles of millions of South Africans still waiting for their winter to end.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60658/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Faull previously received funding from the National Research Foundation.</span></em></p>
It is exactly forty years since the Soweto uprising in June 1976 where the South African police met the students with brutal force. How much has changed in terms of policing?
Andrew Faull, Senior Researcher at the Centre of Criminology, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.