tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/south-african-history-18180/articlesSouth African history – The Conversation2024-03-08T13:24:16Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2253742024-03-08T13:24:16Z2024-03-08T13:24:16ZEdward Webster: South African intellectual, teacher, activist, a man of great energy and integrity, and the life and soul of any party<p>Eddie Webster (82), sociologist and emeritus professor at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, who <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/general-news/2024/2024-03/wits-mourns-the-loss-of-professor-eddie-webster.html">died on 5 March 2024</a>, lived a huge life, applying himself to many different arenas with great energy and insight. </p>
<p>His achievements are quite extraordinary. He was an intellectual, a teacher, a leader, an activist for social change, a builder of institutions, a rugby player and jogger, a man of great energy and integrity, and the life and soul of any party. </p>
<p>As an intellectual and activist he was always independent and critical, and always engaged, whether <a href="https://saftu.org.za/archives/7862">working with trade unions</a> or with South Africa’s new democratic government. It was important to get your hands dirty working for change, he always said, but as important to retain your autonomy and intellectual integrity. This held for the university itself, an institution to which he was wholly committed but at the same time found deeply disappointing when it came to social justice. His life was shaped by these kinds of tensions. </p>
<p>Eddie was one of that <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/graduations/2017/a-life-servicing-many-generations-.html">pioneering</a> generation of scholar-activists at the university, white academics who identified with and supported the black resistance movement, and who saw the world in new ways and pioneered the production of new knowledge: his close colleague, feminist and environmental sociologist <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jacklyn-cock-201078">Jacklyn Cock</a>, anthropologist and democratic activist <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/david-joseph-webster#:%7E:text=On%201%20May%201989%2C%20South,Mandela%20was%20released%20from%20prison.">David Webster</a> (assassinated in 1989), and distinguished historian Phil Bonner. </p>
<p>Eddie inspired generations of us with his vision and practice of critically engaged scholarship – not only in South Africa, but <a href="https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/critical-engagement-with-public-sociology">across the world</a>.</p>
<h2>Independent streak</h2>
<p>In 1986, believing that the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) was out of touch with the majority of South Africans, he drove an investigation called the <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/research-news/2022/2022-10/wits-at-a-time-of-national-crisis-then-and-now.html">Perspectives on Wits</a> with his colleagues. They explored the views of trade unionists and community activists about the university. The university had agreed to fund this investigation. But it was unhappy with the results. These revealed that the institution’s own narrative about its liberal opposition to apartheid was not shared by black South Africans, who saw it as serving white and corporate interests.</p>
<p>A few years earlier, at a time of great repression of unions, he and <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/sources/alumni-news/2017/distinguished-historian-passes-away.html">Phil Bonner</a> had attempted to set up a worker education programme on campus. But the university refused to let it happen. The university’s main funders, such as <a href="https://www.angloamerican.com/">Anglo American</a>, would have been greatly displeased by such a programme – a nice illustration of the point made in the Perspectives document. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/trade-unions-and-the-new-economy-3-african-case-studies-show-how-workers-are-recasting-their-power-in-the-digital-age-214509">Trade unions and the new economy: 3 African case studies show how workers are recasting their power in the digital age</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A decade later the indomitable Eddie was able to establish a branch of the Global Labour University at Wits, and bring trade unionists into the heart of the institution. He was not someone to give up easily.</p>
<h2>Insatiable curiosity</h2>
<p>Eddie worked closely with South Africa’s emerging trade union movement in the mid-1970s. At the time black workers were a tightly controlled source of cheap labour for South Africa’s booming industrial economy, and the unions were not recognised legally and suffered severe repression by employers and the state together. Eddie believed that a strong trade union movement democratically controlled by workers would be a powerful force for change.</p>
<p>He contributed to educational programmes for trade unionists, advocating for the recognition of the unions whenever he could. He co-founded the <a href="https://www.southafricanlabourbulletin.org.za/">South African Labour Bulletin</a>, which served as a forum for the interaction between academics and trade unionists, and the Industrial Education Institute with his comrade <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/rick-turner">Rick Turner</a> and others. Turner was assassinated by the apartheid government in 1978. </p>
<p>Eddie went on to support the unions, and <a href="https://mediadon.co.za/2024/03/06/cosatu-mourns-the-passing-of-revolutionary-professor-eddie-webster/">conduct research</a> with and for them, his entire life. Generations of union shop stewards and organisers knew him through his support, teaching and research, and he was widely loved and revered as “comrade Prof”.</p>
<p>As an intellectual Eddie was insatiably curious about the world and how it worked and about new possibilities emerging for progressive change. While the sociology classics were a foundation for his thinking, he kept up to date with new literature and ideas. </p>
<p>He founded Industrial Sociology at Wits and established the Sociology of Work Unit (now the Society, Work and Politics Institute <a href="https://www.swop.org.za/">SWOP</a>) as a research unit in the early 1980s as a way of stimulating labour research and deepening his work with unions. The unit organised and financed research, held seminars and workshops, provided a home for students, and increasingly collaborated with colleagues at other universities and overseas. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/worker-organisations-can-survive-the-digital-age-heres-how-194379">Worker organisations can survive the digital age. Here's how</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Eddie loved working with others, whether students or colleagues or trade unionists. He knew that ideas arose from wide reading, discussions and interactions, and frequently said “there is no such thing as an original idea”. For its students, staff, colleagues and associates SWOP stood out as a place of vibrant intellectual exchange and curiosity about each other’s work: it was an intellectual home and a place of comradeship and critique that felt unique in the university.</p>
<h2>Academic and teaching legacy</h2>
<p>Eddie was also a great teacher, bringing all of his passion for ideas and his vivid sense of history and change and struggle into the classroom, exciting students about the life of the intellect and the life of struggle. At SWOP he established the first internship programme for black postgraduate students to support and encourage them in what they often experienced as a hostile environment.</p>
<p>Eddie regularly undertook large-scale research projects and recruited numbers of students to participate in field research. This was another learning opportunity, where students immersed themselves in the collective quest for knowledge and began to see themselves as researchers.</p>
<p>In the midst of a multitude of projects, Eddie remained committed to his academic work, publishing a great volume and range of articles and books, and achieving honours and recognition globally.</p>
<p>His first book, <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Cast_in_a_Racial_Mould.html?id=ewPUAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Cast in a Racial Mould</a>, based on his PhD, provided the intellectual foundation for the new discipline of industrial sociology in South Africa, developing an analysis of changing workplace technology and its impact on trade unionism – specifically the workings of race and class. This provided a material basis for understanding the emergence of the new black mass unionism. </p>
<p>His co-authored book <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781444303018">Grounding Globalisation</a> provided a new account of globalisation and trade unions through a comparison of South Africa, Korea and Australia. Global scholars were inspired by it and it <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781444303018">won a major prize</a> from the American Sociological Association. </p>
<p>His most recent book, <a href="https://witspress.co.za/page/detail/Recasting-Workers%EF%BF%BD-Power/?k=9781776148820">Recasting Workers’ Power</a>, written with Lynford Dor, returns full cycle to the themes of his first book, exploring the impact of technological change on the nature of work in the gig economy, and drawing lessons from forms of worker organisation and collective action that have been emerging across Africa.</p>
<p>Each of these books extends the boundaries of our knowledge by exploring the cutting edge of social change – in a sense helping us see the future and, indeed, helping to make it.</p>
<h2>A great love for life</h2>
<p>It is impossible to think about Eddie without thinking about <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/luli-callinicos-416446">Luli Callinicos</a>, historian and biographer, and the great love of his life. Indeed, she was the rock on which he built his achievements. I remember with great fondness the Greek Easter feasts shared at their home, and the many other gatherings with family, friends and colleagues.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-racially-divided-south-africans-can-find-their-common-humanity-57136">How racially divided South Africans can find their common humanity</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://sociology.berkeley.edu/alumni-manager/michael-burawoy">Michael Burawoy</a>, the great American sociologist and lifelong friend of Eddie, once told me that he had never laughed as much as he did when he was with Eddie and his colleagues from SWOP. Eddie enjoyed people and was deeply generous; he was a great raconteur, he loved being alive. Three weeks ago he was celebrated for his <a href="https://www.facebook.com/bezparkrun/">200th Park Run</a> in one of Johannesburg’s large parks. Whatever he did he did fully, heart and soul. He was not bigger than life, he was big with life.</p>
<p>In later years he introduced himself as “a living ancestor”. Now he is simply our ancestor, one who has given us a huge legacy, a living legacy. It is time for us to reflect on his inspiration, burn <a href="http://phytoalchemy.co.za/2018/06/30/imphepho-is-not-a-smudge/">imphepho</a>, slaughter a cow and pour out the wine.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225374/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karl von Holdt 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>Eddie Webster inspired generations of scholars with his vision and practice of critically engaged scholarship, in South Africa and worldwide.Karl von Holdt, Senior Researcher, Society Work and Politics Institute, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2187462024-02-20T13:14:07Z2024-02-20T13:14:07ZWomen in South Africa’s armed struggle: new book records history at first hand<p>South Africa’s young democracy was a culmination of years of sweat, blood and revolution against the apartheid regime. In the early 1960s, after decades of “<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/1960-1966-genesis-armed-struggle">non-violence</a>” as a policy of resistance, the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) formed military wings to take the fight to the apartheid regime. </p>
<p>Based on the living record and popular discourse, it would be easy to assume that the struggle against apartheid was almost entirely the domain of men. But women played a crucial role – one which is only really coming to light today.</p>
<p>In her book <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Guerrillas-and-Combative-Mothers-Women-and-the-Armed-Struggle-in-South/Magadla/p/book/9781032597249">Guerrillas and Combative Mothers</a>, political and international studies academic <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/politicalinternationalstudies/people/academic/profsiphokazimagadlahod/">Siphokazi Magadla</a> uses life history interviews to offer firsthand insights into women’s participation in the armed struggle against apartheid in South Africa from 1961 until 1994. She also examines the texture of their lives in the new South Africa after demobilisation.</p>
<p>Magadla interviewed women who fought with the ANC’s military wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK); the PAC’s military wing, the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (Apla), formerly known as Poqo; and the paramilitary self-defence units in black urban residential areas. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=955&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1200&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1200&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/573453/original/file-20240205-15-bk6g7c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1200&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UKZN Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a sociologist interested in gender and sexuality, I was keen to read this book for the gendered experiences of liberation struggles. I read it alongside <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Guns_and_Guerilla_Girls/dK1borNjTBMC?hl=en&gbpv=1">other studies</a> about <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/The_Front_Line_Runs_Through_Every_Woman/foMvd3m6KDQC?hl=en&gbpv=0">women in southern African liberation wars</a>. </p>
<p>Much of the prevalent discourse about women’s wartime participation tends to centre on one question: why do revolutions and wars fail women? This discourse tends to, for example, heavily examine women’s experiences of sexual violence and victimisation in wars. It excludes their agency and contribution to wars. </p>
<p>But Magadla’s book, as well as the feminist analyses I read to complement it, widens the lens. She wants to know why women joined the armed struggle. How did women use or play with femininity and womanhood to optimise military effectiveness? How can women’s participation broaden our understanding of combat beyond direct physical fighting? And, lastly, how do women view their involvement in the revolutions that result? </p>
<h2>Broadening the definition of combat</h2>
<p>Some may argue that the women profiled by Magadla were not combatants. Few of them engaged in direct combat; that is, physical fighting on the battlefront. But the author urges us to widen the definition of combat. </p>
<p>Citing the South African political activist and academic <a href="https://raymondsuttner.com/about/">Raymond Suttner</a>, Magadla argues that apartheid was a war with no battlefront. Instead it occupied all corners of society. It was fought in homes, schools and churches. Women guerrillas put themselves at risk in different ways and relied on creative approaches to get close to potential targets. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/person-details/231">Thandi Modise</a>, who has served in South Africa’s parliament since 1994 and is currently the minister of defence and military veterans, is one of the women profiled in the book. She tells of carrying a handbag from which protruded a pair of knitting needles – an absolutely ordinary, nonthreatening sight – while she observed potential military targets. </p>
<p>On the rare occasions that women’s wartime participation is recognised in the wider discourse, they tend to be shown as armed revolutionaries who are, simultaneously, feminist icons. Images abound of these women soldiers toting AK47s, ready to shoot, or carrying rifles – and babies on their backs.</p>
<p>Magadla weaves in accounts throughout the book to disrupt this popular narrative. After all, it potentially erases those women who carried neither AK47s nor babies on their backs during the war for liberation. Some women hid bullets inside tampons to bring into the country for the war while others carried explosives in their purses. Some spent endless hours watching and testing for potential dangers and weaknesses in the apartheid military’s defences.</p>
<p>One example is <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275874041_The_Road_to_Democracy_South_Africans_telling_their_stories_-_Nondwe_Mankahla">Nondwe Mankahla</a>, who, while working as a distributor for the New Age newspaper, simultaneously couriered bomb equipment for political activists Govan Mbeki and Raymond Mhlaba. </p>
<h2>Soldiers, not ‘she soldiers’</h2>
<p>Throughout the book, Magadla refuses to pigeonhole the participants. She recognises that their experiences vary and analyses how the women of MK negotiated its culture of patriarchy in a way that highlights the women’s agency without romanticising their struggles. </p>
<p>Women in MK were known as “flowers of the nation” or as <em>umzana</em> (a small home) of the organisation. Some of the women found the labels, <em>umzana</em> in particular, endearing. Others felt that they diminished women’s roles. Similarly, they resisted qualifiers such as “she comrades” and “she soldiers”.</p>
<p>But they did not want to erase their femininity. Some aspects of the patriarchal culture worked to the advantage of women both inside the organisation and in their encounters with the apartheid security police during operations. Women combatants could easily manipulate their femininity to defy the guerrilla image contained in <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-05-27-00-the-knitting-needles-guerrilla/">government propaganda</a>.</p>
<p>During the 1980s MK staged <a href="https://www.news24.com/News24/Secret-world-of-Operation-Vula-20040331">Operation Vula</a>, a mission to bring exiled leaders back into the country. <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/latestnews/womanveteransreflectontheirrolesinsouthafricasarmedstruggle.html">Busisiwe Jacqueline ‘Totsie’ Memela</a> successfully smuggled anti-apartheid activists Mac Maharaj and Siphiwe Nyanda into South Africa from Swaziland (Eswatini). Magadla attributes her success to a combination of her military training and dynamic use of femininity: Memela dressed as a Swati woman while observing the border around the clock. </p>
<h2>A work of theorising</h2>
<p>Guerrillas and Combative Mothers is more than just a project to name the women who dedicated their lives to liberating South Africa. It also presents different ways of theorising. It raises an interesting methodological question about seeing the limits of verbal language and the utility of silence when <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0011392104045377">dealing with traumatic events</a>. How do we analyse silence when the people’s wounds have not healed and therefore their lips remain sealed? </p>
<p>However, while Magadla’s argument is sophisticated, the language doesn’t “sweat”, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/95923/the-language-must-not-sweat">to quote Toni Morrison</a>. It remains simple and accessible to all audiences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thoko Sipungu 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 interviews in this book offer firsthand insights into women’s participation in the armed struggle against apartheid.Thoko Sipungu, Lecturer in Sociology, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2209762024-01-18T15:30:58Z2024-01-18T15:30:58ZSoul Brothers: the story of a band that revolutionised South African music<p>Biographies of important South African musicians often fall into two categories: they either emerge from PhD or other university-based research, or are the fruit of dedicated digging by a fan or family member. The first kind benefit from institutional resources and support; the second from community knowledge of personal details that may be documented nowhere else. </p>
<p>Because of that very scarcity of a public record, the first kind might miss many parts of the story that can’t be checked in formal records and archives. The second risks being bent out of shape by hero-worship or fallible memory.</p>
<p>Sydney Fetsie Maluleke’s book <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/The_Life_and_Times/1qyXtQEACAAJ?hl=en">The Life and Times of the Soul Brothers</a> benefits from an author with a foot in each camp. Maluleke is a university-schooled researcher, but also an insider fan – he’s administered the band’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/p/Soul-Brothers-100044409727019/">Facebook page</a> and comes from a family who, by his own account, were even more fanatical than he is about the legendary <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-soul-brothers-mn0000044338#biography">band</a>. </p>
<p>So the book, recently revised and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjMypAcv41g">relaunched</a> for its second edition, combines the strengths of both kinds of biography, and avoids most of their weaknesses.</p>
<h2>Who are the Soul Brothers?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVo6lHNFkz3h-aWIaR-pa-g">Soul Brothers</a>, formed in KwaZulu-Natal province in the mid-1970s by the late vocalist <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/opinion-and-analysis/2015-07-12-obituary-david-masondo-lead-singer-of-sowetos-legendary-soul-brothers/">David Masondo</a> and keyboardist <a href="https://iono.fm/e/1373266">Black Moses Ngwenya</a> (and still working as a band today, though with new players), was the outfit that shaped the sound of South African <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/mbaqanga-music-guide">mbaqanga</a>. That’s the name of a popular genre blending traditional African vocal styles and lyrical tropes with transformed borrowings from western pop. It grew from a predominantly Zulu-speaking fanbase to dominate Black South African hit parades for more than a decade.</p>
<p>The band scored multiple gold and platinum hits, and although their most recent studio recording was more than a decade ago, Soul Brothers music still gets radio play and is popular at family and neighbourhood parties. Soul Brothers were innovators. They drew in members from across language groups, and multiple inspirations, at the very time the South African <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> regime was entrenching separation and difference. </p>
<p>Incorporating Ngwenya’s soul keyboard into what had begun as Zulu close-harmony vocals and guitar work was as startling an innovation for mbaqanga as US musician <a href="https://raycharles.com">Ray Charles</a>’ introduction of electric piano had been for American rhythm and blues. </p>
<p>Tired of exploitation by big, white-run record labels, the Soul Brothers also established their own label and studio, making them part of South Africa’s first generation of modern Black music entrepreneurs too.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7Vf_c0y3S3E?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Maluleke’s book takes us through all these developments. Though its subtitle describes the narrative as told “through the eyes of Black Moses”, he’s careful to source what he learns, label what is contested, and acknowledge that other interpretations are possible. </p>
<p>The book’s voice is resonantly human. Though chapters are organised thematically around the lives of various artists and the group’s stages of development, the story backtracks, repeats and comes at the same subject from different angles, just as people do when they speak. At points, I found myself hankering for more direct quotes from these insider voices and less paraphrase.</p>
<h2>A new edition</h2>
<p>The book’s first edition in 2017, Maluleke tells us, left out the setbacks and disputes from the tale, something for which Ngwenya himself gently rebuked the author. So in this second edition we learn also, for example, of the professionalism that permitted spellbinding and seamless ensemble performances onstage while, behind the scenes, the principals were literally not talking to one another because of disputes over leadership and power dynamics.</p>
<p>Maluleke and his family’s obsessive fandom, meanwhile, means there’s a priceless archive of press clippings, album covers and photographs to draw on. That provides nearly 40 pages of illustrative evidence to deepen the story. </p>
<p>Along the way, there are multiple bonuses not advertised on the cover: histories of associated musicians such as the veteran <a href="https://umsakazo.bandcamp.com/album/makgona-tsohle-reggi">Makgona Tsohle Band</a>, explanations of tradition, and descriptions of township community life more than half a century ago. Though the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/township-South-Africa">townships</a> – segregated and impoverished areas for black workers removed from the “white” cities – had been designed by apartheid, residents built their own rich networks of solidarity, self-help and shared culture. Music was one of its <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Soweto_Blues.html?id=_fwkCIKoTpgC&redir_esc=y">pillars</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xbBSjO3cMoY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>For me, a big surprise was learning that the young Ngwenya – regarded today as South Africa’s finest mbaqanga keyboardist – was inspired back in the 1960s by watching the rehearsals of the band Durban Expressions, whose keyboardist became one of the country’s finest jazz players: the late <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/bheki-mseleku-south-african-jazz-pianist-932017.html">Bheki Mseleku</a>. </p>
<p>All those are strengths that could make the book a storehouse of inspiration for music scholars. Each one of its details and detours could inspire a study of its own.</p>
<h2>Some flaws</h2>
<p>The book’s flaws, where they exist, emerge from the strains of producing a book on a shoestring budget. Maluleke, quoting Nigerian writer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chinua-Achebe">Chinua Achebe</a>, wrote it because he was determined the history of lions must not be written by the hunters alone. The book did have one editor: veteran broadcaster and popular music expert Max Mojapelo, whose encyclopaedic industry knowledge no doubt enriched the history. </p>
<p>But it needed another, more prosaic kind of editor as well: a copy editor. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/K5HfkjJBl_g?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>There are rather too many typographical errors and inconsistencies in, for example, the use of italics for song and album titles. Some date references are clearly unrevised from the 2017 edition. And there is no index; that makes the contents less accessible. </p>
<h2>Hugely important story</h2>
<p>Yet, if Maluleke had waited until more resources were available, he – and we – might still be waiting. A story hugely important for South African popular music history would have remained largely untold. He made the right choice. </p>
<p>Every music fan eager to understand how the “indestructible sound of Soweto” was born and shaped is in his debt.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220976/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>The book tells the inside story of how they changed the sound of urban pop.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2159232024-01-02T07:10:47Z2024-01-02T07:10:47ZCoca-Cola in Africa: a long history full of unexpected twists and turns<p><em>A new book called <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/bottled/#:%7E:text=Sara%20Byala%20charts%20the%20company%27s,but%20rather%20of%20a%20company">Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African</a> tells the story of how the world’s most famous carbonated drink conquered the continent. It’s a tale of marketing gumption and high politics and is the product of years of research by critical writing lecturer <a href="https://www.sarabyala.com">Sara Byala</a>, who <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=sara+byala&btnG=">researches</a> histories of <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7208/9780226030449/html">heritage</a>, <a href="https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Water-Waste-Energy_sm-1.pdf">sustainability</a> and the ways in which capitalist systems intersect with social and cultural forces in Africa. We asked her some questions about the book.</em></p>
<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/coca-cola-in-africa-a-long-history-full-of-unexpected-twists-and-turns-215923&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<h2>What do you hope readers will take away?</h2>
<p>There are three main takeaways. The first is that while Africa is largely absent from books on Coca-Cola, the company’s imprint on the continent is enormous. It is present in every nation. Most estimates put Coke as one of the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/01/21/africa/coca-cola-africa-mpa-feat/index.html">largest private employers</a> in Africa, if not the largest. Beyond official jobs, the company has been shown to have <a href="https://docplayer.net/11916251-The-economic-impact-of-the-coca-cola-system-on-south-africa.html">a multiplier effect</a> that means that for each official job, upwards of 10 other people are supported. </p>
<p>The second takeaway is that Coke’s story in Africa is an old one. It starts with its use of the west African <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160922-the-nut-that-helped-to-build-a-global-empire">kola nut</a>, from which it takes its name (if no longer <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/pop-quiz-whats-in-a-coca-cola-if-its-not-coca-or-the-kola-nut/">its source of caffeine</a>). Arriving in Africa in the early 1900s, it’s a story that is deeply and, often surprisingly, entangled with key moments in African history. This includes the end of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> in South Africa and the advent of postcolonial African nations.</p>
<p>Third, I want readers to see that while we may assume that a multinational company selling carbonated, sugary water is inherently a force for ill, both the history of Coke in Africa and my fieldwork suggest a far more complicated story. Coca-Cola is what it is today in Africa, I argue, because it became local. It bent to the will of Africans in everything from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@GlobalCopaCocaCola/about">sport</a> to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/cokestudioAfrica">music</a> to <a href="https://www.coca-colacompany.com/social/project-last-mile">healthcare</a>. Its ubiquity thus tells us something about African engagement with a consumer product as well as the many ways in which ordinary people wield power. </p>
<h2>How did Coca-Cola first arrive in Africa?</h2>
<p>Coca-Cola doesn’t export a finished product from its corporate headquarters in the US. It sells a <a href="https://www.coca-colacompany.com/about-us/coca-cola-system">concentrate</a>, which comes from a handful of locations around the globe, including Egypt and Eswatini. This concentrate is sold to licensed bottlers who then mix it with local forms of sugar and water before carbonating and bottling or canning it. </p>
<p>Coca-Cola <a href="https://www.coca-cola.com/xe/en/media-center/95-years-operations-community-impact">lore</a> says that the company first secured local bottlers for its concentrate in South Africa in 1928, its first stop on the African continent. By combing through old newspapers, archival documents, and pharmaceutical publications, however, I found evidence to suggest that Coke may in fact have been sold in 1909 in Cape Town as a short-lived soda fountain endeavour. This is just 23 years after the product was invented in Atlanta, Georgia. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1WSRt-lVuWE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>It was neither easy nor assured that Coca-Cola would take off anywhere in the world upon its arrival. The early chapters of my book detail the often ingenious lengths that bottlers had to go to to get Coke off the ground. This included creating a new line of sodas to support the fledgling product called <a href="https://www.coca-cola.com/za/en/brands/sparletta">Sparletta</a>. This includes <a href="https://www.coca-cola.com/ng/en/brands/sparletta">green Creme Soda</a> and <a href="https://www.coca-cola.com/ng/en/brands/Stoney">Stoney ginger beer</a>, both still available for purchase. Later chapters explore the routes by which the product spread across the continent, by detailing everything from the co-branding of petrol stations with Coca-Cola, to the rise of Coke beauty pageants, the birth of local forms of Coke advertising, the proliferation of Coca-Cola signage, and much more. </p>
<h2>What role did it play in apartheid South Africa?</h2>
<p>Coca-Cola was entrenched in South Africa before the advent of the racist, white minority <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> state in 1948. While the company largely attempted to stay out of politics in South Africa, much as it did elsewhere in the world, it resisted certain “petty apartheid” rules. For example, the washrooms and lunchrooms in its plants were open to all ethnic groups, unlike the “whites only” facilities established under apartheid. A turning point came in the 1980s when, in tandem with <a href="https://blackamericaweb.com/2014/08/10/little-known-black-history-fact-operation-push-boycotts/">activism in the US</a> calling on the company to redress racial imbalances in America, the company was forced to reexamine its racial politics in South Africa as well.</p>
<p>What followed was perhaps the most interesting chapter in the story of Coca-Cola in Africa. Breaking with established precedent, the company took a stance against the apartheid state. Coca-Cola executive Carl Ware led the way here. Under his <a href="https://www.carlwareauthor.com/">direction</a>, the company crafted a unique form of <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-09-18-mn-11241-story.html">disinvestment</a> that enabled it to do what no other company managed: keep the products in the country while depriving the apartheid state of tax revenue. To do this, the company <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/09/18/coke-to-sell-all-holdings-in-s-africa/495f0069-2682-4d67-8769-506f4fbd2d83/">sold all its holdings</a> to a separate business that continued to sell Cokes. It then moved its concentrate plant to neighbouring Eswatini, leaving Coca-Cola with no assets or employees in South Africa.</p>
<p>In part, this was possible because the company aligned itself with the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1990/06/17/mandelas-stops-during-us-tour-reflect-anc-political-concerns/f41a84a3-4aa5-462f-abc3-fc2a9213bb58/">African National Congress (ANC)</a>, making a host of moves to help to end apartheid. These included meeting in secret with ANC leadership, funding clandestine meetings between the ANC and businesspeople, and setting up <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/24/us/coca-cola-giving-10-million-to-help-south-africa-blacks.html">a charitable fund</a> headed by <a href="https://saportareport.com/atlanta-leaders-to-pay-special-tribute-to-desmond-tutu-sept-28/sections/reports/maria_saporta/">Archbishop Desmond Tutu</a> to support Black educational empowerment. In the book, I document these activities for the first time with extensive interviews and archival material.</p>
<p>It was during this era of disinvestment that Coca-Cola exploded within densely populated and remote parts of the country, providing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/26/business/putting-africa-coke-s-map-pushing-soft-drinks-continent-that-has-seen-hard-hard.html">on-ramps to economic participation</a> for scores of South Africans that were later replicated with its global <a href="https://www.coca-cola.com/pk/en/about-us/faq/what-is-5by20-0">5x20 project</a> to empower women in business. </p>
<p>This spread in turn drove the consumption of liquid sugar to new heights, causing a host of other problems such as <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1573448/sugar-tax-pits-jobs-versus-health-diabetes-in-south-africa">diabetes and dental cavities</a>, which both the company and my book tackle too. </p>
<p>What I demonstrate in the book is that Coca-Cola’s shrewd positioning at the end of apartheid allowed it to emerge, in the post-apartheid landscape, ready not only to renew business in South Africa, but also to reinvigorate its presence on the continent at large. The question is how to weigh this spread (and its attendant benefits) against the costs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215923/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Byala 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>Coca-Cola has often been entangled with key political moments in Africa since its arrival in the early 1900s.Sara Byala, Senior Lecturer in Critical Writing, University of PennsylvaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2178282023-11-28T13:24:34Z2023-11-28T13:24:34ZSharpeville: new research on 1960 South African massacre shows the number of dead and injured was massively undercounted<p>On 21 March 1960 at 1.40 in the afternoon, apartheid South Africa’s police opened fire on a peaceful crowd of about 4,000 residents of Sharpeville, who were protesting against carrying <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">identity documents</a> that restricted black people’s movement. The police minimised the number of victims by at least one third, and justified the shooting by claiming that the crowd was violent. This shocking story has been thus misrepresented for over 60 years.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003257806">new research</a> retells the story of Sharpeville, about 70km south of Johannesburg, from the viewpoint of the victims themselves. As experienced <a href="https://www.lsu.edu/hss/history/people/faculty/clark.php">historians</a> who have undertaken archival research in South Africa <a href="https://history.ucla.edu/faculty/william-worger">since the 1970s</a> we based our <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003257806">research</a> on interviews with survivors and investigation into government records in both the <a href="https://archive.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/south-african-police-museum-and-archives">police archives</a> and the <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/soe/soe/national-archives-south-africa-nasa">national archives</a> in Pretoria. Our work reveals the true number of victims and the exact role of the police in the massacre.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville Massacre</a> ignited international outrage and the birth of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/british-anti-apartheid-movement">Anti-Apartheid Movement</a> worldwide. It also led to renewed political protests inside South Africa. These were met with the total suppression of political movements that lasted for 30 years. Despite its historic importance, Sharpeville as a place and a community has remained unknown to the wider public and its residents anonymous. Yet they have a story to tell.</p>
<p>Even though the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> chose the 1960 Sharpeville massacre as the formal beginning of its investigation of apartheid crimes, its examination of the massacre itself was perfunctory. Only three witnesses from the community were invited to testify during just part of one day (out of 2,000 witnesses during five years of hearings). </p>
<p>People in Sharpeville believe that the lack of attention to their plight since democracy in 1994 is because the original protest was organised by the rival <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pan-africanist-congress-pac">Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania</a>, not the governing African National Congress (ANC).</p>
<h2>Changing the narrative</h2>
<p>Based on our research, the new book <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003257806">Voices of Sharpeville</a> traces the long residence of Africans in the greater Sharpeville area, as far as the <a href="https://www.maropeng.co.za/content/page/introduction-to-your-visit-to-the-cradle-of-humankind-world-heritage-site">Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site</a> 100km north. It also emphasises the crucial industrial importance of the greater <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/vaal-triangle-erupts-violence">Vaal Triangle</a> in which Sharpeville is located, from the 1930s onward.</p>
<p>Our work details the rich culture developed by urban Sharpeville residents in defiance of the attempts of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hendrik-frensch-verwoerd">Prime Minister HF Verwoerd’s</a> attempts to control African life. </p>
<p>Using the words of witnesses as recorded from their hospital beds within days of the shooting, and for weeks and months later, the events of 21 March 1960 are recounted in detail, increasing the number of victims to at least 91 dead, and 281 injured. The official police figures first published in 1960 and repeated endlessly ever since were 69 and 180 respectively. </p>
<p>The witness testimony places the responsibility for the shooting squarely with the police. </p>
<h2>New evidence</h2>
<p>The oral and documentary source material we used was previously off limits to researchers, insufficiently examined, or largely ignored. Access to many records held by the previous apartheid government was absolutely restricted prior to 1994, and since then many of the records have not been properly registered. This makes it challenging for researchers to find important documents.</p>
<p>But with the help of archivists and librarians, we were able to locate rare and even hidden records of Sharpeville and its history, and record the voices of many of the town’s residents.</p>
<h2>History of Sharpeville</h2>
<p>The first settlement in the Sharpeville area – <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/sharpeville-gauteng">Top Location</a> – was razed in the 1950s to make space for white people’s businesses and homes. Official records and aerial photographs reveal the previous existence of a large community on the now empty land. There is also an unmarked cemetery where about 3,500 residents were buried between around 1900 and 1938. </p>
<p>By the mid-20th century, apartheid officials began to plan a bigger settlement in the vicinity. Sharpeville and other places like it were designed in the 1950s to segregate Africans away from the cities, which were reserved for white people only. </p>
<p>Sharpeville’s housing construction became a “model” for the ubiquitous <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/figure/House-types-NE-51-6-and-51-9_fig4_272164901">four-roomed NE 51/9 houses</a> in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43622104">black townships</a> throughout the country, none of which they could own outright but rent only.</p>
<p>In almost 300 witness statements taken by the police immediately following the shooting, many of the everyday details of life in Sharpeville were revealed. These statements were recorded immediately after arrest and under oath by the police to determine guilt or innocence against the charges of “public violence and incitement” brought against them. They were also provided voluntarily in 1961 and 1962, also under oath, by survivors and family members to establish a basis for the compensation the victims unsuccessfully requested.</p>
<p>Details of family life – numbers of children, occupations, wages, and health – were recorded, providing a wealth of information about Sharpeville’s residents. </p>
<p><strong>The massacre</strong>: Testimony, both from the official 1960 <a href="https://idep.library.ucla.edu/sharpeville-massacre#:%7E:text=A%20Commission%20of%20Enquiry%20was,officials%2C%20and%20residents%20of%20Sharpeville">commission of enquiry</a> into the massacre, and the criminal court trial of over 70 Sharpeville residents in 1960-1961, detailed the actions of both the crowd and the police.</p>
<p>The testimony by civilians and police alike, together with the claimants’ statements, provides a minute-by-minute narrative of the day. The testimonies of the residents, including all the Africans who worked for the municipality and as police officers in Sharpeville, unanimously attested to the fact that the crowd gathered peacefully to <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa">protest the pass law</a>. According to these witnesses, by the time of the shooting, almost 300 policemen had been moved into the township, including at least 13 white policemen armed with Sten machine guns. There were five Saracen armoured vehicles. </p>
<p>Police testimony makes it clear that the officer in charge gave the order to shoot, with the machine gunners firing directly into the crowd from a distance of no more than 3-5 metres. As one white official noted: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It made me think of a wheat field, where a whirlwind had shaken it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The crowd was taken utterly by surprise by the police fusillade. Over three quarters of them, dead and injured alike, were shot in the back as they fled.</p>
<p><strong>The victims</strong>: Crucial to gaining an accurate understanding of the numbers of victims – their names, families, and injuries – were the autopsy and medical records detailing the exact causes of death and injury for the over 300 victims. These forms and narrative statements, filled out by the hospital physicians who treated the injured and performed autopsies on the dead, prove conclusively that the government under-counted the victims by at least one third. </p>
<p>This new information remained embargoed in police records throughout the apartheid years to 1994. Some of it was finally transferred to the national archives in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It details the injuries.</p>
<h2>Remembrance</h2>
<p>The people of Sharpeville wonder why the world has not listened to their stories even as they have told them from the day of the shooting to the present.</p>
<p>In 2023, residents were able to use the information uncovered in our research to update the Wall of <a href="https://www.freedompark.co.za/">Names Memorial</a> (which lists the name of every person who gave their life fighting for freedom in South Africa) at <a href="https://idep.library.ucla.edu/africa/about-freedom-park">Freedom Park</a> in Pretoria to reflect accurately the number of victims killed on 21 March 1960. But still they have received no compensation for their injuries.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217828/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William H Worger receives funding from the University of California Office of the President.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nancy L Clark 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>Despite its historic importance, Sharpeville itself has remained unknown and its residents anonymous, yet they have a story to tell.Nancy L Clark, Dean and Professor Emeritus, Louisiana State University William H. Worger, Professor Emeritus of History, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1758712023-09-09T12:52:24Z2023-09-09T12:52:24ZMangosuthu Buthelezi: the Zulu nationalist who left his mark on South Africa’s history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444063/original/file-20220202-19-1fky7gn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C49%2C575%2C442&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi speaks in parliament.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/mangosuthu-gatsha-buthelezi">Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi</a> played a prominent role in South African politics for almost half a century. <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/press-statements/president-ramaphosa-announces-passing-honourable-prince-mangosuthu-buthelezi%2C-traditional-prime-minister-zulu-nation-and-monarch">He was</a> one of the last of a generation of black South African leaders who influenced the transition from the white minority apartheid regime to a society under a democratically elected government. </p>
<p>Prince Buthelezi (95) was born on 27 August 1928 in Mahlabatini into the Zulu royal family. His mother <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/princess-magogo">Princess Magogo ka Dinuzulu</a> was the daughter of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/king-dinuzulu">King Dinizulu</a>. His grandfather was the prime minister of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/king-cetshwayo">King Cetshwayo</a>. So, he was the first-born in line to the Buthelezi chieftainship. </p>
<p>His Zulu identity became the decisive compass for his career in politics, and personified the ambiguities between ethnic identity and national policy. He became the only Bantustan leader who played a significant role in South Africa’s transition to democracy and subsequent politics. Under apartheid <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands">Bantustans or homelands</a> were the ten mainly rural, impoverished areas where black South Africans were required to live and have nominal “self-rule” and “independence”, along ethnic group lines separate from whites under apartheid. </p>
<p>Buthelezi used his power to combine ethnic particularism with a policy aimed at inclusive national governance opposed to segregation under apartheid. </p>
<p>As Minister of Home Affairs (1994-2004) and MP since democracy in 1994, he remained a relevant political figure with considerable political influence. His political role remains a controversial and heavily criticised example of how a quest for power based on a Zulu identity as regional-ethnic particularism can take a huge toll on lives.</p>
<h2>Under apartheid</h2>
<p>In 1948 Buthelezi enrolled to study history and “Bantu administration” <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/mangosuthu-gatsha-buthelezi">at Fort Hare University</a>. In 1949 he briefly joined the African National Congress Youth League. He was expelled from the university in 1950 for his political activism, completing his degree at the University of Natal. In 1953 he became the hereditary chief of the Buthelezi clan. </p>
<p>In 1976 he was appointed the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/KwaZulu">chief minister</a> of KwaZulu. The area comprised 11 territorial enclaves in the province of Natal. It was a Bantustan under the apartheid state’s policy euphemistically called <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-separate-development-south-africa">“separate development”</a>.</p>
<p>In 1975 <a href="https://theconversation.com/post-election-pact-failure-echoes-of-fraught-history-between-south-africas-anc-and-inkatha-172696">he revived Inkatha ka Zulu</a>, a Zulu cultural movement established by King Dinizulu in 1922. It later became the <a href="https://www.ifp.org.za/our-history/">Inkatha Freedom Party</a>. According to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mangosuthu-G-Buthelezi">Encyclopedia Britannica</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He used Inkatha as a personal power base that systematically mobilised Zulu nationalist aspirations, although his narrow regional and ethnic support base would make his ambition of being national leader difficult.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His Zulu stronghold allowed him to throw a spanner in the apartheid government’s “separate development” policy, by preventing a declaration of pseudo-independence for KwaZulu. </p>
<p>As he once <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=NcipiPf0tncC&pg=PA142&lpg=PA142&dq=Mangosuthu+Buthelezi:+We+have+our+own+history,+our+own+language,+our+own+culture.+But+our+destiny+is+also+tied+up+with+the+destinies+of+other+people+-+history+has+made+us+all+South+Africans.&source=bl&ots=SUDJvJwodt&sig=ACfU3U3xcligo5RWHbM_x9pkORPIYtv6Og&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizpKmjwoH2AhXcwAIHHRWLDw4Q6AF6BAgFEAM#v=onepage&q=Mangosuthu%20Buthelezi%3A%20We%20have%20our%20own%20history%2C%20our%20own%20language%2C%20our%20own%20culture.%20But%20our%20destiny%20is%20also%20tied%20up%20with%20the%20destinies%20of%20other%20people%20-%20history%20has%20made%20us%20all%20South%20Africans.&f=false">explained</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have our own history, our own language, our own culture. But our destiny is also tied up with the destinies of other people – history has made us all South Africans.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Adam Houldsworth, in his <a href="http://scholar.ufs.ac.za:8080/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11660/4047/HouldsworthA.pdf;jsessionid=B41C2C6F899271C77B98E5FF9FD35E82?sequence=1">PhD thesis</a> on Inkatha and the National Party, 1980-1989, documents important domestic policy shifts, influenced by Buthelezi’s political manoeuvres. He disputes the view that Buthelezi pursued an opportunistic and unprincipled policy.</p>
<p>Much of the underlying notion in Buthelezi’s position was inspired by the conservative political philosophy of <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/edmund-burke-guide#who-was-edmund-burke">Edmund Burke (1729-1797)</a>. Buthelezi demanded a majoritarian power-sharing system on a national level as opposed to apartheid. He placed his hopes on reformist tendencies emerging from within the National Party.</p>
<p>According to Houldsworth (p. 210): </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Buthelezi sought to improve Inkatha’s prospects by advocating a long and multifaceted negotiating process which would allow for the gradual moderation of African politics and the reconciliation of disparate black groups … Inkatha politics were to an extent shaped by considerations of expedience in its efforts to retain or gain influence in South African politics.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Reinventing Zulu traditionalism for politics</h2>
<p>Buthelezi turned his local-ethnic agency into a national policy factor by rejecting the Bantustan principle. This contributed to the growing awareness within the ranks of the more enlightened faction in the ruling <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/national-party-np">National Party</a> that a post-apartheid scenario needed to be negotiated. </p>
<p>With the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/african-national-congress-anc">African National Congress</a> (ANC) becoming an increasingly influential factor in any negotiated solution, while at the same time a threat to his own interests, Buthelezi walked a political tightrope. Considering the exiled ANC as ideologically too left, he advocated the <a href="https://www.deseret.com/1988/6/12/18768341/leader-of-zulus-calls-for-the-release-of-mandela-assails-emergency-rule">release from prison</a> of its leader <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>. Mandela had been jailed for life for sabotage aimed at <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">overthrowing the apartheid regime</a>. Buthelezi believed Mandela would be a moderating element, preventing a socialist transformation. </p>
<p>German historian Aljoscha Tillmanns adds further insights to Buthelezi’s political strategy in his <a href="https://www.roehrig-verlag.de/shop/item/9783861107545/development-for-liberation-von-aljoscha-tillmanns-gebundenes-buch">PhD thesis</a>. As he shows, Buthelezi’s political convictions were strongly influenced by a belief in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/consociationalism">consociationalism</a>. As a concept of government by coalition it is a form of political power sharing among competing elites.</p>
<p>As sociologist <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/roger-southall-296862">Roger Southall</a> has shown, this included attempts to seek closer cooperation with liberal and conservative whites <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/721987">in a politics of compromise</a>. Buthelezi posed as a pragmatic reformer without any specific ideology. </p>
<p>His trust in and reaffirmation of capitalism appealed to the business community, both in and outside South African. Tillmanns (p. 408) quotes him from a meeting with the press, commerce and industry in Frankfurt in February 1986:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Dire necessity dictates that the free enterprise system be unshackled from its apartheid shackles (and…) multi-party democracy in which politics and economics are synthesised is prescribed by the need for economic development. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>From civil war to democracy</h2>
<p>Buthelezi personified both black nationalism and Zulu traditionalism. But his ambitions were confronted with and limited by the growing influence of the ANC in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">negotiations for a post-apartheid society</a>. This escalated into massive violent clashes between his <a href="https://www.ifp.org.za/">Inkatha Freedom Party</a> and the ANC. Thousands of people <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/161169">were killed</a>. </p>
<p>He was willing to cooperate closely with the apartheid regime in his aim to prevent the ANC from seizing power. This went as far as having Inkatha members receiving <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/1995-12-22-caprivi-200-the-year-of-the-generals/">military training from the apartheid government’s army</a>.</p>
<p>Buthelezi’s determination to prevent the establishment of a new post-apartheid dispensation in which he had no major role ended in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/161169">large-scale, deadly violence between IFP and ANC supporters</a> in today’s KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces. This escalated after the ANC and other liberation movements were unbanned in 1990. Thousands were killed ahead of the first democratic elections of 1994. </p>
<p>At the brink of civil war, Buthelezi – who originally <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/ifp-agrees-participate-1994-elections">refused to participate in the elections</a> – decided to add Inkatha to the ballot papers. This paved the way to reducing the violence and allowed President Nelson Mandela to co-opt Buthelezi as minister of home affairs in his cabinet.</p>
<p>Buthelezi kept the portfolio during the first term of Thabo Mbeki’s presidency. He also occasionally served as South Africa’s acting president.</p>
<h2>The last days</h2>
<p>With the decline of Inkatha in the <a href="https://www.eisa.org/pdf/JAE3.2Mottiar.pdf">2014 elections</a>, Buthelezi lost his cabinet post. He remained president of the IFP until 2019 and an MP until his death.</p>
<p>He had an uneasy relationship with <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/king-goodwill-zwelithini-kabhekuzulu">King Goodwill Zwelithini</a>, the Zulus monarch since 1971. With the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/22/king-goodwill-zwelithini-obituary">king’s death</a> in March 2021, Buthelezi re-engaged more intensively with the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03005/06lv03006/07lv03068/08lv03074.htm">Zulu kingdom</a> and related politics. </p>
<p>Buthelezi should not be dismissed as a mere stooge during apartheid. Yet, he deserves little praise as an advocate for human rights and civil liberties. His appetite for power was always stronger. But no matter on which side of history he is placed, he will remain the only leader of a Bantustan who left an imprint on South Africa’s way to democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175871/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber 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>Buthelezi should not be dismissed as a mere stooge during apartheid. Yet, he deserves little praise as an advocate for human rights and civil liberties.Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2120662023-08-31T13:59:13Z2023-08-31T13:59:13ZWinnie and Mandela biography: a masterful tale of South Africa’s troubled, iconic power couple<p>A new book on South African liberation struggle icons Nelson and Winnie Mandela is a masterful biography of the pair. It’s a work of scholarship involving an immense body of primary and secondary research, written with flair and panache but in an easy and compelling style, making it accessible to anyone with an interest in politics, power and South Africa and looks set to become the definitive work on them. </p>
<p>Jonny Steinberg’s splendid 550-page biography, <a href="https://www.jonathanball.co.za/component/virtuemart/winnie-and-nelson">Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage</a>, ends on a note of pathos with a poignant tale from Nelson Mandela’s deathbed.</p>
<p>Four days from death <a href="https://www.britannica.com/question/When-did-Nelson-Mandela-die">in December 2013</a>, Nelson is in an advanced state of dementia and refuses to eat. <a href="https://theelders.org/profile/graca-machel">Graça Machel</a>, his third wife, invites his estranged second wife, Winnie, to be with him, noting that she was “Nelson’s great love”, and it’s Winnie who feeds him. Winnie remarks to a friend: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>First he decided to leave me; now he won’t eat without me. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a sense, their story came full circle. The estranged power couple couldn’t quite keep apart all the way to the end, and there is something of the nation’s <a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/psyche.html">id (instinctive inner nature) and superego</a> (moral standards) reflected in their contradictory roles.</p>
<p>Nelson emerges as a man plagued by inner strife and anger, saddened about the fate of his family (including his youngest daughter <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/zindziswa-zindzi-nobutho-mandela">Zindzi</a>’s inability to separate herself from her volatile mother) and his inability to play his role of patriarch, and yet so keenly aware of what is required that he self-consciously puts on his impassive and sometimes avuncular mask in public. Winnie, on the other hand,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>is at once the most commanding figure and a figure of terrible subjection.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Earlier Steinberg uses the adjective “diabolical” to describe her tormented, mercurial mind, which had its full expression in the murders that emerged from her household –</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the violence of the world without mirrored the violence of the world within.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The story begins with a tale Steinberg says is “not entirely true” – one Nelson and Winnie spun about their courtship, 57 years earlier: he saw this beautiful young woman at a bus stop, was overwhelmed, and soon swept her off her feet. In reality, Winnie had another lover at the time (who was still on the scene several months into her relationship with Nelson) and, as Nelson reminded her in a 1970 letter from prison, it was she who courted him.</p>
<h2>Ambition and expedience</h2>
<p>The early Nelson is portrayed as a man consumed by insecurity and ambition. He’s discovered by the wise ANC activist <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/sisulu-walter-1912-2003/">Walter Sisulu</a>, who sees immense potential in this tall, regal-looking young man, draws him into his ANC world, and sets him on his way.</p>
<p>Sometimes ambition and expedience get in the way of altruism and principle. He swings towards Africanism after the ANC Youth League’s launch but veers away from it when offered the leadership of the 1952 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/defiance-campaign-1952">Defiance Campaign</a> against apartheid, led by the ANC. He joins the Communist Party, but when the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pan-africanist-congress-pac">Pan-Africanist Congress</a> takes off, he proposes sidelining whites and dropping the Party.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mandela-was-a-flawed-icon-but-without-him-south-africa-would-be-a-sadder-place-142826">Mandela was a flawed icon. But without him South Africa would be a sadder place</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>He’s portrayed as a voracious womaniser during his first marriage to Evelyn (whom he admitted assaulting) and also while with Winnie. This book gives space to just two of his many lovers – the Women’s Federation leaders <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/lilian-masediba-ngoyi">Lilian Ngoyi</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ruth-mompati">Ruth Mompati</a>.</p>
<p>Steinberg hints that Winnie’s inner turmoil was rooted in the lack of love in her childhood, and her need to please her overbearing father, even if her long periods of detention, imprisonment and banishment, and her resort to heavy drinking, exacerbated what was already lurking. Other accounts have taken the early influences further. Emma Gilbey’s 1993 biography <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/1994-05-01/lady-life-and-times-winnie-mandela">The Lady</a> portrays a psychopathic Winnie who, while still a teenager, committed a violent assault on a young woman. </p>
<p>Winnie defied convention by having lovers throughout her marriage. One of those was Brian Somana, who emerged as a security police informer. Winnie and Somana remained lovers after his exposure, prompting Nelson’s resolve to divorce her in 1965. However, Sisulu persuaded him against it.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/winnie-madikizela-mandela-revolutionary-who-kept-the-spirit-of-resistance-alive-94300">Winnie Madikizela-Mandela: revolutionary who kept the spirit of resistance alive</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Winnie seemed to have been a soft touch for security police spies. Not only did several of her young lovers emerge in this light, so did several of her friends and associates. One was her aide Jerry Richardson, who on New Year’s day 1989 cut the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media/1997/9712/s971203f.htm">throat of 14-year-old Stompie Seipei</a> who’d been accused by Winnie of being a spy. Nelson again made moves to divorce her, and once more pulled back.</p>
<h2>Nelson and Winnie post-1990</h2>
<p>While in prison, he had hid his angst about Winnie, who openly pursued her love affair with the young lawyer Dali Mpofu. It was in his bid to save her after the murder of Seipei that Nelson bared his teeth and emerged in the least favourable light.</p>
<p>First, when Winnie failed to get elected to the executive of her local ANC branch in Soweto, he got his aides to set up a new branch, which duly elected her. Then he used his muscle to get her elected to the regional executive.</p>
<p>Next he prompted the breakup of the <a href="https://africanactivist.msu.edu/organization/210-813-532/">International Defence and Aid Fund</a>, cajoling them into helping fund her trial for kidnapping and assault. As Steinberg puts it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He had corrupted the democratic processes of his organisation; he had wounded a fund to which he, personally, owed an enormous debt; he had received covert money from a private corporation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The book suggests Nelson approved when a key witness and one of the accused were abducted and taken out of the country until the trial was over. Thus the court accepted Winnie’s false alibi that she was not in Soweto when the assaults on Seipei and others were taking place. In the end, she was convicted of kidnapping and being an accessory to assault.</p>
<p>Nelson did all this to save Winnie. And yet finally it all became too much for him. In 1992 he announced <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/nelson-mandela-announces-his-separation-his-wife-winnie-mandela">their marriage was over</a>, prompting a wave of despair from her.</p>
<h2>Four murders</h2>
<p>The book directly implicates Winnie in the murders of two young men, Lolo Sono and Siboniso Tshabalala (both falsely accused of being informers, when the real informers were Winnie’s lover Johannes Mabotha and Jerry Richardson). It also strongly implies that she was behind the murder of her doctor <a href="https://www.newframe.com/abu-baker-asvat-a-forgotten-revolutionary/">Abu Baker Asvat</a> (who’d examined Seipei) but leaves the question open as to whether she’d ordered Seipei’s murder.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nelson-mandelas-legacy-is-taking-a-battering-because-of-the-dismal-state-of-south-africa-209883">Nelson Mandela's legacy is taking a battering because of the dismal state of South Africa</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Inevitably, with a book on two such immensely significant lives, the author will choose to emphasise some things and leave out others. For instance, there is no mention of her <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/apr/24/southafrica">conviction in 2003 on 42 counts of fraud</a>.</p>
<p>It draws to a close by looking at the denigration of Nelson and rehabilitation of Winnie, particularly after her death in 2018, her slate wiped clean by young activists frustrated by the slow pace of post-apartheid change. They came to believe that all the allegations against her were the product of state invention.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212066/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Evans 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 early Nelson comes across as a man consumed by insecurity and ambition, plagued by inner strife and anger.Gavin Evans, Lecturer, Culture and Media department, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2104162023-08-07T13:59:55Z2023-08-07T13:59:55ZUmlungu: the colourful history of a word used to describe white people in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540800/original/file-20230802-23936-6zixs7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wreck of the British ship Charlotte in Algoa Bay, South Africa, 1854. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Print Collector/Heritage Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In South Africa “umlungu” is a word that’s commonly used to refer to white people. It comes from isiXhosa, the language of the country’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Xhosa">Xhosa people</a>. It’s always been a mystery how the word originated or what it actually means because no human beings were referred to as umlungu before the arrival of white people in the country by ship. There was, however, a word “ubulungu” which meant “that deposited out by the sea” or sea scum.</p>
<p>While it may have been considered impolite in the past, <a href="https://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/2016-11-21-experts-say-umlungu-is-not-negative-in-meaning/">today</a> umlungu is a polite word. Many white South Africans don’t mind calling themselves umlungu – there are even T-shirt ranges bearing the word. And it’s now also commonly used to refer to black people – meaning “my employer” or “a wealthy person”. So how did umlungu come to change its meaning?</p>
<p>As a linguist who teaches and studies isiXhosa, I recently published a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2989/16073614.2022.2153709">study</a> that considers the word from a sociolinguistic perspective. Sociolinguistics can be <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Introducing_Language_and_Society.html?id=gA4jAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">defined</a> as the link between language and society. I chose to frame my study through this theory because a language is not independent of the people who speak it. Individuals shape words to reflect the changing context of their society. </p>
<p>The word umlungu has taken on multiple meanings as a result of historical events, showing how language evolves through social interactions. </p>
<h2>Colonial times</h2>
<p>According to one <a href="https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2023.2188233">study</a>, the term umlungu arose from an incident in which shipwrecked white people were deposited from the sea. The sea’s tendency is to toss anything out that is dirty in order to clean itself. The shipwrecked white people were given the name “abelungu/umlungu”, which <a href="https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2023.2188233">means</a> “filth that is rejected by the ocean and deposited on the shore”. Some of those shipwrecked remained and the clan name Abelungu <a href="http://vital.seals.ac.za:8080/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:28312?site_name=GlobalView">was used</a> to record their children.</p>
<p>The words umlungu and abelungu (plural) are used by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nguni">Nguni</a> people across South Africa. The Nguni are a large cluster of Bantu-speaking ethnic groups in southern Africa who have played an important role in the country’s history and culture. The Nguni ethnic groupings include the Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi and Ndebele. These subgroups share linguistic and cultural similarities while adhering to their own traditions and practices. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/20032">Zulu historians</a>, white people arriving in South Africa were called “abelumbi” (magicians). This is because <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/shaka-zulu">Shaka Zulu</a>, the powerful leader of the Zulu Kingdom, witnessed a white person killing a man without touching him (with a gun). He stated that only a witch could kill a person without any physical contact. As a result, he called them abelumbi, which was later altered to abelungu (philanthropists) as time passed.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/shaka-zulu-is-back-in-pop-culture-how-the-famous-king-has-been-portrayed-over-the-decades-207417">Shaka Zulu is back in pop culture – how the famous king has been portrayed over the decades</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Various events throughout the colonial era forced black people into poverty, particularly after the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/nongqawuse">Nongqawuse</a> episode. Nongqawuse was a Xhosa prophetess who, in 1856, had a vision that if the Xhosa people killed all their cattle and destroyed their crops, the spirits would drive the British colonisers out of South Africa and bring about a new era of prosperity. Many Xhosa people then <a href="https://www.siyabona.com/eastern-cape-xhosa-cattle-killing.html">slaughtered</a> their own cattle and destroyed their own crops. Some people died because of hunger.</p>
<h2>Apartheid</h2>
<p>This poverty was exacerbated under <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> – an organised system of white minority rule in South Africa that imposed racial segregation and discrimination from 1948 until the early 1990s. </p>
<p>An umlungu was an esteemed member of society during the apartheid era because of the power and authority that they possessed. It’s my view that because of the apartheid system, black people were psychologically influenced to perceive everything linked with a white person as better and of a higher standard. </p>
<p>Due to the reality of colonisation and apartheid, most black South Africans were forced to work for white people and so an umlungu came to be defined as a white boss or employer. With time, this came to include all bosses or employers – even black people came to refer to a black boss as umlungu.</p>
<h2>Today</h2>
<p>I argue that the views of black people toward white people had a significant impact on the word changing and gaining numerous positive meanings. The concept that anything finer, richer and whiter in colour is umlungu has given rise to new positive connotations for the term. The word umlungu today can refer to an employer, a black person of a certain ethnicity with a lighter skin colour, someone of higher standing, a wealthy person – or simply a white person. </p>
<p>A black person who owns and runs a farm like a white person using a labour tenancy arrangement, for example, is <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/people-and-whites">referred to</a> as an umlungu. University students may be <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/ubuntu-abantu-abelungu">referred to</a> as abelungu since they represent class mobility and luxury. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/zulu-vs-xhosa-how-colonialism-used-language-to-divide-south-africas-two-biggest-ethnic-groups-204969">Zulu vs Xhosa: how colonialism used language to divide South Africa's two biggest ethnic groups</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Xhosa people have further adapted the term, with some naming their children Nobelungu (the one who is of white people), Umlungwana (young white person) or Mlungukazi (white woman).</p>
<p>Social class and status influence the evolution of language. Change is also related to the relative safety of a group’s standing in society, with lower-status groups generally imitating higher-status ones. As a result, those identified as abelungu, particularly among the black population, are seen as having ascended the social ladder. </p>
<p>“Umlungu” demonstrates how the meaning of a word can change to reflect a changing society. Language is not static, it is a growing and shifting way of reflecting the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andiswa Mvanyashe 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 word shows that language isn’t static, it evolves to reflect developments in a society.Andiswa Mvanyashe, Senior lecturer in Languages and Literature, Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2100132023-08-01T12:38:07Z2023-08-01T12:38:07ZSouth Africa’s ANC controls eight of nine provinces - why the Western Cape will remain elusive in the 2024 elections<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538735/original/file-20230721-15-k8st6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Cyril Ramaphosa congratulates the new leaders of the ANC in the Western Cape.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Jaco Marais/Die Burger/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The African National Congress (ANC), which governs South Africa, finally held its postponed Western Cape provincial elective congress <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-06-22-anc-western-cape-to-finally-convene-elective-conference-to-rebuild-and-renew-leadership/">in June</a>. This was after painstaking years of electing branch and regional executives. The new executive is the first elected ANC Western Cape provincial executive in six years. </p>
<p>These are among the first essential steps the ANC needed to take to be on a better footing to make gains in this province – the only one of nine it doesn’t control.</p>
<p>But, the odds are stacked against the party making serious inroads in the province, let alone winning it.</p>
<p>By history and demography, the ANC in the Western Cape faces tougher challenges than anywhere else in the country. In all other provinces, black Africans constitute the majority of voters. But in the Western Cape the majority are <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Coloured">coloured</a> voters. “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02582479208671739">Coloured</a>” in South African history means people who are of biracial or multiracial descent, or whose ancestors were Khoisan, not Bantu-speaking Africans. The country’s other population categories are <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/race-and-ethnicity-south-africa">white and Indian</a>. </p>
<p>The mass support in the Western Cape for the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03188/06lv03222.htm">United Democratic Front</a>, a loose coalition of anti-apartheid organisations allied to the then-banned ANC, between 1983 and 1990, misleadingly suggested support for the unbanned ANC after 1990. In fact, the ANC in that province faced devastating defeats in all the elections from 1994 onwards.</p>
<p>The ANC started by winning only 33% (rounded off) of the votes in the first <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/figure/DA-and-ANC-Election-Results-Western-Cape-1994-2014_tbl2_307824981">democratic 1994 election</a>, rising to 42% in 1999 and peaking at 45% in 2004. After that it declined to 32% of the votes in 2009 and 2014, dropping further to 29% in 2019. It attracted still fewer votes in local government elections, getting for example only 21% of the votes in 2021. The Democratic Alliance (DA) has run the province with an absolute majority for over a decade.</p>
<p>The effect of the ANC’s governance and poor performance in the eight provinces and most municipalities it runs is the main factor in the ANC’s nationally declining vote in the four general elections held since 1994. In media, commentariat, and auditor-general reports, the DA is judged to do a much better job of running the <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/auditor-general-positive-about-western-cape-municipalities-8-jun-2022-0000">Western Cape province</a> and <a href="https://mfma-2021.agsareports.co.za/municipality/9-city-of-cape-town-metro">Cape Town metro</a>. </p>
<p>One factor for its declining vote is demography. Though all major South African parties commit to a vision of a non-racial society, it is estimated that <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Marginal-influence-of-white-on-retrospective-ANC-voting-conditional-on-white-isolation_fig3_332744620">less than 2% of white voters vote for the ANC</a>, and less than 6% of African voters vote for the <a href="https://www.da.org.za/%20(DA)">Democratic Alliance</a>. A majority of coloured voters vote against the ANC, and in the Western Cape coloured voters constitute a majority of the electorate. </p>
<p>This is in spite of the fact that the ANC over the years chose several coloured and Indian leaders for the province, such as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/reverend-allan-aubrey-boesak">Allan Boesak</a>, <a href="https://www.sahrc.org.za/about-us/commissioners">Chris Nissen</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/mar/16/guardianobituaries.southafrica">Dullah Omar</a>, <a href="https://acmcu.georgetown.edu/profile/amb-ebrahim-rasool/">Ebrahim Rasool</a>, and <a href="https://www.pa.org.za/person/marius-llewellyn-fransman/">Marius Fransman</a>. This showed that the ANC was no longer limited to Africans, but sought to represent a “<a href="https://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/3761/thesis_tshawane_n.pdf">rainbow nation</a>”, in <a href="https://theconversation.com/archbishop-desmond-tutu-father-of-south-africas-rainbow-nation-97619">Archbishop Desmond Tutu</a>’s phrase.</p>
<p>But the old joke that in Africa election results are an ethnic census is too simplistic. The coloured majority of the Western Cape electorate has ensured that the ANC has never won an absolute majority in that province. But coloured voters are almost a majority of Northern Cape province voters, where the ANC comfortably wins every election. It is clear that many coloured voters in that province do vote for the ANC.</p>
<p>Also, there is a striking difference between Cape Town and the rest of the Western Cape. In the city, the DA scores sensational majorities from 92% in white voting districts to <a href="https://www.jonathanball.co.za/component/virtuemart/future-tense">80% in coloured townships</a>. Elsewhere in the province, the DA seesaws between 45% and 55% of the local votes.</p>
<h2>Challenges and own goals</h2>
<p>What can explain such a spectacular divide? As a political scientist and historian, I suggest that one factor is that in Cape Town, the DA of 2023 is based upon the old network of its historical predecessor the <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20111123105655574;jsessionid=5584198404AA160CD4F0AA657526FB61">Progressive Party</a> (Prog) branches, and the current DA politicians were mentored into politics by <a href="https://www.da.org.za/people/helen-zille-2">Helen Zille</a>, the party’s federal chair, and other old Prog leaders. These were liberal activists and veterans committed to nonracialism.</p>
<p>But in the rural Western Cape, today’s DA branches are based upon the renamed <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Party-political-party-South-Africa">National Party</a> branches of the 20th century. National Party politicians, responsible for driving the apartheid programme, were late converts to non-racialism, and often tone deaf to what black voters will take as priority issues, or insults. The DA is made up of the former Progs and National Party adherents.</p>
<p>Another factor in the ANC’s declining vote is the declining moral standards of ANC leadership. The first ANC Western Cape chair after 1994 was the respected Chris Nissen, a trilingual clergyman (speaking isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans) from the Presbyterian church. This enabled him to speak to all voters in their mother tongue. </p>
<p>By 2016 the chair was <a href="https://www.pa.org.za/person/marius-llewellyn-fransman/">Marius Fransman</a>, a career politician, who had to step down from all posts after complaints of being a sex pest were lodged against him. The ANC judged that these complaints also <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-01-12-marius-fransmans-sexual-assault-charge-anc-western-capes-tipping-point/">merited suspending his membership for five years</a>. </p>
<p>After that, the ANC Western Cape was unable to elect anyone at all as its chair for six years, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-07-21-00-fransman-a-factor-in-cape-feud/">due to factionalism</a> and branches, zonal, and regional structures becoming defunct. Simultaneously, nationwide, the <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/anc-youth-league/">ANC Youth League</a> was disbanded, and the <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/anc-womens-league/">ANC Women’s League</a> very little in evidence. The plight of the ANC in this province was evident to all.</p>
<h2>Bottoming out?</h2>
<p>The new popular leader, Vuyisa JJ Tyhalisisu, was elected chair by 311-282 votes. Its leader in the Western Cape provincial parliament, Cameron Dugmore, is a veteran of four decades of service to the ANC, and nationally the only white person in such an ANC position.</p>
<p>The newly elected Western Cape provincial executive committee balances Africans such as Tyhalisisu and Ayanda Bam with coloureds such as Neville Delport, Sharon Davids and Derek Appel. </p>
<p>A significant number of ANC branches have been revived. This coincides with a start in reviving the ANC Youth League and the Women’s League. Next year’s general elections will show how far these measures have changed ANC fortunes in the Western Cape.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210013/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is a member of the African National Congress, but writes this analysis in his professional capacity as a political scientist.</span></em></p>The 2024 general elections will show to what extent the new provincial leadership can start to turn around the ANC’s fortunes in the Western Cape.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2091662023-07-07T10:30:19Z2023-07-07T10:30:19ZTennis and apartheid: how a South African teenager was denied his dream of playing at Wimbledon<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536045/original/file-20230706-30-5qdns0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some 1971 tour players, from left, Hira Dhiraj, Hoosen Bobat, a Dutch friend, Jasmat Dhiraj, Charmaine Williams and Oscar Woodman. Williams toured at her own expense.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the 1971 players/UKZN Press</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today the <a href="https://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/atoz/about_aeltc.html">All England Lawn Tennis Club</a>, hosts of the famous <a href="https://www.wimbledon.com">Wimbledon Championships</a>, pledges to be diverse and inclusive. But in 1971 an 18-year-old university student, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jun/28/how-junior-wimbledon-apartheid-south-africa-blocked-hoosen-bobat-tennis-dream">Hoosen Bobat</a> from Durban, was excluded from achieving his dream of becoming the first black South African to play in the Wimbledon men’s junior tournament. This was due to <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>, and the collusion of the all-white tennis union in South Africa and the International Lawn Tennis Federation, with Wimbledon toeing the line. </p>
<p>I tell Bobat’s story in the new book <a href="https://www.ukznpress.co.za/?class=bb_ukzn_books&method=view_books&global%5Bfields%5D%5B_id%5D=598">Tennis, Apartheid and Social Justice</a>. I am a scholar who has published numerous <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=saleem+badat&btnG=">books and papers</a> on the histories of <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/the-forgotten-people-political-banishment-under-apartheid/">black exclusion</a> and organised <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Black_Man_You_are_on_Your_Own/DsLYRwAACAAJ?hl=en">black resistance</a> during apartheid, and on social justice and transformation. </p>
<p>My book documents the historic 1971 first international tour by a squad of black South Africans who played tennis under the auspices of the non-racial Southern African Lawn Tennis Union.</p>
<p>In 1973, the union was a founding affiliate of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-south-african-council-on-sport-at-50-the-fight-for-sports-development-is-still-relevant-today-202402">South African Council on Sport</a>, which popularised the slogan</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No normal sport in an abnormal society. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the context of apartheid, this must be contrasted with tennis played by white South Africans under the racially exclusively white tennis union.</p>
<p>The 1971 touring players were dubbed the “Dhiraj squad” after tennis champion Jasmat Dhiraj, a school teacher. The other five were Hira Dhiraj, Alwyn Solomon, Oscar Woodman, Cavan Bergman and Bobat.</p>
<p>The union’s goals were for its most promising players to compete in tournaments in Europe irrespective of “race” and nationality, to improve their games and be ambassadors for upholding equity and human dignity in sport.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-south-african-council-on-sport-at-50-the-fight-for-sports-development-is-still-relevant-today-202402">The South African Council on Sport at 50: the fight for sports development is still relevant today</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>I wrote the book because I believe important social justice issues arose from the tour. At a minimum, a public apology is due from the international tennis body and Wimbledon to the non-racial sport community, the 1971 tour players and Bobat.</p>
<p>I also thought it was important to tell the story while most of those who lived through it were were still with us. And the book was also an opportunity to focus on “ordinary” people, on unsung heroes, on their tribulations and triumphs. A focus on everyday histories rather than on dramatic events and on elites.</p>
<h2>The issues</h2>
<p>In the book I cover three issues. </p>
<p>Firstly, I place the tour within the political, social and sporting conditions under apartheid. In 1971 South Africa was a racist, segregated and repressive society, based on white supremacy and privilege and black subjugation. Black people were denied proper sports facilities, coaching and opportunities to excel, could not belong to the same clubs as whites or compete in competitions with or against white players. Considered subjects, not citizens, they couldn’t represent South Africa in sport. Sport under apartheid was a killing field of ambitions and dreams.</p>
<p>Secondly, it records the players. The tournaments they participated in, their performances and challenges, the tour’s impact on them, the lessons learnt and their lives and tennis accomplishments after 1971.</p>
<p>Thirdly, the book demonstrates the collusion between the International Lawn Tennis Federation and the white South African tennis body. That collusion, and the action of the All England Lawn Tennis Club, prevented Bobat from becoming the first black South African to play in the junior Wimbledon championships.</p>
<h2>The arguments</h2>
<p>I make five main arguments. </p>
<p>One is that, since democracy in 1994, there has been no fitting recognition, symbolic or material, of outstanding apartheid-era non-racial tennis players. Nor has there been appropriate restitution and reparation of any kind.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536123/original/file-20230706-24-7rnte4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536123/original/file-20230706-24-7rnte4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536123/original/file-20230706-24-7rnte4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536123/original/file-20230706-24-7rnte4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536123/original/file-20230706-24-7rnte4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536123/original/file-20230706-24-7rnte4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536123/original/file-20230706-24-7rnte4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536123/original/file-20230706-24-7rnte4.jpg?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>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UKZN Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A second argument is that apartheid’s legacy continues to profoundly affect and shape tennis today. A walk around the affluent white town of Stellenbosch in the Western Cape province and a black township like KwaMashu near Durban reveals the stark differences in terms of tennis courts, coaching and the like.</p>
<p>Third, probably less tennis is played today in black schools and communities than before democracy. Certainly, there is less self-organisation of the kind that harnessed limited economic and social capital in black communities to ensure non-racial tennis.</p>
<p>Fourth, as in other areas of South African society, there has been much talk about “transformation” but <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10130950.2010.9676325">little substantive transformation</a> in tennis. </p>
<p>Fifth, there should have been a <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> for sport that laid bare apartheid sports crimes, the perpetrators and collaborators, and forged agreement on reparations and transformation.</p>
<p>The collaborators included big business and the media. With the support of the South African sugar industry, the tennis Sugar Circuit <a href="https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/80SLoFsUS9iyZ9PbDBv6">became</a> the “breeding ground for world ranked (white South African) players”. The sugar industry was <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/kzns-sugarcane-plantations-fed-off-the-blood-sweat-and-tears-of-indentured-labourers-38db5e28-e88b-4bbd-87a0-5580cd8bfadd">built on</a> the blood and sweat of Indian indentured labour and black labour more generally.</p>
<p>Yet, sugar big business did little to support black players. The commercial media linked to big business were also complicit, devoting print copy and airtime principally to white sports.</p>
<h2>Class, racism and patriarchy</h2>
<p>Opportunities in tennis were profoundly shaped by class, racism, patriarchy and other factors. </p>
<p>The players in the 1971 tour were classified “Coloured” or “Indian”. There were no “Black” South African players chosen because of a debatable notion of “merit” used by the Southern African Lawn Tennis Union.</p>
<p>And the tour was an exclusively male affair even though there were outstanding women tennis players and well-established women’s tournaments. Charmaine Williams joined the tour at her own expense.</p>
<p>In my study I identify how non-racial tennis officials in South Africa exemplified dominant patriarchal attitudes and didn’t take gender inclusion seriously. This would remain an issue in the South African Council on Sport of the 1970s and 1980s.</p>
<p>Jasmat Dhiraj <a href="https://www.ukznpress.co.za/?class=bb_ukzn_books&method=view_books&global%5Bfields%5D%5B_id%5D=598">told me</a> that he had to “overcome inhibitions and complexes” on tour. Bobat states that they </p>
<blockquote>
<p>had to overcome the so-called inferiority complex of playing against white tennis players.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Truth and justice</h2>
<p>Former South African president and liberation leader <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a> <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/No_One_to_Blame.html?id=nAgAzUwnyN4C&redir_esc=y">commented</a> in 1995:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We can now deal with our past, establish the truth which has so long been denied us, and lay the basis for genuine reconciliation. Only the truth can put the past to rest.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But, in my view, instead of dealing with our past South Africans are letting it fester, failing to see that genuine reconciliation cannot be achieved by ignoring the injustices and pain of the past.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209166/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Saleem Badat receives funding from the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. </span></em></p>A new book delves into the issues faced by a 1971 international tennis tour, and calls for injustice to be recognised.Saleem Badat, Research Professor, UFS History Department, University of the Free StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2049692023-05-11T14:29:12Z2023-05-11T14:29:12ZZulu vs Xhosa: how colonialism used language to divide South Africa’s two biggest ethnic groups<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524909/original/file-20230508-230994-rsgk8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An illustration of an antique photograph of the British Empire's mission work among the Zulu people of then-Natal province.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ilbusca/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>South Africa has <a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/press-releases/na-approves-south-african-sign-language-12th-official-language">12 official languages</a>. The two most dominant are <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zulu-language">isiZulu</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Xhosa-language">isiXhosa</a>. While the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/zulu">Zulu</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/xhosa">Xhosa</a> people share a rich common history, they have also found themselves engaged in ethnic conflict and division, notably during <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2022/07/divided-by-the-word">urban wars</a> between 1990 and 1994. A new book, <a href="https://shop.wits.ac.za/product/divided-by-the-word/">Divided by the Word</a>, examines this history – and how colonisers and African interpreters created the two distinct languages, entrenched by apartheid education. Historian Jochen S. Arndt answers some questions about his book.</em></p>
<h2>What is the key premise of the book?</h2>
<p>The beautiful thing about history is that it can help us develop a more complex understanding of the things we consider natural in our daily lives.</p>
<p>People like to believe that their languages have always been there and always played an important role in defining their identity.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524921/original/file-20230508-15-pj1xl7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover showing an old photo of a young African girl in western attire holding a book and a pen and reading from the pages." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524921/original/file-20230508-15-pj1xl7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524921/original/file-20230508-15-pj1xl7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524921/original/file-20230508-15-pj1xl7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524921/original/file-20230508-15-pj1xl7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524921/original/file-20230508-15-pj1xl7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524921/original/file-20230508-15-pj1xl7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524921/original/file-20230508-15-pj1xl7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&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">Wits University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But history can show us that what appears to be timeless is, in fact, deeply historical and dependent on the actions of people with ambitions and agendas. My book argues that, as well-defined, standardised languages rather than speech forms (vernaculars), isiZulu and isiXhosa emerged as part of a long historical process that involved a wide range of actors, notably European and US missionaries and African interpreters and intellectuals.</p>
<h2>How did you arrive at the project?</h2>
<p>During the transition from <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> to democracy in South Africa between 1990 and 1994, the urban areas reserved for black people around Johannesburg were engulfed in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/112/447/283/79418">violence</a> that killed thousands. Civil wars are always complex, but the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/112/447/283/79418">testimonies</a> of <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781847012128/township-violence-and-the-end-of-apartheid">participants</a> <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637187">reveal</a> that many of them understood the <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/passages/4761530.0004.002/--violence-and-political-action-in-south-africa-five-comrades?rgn=main;view=fulltext">conflict</a> as a war between Zulus and Xhosas. I was struck by how they defined Zuluness and Xhosaness. Many said they were Zulu because they spoke the Zulu language, and Xhosa because they spoke the Xhosa language. One haunting testimony was of a self-identifying Zulu:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Xhosa who were trying to kill us were just looking for your tongue, which language you were.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My book argues that the historical process that produced isiZulu and isiXhosa as distinct languages began at least two centuries before apartheid. It was the product of colonial encounters and both foreign and African ideologies of language.</p>
<h2>Was there a time when Zulu and Xhosa identities didn’t exist?</h2>
<p>The subtitle of the book is: “Colonial encounters and the remaking of Zulu and Xhosa identities”. I’m not saying that Zulu and Xhosa identities didn’t exist before the languages were well defined, rather that the identities were transformed when these languages came into existence.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-100-year-old-story-of-south-africas-first-history-book-in-the-isizulu-language-178924">The 100-year-old story of South Africa's first history book in the isiZulu language</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Before the 1800s, South Africa’s indigenous people had two key forms of collective belonging: the chiefdom and the clan. There were many chiefdoms and clans, including Zulu and Xhosa ones. The chiefdom was a political entity: a person belonged to a chiefdom because they had submitted or sworn an oath of fealty to a chief. The clan was a genealogical entity: a person belonged because they were born into the clan. </p>
<p>Membership in a chiefdom or a clan had nothing to do with language. </p>
<h2>How did the two distinct languages come into existence?</h2>
<p>I argue that in the 1800s foreign missionaries and their African interpreters together created distinct isiZulu and isiXhosa out of numerous speech forms.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525056/original/file-20230509-25-q1mqtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A vintage illustration in black and white of an African man in formal western attire standing next to a table where three other men stand and sit in a lavish drawing room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525056/original/file-20230509-25-q1mqtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525056/original/file-20230509-25-q1mqtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525056/original/file-20230509-25-q1mqtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525056/original/file-20230509-25-q1mqtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525056/original/file-20230509-25-q1mqtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525056/original/file-20230509-25-q1mqtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525056/original/file-20230509-25-q1mqtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">JanTzatzoe, left, was a Xhosa chief who converted to Christianity and served as a translator for the British.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Nicholson/Corbis via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Protestant missionaries arrived in South Africa in the 1820s. Their primary goal was to convert Africans to Christianity. For them the Bible was the source of revelation. To give Africans direct access to it, it had to be translated.</p>
<p>The problem was there was no written language, so written languages and their geographic reach had to be defined. Consequently, missionaries asked themselves: are the speech forms of the Zulu and Xhosa and of the chiefdoms and clans in between them – such as Mfengu, Thembu, Bhaca, Mpondo, Mpondomise, Hlubi, Cele, Thuli, Qwabe – similar enough to represent a single language into which the Bible can be translated, or do they represent multiple languages?</p>
<p>I suggest that the answer to this question changed over time for a host of reasons, perhaps most importantly due to the influence of African interpreters. Missionaries depended on interpreters, who had their own ideas about language. The decision to think of isiZulu and isiXhosa as two separate languages can to some extent be traced back to these interpreters.</p>
<p>Education played the crucial role in people identifying with these languages. It involved Africans and non-Africans, as lawmakers, superintendents of education and teachers, promoting isiZulu and isiXhosa as part of “mother tongue” education in various school settings between the middle of the 1800s and the last decade of the 1900s.</p>
<h2>How did apartheid entrench this?</h2>
<p>Apartheid merely reinforced this trend. Crucial was the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eiselen-Commission">Eiselen Commission</a> of 1949, which <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/report-of-the-commission-on-native-education-1949-1951/oclc/668118744">claimed</a> that isiZulu and isiXhosa were the “bearer of the traditional heritage of the various ethnic groups”. This was like saying that these languages captured the essence of these groups in particularly powerful ways. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524925/original/file-20230508-213756-74pvcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Close up of hands holding an old, battered document containing an identity photo and personal information." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524925/original/file-20230508-213756-74pvcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524925/original/file-20230508-213756-74pvcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524925/original/file-20230508-213756-74pvcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524925/original/file-20230508-213756-74pvcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524925/original/file-20230508-213756-74pvcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524925/original/file-20230508-213756-74pvcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524925/original/file-20230508-213756-74pvcv.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">Dekemani Mzuzwa with his pass book that he is waiting to exchange for a new passport in 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To reinforce these group identities, the commission expanded mother tongue education in schools. This for a Mpondo child, for instance, meant studying isiXhosa, and for a Hlubi child meant studying isiZulu. Children gradually assimilated Zulu or Xhosa as their language-based identities.</p>
<h2>How is this relevant today?</h2>
<p>Post-apartheid South Africa continues to promote the Zulu-Xhosa divide through its own official language policies in schools. In the Eastern Cape, for instance, African pupils will learn standard isiXhosa because it is assumed that their “home language” is a dialect of isiXhosa. In KwaZulu-Natal the same happens with isiZulu. Under this policy, it is very difficult to revive and strengthen identities such as Bhaca or Hlubi.</p>
<p>The only way out of this predicament for the Hlubi and Bhaca is to make language a battleground of their identity politics. I think this best explains why the Hlubi have created an <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-02-21-amahlubi-battle-to-save-mother-tongue-from-extinction/">IsiHlubi Language Board</a> and why the <a href="https://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/2015-05-28-respect-bhaca-kingdom-/">Bhaca</a> insist that their <a href="https://ridgetimes.co.za/43364/isibhaca-is-the-language-of-the-bhaca-nation/">speech</a> is not a dialect of isiXhosa.</p>
<p>My point is that we cannot make sense of their need to make these arguments without coming to terms with the long history of the Zulu-Xhosa language divide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204969/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jochen S. Arndt received funding from the Social Sciences Research Council, American Historical Association, and Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa.</span></em></p>Missionaries and African translators working on local versions of the Bible divided South Africa’s ethnic groups by language.Jochen S. Arndt, Associate Professor of History, Virginia Military InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2024022023-03-28T13:59:22Z2023-03-28T13:59:22ZThe South African Council on Sport at 50: the fight for sports development is still relevant today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517892/original/file-20230328-3015-yxtdpj.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">Richard Drury/Getty Images</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s 50 years since the <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.817068754613985">official formation</a> of the South African Council on Sport (Sacos). Sacos was the sport wing of the anti-<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> liberation movement. It was established in 1973 and disbanded in 2005. It’s main <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.817068754613985">aim</a>, at the time, was to lay the ground for all national sport federations to be able to compete in international competition – and not just the teams of the white-minority apartheid state.</p>
<p>As a remembrance campaign, regional committees were established in various South African cities to commemorate this nearly forgotten but historically important organisation. It’s important to remember Sacos because its ideals of a non-racial sport society have still not been realised in 2023.</p>
<p>Instead, South African sport has regressed to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349590114_A_Critique_of_Neoliberalism_in_Sport_Towards_Optimistic_Sport_in_the_Wake_of_the_COVID-19_Pandemic">elitism</a>, uncontrollable <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Sport.html?id=L35jxQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">corruption</a>, over-professionalism, nepotism and exclusion.</p>
<p>The Remembering Sacos Campaign, begun on 17 March 2023, consists of seminars, exhibitions and sport activities. It is an ongoing drive, aiming to make the majority of South Africans aware of their present-day marginalisation from sports structures. Simply put, it is a reactivation of the Sacos slogan:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No normal sport in an abnormal society.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The slogan meant that sport cannot be divorced from broader social issues. It was a very unpopular idea among establishment sport circles in the 1970s, who spread a message that sport and politics do not mix.</p>
<p>Sports historians have <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.817068754613985">contributed</a> sparse but <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Sport_and_Liberation_in_South_Africa.html?id=baGfAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">important</a> <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Sport_and_Liberation_in_South_Africa.html?id=baGfAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">research</a> <a href="https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/esploro/outputs/doctoral/Opposing-apartheid-through-sport-the-role/9911673007691?skipUsageReporting=true&skipUsageReporting=true&recordUsage=false&recordUsage=false&institution=27UOJ_INST">works</a> that reveals the huge contribution Sacos made to sport development in South Africa up until 2005.</p>
<p>These histories, combined with information from archives at local and overseas universities, show how sport development was used to unite oppressed communities, unlike the false unity of today. Administrators were able to develop sport programmes from community to national level without government and corporate support. They were united around issues such as organising fixtures, agitating for facilities, seeking out sponsorships and others. This was enabled by self-sacrificing leaders, committed to non-racialism – such as 1980s Sacos leader <a href="https://www.sun.ac.za/english/Lists/Events/DispForm.aspx?ID=5445&RootFolder=%2Fenglish%2FLists%2FEvents&Source=https%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esun%2Eac%2Eza%2Fenglish%2FPages%2Fdefault%2Easpx">Willie Adams</a>.</p>
<p>The history of Sacos offers insights into how to craft new narratives that could advance sport development in marginalised communities today.</p>
<h2>Remembering Willie Adams</h2>
<p>Willie Adams (1951-2012) was the subject of one <a href="https://www.sun.ac.za/english/Lists/Events/DispForm.aspx?ID=5445&RootFolder=%2Fenglish%2FLists%2FEvents&Source=https%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esun%2Eac%2Eza%2Fenglish%2FPages%2Fdefault%2Easpx">symposium</a> marking the 50th anniversary. Adams personified what Sacos leadership represented during apartheid and what potential it holds for a future sport leadership. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white photograph of a row of six men and a woman standing posing, the men wearing jackets and ties" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517891/original/file-20230328-490-8f7acl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sacos members. From left to right: Michael Titus, Stan Gumede, Dallas Haynes, Reginald Feldman, Hilton Adonis, Willie Adams and Basil Brown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stellenbosch University Library/Willie Adams Collection</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This activist and intellectual sport leader realised the importance of a politically non-aligned resistance sport movement that worked towards an equal and open society. Even after the first steps to dismantle the country’s apartheid structures, Adams and a small band of former Sacos comrades remained true to this principle. They successfully waged a “Stop the Olympic bid committee” campaign in the 1990s. They argued that development must take precedence over hosting high profile events, especially in a society struggling to recover from decades of oppression under white minority rule.</p>
<p>Adams also continuously warned of the pitfalls of a hastily concocted sport unification in the 1990s. He based his sport-political project firmly on Sacos principles of No Normal Sport in an Abnormal Society.</p>
<h2>A history of Sacos</h2>
<p>Sacos was established in 1973 by a small group of sport administrators, representing nine federations from oppressed communities. This was to formulate a response to the government’s apartheid practices, which promoted separate development for different racially classified communities.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-colonial-history-shaped-bodies-and-sport-at-the-edges-of-empire-166192">How colonial history shaped bodies and sport at the edges of empire</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In 1970, the apartheid government <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/The_South_African_Game.html?id=lXeBAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">introduced</a> a new multinational sport policy. It was an attempt to trick the international community into believing it was making significant reforms of its segregation practices. This was a time when South Africa was <a href="https://olympics.com/en/news/why-south-africa-barred-from-the-olympics-apartheid">expelled</a> from the International Olympic Committee and an <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354971367_Non-Racial_Sport_in_South_Africa_A_Documentary_Analysis_of_the_Struggle_for_International_Recognition_1946-1971">increasing number</a> of international sport federations. Absurd as it may seem today, the new policy allowed people from different, racially classified, communities to play sport together – provided they apply for a permit. But apartheid laws remained firmly intact.</p>
<p>Initiated by the non-racial South African Soccer Federation, a <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.817068754613985">meeting</a> was held under the name The First Conference of National Non-Racial Sports Organisations (commonly referred to as “the ad hoc committee”). It took place at the Himalaya Hotel in Durban on 6 September 1970. The committee had meagre funds at its disposal and no permanent administrative staff. Meetings were held after work hours in private offices. </p>
<p>The meeting may be regarded as the first step towards the formation of Sacos. It revolved around the presentation of two papers: Problems Confronting our Sports Administrators and Sportsmen of our Country by Morgan Naidoo and International Sport by M.N. Pather. These papers have unfortunately not been preserved but the <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.817068754613985">minutes</a> of the meeting indicate that discussions revolved around the lack of opportunity for oppressed communities to participate in international sport. These issues remain unresolved in a society with huge <a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-loses-its-glow-for-south-africans-amid-persistent-inequality-181489">inequalities</a> and rampant <a href="https://theconversation.com/zumas-disastrous-rule-goes-on-as-a-corrupt-elite-robs-south-africa-blind-68185">corruption</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-story-of-milo-pillay-the-strongman-who-lifted-a-bar-for-south-african-sports-161915">The story of Milo Pillay, the strongman who lifted a bar for South African sports</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>After a series of formal meetings for the next three years, Sacos was established on 17 March 1973 at the Himalaya Hotel. Guest speakers included <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/chief-mangosuthu-gatsha-buthelezi">Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi</a> from the Inkhata Party and journalist <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2006-07-21-journalist-barry-streek-passes-away/">Barry Streek</a> representing the banned student leader, <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/opinions/analysis/paul-pretorius-guiding-sa-through-the-morass-of-corruption-20190131">Paul Pretorius</a>. Sacos was to prepare the ground for oppressed national sporting bodies to achieve international recognition. Apartheid sport federations ignored its overtures, resulting in a hardening of Sacos attitudes, especially after the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Soweto 1976 uprising</a>. </p>
<p>When Adams entered the Sacos leadership in the 1980s, the organisation had changed. It envisaged a new sporting world for South Africa’s oppressed masses, beyond just international participation. Again, the apartheid government rejected its call. As did the new, post-apartheid sport regime under the ruling African National Congress’s short-lived National Sports Congress. The Sacos call, this time, was for development first – before international participation. This lack of recognition by the state led to the eventual demise of Sacos in 2005. </p>
<p>For those in search of a new sport world of equal opportunity for all South Africans, it is worth remembering Sacos and its fight for sport development.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202402/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francois Cleophas 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>Fifty years ago the council was created to fight for marginalised communities to participate fairly in sports. Their dream remains unfulfilled.Francois Cleophas, Senior Lecturer in Sport History, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1924252022-10-20T14:07:58Z2022-10-20T14:07:58ZSouth Africa’s struggle songs against apartheid come from a long tradition of resistance<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490044/original/file-20221017-21-qtbypn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions sing political songs in 1987 in Johannesburg. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Walter Dhladhla/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Struggle songs, also known as protest music or liberation songs, are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007768308591202">defined as</a> “expressions of discontent or dissent” used by politically disenfranchised protesters to influence political conversations and express emotions. </p>
<p>Some scholars <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007768308591202">argue</a> that these songs date back to ancient biblical times when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt and “the Hebrew people sang their lamentations”. </p>
<p>In the American context, researchers <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Sinful_Tunes_and_Spirituals.html?id=OvQLVneUgHkC&redir_esc=y">contend</a> that protest music can be traced back to transatlantic slaves. But others <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1">note</a> that the use of these songs <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-50538-1">goes back even further</a>.</p>
<p>In modern Africa and in other colonised contexts, such as Latin America, protest music was an <a href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/attachments/jps-articles/jps_2003_32_3_21.pdf">important tool</a> used by oppressed peoples in their quests to overthrow oppressive regimes. </p>
<p>In South Africa, struggle songs were critical in the strategies used to depose the oppressive race-based <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> state. They became effective instruments of confrontation used by the black majority against the white oppressors.</p>
<p>They were also used as a means of keeping alive the memory of political icons who had been killed, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-is-steve-bikos-remarkable-legacy-often-overlooked-82952">Steve Biko</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-south-african-struggle-hero-chris-hani-lessons-for-today-64715">Chris Hani</a>, and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/solomon-kalushi-mahlangu">Solomon Mahlangu</a>. </p>
<p>At the same time they helped ensure that those resistance leaders who were imprisoned, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/mandela-was-a-flawed-icon-but-without-him-south-africa-would-be-a-sadder-place-142826">Nelson Mandela</a>, or exiled, like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/oliver-tambo">Oliver Tambo</a>, were not forgotten. These people, the dead and the living, represented the country’s political struggle.</p>
<p>The songs were also a way of marking moments of grief, of which there were many, and the occasional moments of hope, as black South Africans looked forward to the apartheid regime’s demise.</p>
<p>As a researcher whose work looks at the intersection of rhetoric, language and media, I <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780367823658-26/persuasion-songs-protest-sisanda-nkoala">have</a> <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC-20c6b555ff">examined</a> the appeal of struggle music as an persuasive means of engaging in political communication in the South African context. </p>
<p>These texts are relevant even in the post apartheid context because they continue to be an important way in which people deliberate on issues. </p>
<p>Even though the lyrics are relatively simple, and the music can be viewed as straightforward and repetitive, the depth of the ideas they capture makes a case for reading texts like struggle songs at a level much more profound than what they literally denote. </p>
<h2>A brief history</h2>
<p>Different styles of music characterised different periods in South Africa’s struggle for liberation. The change in political and social conditions did not just prompt a change in the lyrics of the songs; it called for a change in the form to capture the tone of the times. </p>
<p>From the late 1800s into the early 1900s, the strong influence of missionaries on black South African literary culture influenced the tone and lyrics of protest music. It resulted in struggle songs that were characterised by a hymn-like sound. This was in the context of a shared Christian belief system. </p>
<p>For example, Biblical and ancient studies scholar, J. Gertrud Tönsing (2017) <a href="https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/4339">talks about</a> how the emphasis of prayer as a tool against the apartheid regime was rooted in the missionary influence. This, in turn, influenced the lyrics and melodies of the struggle songs that emerged so that they featured rhythmically static music and words written like prayers. </p>
<p>From the 1940s and 1950s the violence against black South Africans was written into law through the passing of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/group-areas-act-1950">Group Areas Act</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">“pass laws”</a>. These restricted the movement of black people in certain areas. </p>
<p>Music began to incorporate musical elements inspired by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3113919#metadata_info_tab_contents">American jazz and kwela penny whistles</a>. Kwela is a <a href="https://ukzn-dspace.ukzn.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10413/9106/Allen_Lara_V_1993.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">pennywhistle-based street music with jazzy underpinnings and a distinctive, skiffle-like beat</a>.</p>
<p>This merger of musical elements was indicative of the cultural diversity that characterised the townships. Music historian Lara Allen <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3113919#metadata_info_tab_contents">argues</a> that the music found resonance and gained popularity because the sound expressed a “locally rooted identity”. </p>
<p>Another feature of the struggle songs from this era was the topical subject matter. Lyrics spoke to current events as they affected black people – kind of “singing the news”. As Allen <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3113919#metadata_info_tab_contents">puts it</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In this regard vocal jive enjoyed an advantage … in that lyrics, through reference to current events and issues of common concern, enabled listeners to recognize their own interests and experiences more concretely.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The 1960s marked an intensification of the apartheid government’s heavy-handedness on any form of protest and resistance. On 21 March 1960, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> occurred, where 69 people were killed while staging a protest against pass laws. In response, the struggle approach changed from a non-violent to an armed struggle with the establishment of the militant wing of the African National Congress, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">uMkhonto we Sizwe</a>. </p>
<p>The upbeat vocal jive style <a href="http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/265/the-sounds-of-resistance-the-role-of-music-in-south-africas-anti-apartheid-movement">was increasingly replaced</a> by militaristic rhythms and chants accompanied by marching actions. </p>
<p>Some of the songs from this period were simply chants. Nevertheless, they were still musical in the way in which they used the beat and other vocal sound effects to evoke emotions. They were often accompanied by the toyi-toyi, a high-stepping ‘dance’ that Allen describes as a march that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03057070902920015?casa_token=IJZ5nO8NssYAAAAA:WTltYQHaHlYg6ZvMtFriNwlAyF-CADEhEmDcxyV32iauPXJbrCVK0Vnl2xkrU0Hmws5O9K9FrD6rLg">mimicked the movement of soldiers in training</a></p>
<p>As musicologist and expert in struggle music Michela Vershbow <a href="http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/265/the-sounds-of-resistance-the-role-of-music-in-south-africas-anti-apartheid-movement">describes them</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The power of this chant builds in intensity as it progresses, and the enormity of the sounds that erupt from the hundreds, sometimes thousands of participants was often used to intimidate government troops.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>In a post-apartheid world</h2>
<p>In the late 1980s academic and expert on Latin American revolutionary songs Robert Pring-Mill <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/853420#metadata_info_tab_contents">wrote about how</a> songs that featured prominently in many oppressive cultures retained their power and currency over time.</p>
<p>This is true in South Africa too where songs from the struggle continue to hold an established place as part of South Africa’s political communication heritage. Examples include songs of lament, like <em>Senzeni na?</em> which bemoans the unjust treatment of marginalised South Africans. Another is the more confrontational <a href="https://www.newframe.com/political-songs-ndodemnyama-miriam-makeba/">Ndodemnyama we Verwoerd!,</a> which was written by Vuyisile Mini and sung by him and his compatriots while walking to their death in the apartheid gallows.</p>
<p>Pring-Mill argues that struggle songs endure because they reflect historical </p>
<blockquote>
<p>events recorded passionately rather than with dispassionate objectivity, yet the passion is not so much that of an individual singer’s personal response, but rather that of a collective interpretation of events from a particular ‘committed’ standpoint. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s noteworthy that in recent years, some of these songs are now said to be hate speech. There have even been calls <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/politics/political-parties/equality-court-grants-afriforum-leave-to-appeal-kill-the-boer-ruling-20221004">to ban them from being sung</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192425/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sisanda Nkoala receives funding from the National Research Foundation and has previously been awarded an AW Mellon-UCT Graduate Scholarship in Rhetoric </span></em></p>Struggle songs are relevant even in the post apartheid context because they continue to be an important way in which people deliberate on issues.Sisanda Nkoala, Senior Lecturer, Cape Peninsula University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1906022022-10-06T13:43:48Z2022-10-06T13:43:48ZZulu monarchy: how royal women have asserted their agency and power throughout history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/484899/original/file-20220915-37506-jywf4t.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">EPA-EFE/Phill Magakoe/AFP Pool</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The passing away of South Africa’s Zulu king <a href="https://www.citizen.co.za/witness/news/eidos-news/obituary-zulu-king-goodwill-zwelithini-72-died-on-friday-20210312/">Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu</a> in March 2021 refocused attention on the role of royal women in Zulu leadership. After the official mourning period, and to the surprise of many observers, the late king’s will <a href="https://www.citizen.co.za/witness/news/kzn/update-queen-mantfombi-madlamini-zulu-to-reign-as-regent-until-installation-of-next-king-20210322/">appointed</a> his senior wife Queen Mantfombi Dlamini Zulu to hold the throne for his successor. </p>
<p>Queen Mantfombi <a href="https://www.citizen.co.za/witness/news/kzn/queen-mantfombi-dlamini-zulus-obituary-20210430/?fbclid=IwAR10PkNlTJf5_L6e37tk2NM8BNwk0tD3dRS2HsnwsHWT6iezFvpHK7cpFpI">died</a> six weeks later. Her will named her son <a href="https://www.citizen.co.za/witness/news/kzn/new-zulu-king-aims-to-unite-the-royal-family-20210603/">Misuzulu kaZwelithini</a> as the heir.</p>
<p>In response, Zwelithini’s first wife Queen Sibongile Dlamini Zulu and her daughters, Ntombizosuthu kaZwelithini and Ntandokayise kaZwelithini, <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-01-13-legal-tussle-over-zulu-royal-family-succession-could-take-years-to-resolve/">challenged the late king’s will in court</a>. They tried to prevent Misuzulu’s installation.</p>
<p>These contestations are only the latest episodes in a long history of royal women’s agency in the affairs of the Zulu kingdom. </p>
<p>Since 2010, the South African government has formally recognised seven kingdoms in the country. Of these, the Zulu royal house is the best financially supported. As a result of secret <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-08-07-secret-details-of-the-land-deal-that-brought-the-ifp-into-the-94-poll/">negotiations</a> in the last days of apartheid, the Zulu king is the largest landowner in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. He is the sole trustee of nearly 30% of KwaZulu-Natal’s land. South African taxpayers <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2021/04/the-king-is-dead">support the royal family</a> to the tune of R75 million (over US$4 million) each year.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-zulu-kingship-judgment-tells-us-about-the-future-of-south-african-customary-law-178786">What the Zulu kingship judgment tells us about the future of South African customary law</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As scholars of traditional authority in the region that is now KwaZulu-Natal, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02582473.2021.1937300?scroll=top&needAccess=true">we convened</a> a roundtable after Zwelithini’s passing with historian Jabulani Sithole to reflect on how historians have written about the king. As we noted in the roundtable, this necessary attention to Zwelithini and his forefathers has obscured the agency exerted by royal Zulu women in state-building. Historians still have much to explore on this topic. The isiZulu language, <em>izibongo</em> (praises) and place names are among the sources still to be mined in depth. But Zwelithini’s passing provides a starting point for reflection on the role of senior royal women in Zulu history.</p>
<h2>Gender, status and access to power</h2>
<p>In the historical polities of southeastern Africa, gender and generation shaped a person’s status and access to power. Respect for elders was encouraged. Women carried many responsibilities in showing respect for men. Men, too, were required to show deference for senior women – including mothers, mothers-in-law and royal women.</p>
<p>As the historian <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sifiso-Ndlovu">Sifiso Ndlovu</a> has argued, among royals,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the primary principles of social organisation were seniority, defined by lineage and relative age.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This does not mean gender did not come into play. As Ndlovu points out, some of the praises of royal women masculinise them. The <em>izibongo</em> of Queen okaMsweli, who was the mother of King <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/king-dinuzulu">Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo</a>, describe her as “uSomakoyisa”. This praise positions her as “the tough and uncompromising one”. The prefix “so” depicts a male figure (versus “no” to refer to a female). </p>
<h2>Reinforcing customs, fighting succession battles</h2>
<p>Perhaps most famous of the powerful Zulu women are Regent Queen Mkabayi kaJama, regent for Senzangakhona kaJama, and the Queen Mother Nandi. </p>
<p>Regent Queen Mkabayi operated as a senior member of the Zulu kingdom during its height in the early 19th century. She was responsible for enforcing custom and advising kings <a href="https://sahistory.org.za/people/shaka-zulu">Shaka kaSenzangakhona</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/king-dingane-ka-senzangakhona">Dingane kaSenzangakhona</a> as part of a military council. The <em>izibongo</em> of Queen Nandi present her as a strong-willed and protective mother who advocated for her son Shaka’s ascendancy.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-has-a-new-traditional-courts-bill-but-it-doesnt-protect-indigenous-practices-190938">South Africa has a new traditional courts bill. But it doesn't protect indigenous practices</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Royal women defended the Zulu monarchy during times of assault and civil war. For example, Novimbi okaMsweli advised her son Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo in the wake of the Zulu civil war that followed the British annexation of Zululand. While he was exiled to Saint Helena, she kept him updated and cooperated with the prime minister of the Zulu, Mankulumana kaSophunga.</p>
<p>Royal women also defended King Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo during his trial after <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/bambatha-rebellion-1906"><em>impi yamakhanda</em></a> (the war of the heads, or Bambatha’s Rebellion) in 1906, collaborating with Anglican missionary <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/harriette-emily-colenso">Harriette Colenso</a> to position the leader as protecting Zulu autonomy. </p>
<p>These royal women played important roles in succession disputes. <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Zulu_Woman.html?id=5ZTelqdJKgQC&redir_esc=y">Christina Sibiya</a>, the wife of King Solomon kaDinuzulu, provided her son <a href="https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/23611">Cyprian Nyangayezinzwe Bhekuzulu kaSolomon</a> with the impetus to claim the throne. She also testified in 1945 to the government commission that found her son to be the rightful heir.</p>
<p>In 1969, King Cyprian’s widows and Princess Greta <a href="https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/44558d306?locale=en">manoeuvred</a> to have Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu installed. Princess Nonhlanhla shaped the official account of Zwelithini’s ascendancy and rule through her contribution to his <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/King_of_Goodwill.html?id=ufAwAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">authorised biography</a>.</p>
<p>During King Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu’s long reign, royal women played key roles in sustaining and reestablishing cultural inheritances. The late king’s fourth wife, Queen Buhle kaMathe, revitalised uMkhosi woMhlanga (the <a href="https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/sights-and-sounds-from-umkhosi-womhlanga-2022/">Reed Dance</a>), a long-standing ceremony to celebrate Zulu womanhood, and held major cultural events at her palace.</p>
<p>Princess Ntandoyenkosi was granted the title of “head of the maidens” in 2005. Mukelile kaThandekile Jane Ndlovu Zulu and Nqobangothando kaNophumelelo MaMchiza Zulu promoted <em>izintombi zomhlanga</em> (virginity testing) revivals and a controversial <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-06-16-virginity-testing-gender-equality-commission-bans-maiden-bursaries/">bursary for “maidens”</a> proposed in 2016.</p>
<p>The claim by Queen Sibongile that she is entitled to half of the <a href="https://www.citizen.co.za/witness/news/kzn/zulu-royals-standoff-not-about-throne-but-about-who-gets-what-in-the-will-20210624/">royal estate</a> as Zwelithini’s only legal wife shows new forms of agency for the women of the royal family. It remains to be seen what role King Misuzulu’s new wife, Queen <a href="https://www.citizen.co.za/witness/news/kzn/meet-zulu-kings-wife-to-be-ntokozo-mayisela-20210515/">Ntokozo Mayisela</a>, will take in the public sphere.</p>
<h2>Sustaining chiefdoms</h2>
<p>Beyond the inner circle of the Zulu kingdom, there are instances of women sustaining chiefdoms in the early decades of colonial rule in Natal. The scholar Felix Jackson <a href="https://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10413/12460/Jackson_Eva_Aletta_2014.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">shows women members of chiefly elites</a> attempting to reestablish polities in these difficult years.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-goodwill-zwelithini-the-zulu-king-without-a-kingdom-156965">South Africa's Goodwill Zwelithini: the Zulu king without a kingdom</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Zulu women don’t have a single, homogeneous status. Not all women enjoyed access to political power. But there were those who actively engaged in politics and governance. Their influence is yet to get full attention and understanding.</p>
<p>The intrigues of the succession dispute remind us that much more historical research is needed on women’s access to power.</p>
<p><em>Jabulani Sithole, a commissioner in the KwaZulu-Natal Commission for Traditional Leadership Disputes and Claims, contributed to the research.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190602/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jill E. Kelly's research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies and Fulbright.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Timbs has received funding from Fulbright </span></em></p>Royal women play important roles in succession disputes, such as the naming of King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu’s heir.Jill E. Kelly, Associate Professor of History, Southern Methodist UniversityLiz Timbs, Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina WilmingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1887772022-08-16T14:27:02Z2022-08-16T14:27:02ZSouth Africa’s Marikana 10 years on: survey shows knowledge of massacre is low<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479382/original/file-20220816-5614-dzeno6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman at a protest in support of victims of the Marikana massacre outside the South African parliament.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>To explore the patterns of collective memory in South Africa after nearly three decades of democracy, we set out to establish how much of the country’s recent history people in the country still remember. </p>
<p>Close to 3,000 people over the age of 15 responded to the annual round of the <a href="https://hsrc.ac.za/news/latest-news/striking-pain-memory-trauma-and-restitution-a-decade-after-the-marikana-massacre/">South African Social Attitudes Survey (2021)</a> by the <a href="https://hsrc.ac.za/">Human Sciences Research Council</a>. The nationally representative data suggests that there is low public awareness in the country about key historical events. The <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/marikana-massacre-16-august-2012">Marikana massacre</a> – the killing of 34 striking miners by police on 16 August 2012 – is one of them.</p>
<p>Just over 40% of the survey respondents said they had heard of the massacre but knew very little about it, while 17% said that they were unaware of it. Only 40% reported knowing enough about Marikana to be able to explain it to a friend. </p>
<p>The findings seem to suggest that public awareness of the tragedy is relatively low among the South African public. This raises uncomfortable questions about collective memory in the country, implying a weak acknowledgement and appreciation of important turning points in its modern national history. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479399/original/file-20220816-9774-hiye6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479399/original/file-20220816-9774-hiye6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479399/original/file-20220816-9774-hiye6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479399/original/file-20220816-9774-hiye6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479399/original/file-20220816-9774-hiye6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479399/original/file-20220816-9774-hiye6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479399/original/file-20220816-9774-hiye6v.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South African Social Attitudes Survey, 2021.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To put the finding in perspective, we compared the responses to the Marikana massacre with other big historical events in the country. These included the <a href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/south-africa-student-protests-explained/">#FeesMustFall Movement</a> (2015/16), the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">1976 Soweto Uprising</a>, and the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> (1960). </p>
<p>The results show that awareness of the Marikana massacre was very similar to knowledge about the #FeesMustFall Movement, with 16% having heard of it, 41% displaying limited knowledge, and 40% no awareness (Fig 2). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479400/original/file-20220816-26-6grk0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479400/original/file-20220816-26-6grk0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479400/original/file-20220816-26-6grk0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479400/original/file-20220816-26-6grk0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479400/original/file-20220816-26-6grk0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479400/original/file-20220816-26-6grk0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479400/original/file-20220816-26-6grk0p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">South African Social Attitudes Survey, 2021</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Familiarity with the 1976 Soweto youth uprising against apartheid education was marginally lower. Awareness of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, in which 69 peaceful protesters against restrictions on the movement of black people were shot dead, was even lower. The share of respondents who were confident they would be able to describe the historical events to someone else ranged between 26% and 40%. </p>
<p>These findings suggest that awareness is likely to be event-specific. And that it’s influenced by how recently events have happened. But overall the level of knowledge about historical events remains generally quite shallow.</p>
<p>As the philosopher George Santayana once <a href="https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/those-who-do-not-learn-history-doomed-to-repeat-it-really/#:%7E:text='Those%20who%20do%20not%20learn,are%20condemned%20to%20repeat%20it.%E2%80%9D">said</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Skewed memory</h2>
<p>Women were slightly less knowledgeable about the Marikana massacre than men. A high percentage of young people – especially 16 to 19-year olds – as well as those over the age of 65 knew very little. The group that knew the most were aged between 35 and 49. </p>
<p>Less educated and rural adults displayed significantly lower awareness of the Sharpeville massacre. The influence of education is especially pronounced in shaping awareness. Access to information also has a bearing. People with a television at home or internet access displayed higher knowledge levels than those without. </p>
<p>Looking across all these attributes, more than a fifth of youth (16-24 years) and students, those with less than a high school level education, rural residents, and those living in North West, Northern Cape, Free State and Eastern Cape provinces reported not having heard of the Marikana massacre.</p>
<p>The most surprising finding was the relatively low awareness among those in North West province, where the massacre happened. This raises the question of whether this historic event is not adequately represented in the media platforms accessible to this community.</p>
<h2>A desire to remember?</h2>
<p>Apart from social and demographic characteristics, the survey also found that individual beliefs about the past and its relevance for the present had a strong influence on awareness of the Marikana massacre (Figure 3). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479401/original/file-20220816-8518-5u5jp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/479401/original/file-20220816-8518-5u5jp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479401/original/file-20220816-8518-5u5jp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479401/original/file-20220816-8518-5u5jp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479401/original/file-20220816-8518-5u5jp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479401/original/file-20220816-8518-5u5jp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/479401/original/file-20220816-8518-5u5jp5.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=413&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>Firstly, the extent to which people expressed interest in “the history and cultures of South Africa” was found to be a significant factor. Those who were very interested in local history and culture were nearly four times more likely to have high awareness of the massacre than those not at all interested (55% compared to 14%). </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/marikana-massacre-south-africa-needs-to-build-a-society-thats-decent-and-doesnt-humiliate-people-188534">Marikana massacre: South Africa needs to build a society that's decent and doesn't humiliate people</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A similar pattern was found based on the degree to which South Africans recognised the importance of the past for the present. Those who believed that historical events were very important were two-and-a-half times more likely to confidently explain the events of Marikana, relative to those who did not (55% versus 22%). </p>
<p>Finally, adults were less knowledgeable of the Marikana massacre (37% could explain the event) if they held the view that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>we should forget the past, move on and stop talking about apartheid.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Those challenging this viewpoint displayed a distinctly higher level of awareness (52%). </p>
<p>Given the importance of such beliefs, it is encouraging that many South Africans recognise the importance of the past for the present. Overall, 71% were interested in South African history and culture (38% very, 33% somewhat), while 78% said that historical events such as the Marikana massacre were very or somewhat important today (47% very, 32% somewhat). </p>
<p>More ambiguously, 45% agreed that South Africans should forget the past and move on, while 31% disagreed and 24% were neutral or uncertain. </p>
<h2>Commemoration, accountability and justice</h2>
<p>The tenth anniversary of the Marikana massacre raises many lingering and uncomfortable questions. These include issues of accountability and culpability, the nature of corporate power and state violence in democratic South Africa, and ultimately of social justice, restitution and healing.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/disconnect-between-business-and-state-contributed-to-marikana-massacre-121507">Disconnect between business and state contributed to Marikana massacre</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A failure to remember and address the issue of reparations will, as William Gumede, Associate Professor at the Wits School of Governance, has argued, pose the societal risk of <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2020-08-16-how-workplace-democracy-can-undo-many-of-apartheids-ills/">“many more Marikanas”</a>.</p>
<p>As former public protector Thuli Madonsela stated in a 2020 Marikana <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-08-14-remembering-and-renewal-thoughts-on-building-a-positive-future-for-the-marikana-region/">memorial lecture</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Marikana happened because we forgot to remember. We forgot to remember our ugly, unjust past and the legacy it left us … We forgot to heal and we focused on renewal. A renewal without a foundation can’t work.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Samela Mtyingizane, a doctoral researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council, contributed to the research and writing of this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Roberts receives funding from various government departments and non-government organisations for the fielding of commissioned content in the annual South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) series. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jare Struwig receives funding from various government and non-governmental organisations as part of a body of work connected to the South African Social Attitude Survey. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Gordon works for the Human Sciences Research Council as a senior research specialist. He is a member of the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) research team. In addition, he is affiliated with the University of Johannesburg. </span></em></p>Individual beliefs about the past and its relevance to the present strongly influenced awareness of the Marikana tragedy.Benjamin Roberts, Acting Strategic Lead: Developmental, Capable and Ethical State (DCES) research division, and Coordinator of the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), Human Sciences Research CouncilJare Struwig, Chief Research Manager, Human Sciences Research CouncilSteven Gordon, Senior Research Specialist., Human Sciences Research CouncilLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1879262022-08-07T08:03:28Z2022-08-07T08:03:28ZNew book on Mapungubwe Archive contests history of South African world heritage site<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477610/original/file-20220804-14-n38306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The new home of the Mapungubwe Archive.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Pretoria Museums/Mapungubwe Archive</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/mapungubwe">Mapungubwe</a> is a <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1099/">world heritage site</a> and <a href="https://www.sanparks.org/parks/mapungubwe/">national park</a> located on the border between South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana. From about 1000 AD the settlement there developed into a major African state before being abandoned by the 1300s. Mapungubwe has been the subject of diverse scientific enquiry and archaeological research since the early 1930s. As a heritage site, however, it challenges colonial, nationalist and apartheid views of prehistory. The vast global trade that’s evidenced by masses of trade glass beads and local artisanship of metals at Mapungubwe shows that Africa was not a ‘dark continent’, devoid of technology and innovation. Mapungubwe’s prehistory was excluded during apartheid to support more Eurocentric views of South Africa’s past. Now a new book, <a href="https://www.barpublishing.com/past-imperfect.html">Past Imperfect</a>, offers a study of this archive of research and reveals gaps, silences and missing voices, some deliberately erased. The author, a curatorial specialist, historian and archaeologist, Sian Tiley-Nel, discusses her findings.</em></p>
<h2>What is the Mapungubwe Archive?</h2>
<p>For more than two decades the <a href="https://www.up.ac.za/museums-collections/gallery/view-2345176-mapungubwe">Mapungubwe Collection</a> has been on public display at the University of Pretoria. The world-class collection, including a famous gold rhino and other significant materials, is a critical research collection for the precolonial era. It has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people since being made more accessible after 1999 at the University of Pretoria.</p>
<p>The same cannot be said for the associated Mapungubwe Archive, which for decades lay in departmental storerooms at the university in boxes, as old papers and ageing photographs. </p>
<p>As an academic, historian and conservator, I was responsible for the archive, which was often unfunded and unvalued as a research asset. It was only in 2018, when I submitted a grant application to the <a href="https://www.up.ac.za/news/post_2735669-ups-mapungubwe-archive-receives-r800-000-cultural-preservation-grant-">US Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation Grant via the US Embassy in Pretoria</a>, that greater traction could be gained to fund the physical preservation of the archive. In the end, the Mapungubwe Archive was established as a formal repository and research site at the University of Pretoria.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477427/original/file-20220803-11163-c4yh6h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover in red with the title Past Imperfect and a black and white photo of a grand old university building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477427/original/file-20220803-11163-c4yh6h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477427/original/file-20220803-11163-c4yh6h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477427/original/file-20220803-11163-c4yh6h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477427/original/file-20220803-11163-c4yh6h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477427/original/file-20220803-11163-c4yh6h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477427/original/file-20220803-11163-c4yh6h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477427/original/file-20220803-11163-c4yh6h.jpeg?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"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BAR Publishing</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was early in my career, in 1999 that I began to realise the full extent of negligence and disregard for original archival sources. There were many antiquated views from scholars which excluded many hidden histories and suggested that other cultures or “non-Africans” were responsible for building the Mapungubwe site. So some Mapungubwe academics often came with racist theories and partial hypotheses based on circumstantial evidence, and ignored histories of oral records. Most disconcerting was the lack of proper care, conservation, preservation, access and active research. Mass excavation was more important than preserving the material and associated records derived from the Mapungubwe Collection.</p>
<h2>What was neglected and what would the missing voices tell us?</h2>
<p>The gaps, silences and missing voices in the Mapungubwe Archive usually indicate highly selected material that was deliberately not kept and is most probably in private possession or was simply destroyed. There were missing letters, photographs and other content. There were gaps in the archive chronology, no field reports and the like.</p>
<p>Some of the Mapungubwe Archive material is related to when the site was used as a military terrain on the farm Greefswald. Many military records are tied up in the Department of Defence and some still have an embargo. </p>
<p>Other forms of missing narratives outlined in the book refer to the neglect of oral history and indigenous knowledge of Mapungubwe Hill as a sacred site by local communities. Fortunately the recognition of community voices has increased over the decades.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-continued-threat-of-coal-mining-at-the-mapungubwe-world-heritage-site-138153">The continued threat of coal mining at the Mapungubwe world heritage site</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In 1969, archaeology become a fully fledged discipline at the University of Pretoria, with a focus on stratigraphy (the layering of archaeological deposits). Research reinforced what I call “pots over people”. There was a lack of consultation with local commmunities in and around the Mapungubwe region. This included a lack of acknowledgement that prior to 1933, Mapungubwe held a deep precolonial history – although not physically evidenced or written. </p>
<p>There are also intentional gaps and silences in the archive during the height of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> (white minority rule in South Africa) mainly from the 1970s until the late 1980s. But even after democracy in 1994 this was happening in archives, and in many other universities as well. It was largely as a result of departmental agendas, academic power struggles and internal institutional politics or just a lack of rigour to preserve archival material.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477459/original/file-20220803-11-vpuj3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women, one seated, examine a clay pot on a table in front of them." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477459/original/file-20220803-11-vpuj3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477459/original/file-20220803-11-vpuj3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477459/original/file-20220803-11-vpuj3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477459/original/file-20220803-11-vpuj3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477459/original/file-20220803-11-vpuj3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477459/original/file-20220803-11-vpuj3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477459/original/file-20220803-11-vpuj3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The author (right) with Helma Steenkamp in 2015, former assistant conservator now the Mapungubwe archivist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stefan Heunis/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The understanding of Mapungubwe’s early contested history can be shaped by the archive and can reveal why some records were kept and others not. And, more importantly, what can be further extracted and learned from the many omissions, silences and absences.</p>
<h2>Is this the case in many archives in South Africa?</h2>
<p>Sadly, the destruction, reckless handling and poor conservation efforts of historical records is notable and widespread even today, globally. The book acknowledges upfront the loss of countless important South African archives over years, not just by research institutions, but by government, private and public institutions as well.</p>
<p>Yet the fact remains that the Mapungubwe Archive does exist. Even if with gaps and omissions, it remains one South Africa’s greatest heritage archives for the continent. </p>
<h2>Why does this matter?</h2>
<p>Archives matter as history matters. Lessons can be learnt from past mistakes and archives serve as human testimony and knowledge that would not have been known if they weren’t preserved. The damage by omissions in the archive from a research point of view demonstrates that the archive is not a repository of historical material only. Archives are shaped in the present and have the potential to shape the future. Much of what is known about Mapungubwe in the 21st century stems from the contents of the archive. <em>Past Imperfect</em> provides many fascinating details of this research.</p>
<p>The recentering of the Mapungubwe Archive shows that while archival material has enduring historical value it also forms part of the university’s shaped culture, trajectory of research and institutional memory. The book is not about making history but instead how history is used. </p>
<p>The Mapungubwe Archive at the University of Pretoria has evolved into not just a repository or depository, but a site of contestation, a space and place of memory.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187926/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sian Tiley-Nel 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 Mapungubwe site offers evidence of precolonial innovation and technology.Sian Tiley-Nel, Head of Museums, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1850732022-06-15T13:20:45Z2022-06-15T13:20:45ZSouth Africa’s epochal 1976 uprisings shouldn’t be reduced to a symbolic ritual<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468960/original/file-20220615-15-hmszgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A memorial in Orlando West, Soweto, honouring the victims of the massacre of school children by apartheid police.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> AFP/Mujahid Safodien/via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the morning of Wednesday, 16 June 1976, young students from schools across Soweto <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">set out on a march </a> through the sprawling <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/townships">black township</a> outside Johannesburg. The march was to amplify their opposition to the apartheid government’s new school-language policy that would see Afrikaans replace English as their <a href="https://michiganintheworld.history.lsa.umich.edu/antiapartheid/exhibits/show/exhibit/origins/soweto_uprising">main medium of instruction</a> in several key subjects. </p>
<p>Before the march began, they were confident. They knew the risks that they faced – <a href="http://www.julian-brown.net/roadtosoweto">“we decided that there should be no placard inciting the police as such</a>, one activist put it afterwards, because "we wanted a peaceful demonstration – it had to be disciplined”. Even so, they were excited, believing that the march would be a carnivalesque event, “a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Guy-Fawkes-Day">Guy Fawkes</a> thing,” as one put it – an event in which the world would be turned upside down.</p>
<p>Their excitement buoyed them in the early hours of the morning, as thousands of students joined in the march. But this atmosphere did not last.</p>
<p>A few hours into the march, heavily-armed members of the South African Police confronted a crowd of students near the Orlando West High School. They fired tear-gas at the students, and then, moments later, fired live ammunition. In the moments that followed, they shot and killed <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hector-pieterson">Hector Pieterson</a> an eleven-year old child. As if energised by this death, the police continued to assault and kill students.</p>
<p>In the hours that followed, another 10 people died at the hands of the police. Over the next three days, at least 138 people died. And the deaths did not stop. Throughout the rest of the year, the police and military would patrol Soweto and many other sites of popular resistance, and use whatever force they deemed necessary to suppress dissent, quash protest, and establish order.</p>
<p>These protests reignited the public flame of resistance, and helped <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">re-make the opposition to apartheid</a>. They provided a model and an example for activists to follow into the 1980s.</p>
<h2>June 16 in perspective</h2>
<p>Today, 46 years later, South Africa commemorates June 16th as <a href="https://www.gov.za/YouthDay2022">National Youth Day</a>.</p>
<p>It is no doubt important to do this, and to remember the sacrifices and struggles of the past. But in commemorating this day, South Africa runs the risk of sacralising these events – of lifting them out of their historical context, stripping them of their political complexities, and remaking them into a mere symbol, something that only needs to be remembered once a year and then forgotten the rest of the time.</p>
<p>In my book, published on the eve of the 40th anniversary of June 16th, <a href="http://www.julian-brown.net/roadtosoweto">The Road to Soweto</a>, I argued that the sacralisation of this singular day has distorted understandings of South Africa’s post-apartheid democracy.</p>
<p>It is now almost trite to suggest that the political order of post-apartheid South Africa was forged in conference rooms and around negotiating tables <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv03370/05lv03405.htm">in the 1990s</a>; that the conversations, debates, and arguments between the representatives of the negotiating parties are what shaped the terms of the country’s political institutions and laws; and that the country constitution is best understood <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.1080/02587203.2018.1550939">as the product of an elite idealism</a>. All of this is at least partially true.</p>
<p>What is wrong with this vision is that it leaves out the role of ordinary people taking to the streets –- the role of protest, of marches, of popular organisation, dissent, discordance, creativity, and struggle –- in making the post-apartheid democratic order.</p>
<p>It presumes that the state is the beginning and the end of the political order; that democracy is only achievable through representation; and it presumes that “the people” are a political resource to be deployed by elite actors (whether these be politicians or intellectuals, revolutionaries or revanchists) and not a source of political ideas in themselves.</p>
<p>But this is not true.</p>
<h2>Making democracy</h2>
<p>While democracy may be encouraged and entrenched through institutions and ideas, it is first made through action. The students who marched on 16 June 1976 did more than simply register a political opinion. </p>
<p>They enacted an alternate form of politics. By gathering and marching together, and by acting together they constituted themselves as political agents – as people who already possessed the kind of agency that the apartheid state denied they could ever claim. And by marching side-by-side – regardless of their age and gender, status and authority – they constituted themselves as a democratic force, as a community of equals.</p>
<p>As I’ve <a href="http://www.julian-brown.net/insurgentcitizens">argued before</a>, this form of politics is not merely a product of the past, not merely a product of the anti-apartheid struggle. Instead, it has marked – and still marks – popular dissent and democratic organising in South Africa since the end of apartheid. </p>
<p>Over the past two decades, such forms of popular democracy have marked the struggles of <a href="http://abahlali.org">Abahlali baseMjondolo</a>, a shack-dwellers movement that organises in informal settlements across South Africa. It has driven the activism of the <a href="https://www.tac.org.za">Treatment Action Campaign</a>, and its grassroots work to force the state to provide anti-retroviral medication. And it has led to labour activists, unions, and other communities achieving significant changes in the <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/the-spirit-of-marikana/">platinum mining industry</a>.</p>
<p>The roots of democracy lie in these actions, in these claims to agency and equality. These acts are themselves rooted in a complex pattern of joy and anger – in the desire to turn the world upside-down, and emerge out of specific historical and social contexts. But they can transcend these moments. They can open up a channel, create a model, and instigate a revolution.</p>
<p>In other words: if the events of 16 June 1976 are seen as an ongoing part of the process of constituting democracy in South Africa, then we can see it as part of contemporary political struggles – and not just as an historical event, safely sealed away in the past.</p>
<p>The marches, protests, and pickets that mark contemporary South Africa are the source of a continually-renewing (and, perhaps, continually-mutating) democracy. The institutions of the state may shape the ways in which this democracy develops, but they do not create it. “The people” make politics.</p>
<p>At this moment, as South Africa’s political elites continue to be <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-05-29-everyone-but-the-guptas-feels-the-heat-as-sa-ups-the-ante-on-state-capture-prosecutions/">mired in scandal</a>, as <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-06-13-sassa-ramaphosa-say-social-relief-of-distress-payments-will-be-made-within-the-week/">the state bureaucracy struggles to fulfil its functions</a>, and as scholars and activists question <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.1080/02587203.2018.1550939">the legitimacy of the constitutional settlement</a>, the anniversary of the uprising of 16 June 1976 in an opportunity to think about what post-apartheid democracy can mean.</p>
<p>It does not only mean the forms and institutions that define the democratic state. It must also mean the ongoing acts of ordinary people, the acts that assert and imagine democracy on the streets over and again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185073/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Brown 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 students who marched on 16 June 1976 did more than simply register a political opinion.Julian Brown, Associate Professor of Political Studies, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1821502022-05-09T13:35:03Z2022-05-09T13:35:03ZNew book unpacks the complexities of whiteness in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460535/original/file-20220429-19-vyzzmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A multiracial crowd sings the South African National Anthem at 2019 memorial service for the late rugby Springbok Chester Williams.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rodger Bosch/AFP/ via GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his latest book <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/roger-southall-296862">sociologist Professor Roger Southall</a>, a prolific researcher who has written extensively about political dynamics in Southern Africa, avoids the “negative and condemnatory” approach generally seen in writing on white South Africans, the creators and beneficiaries of apartheid.</p>
<p>In the preface to the book, <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781847012890/whites-and-democracy-in-south-africa/">Whites and Democracy in South Africa</a>, he explains that he’s done this to instead undertake a nuanced and constructive assessment of white people’s adjustment to post-apartheid democracy.</p>
<p>Therefore, he enters the South African debate on critical race studies by setting his study apart from whiteness scholarship that assumes</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the homogeneity of white practices, ideas and attitudes and that being white is synonymous with being racist (p. 13).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Southall criticises academic writing that attempts the corrective re-orientation of white people towards adopting more desirable behaviour as “sociologically overambitious” (p. 13).</p>
<p>He regards such scholarship as prescriptive and removed from the everyday experiences of white people. Instead, he insists that analysis of whiteness must be based on empirical research.</p>
<p>With this approach, Southall cuts through the sometimes shrill debate on race in South Africa with findings that are grounded in solid research. The book assists in taking the sometimes overly abstract idea of whiteness to a more useful engagement with white people, and their actions and ideas. The findings provide a welcome update on white people’s political stances after <a href="https://www.gov.za/FreedomDay2022">almost 30 years of democracy</a>.</p>
<h2>Whiteness in South Africa</h2>
<p>The book is based on data collected through eight in-depth qualitative focus group interviews, conducted in the provinces of KwaZulu Natal, Western Cape, Gauteng and Free State. Southall anchors the study with a historical contextualisation, giving the long view over time of specifically the political development of whiteness.</p>
<p>He provides an analysis of the state of liberalism. There’s renewed interest in this because of controversial stances on <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-main-opposition-party-caught-in-an-unenviable-political-bind-150296">race taken by the main opposition Democratic Alliance</a>. The party is the primary representative of liberalism among opposition parties in the country. </p>
<p>He also analyses changes in Afrikaner politics over time, white people as citizens, and explores the politics of representation through to the politics of wealth redistribution.</p>
<p>The study confirms the diversity in the political positions of white people in the country. This is also <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Whiteness-Just-isnt-What-Used/dp/B01K0UDD44">found in other work</a>. </p>
<p>Whiteness stands centrally in a racial order in which those positioned as “other” to whiteness are regarded as inferior. But it also creates internal hierarchies through overlapping regimes of domination, whether economic, patriarchal, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/heteronormativity">heteronormative</a> or others. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-1994-miracle-whats-left-159495">South Africa's 1994 'miracle': what's left?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sitting-Pretty-Afrikaans-Postapartheid-Africa/dp/1869143760">Analysis</a>, when done from a critical vantage point of taking into account ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality, shows complex intersections within whiteness. In these, women, LGBT and economically marginalised people occupy “lesser” statuses.</p>
<p>Southall’s contribution is to show the political changes within whiteness. Bringing in these internal complexities is important as it guards against <a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/Achille%20Mbembe%20-%20Decolonizing%20Knowledge%20and%20the%20Question%20of%20the%20Archive.pdf">mythologising whiteness</a>, which can make whiteness appear to be an insurmountable form of racial exclusion and dehumanisation.</p>
<h2>Reluctant democrats but without apartheid nostalgia</h2>
<p>One of Southall’s important findings is that limited nostalgia for apartheid exists among his respondents. Not a single respondent expressed the wish that the apartheid dispensation should have continued.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Book cover showing no image ut the words 'Whites and Democracy in South Africa' written several times and the name 'Roger Southall' appearing once." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&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>He shows in this book that white South Africans might be “reluctant democrats”, but they have accepted democracy (p. 239). This might seem like an underwhelming statement to make. But it serves as a reminder that an inclusive democracy in which all South Africans enjoy equal citizenship status was complete anathema to successive ruling white cliques for centuries.</p>
<p>The violent lengths that the white settler group went to, to sustain its dominance, are well recorded. As late in the day as the first half of the 1990s, the then ruling <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/South-Africa/The-National-Party-and-apartheid">National Party</a> had no intention of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1770073051/ref=olp-opf-redir?aod=1&asin=1770073051&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1">giving up white power</a>.</p>
<p>In 1992 a whites-only <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/161008?seq=1">referendum was held</a>. The result showed support for a transition to democracy. This indicated that not only the apartheid ruling elite but also the majority of white people wished to open up the political space.</p>
<p>This contributed to, as Southall puts it, the country becoming a “failed settler state”. This is a liberating failure that has created the possibility for the extension of human dignity to all in the country. Those who lose sight of this downplay the gains made since the <a href="https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/unit.php?id=65-24E-6">end of official apartheid in 1994</a>.</p>
<p>However, the point is not to congratulate white people. Historical conditions mostly beyond their control forced a rethink of political positions beyond the small groups of whites who were already critical. Sustained white dissidence against colonialism and apartheid falls beyond the scope of the book. But, it is important again to keep in mind the multiplicity in white people’s political positions.</p>
<h2>Needed: a ‘politics of responsibility’</h2>
<p>The study finds that white people are willing to admit to the “wrongness” of apartheid, even as they deflect responsibility to apartheid-era securocratic and political elites. They had “a sense of relief” when the country finally transitioned to democracy in the 1990s.</p>
<p>However, respondents in the study do not support redress to correct the effects of colonial and apartheid racist policies. This is despite the legacy of white privilege that remains highly visible in the present. </p>
<p>This worrying finding assists in understanding how white resistance to wealth redistribution partly contributes to continuing black poverty in South Africa.</p>
<p>Foremost postcolonial thinker <a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/users/achille-mbembe">Achille Mbembe</a> is quoted in the book to make the point that what is needed among white people, specifically, is a “politics of responsibility” (p. 240). This would include white people bearing a material responsibility towards black people to undo the ravages of centuries of colonialism.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-loses-its-glow-for-south-africans-amid-persistent-inequality-181489">Democracy loses its glow for South Africans amid persistent inequality</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Southall provides a useful set of criteria to give flesh to South Africa’s unique contribution to the global struggle against racism, namely the decades-old idea of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42705231?seq=1">non-racialism</a>. When it comes to a “politics of responsibility”, non-racialism necessarily involves a socio-economic dimension. This must take the form of addressing racial inequality, the property question and eradicating black poverty. All this alongside strengthening the commitment to democracy and advancing interracial inclusivity.</p>
<p>He may be circumspect about fitting his book within whiteness scholarship. But Southall’s latest work adds significant insights to <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Critical-Studies-in-Whiteness/Hunter-Westhuizen/p/book/9780367403799">a newly critical literature on studies of whiteness</a>, which seeks fresh pathways out of the destructive conundrum created by race and racism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christi van der Westhuizen 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>Avoiding trite moralisations, Professor Southall uses empirical research to shed light on white South Africans’ adjustment to democracy.Christi van der Westhuizen, Associate Professor, Centre for the Advancement of Non-Racialism and Democracy (CANRAD), Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1810852022-05-04T14:31:20Z2022-05-04T14:31:20ZFormer South African president predicts the end of the ruling party: history is on his side<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460278/original/file-20220428-26-t9u1nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The African National Congress is steadily losing dominance. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Former South African president Kgalema Motlanthe, one of the saner voices in the ruling African National Congress (ANC), has recently given voice to heresy. He has said that the time of the ANC in power <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/politics/2022-04-06-no-dominant-role-for-anc-in-future-says-kgalema-motlanthe/">is coming to an end</a>. The party that has dominated South African politics since 1994, winning five successive general elections, is <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/ralph-mathekga-the-anc-s-last-decade/vjvm-7311-ga40">confronting a crisis of its own making</a>. This results from poor governance and rampant corruption. A steady decline in support raises the real prospect of gaining less than 50% in the next general election <a href="https://issafrica.org/iss-today/south-africas-future-is-tied-to-anc-leadership-and-election-battles">in 2024</a>.</p>
<p>As Motlanthe <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/politics/2022-04-06-no-dominant-role-for-anc-in-future-says-kgalema-motlanthe/">points out</a>, South African politics is in a state of flux </p>
<blockquote>
<p>which must necessarily result in a realignment of political forces. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>No ANC figure of his stature has hitherto admitted that the ANC as such might cease to exist. South Africa without the ANC is considered unimaginable.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/former-president-kgalema-motlanthe">Motlanthe</a> served as president between the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-safrica-politics-mbeki-idUSWEA015020080920">ejection of Thabo Mbeki</a> in September 2008 and the <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/profiles/president-jacob-zuma-0">elevation to the post of Jacob Zuma</a> following the April 2009 general election.</p>
<p>The defeat of the ANC would be contrary to liberation movement ideology, which suggests that liberation from settler, colonial or apartheid rule constitutes the end of history. Because the ANC is projected as <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-anc-insists-its-still-a-political-vanguard-this-is-what-ails-democracy-in-south-africa-141938">the party of the people</a>, it is assumed that ANC rule inaugurated the rule of the people and the oppressed. Liberation is thus conceived as an end-state. No other future can be imagined; no other future can be regarded as legitimate. </p>
<p>Yet South African history shows that political parties do not last forever. They fragment, they coalesce, and they change their identities as the political landscape changes.</p>
<p>Faced by the consequences of its poor governance, many in the ANC’s top ranks are worried about its declining popular support. If it loses its outright majority in the <a href="https://www.eisa.org/wep/southafrica.htm">2024 national elections</a>, the ANC will need to enter a coalition with another party. Yet history shows that South African parties that seek to govern by forging unity out of diversity tend to fragment when they are confronted by a fundamental political or economic crisis. Let’s recap.</p>
<h2>Fractious party politics in history</h2>
<p>At the establishment of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/union-south-africa-1910">Union of South Africa in 1910</a>, Louis Botha’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Botha">Het Volk</a> of the old Transvaal combined with Prime Minister <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/james-barry-munnik-hertzog">Barry Hertzog’s</a> Orangia Unie of the Free State and the Cape’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Afrikaner-Bond">Afrikaner Bond</a> to form the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/South-African-Party">South African Party</a>. Subsequently, when South Africa entered the <a href="https://en.unesco.org/courier/news-views-online/first-world-war-and-its-consequences-africa">first world war</a> in 1914, an outraged Hertzog, who was bitterly opposed to siding with Britain, left the South African Party to form the first iteration of the Afrikaner-based National Party.</p>
<p>In the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-africas-electoral-history-timeline-1910-2009">1920 election</a>, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/national-party-np">National Party</a> won more seats than the South African Party, which was forced to absorb the Natal-based, jingoistic, pro-British <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03514.htm">Unionist Party</a> to stay in office. However, having alienated the white working class by suppressing the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rand-rebellion-1922">1922 Rand Revolt</a> – when white workers’ resistance to plans by mine-owners to replace them with cheaper black labour resulted in armed rebellion – the South African Party lost the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00358534808451522?journalCode=ctrt20">1924 election</a> to an alliance of the National Party and the <a href="https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/9929">Labour Party</a>.</p>
<p>After being returned to power with an outright majority in 1929, the National Party ran into the headwinds of the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20780389.1990.10417176">economic depression</a>. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jan-Smuts">Jan Smuts</a>, the leader of the South African Party and prime minister, came to its rescue in 1933, entering into a coalition with Hertzog. This led to the “fusion” of the South African Party and the National Party into the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-Party">United Party</a> in 1934.</p>
<p>This was treason to the ultra-British wing of the South African Party, which decamped into the Natal-based <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/dominion-party/m0kg3c8k?hl=en">Dominion Party</a>. More significantly, the formation of the United Party was also sacrilege to the extremist wing of the National Party, which under the leadership of DF Malan crossed the floor of the House of Assembly and formed the opposition, the Gesuiwerde Nasionale Party.</p>
<p>Subsequently, after Hertzog had lost a narrow vote to keep South Africa out of the second world war in 1939, he made way for Smuts as prime minister. Hertzog’s supporters either joined the Gesuiwerde Nasionale Party, which became the Herenigde Nasionale Party, or followed other “Hertzogites” into the small Afrikaner Party. An electoral agreement between the Herenigde Nasionale Party and the Afrikaner Party was subsequently to lead to the defeat of Smuts and the United Party government in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-south-africas-catastrophe-the-1948-poll-that-heralded-apartheid-96928">1948 election</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man makes an open palm gesture with his right had as he speaks into a microphone in his left hand." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460285/original/file-20220428-18-nomiim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460285/original/file-20220428-18-nomiim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460285/original/file-20220428-18-nomiim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460285/original/file-20220428-18-nomiim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460285/original/file-20220428-18-nomiim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460285/original/file-20220428-18-nomiim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460285/original/file-20220428-18-nomiim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leading ANC member and former South African President Kgalema Motlanthe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS/Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The National Party retained power for the best part of the next 40 years. Yet it found it necessary, for reasons both political and economic, to make adjustments to <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hendrik-frensch-verwoerd">Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd</a>’s policies of apartheid. It suffered successive breakaways to the right. The first, led by <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/full/10.18820/24150509/SJCH46.v1.4">Albert Hertzog</a> (the former prime minister’s son) in 1969, saw the formation of the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03472.htm">Herstigte Nasionale Party</a>, which had little impact.</p>
<p>A more serious challenge was presented by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/andries-treurnicht">Andries Treurnicht</a>’s formation of the Conservative Party in 1982, which grew to become the official opposition in 1987. Its threat was such that it forced the National Party government, now headed by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/P-W-Botha">PW Botha</a>, to broaden its support base. It increasingly appealed to English-speakers alongside Afrikaners to retain its majority. </p>
<p>Botha was replaced as leader of the National Party in 1989 by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/frederik-willem-de-klerk">FW de Klerk</a>, who led it through the transition that culminated in the country’s <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/frederick-willem-de-klerk">negotiated end of apartheid</a>. He retired in 1997. </p>
<p>Eventually, in 2000, most of the carcass of the National Party, which had lost power to the ANC in the first democratic election in 1994, was absorbed by the Democratic Party, which became the official opposition <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Democratic-Alliance-political-party-South-Africa">Democratic Alliance</a>.</p>
<h2>Post-apartheid political realignments</h2>
<p>Many observers of the current South African scene will query whether this dizzying detour into the history of white political parties is at all relevant to the present. The answer is that it is.</p>
<p>Successive breakaways from the ANC – by the <a href="https://udm.org.za/history/">United Democratic Movement</a> in 1997, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Congress-of-the-People-political-party-South-Africa">Congress of the People in 2008</a> and, most consequentially of all, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/founding-economic-freedom-fighters-eff">Economic Freedom Fighters</a> in 2013 – reflect the inherently fractious nature of South African politics, whether it has been under white minority rule or, as now, under a democratic dispensation.</p>
<p>That’s why successive ANC governments have lent such strong support to the Zanu-PF government in Zimbabwe. The ANC fears Zanu-PF’s defeat in an election will collapse the myth of the inviolability of liberation movements in southern Africa.</p>
<p>It is still early to predict the decease of the ANC. Yet all the signs of terminal disease are there. It has become <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-10-07-anc-fails-to-stop-the-corruption-train-32-major-scandals-four-in-2021-alone/">thoroughly corrupt</a>; it <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2022/04/11/corruption-accused-zandile-gumede-elected-as-regional-chair-of-ethekwini-anc">appears unable to reform itself</a>; and it appears <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/sources/wsg-news/2022/parts-of-south-africa-have-now-collapsed-wsg-expert-.html">increasingly unable to govern the country</a>, whether that be at national, provincial or municipal level.</p>
<p>All its politicians are frightened to be the ones to <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/we-wont-allow-the-anc-to-split-ramaphosa">break the ANC apart</a>. Yet events – whether this be electoral defeat, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-have-south-africans-been-on-a-looting-rampage-research-offers-insights-164571">mass revolt</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-fiscal-squeeze-warning-signs-ignored-for-too-long-177188">economic failure</a> or whatever – are likely to force their hand. Potential partners will be reluctant to identify themselves with a failing party. They may well demand the formation of a completely new party, with a new name, a new programme and a new brand.</p>
<p>This is a reminder that South African parties have changed over time because the country is difficult to govern. It is a nation of very diverse regions, peoples, religions and ideologies. A ruling party has somehow to cobble all these elements together if it wants to stay in power.</p>
<p>It is no wonder that any ruling party in South Africa finds it difficult to maintain internal coherence and unity over an extended time span. The long and the short of this potted history is that no South African party has shown its capacity to last forever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181085/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<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>Any ruling party in South Africa has found it hard to maintain internal coherence and unity over an extended time span amid wide national diversity.Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1789242022-04-07T14:10:22Z2022-04-07T14:10:22ZThe 100-year-old story of South Africa’s first history book in the isiZulu language<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454206/original/file-20220324-15-r57pc5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail from the cover of the book Magema Fuze: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">UKZN Press</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year marks the centenary of the publication in 1922 of <em>Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona</em> (The Black People and Whence They Came), the first book-length history of black people written in isiZulu. Part of the Nguni language group, there are an estimated 12 million isiZulu speakers in South Africa.</p>
<p>Its author was Magema Fuze, now seen as a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02590123.2005.11964129">major figure</a> in the body of writings produced in African languages in South Africa, but one who remains too little known outside narrow scholarly circles. </p>
<p>The significance of the book is that he was the sole author and the first native speaker of isiZulu to publish a book; previous isiZulu books had been written and published by missionaries and colonial officials. The book was a radical act of publishing; it contained local histories of chiefdoms and kingdoms – from the Zulu to the Ngcobo – as well as theories about the Egyptian/Nubian origins of all black Africans. </p>
<h2>Magema Fuze</h2>
<p>Fuze was born in the mid-1840s in the newly formed British colony of Natal (today KwaZulu-Natal). In 1856 his father sent him to be educated at Ekukhanyeni, the mission station set up at Bishopstowe near Pietermaritzburg by the first Anglican Bishop of Natal, John Colenso. The young Magema learnt to read and write, and also trained as a printer.</p>
<p>Fuze later became a firm supporter of Bishop Colenso in the difficult times that the Bishop faced. In the early 1860s Colenso became the central figure in a fierce dispute over religious beliefs in the Anglican Church. Then in 1874 he became involved in an ugly political battle when he took up the defence of Chief Langalibalele ka Mthimkhulu of the Hlubi people in Natal. The chief had quarrelled with the colonial authorities, and had been exiled to the Cape. </p>
<p>Colenso was one of the very few colonists who thought that he had been unjustly treated. </p>
<p>Throughout these events, Fuze was one of Colenso’s main sources of information on African opinion in the colony. In the Langalibalele affair, he played a key role in helping the bishop to find witnesses that he could use in the chief’s defence.</p>
<p>Fuze was further drawn into assisting Bishop Colenso after the British invaded the Zulu kingdom and defeated Cetshwayo’s armies in 1879. The bishop saw the invasion as another monstrous case of injustice, and was determined to expose the actions of British officials before and after the war. </p>
<h2>Prolific</h2>
<p>Over the next four years, he published a stream of articles and books in which he commented critically on reports on local affairs that appeared in official documents and in newspaper articles. Through this period, Fuze was kept busy in discussions with the bishop and with putting his written comments into print.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-long-moral-shadows-cast-by-south-africas-colonial-history-127123">The long moral shadows cast by South Africa's colonial history</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Bishop Colenso died in 1883. His daughter Harriette took up his work, but in 1884 disaster struck at Bishopstowe when the house burnt down and the printing press was destroyed. By the late 1880s Fuze found that there was no more work for him to do at Bishopstowe. </p>
<p>He went to St Albans College, run by the Anglican Church in Pietermaritzburg, where he taught typesetting to the students. This was the time when Fuze’s career as a writer of newspaper articles began to take off. He wrote numerous letters and articles on public affairs for <em>Inkanyiso</em>, a paper founded by the Anglican Church.</p>
<p>In 1896 Fuze travelled to the island of St Helena where Dinuzulu, the senior figure in the Zulu royal house, had been exiled after rebelling against British colonial rule in 1888. Fuze spent more than a year at St Helena, teaching Dinuzulu and also his children to read and write. He eventually travelled back to Natal when Dinuzulu was allowed to return early in 1898.</p>
<h2>Amakholwa</h2>
<p>After his return from St Helena, Fuze wrote numerous letters to <em>Ipepa lo Hlanga</em>, the earliest known African-owned newspaper in Natal. He commented on public affairs and on African customs, and, as was common in the newspapers of the time, expressed his opinions about what other letter-writers had to say. This practice made for lively debates among <em>amakholwa</em> (African Christian converts) intellectuals in Natal. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454210/original/file-20220324-17-1sajzoa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover showing an illustration of a photo of an elderly man in a suit, with a beard and cane and a bright red banner across the middle wit the words 'Magma Fuze'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454210/original/file-20220324-17-1sajzoa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454210/original/file-20220324-17-1sajzoa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454210/original/file-20220324-17-1sajzoa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454210/original/file-20220324-17-1sajzoa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454210/original/file-20220324-17-1sajzoa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454210/original/file-20220324-17-1sajzoa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454210/original/file-20220324-17-1sajzoa.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&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">UKZN Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We know very little of Fuze’s life in the early years of the 1900s. He comes back into view from 1915 onwards, living in a state of poverty in Pietermaritzburg. At this time, in his old age, he began writing a long series of articles on history and public affairs for the bilingual newspaper <em>Ilanga lase Natal</em>. This had been established in 1903 by John Dube, a leading political and intellectual figure in Natal who in 1912 became the first president of the South African Native National Congress (later the African National Congress, the country’s ruling party since the first democratic elections of 1994).</p>
<p>Fuze’s articles, together with letters that he wrote to the editor of <em>Ilanga</em>, often called forth opposing views from his readers. The newspaper, like others of the time, served as a forum for lively discussions among amakholwa in Natal about their history and identity. This was a period of growing political resistance to oppressive white rule among black people all over South Africa. IsiZulu-speaking intellectuals and political figures were actively discussing what it meant to be ‘Zulu’. In this context, Fuze found firm support from some of his readers for putting his ideas about the past into a book.</p>
<h2>The book</h2>
<p>Fuze seems to have had the idea of publishing a book on his researches into the history of Africans in Natal by at least 1902. But for many years he was unable to find the money that he needed for the purpose. He was eventually able to find assistance from a landowner, Nicholas Masuku, his son N.J.N. Masuku, and his old patron and co-worker from the Bishopstowe years, Harriette Colenso. His book was privately published in Pietermaritzburg in 1922 under the title <em>Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona</em>.</p>
<p>Much of the book was based on articles that Fuze had published in <em>Ilanga lase Natal</em> after 1915. It was not a conventional history book. Fuze did not call himself a historian in the sense of someone who is trained to use evidence to write an authoritative account of the past. In many ways he was writing to open up discussion of affairs of the day among amakholwa intellectuals.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-zulu-radio-dramas-subverted-apartheids-grand-design-126786">How Zulu radio dramas subverted apartheid's grand design</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Abantu Abamnyama</em> was published in the first few months of 1922. Fuze died in September of that year at the age of about 78. He would probably have been disappointed with the way his book was received by the public. It cost five shillings (more than R200 or US$13 in today’s money), so very few people could afford to buy it. It was read by a few specialists in education and in Zulu literature, but does not seem to have had a popular readership. </p>
<p>Today, though, Fuze’s book is coming to be seen as a very important text in the archive of how black intellectuals thought about the past in the often troubled times when “modern” South Africa was coming into being. One of the obvious topics of discussion was the rise of the Zulu kingdom under the reign of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/shaka-zulu">Shaka kaSenzangakhona</a>. Less obvious topics included debates about whether the Bible should be read literally by the newly converted.</p>
<p>In 2011 I published a book on Fuze. When I first began research on him, I was uncomfortable with the idea of being his biographer. Writing about someone else’s life is not an easy thing to do: it puts a heavy responsibility on the writer. But in more recent years I have become comfortable with the idea. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454325/original/file-20220325-21-yp13yf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover that shows a collage of photos of various ancient manuscripts, rock art, archaeological digs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454325/original/file-20220325-21-yp13yf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454325/original/file-20220325-21-yp13yf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454325/original/file-20220325-21-yp13yf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454325/original/file-20220325-21-yp13yf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454325/original/file-20220325-21-yp13yf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454325/original/file-20220325-21-yp13yf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454325/original/file-20220325-21-yp13yf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&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">Wits University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As more and more scholars search for and rediscover the lost treasures of African intellectual history, I am pleased that I found Fuze at the beginning of my academic career. His writing continues to influence my thinking on how best to recapture the ideas of the past and make them come alive for contemporary readers. I think Fuze himself would be excited by the thought that he is now once again an influential author.</p>
<p><em>This edited extract is from a chapter in the book <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/archives-of-times-past/">Archives of Times Past</a>: Conversations about South Africa’s Deep History (Wits University Press). Mokoena is the author of <a href="https://www.ukznpress.co.za/?class=bb_ukzn_books&method=view_books&global%5Bfields%5D%5B_id%5D=369">Magema Fuze</a>: The Making of a Kholwa Intellectual (UKZN Press)</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178924/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hlonipha Mokoena 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>Magema Fuze’s book was a radical act of publishing. It contained histories of chiefdoms and kingdoms - from the Zulu to the Ngcobo.Hlonipha Mokoena, Associate Professor at the Wits Institute for Social & Economic Research, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1768962022-02-10T14:42:40Z2022-02-10T14:42:40ZSouth Africa has its first woman Deputy Chief Justice: here’s who she is<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445670/original/file-20220210-40846-10mewag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Judge Mandisa Maya, South Africa's Chief Justice-elect.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Gallo Images / The Times / Simphiwe Nkwali</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.supremecourtofappeal.org.za/index.php/judges/judges-of-the-supreme-court-of-appeal/9-judges/maya-mandisa-muriel-lindelwa">Mandisa Maya</a>, Judge President of South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal, has been appointed the country’s new Deputy Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court by President Cyril Ramaphosa. She takes up the position <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2022/07/25/ramaphosa-appoints-maya-as-deputy-chief-justice">from 1 September 2022</a>.</p>
<p>She is the first woman Deputy Chief Justice since South Africa became a constitutional democracy following the end of apartheid <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/04597239308460952?journalCode=tssu20">in 1994</a>.</p>
<p>Here are some interesting facts you need to know about Judge Maya.</p>
<h2>The early years</h2>
<p>Mandisa Muriel Lindelwa Maya was born in Tsolo, Eastern Cape, one of the country’s poorest areas, which <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Eastern-Cape-province-South-Africa">borders the Indian Ocean</a>, in 1964. She has five younger siblings, three children and is <a href="http://www.supremecourtofappeal.org.za/index.php/judges/judges-of-the-supreme-court-of-appeal/9-judges/maya-mandisa-muriel-lindelwa">married to Dabulamanzi Mlokoti</a>. Both <a href="https://www.news24.com/News24/newsmaker-mandisa-maya-making-history-20170409-2">her parents were teachers</a>.</p>
<p>She grew up in King William’s Town and Mthatha where she matriculated (finished high school) from <a href="https://www.facebook.com/stjohnscollegeUta/">St John’s College,</a> in 1981. The school is one of the oldest – and one of the most highly rated – in the country. It it closely associated with the Anglican Church of South Africa, having been established in 1879 by a Church of England missionary.</p>
<p>Maya’s early childhood were in the former <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/ciskei">Ciskei</a>, which was one of the four <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands">Bantustans or homelands</a> – together with Transkei, Bophuthatswana, and Venda – which were granted nominal independence by the apartheid government. They were some of the mainly rural and impoverished areas set aside by the apartheid government where black people exercised nominal “self-rule” along ethnic lines. They offered little opportunity for advancement and upward mobility.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, growing up in a Bantustan did not deter Maya’s from her commitment to justice and human rights saw her pursuing studies in law. She holds B.Proc from the University of Transkei, LLB (University of Natal), and LLM (Duke University, North Carolina in the USA). She is a Fulbright Scholar, was a fellow of Georgetown University law and gender programme as well as a Commonwealth Foundation fellow and a Duke Law School International Alumnus. </p>
<h2>Career and achievements</h2>
<p>Maya began her legal career as an attorney’s clerk in a professional firm in Mthatha. She went on to become court interpreter and prosecutor of the Magistrates’ Court in the town. This was followed by the job of Assistant State Law Adviser before she did her pupillage at the Johannesburg Bar. She subsequently became a a practising advocate associated to the Transkei Society of Advocates. </p>
<p>Maya also had a stint as Law Lecturer at the University of Transkei. </p>
<p>The positions she held before becoming a judge imbued in her values that make her a suitable candidate for Chief Justice. These include ideals and values of integrity, impartiality, professional ethics and court decorum. </p>
<p>She also has a footprint in other jurisdictions – notably Lesotho, Namibia and US. In Washington DC she was policy counsel and lobbyist intern at the Women’s Legal Defense Fund. She has also acted as a judge in the Supreme Court of Namibia and the Appeal Court of Lesotho.</p>
<p>In 2016 Judge Maya became the first woman President of South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court of Appeal, established in 1910, is the country’s second highest court after the Constitutional Court. This makes her the third most senior judge in South Africa after the Chief Justice and the Deputy Chief Justice.</p>
<p>She has been honoured and acknowledged in the legal profession, including honorary doctorates of law by a number of universities. Her leadership qualities have been recognised in various other ways too. For example, she was elected the President of the South African Chapter of the International Association of Women Judges.</p>
<h2>Highlights on the bench</h2>
<p>Her years on the bench, including the current position, have been characterised by the championing of children and women’s rights, the poor, and many other marginalised groups.</p>
<p>In 2012 she received the <a href="https://law.mandela.ac.za/recent-news-and-events/justice-maya">South African Women Lawyers Icon award </a> for her role in empowering and mentoring women in both the judiciary and the broader legal profession.</p>
<p>Maya is one of the few judges in South Africa with a strong commitment to changing the approach of judges in adjudicating gender-based violence and femicide cases. </p>
<p>She <a href="https://www.judiciary.org.za/images/speeches_from_the_judiciary/Gender_Based_Violence_and_Femicide_Summit_Speech.pdf">told</a> a summit on gender based violence and femicide in 2018:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So while there has been a marked ideological shift in the ways judges adjudicate matters relating to gender-based violence and femicide in recent times, including the abolition of cautionary rule in respect of sexual offences, and the conduct of many judicial officers can be commended, the fate of these victims should not be left to the off-chance that the individual Judges hearing their cases will be attuned to the sensitivities. There should be a formalisation and standardisation of these norms so that it is incumbent on the Courts to pay particular attention to the treatment of victims in these cases.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Through her judgments she has demonstrated comprehensive knowledge of the law and the Constitution. She is also considered a jurisprudential thought leader given that some of her judgments have – directly and indirectly – influenced nation-building. </p>
<p>For instance, in the 2020 <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZASCA/2020/79.html">AfriForum NPC v Chairperson of the Council of the University of South Africa and Others</a> case, she ruled that the removal of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction at the University of South Africa was unlawful and unconstitutional. The decision was later <a href="https://www.concourt.org.za/index.php/judgement/411-chairperson-of-the-council-of-the-university-of-south-africa-and-others-v-afriforum-npc-cct135-20">confirmed by the Constitutional Court</a>. </p>
<p>Her dissenting minority judgment in Minister of <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZASCA/2011/3.html">Safety and Security v F, 2011</a> greatly influenced the decision of the Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court reversed the Supreme Court of Appeal’s majority decision and <a href="https://collections.concourt.org.za/handle/20.500.12144/3642">confirmed her minority decision</a>. </p>
<p>The matter before the Supreme Court of Appeals was about a claim for damages arising from the rape of a woman by an off-duty policeman. The majority of the court held that the Minister of Safety and Security was not vicariously liable because the policeman committed the rape when he was off duty. Maya penned a dissenting judgment in which she argued that members of the police services were entrusted with the constitutional role and the responsibility to conduct themselves properly to foster the community’s trust. And that this could not be suspended because a member was off duty.</p>
<h2>Deputy Chief Justice role</h2>
<p>Maya has overcome career labyrinths faced by all female judges in South Africa.</p>
<p>The steeliness with which she will approach the job is reflected in her response to the question in a previous interview for the position of Chief Justice: Is South Africa ready for a woman Chief Justice? She <a href="https://mg.co.za/news/2022-02-02-chief-justice-interviews-mandisa-maya/">responded</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m not here because I’m a woman, I’m a worthy judge … I’m just a good woman judge. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>The article was updated following Justice Maya’s confirmation as the Deputy Chief Justice</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176896/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Omphemetse Sibanda 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>Her values of integrity, impartiality, professional ethics, and court decorum make her the ideal person to head the country’s judiciary.Omphemetse Sibanda, Executive Dean and Full Professor, University of Limpopo Faculty of Management and Law, University of LimpopoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1718302021-11-25T14:33:00Z2021-11-25T14:33:00ZNew book on South Africa’s history puts black people at the centre, for a change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433151/original/file-20211122-13-1ufvxwf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi, former South African President FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela after signing a peace pledge ahead of the first democratic elections in 1994.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Schamotta/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thula Simpson’s new <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/thula-simpson-history-of-south-africa/cpbl-7180-g030?referrer=googlemerchant&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkNiMBhCxARIsAIDDKNUU7XlVLrUqPmgkQdKsNe1ZHc3EloPMUPMN9stKope-Ofx6kCBjnMIaAv-MEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds">book</a>, History of South Africa from 1902 to the Present, is an event-packed narrative history. It is reminiscent of the style of Eric Walker’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/History-Southern-Africa-Walker/dp/B0028A9JIE">History of Southern Africa</a> eight decades ago – a very influential book, prescribed for many university history classes – except this time black South Africans are central to the story, not confined to its margins.</p>
<p>The author, <a href="https://www.up.ac.za/historical-heritage-studies/article/2353404/prof-thula-simpson">an associate professor</a> at the University of Pretoria, most recently published the book, <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/thula-simpson-umkhonto-we-sizwe/mmhj-3406-g720?referrer=googlemerchant&gclid=CjwKCAiAnO2MBhApEiwA8q0HYXLl7yeiRyOOyRove8-Y1Hz7bkQHygZnWsKo7u-6FLsArWOs6kf9UxoCytgQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle</a>, in 2016. This was also written in an event-by-event narrative style.</p>
<p>The author’s choice of 1902 as his starting point is presumably because from then on South Africa was under one political ruler – first, the British imperial government; then white settlers; and since 1994, majoritarian democratic rule. The trade-off for dense detail of twentieth century is that the reader forgoes older periods that haven’t received much attention.</p>
<p>A wealth of archaeological research has breathed life into thousand year old trade routes, and the <a href="https://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/bokoni-mpumalanga">Bokoni</a>, a pre-colonial mixed farming society, from the 1500s and other forgotten kingdoms and chiefdoms.</p>
<p>This history covers twelve decades, from the surrender of Boer guerrillas in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/second-anglo-boer-war-1899-1902">Second Anglo-Boer War</a> in 1902 to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-lies-behind-social-unrest-in-south-africa-and-what-might-be-done-about-it-166130">July 2021 looting spree</a> in two of South Africa’s provinces. Usefully, this history provides the results of every election since 1910. As the publisher’s blurb states,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the book follows the South African people through the battles, elections, repression, resistance, strikes, insurrections, massacres, economic crashes and health crises that have shaped the nation’s character.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This book is new scholarship, which fills a gap with the release of new documents.</p>
<p>This history traces that as far back as the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/paris-peace">Versailles peace conference of 1919</a>, to settle the post - World War 1 arrangements. Rival delegations to the conference came from the South African Native National Congress (today South Africa’s governing ANC) and JBM Hertzog’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/national-party-np">Nasionale Party</a>, to lobby for opposite causes. Both lobbied in vain the British Prime Minister Lloyd George: the one for an Afrikaner republic; the other to defend the Cape franchise for blacks.</p>
<h2>Capturing history</h2>
<p>This historical narrative covers the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-bulhoek-massacre">Bulhoek massacre</a> in 1921, about a church stand to keep their meeting ground, but ignores the <a href="https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/40685?ln=en">1922 Bondelzwart rebellion</a> against the South African Government imposing a sixfold increase in their effective taxes. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/433132/original/file-20211122-13-5hbe17.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&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>It covers the crushing of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rand-rebellion-1922">1922 Rand revolt</a> against hiring African miners instead of higher paid white miners, and the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40206586">Pact government’s legislative victory</a> for the defeated white mine workers. The Pact government was constituted by an Afrikaner majority, with support from English-speaking white mineworkers. This was about firing black workers in skilled jobs. It also reminds one of the statutory anti-Semitism of the 1930 <a href="https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/28071/08chapter8.pdf?sequence=9&isAllowed=y">Quota Act</a>, which dramatically blocked Jewish refugees’ emigration to South Africa, as did the <a href="https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201503/act-53-1986.pdf">Aliens Act of 1937</a>. </p>
<p>This book is a good reminder that, notwithstanding Prime Minister Jan Smuts’ “segregation has fallen on evil days” speech in 1942, (p.131), his government subsequently repealed not one segregation law. But, to the contrary, it added to segregation laws against Indians, while a parliamentary Marriage Commission proposed in 1939 a ban on interracial marriages (p.162). This was immediately implemented by the apartheid regime in 1949.</p>
<p>The decades of struggle between the apartheid government and the <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/">African National Congress</a>, <a href="http://pac.org.za/">Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania</a>, <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03188/06lv03192.htm">Azanian People’s Organisation</a>, the <a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">South African Communist Party</a>, and trade unions are chronicled, culminating in the mass struggles for freedom of the 1980s, and the fraught negotiations of 1990-93 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/convention-democratic-south-africa-codesa">to end apartheid</a>.</p>
<p>The current struggles by the families of killed detainees to get prosecution of torturers from the Special Branch – the notorious apartheid police unit – makes topical this books’ reminder that President F W de Klerk’s last action in office was to grant amnesty from prosecution to Adrian Vlok, Magnus Malan, apartheid police and military leaders, respectively, and 3,500 policemen and others, for atrocities committed to uphold apartheid. (p.352)</p>
<p>The winning of democracy a generation ago fills seven chapters. With hindsight, we can assess the consequences that in 1997 <a href="https://theconversation.com/jacob-zuma-likes-to-be-cast-as-a-man-of-the-people-but-is-he-50665">Jacob Zuma</a> was appointed to head the ANC cadre deployment committee: (p.373) chapter 29 is titled Captive State.</p>
<p>The ANC will look back to its 2009 election peak of 70% of votes; the opposition Democratic Alliance will similarly recall its 2014 election peak of 22% of the votes, reaching 30% in Gauteng. (pp. 404, 421) </p>
<h2>Criticism</h2>
<p>Inevitably, a six hundred page history book will have a few mistakes.</p>
<p>Walvis Bay in Namibia, then South West Africa under South African rule, was not conquered by South Africa in 1914 as claimed on page 47. It was annexed to the Cape Colony in 1884, as Simpson himself writes on page 243.</p>
<p>The Special Branch was not founded “about 1935” (p.150): <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-Party">United Party</a> cabinet minister Harry Lawrence ordered it set up in 1947. Before that, Criminal Investigation Department detectives did political snooping, ever since the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/international-socialist-league-isl">International Socialist League</a> of the Cape Colony in the 1900s.</p>
<p>In 1968, University of Cape Town (UCT) appointments did not have to be confirmed by the government (p.216). The government threatened that it would extend the apartheid colour bar to academic posts unless the UCT Council rescinded its appointment of Archie Mafeje. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/archie-mafeje">Mafeje</a>, a black man, was an emerging scholar who became a major academic critic of the discipline of social anthropology itself.</p>
<p>There will always be more facts than there is space for. But this history should have mentioned that the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/liberal-party-south-africa-lpsa">Liberal Party</a> by 1960, and the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03491.htm">Progressive Federal Party</a> by 1979, had updated their policies to accept universal franchise. Also, bar the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/document-77-yu-chi-chan-club-pamphlet-no-ii-conquest-power-south-africa-1963">Yu Chi Chan Club</a>, there is not even one sentence on any organisations of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/non-european-unity-movement-neum">Non-European Unity Movement</a> family. Their activists influenced the boycott strategy of the <a href="https://africanactivist.msu.edu/organization.php?name=South+African+Non-Racial+Olympic+Committee">South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee</a>.</p>
<h2>Bleak conclusion</h2>
<p>This history paints a bleak conclusion to its twelve decades: xenophobic “pogroms and lynching had become a routine feature of South African life” from 2008 (p.400) with poor blacks attacking other poor blacks. A 153-day strike became the longest ever in South African mining history (p.415) in 2012, and we witnessed the Marikana massacre in 2012.</p>
<p>Chapter 30 is titled False Dawn in its summary of <a href="https://theconversation.com/precarious-power-tilts-towards-ramaphosa-in-battle-inside-south-africas-governing-party-158251">President Cyril Ramaphosa’s</a> difficult first years in power. COVID-19 and the lockdowns culminated in the KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng looting spree of July 2021, mixing opportunism and Zuma diehards <a href="https://theconversation.com/violence-in-south-africa-an-uprising-of-elites-not-of-the-people-164968">incensed by his incarceration for contempt of court</a>. </p>
<p>But it’s not all bad. South Africa spends 45% of its annual budget on the poorest 40% of its citizens. (p.393). Its constitutional democracy, and enforceable <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng-02.pdf">Bill of Rights</a>, remain rare beacons on the African continent. Corruption triggered a huge backlash, including Ramaphosa’s appointment of new prosecutors.</p>
<p>If this history book runs to a second edition in a decade’s time (as Eric Walker’s did) we will await with interest any revision of its conclusions, which are that South Africa is on a downward path.</p>
<p>This is a thorough, fact-packed history that deserves to be in every school library and on every home bookshelf.</p>
<p><em>History of South Africa from 1902 to the Present is published by <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/thula-simpson-history-of-south-africa/cpbl-7180-g030?referrer=googlemerchant&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkNiMBhCxARIsAIDDKNUU7XlVLrUqPmgkQdKsNe1ZHc3EloPMUPMN9stKope-Ofx6kCBjnMIaAv-MEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds">Penguin Random House</a></em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171830/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is a member of the ANC, but writes this review in his professional capacity as a political scientist. </span></em></p>This history covers twelve decades, from the surrender of Boer guerrillas in the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1902 to the July 2021 looting spree and violence.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1715052021-11-18T14:02:51Z2021-11-18T14:02:51ZCharlotte Maxeke book highlights tensions of visibility and erasure in South African history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431650/original/file-20211112-17-m1jb4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C137%2C613%2C436&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Charlotte Mmakgoko Mannya- Maxeke has been immortalised in several works</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This year the South African <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/sport-arts-and-culture-launches-year-charlotte-mannya-maxeke-30-april-29-apr-2021-0000">government</a> set about honouring Charlotte Mannya Maxeke, one of the country’s most remarkable women who was born 150 years ago. It is said she was only the “second woman to be memorialised and honoured in this way since 2018 when (anti-apartheid) struggle icon <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/albertina-nontsikelelo-sisulu">Albertina Sisulu</a> was honoured”. </p>
<p>Charlotte Makgomo Mannya-Maxeke was born in 1871. Through funding from the African Methodist Episcopal Church, <a href="https://wilberforcepayne.libguides.com/c.php?g=763792&p=5478039">she graduated from Wilberforce University</a> in Ohio and became the first black South African woman to earn a degree, in 1901.</p>
<p>When she returned home to South Africa she became involved in many movements. She was the founding president of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/bantu-womens-league">Bantu Women’s League</a>, which was established in 1918, and president of the <a href="http://ncaw.org/">National Council of African Women</a>, founded in 1937. She was instrumental in the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the country. By the time she died in 1939 she was a force to reckon with in South Africa’s socio-political sphere.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-eight-must-read-african-novels-to-get-you-through-lockdown-136543">The eight must-read African novels to get you through lockdown</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Various events have marked the memorial year. A play, <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/entertainment/whats-on/pretoria/napo-masheane-evokes-the-spirit-of-charlotte-maxeke-in-new-play-tsogo-7fcf735b-e39b-4c9e-9836-993262f43860">Tsogo: The Rise of Charlotte Maxeke</a> was staged at the State Theatre, written by <a href="https://howlround.com/commons/napo-masheane">Napo Masheane</a>. Previous works about her include Zubeida Jaffer’s biography, <a href="https://www.zubeidajaffer.co.za/beauty-of-the-heart/">Beauty of the Heart</a>, Margaret McCord’s <a href="https://xarrabooks.com/shop/the-calling-of-katie-makhanya/">The Calling of Katie Makhanya</a>, and Thozama April’s <a href="http://etd.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/11394/1627">PhD thesis</a>, on her intellectual contribution to the struggle for liberation in South Africa. A documentary about her life, <a href="https://cmmi.org.za/event/the-charlotte-mannya-maxeke-documentary-film-for-the-people/">For the People</a>, was also launched.</p>
<p>Now her grand-nephew Modidima Mannya has published a <a href="http://mannyamodidima.co.za/">book</a>, Lessons from Charlotte Makgomo Mannya-Maxeke, to add to the cultural, literary and scholarly engagement with her. We now have a variety of readings, representations and interpretations which show the complexity of not only her life, but the way South Africa’s history tends to be portrayed.</p>
<p>According to the back cover blurb, Mannya’s book:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>does not only provide an accurate account of her life through oral history from an insider perspective, but also presents a scholarly account through archival research.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The book also claims that it is “not a biography” but rather it is “about the ethos and the values [Charlotte Maxeke] espoused”. </p>
<p>Much like the play <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/entertainment/whats-on/pretoria/napo-masheane-evokes-the-spirit-of-charlotte-maxeke-in-new-play-tsogo-7fcf735b-e39b-4c9e-9836-993262f43860">Tsogo</a>, which represented her life through seven characters, Mannya’s book is divided into chapters that deal with different facets of her life. These include her character, religion, education, politics, support for women’s rights, leadership and racial inequality. </p>
<p>The book reads as a consolidation of the previous works on Charlotte Maxeke. While the appendices include tributes, articles and government documents and letters by and about her, it is not clear whether the overall book offers anything new. The scant bibliography belies the extensive interest in her. The author’s reflection on his ancestor is revealing of the difficulty of writing about such a complex character. </p>
<h2>Retelling the story of a complex life</h2>
<p>Mannya’s book claims to be an accurate account of Charlotte Maxeke’s life. I found this jarring, given the contested nature of archives, which are curated based on who has power, and the nature of oral history, which is always in flux depending on who is telling the story. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=848&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431561/original/file-20211111-21-1pr1ost.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1065&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>Thanks to the public events and the scholarly engagement with her life and work, Charlotte has become one of the most visible South African women from the 19th and 20th centuries. But her visibility is not without its problems.</p>
<p>While Mannya attempts to place Charlotte within a milieu, the book takes away from the stories of the women who would have been her peers, friends and comrades. The African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s governing party, has “reclaimed” her because she was the only woman present in 1912 when the party was established, but Mannya is at pains to show that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>She was certainly neither a member of the SANNC nor of the ANC. Charlotte died in 1939 before women could be admitted as members of the ANC in 1943.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The SANNC, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/formation-south-african-native-national-congress">South African Native National Congress</a>, is the original name of the ANC when it was formed. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/anc-womens-league-ancwl">ANC Women’s League</a> was established in 1948. It is linked to the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/bantu-womens-league">Bantu Women’s League</a> though scholars such as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10130950.1990.9676171">Frene Ginwala</a> have complicated this connection. This points to the need for more research.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-sindiwe-magonas-devastating-uplifting-story-of-south-african-women-166186">Book review: Sindiwe Magona's devastating, uplifting story of South African women</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This focus on Charlotte’s relationship with one organisation undermines the ways she would have related to women in her network. For example, Adelaide Tantsi, <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2020/02/excavating-forgotten-histories-in-south-africa">a poet and teacher</a>, is not mentioned as among the other South African women at Wilberforce University alongside her. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1017-04992014000300008">Nokutela Dube</a>, teacher, musician and co-founder of <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/ohlange-institute-declared-national-heritage-site-33324489">Ohlange Institute</a> with ANC founding president John Dube, is mentioned. But they are not linked together as women whose paths would have crossed politically, through the church and as founders of schools and while travelling abroad. There is very little engagement with the women who built the Bantu Women’s League alongside Charlotte, or with <a href="https://dacb.org/stories/southafrica/soga-mina/">Mina Soga</a>, one of the founders of the <a href="http://ncaw.org/history">National Council of African Women</a>.</p>
<h2>Exceptionalism and erasure</h2>
<p>Mannya chooses political activists such as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/winnie-madikizela-mandela">Winnie Madikizela-Mandela</a> and <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/newandevents/Pages/vc-awards/ELLEN-KUZWAYO.aspx">Ellen Kuzwayo</a>, who no doubt were inspired by Charlotte as young women but were not her peers. This inclusion seems anachronistic – an attempt to read Charlotte through a modern framework rather than locating her within her context. </p>
<p>Charlotte’s life was a network of relationships and organisations where she was constantly building political, spiritual, intellectual, transnational and social connections. It is not possible that she did this alone. Making an exception of her risks making her the sole representative of black women who lived at the turn of the century. It erases the stories of other women who lived and built organisations alongside her.</p>
<p>This book is an invitation to ask more questions about how we make meaning of history. The book contributes to the larger South African story and the ways in which it reproduces Charlotte Maxeke at the expense of many women whose stories still need to be told. It challenges us to look closer at historical narratives which often fall off the radar. </p>
<p><em>Lessons from Charlotte Makgomo Mannya-Maxeke is <a href="http://mannyamodidima.co.za/">self-published by the author</a></em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171505/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Athambile Masola 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>Thanks to the public events and the scholarly engagement with her life and work, Charlotte Maxeke has become one of the most visible South African women from the 19th and 20th centuries.Athambile Masola, Lecturer, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1661922021-08-24T14:19:09Z2021-08-24T14:19:09ZHow colonial history shaped bodies and sport at the edges of empire<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/416760/original/file-20210818-23-1trzk1p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ron Eland, a South African Olympian who would go on to represent Great Britain in the 1948 Olympic Games.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ron Eland Private Archives/Author supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since the 1990s, studies of sport have tended to focus on science, at the expense of physical culture studies. The once thriving field of physical culture studies – how people shape their bodies culturally – has also had a bias. It has tended to focus on body strengthening, healthy living and beautifying (or neglect), all from a Eurocentric perspective. </p>
<p>The result is that ordinary people uncritically accept modern marketing of what it is to be healthy – fad diets, expensive gyms, branded sportswear and more. </p>
<p>There is more to sport, though, than a performance element. Sport is also about community and identity – and is shaped by culture, politics and resistance.</p>
<p>The essays collected in a new <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1nzg1zm">book</a> I edited, <em>Critical Reflections on Physical Culture at the Edges of Empire</em>, are an effort to recognise what has been excluded from the picture. They seek to understand the impact that colonial history has had on physical culture’s past and present. In particular, they show the links between physical culture and the portrayal of racial and cultural identities as “others”. Hopefully, this book can contribute to a growing consciousness about the value of sport participation beyond high performance and Olympic medals. </p>
<h2>Politics of the body</h2>
<p>The book’s contributors consider sport and the human body in a social context, exploring how they contribute to systems of power. </p>
<p>Historically, the term physical culture is associated with displays of strength, health and fitness. It came to include sport movements such as rugby, cricket, netball, hockey, organised mountaineering and others. These diffused from Europe to Africa and other regions in the late 1800s and early 1900s. </p>
<p>This diffusion formed part of the European colonisation process. The introductory chapter of our book calls it “an exercise of mimicry … where the colonised adopts the coloniser’s cultural habits”. The book examines this by unearthing some of the history of physical culturalists who were on the receiving end of exploitation and oppression. </p>
<p>For example, the chapter on mountaineering in South Africa, by Farieda Khan, shows how sport, the environment and politics are intertwined. The chapter deals with the response of Cape Town-based mountain clubs to the changing political landscape between 1970 and 1994. Khan illuminates the political reasons for the position of the <a href="https://mcsa.org.za">Mountain Club of South Africa</a> as South Africa’s premier mountaineering club, as well as the political obstacles facing clubs such as the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319840028_From_Carriers_to_Climbers_The_Cape_Province_Mountain_Club_1930s_to_1960s_-_An_Untold_Story">Cape Province Mountain Club</a> and the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/WPMC.AshValley/">Western Province Mountain Club</a>, which served disadvantaged communities. </p>
<p>Another chapter on weightlifting and bodybuilding talks about colonised people “mimicking” imported practices, but in doing so achieving an effect opposite to what the colonisers intended. South African bodybuilder <a href="https://www.news24.com/you/News/pics-meet-the-70-year-old-bodybuilder-taking-cape-town-by-storm-20190723">David Isaacs</a> used the sport as a commitment to non-racialism and self-sacrifice. Despite facing institutionalised racism, he overcame a victim mentality during and after apartheid. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/narratives-about-south-africas-black-athletes-need-to-be-reclaimed-and-retold-89869">Narratives about South Africa's black athletes need to be reclaimed and retold</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A common thread running through all the chapters is the persistence of inequalities in society, unchanged by sport interventions. This is brought home by Norman Ontong and Tarminder Kaur in their chapter on the lingering legacies of apartheid in South Africa. Poverty, gang violence, crime and broken families are daily experiences of many African athletes. Decades after the official end of apartheid, a community organisation like <a href="http://fit2run.co.za/about/">Fit2Run</a> still struggles to hold its own financially and culturally.</p>
<p>In my chapter on the South African weightlifter <a href="https://theconversation.com/narratives-about-south-africas-black-athletes-need-to-be-reclaimed-and-retold-89869">Ron Eland</a>, I looked beyond the boundaries of official African colonial archives. A treasure trove of information was found in Eland’s private collection of letters, diaries, sport brochures, newspaper cuttings, memorabilia (including Olympic clothing) and photographs. </p>
<p>It is in these private archives that an international African weightlifter gets to tell his story. His lasting contribution to poor communities, passion for sport and commitment to furthering his own education make him a role model for young people. The absence of material in Eland’s archive relating to strength sport among women also reveals much about a genderized attitude in black communities during the 20th century. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-story-of-milo-pillay-the-strongman-who-lifted-a-bar-for-south-african-sports-161915">The story of Milo Pillay, the strongman who lifted a bar for South African sports</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Paul Hendricks also used data from private collections to lift a veil on the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/teachers-league-south-africa-tlsa-conference-1925">Teachers’ League of South Africa</a> and the non-racial schools’ sport movement in the Western Cape. By showing the relationship between radical politics and school sport, he debunks the “sport unites all” myth. </p>
<p>Over four decades, teacher activists sustained mass-based school sport in under-resourced areas. Hendricks points out that the compromises African politicians made with big business, mostly in secret, led to the destruction of mass-based school sport. Consequently, conflict in school sport, as in education, would remain unresolved well beyond the inauguration of the new South Africa.</p>
<p>Through this publication, the authors tried to find new methods to tell a decolonised story of physical culture. We included a broad range of unheard voices from around the world with the intention of liberating global history from its Eurocentric paradigms. The publication suggests to readers that there are alternative ideas to the high performance model for sport. It also points to how sport and physical culture are shaped over time by various social and political forces.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166192/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Francois Cleophas 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>A new book explores physical culture in a social and historical context, focusing on colonial settings.Francois Cleophas, Senior Lecturer in Sport History, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1655562021-08-05T15:01:42Z2021-08-05T15:01:42ZHow communists have shaped South Africa’s history over 100 years<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414331/original/file-20210803-27-8sey0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African Communist Party members have held key positions in the ANC-led governments. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Until recently, just living to a 100 was an achievement worth celebrating for itself. In England new centenarians receive a special card from their queen. Perhaps the same convention is maintained in South Africa and its <a href="https://www.sacp.org.za/">Communist Party’s</a> 300 000 or so members can expect a birthday message from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on their <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/analysis/centenary-of-the-sacp-50a1b8bf-9d07-4733-adad-8803ec7c0e2e">centenary</a>. Or maybe not. </p>
<p>In any case, they have more to celebrate than their party’s extreme old age, though under often tough conditions survival itself is an achievement. Next to the 109-year old governing <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/brief-history-anc">African National Congress (ANC)</a>, the South African Communist Party is the second oldest political organisation in Africa. But, South African communists did more than outlive their rivals and opponents. They can make reasonable claims to have shaped South African history, as I’ve outlined in my <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/red-road-to-freedom/">book</a>, <em>Red Road to Freedom: A History of the South African Communist Party 1921-2021</em>.</p>
<p>In which ways did they do this?</p>
<p>And is it just history, though, that the party will be celebrating? What about today?</p>
<h2>Shaping history</h2>
<p>First, they initiated political solidarities that cut across South Africa’s racial and social cleavages. They began doing this from the party’s formation in 1921 when it began recruiting black South Africans. Ten years later there were black people leading the party and joining it in thousands. This was in an era when most forms of social life were racially segregated, by custom if not by law. From 1948 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> would restrict any interracial contact still further. But, such confinements were fairly extensive well before then.</p>
<p>The party’s commitment to cross-racial politics wavered now and then but, even so, it supplied real world evidence that black and white South Africans could share political goals and work towards them together. In the early 1930s, the first white communists were convicted and served prison sentences for sedition, that is for attempting to mobilise black followers. </p>
<p>Today in South Africa communists can take a considerable portion of the credit for the extent to which the country’s politics is nonracial.</p>
<p>Secondly, modern South Africa has one of the strongest labour movements in the developing world, a movement that still shapes government policy. Its historical gestation is a complicated story. Communists were not the only labour pioneers.</p>
<p>But in the 1930s and 1940s people like recently disembarked Lithuanian immigrant, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ray-alexander-simons">Ray Alexander</a>, assembled industrial unions that would constitute enduring foundations for what was to follow. Some of today’s most powerful trade unions can trace their genealogy back to her efforts.</p>
<p>Communists in the 1940s such as the Port Elizabeth dry cleaning worker <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/raymond-mhlaba">Raymond Mhlaba</a> worked out a strategy of alliances beginning with community protests to support strike movements. This coalition between labour leaders and community activists would persist through the next five decades, helping to enable national liberation <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-general-elections-1994">in 1994</a>.</p>
<p>In fact, at a local level trade unionists often were community leaders in the 1940s, as well as belonging to the Communist party. In the places in which they were busiest, in New Brighton outside Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, for example, or in the <a href="https://ccs.ukzn.ac.za/files/Bond%20Townships.pdf">townships</a> – exclusively black residential areas – dispersed along the East Rand, or in Cape Town’s Langa, these leaders and their activist communist following in the 1950s after the party’s <a href="https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1071/communist-control-act-of-1954">prohibition</a> continued to organise and mobilise.</p>
<p>It was no coincidence that the ANC had the most entrenched and systematic presence in the 1950s in the localities in which communists were best organised in the 1940s. In short, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/defiance-campaign-1952">“Decade of Defiance”</a>, the ten years or so of mass action against apartheid in the 1950s, was incubated in party networks.</p>
<p>There are many other ways in which the party stamped its historic imprint. If the ANC’s armed struggle against apartheid minority rule was decisive, and it was certainly important in inspiring other kinds of political action during the 1980s, then communists supplied most of the key members of its general staff and as well many field unit commanders.</p>
<p>Then from the 1920s onwards through its night-schools and other training facilities, the party educated successive echelons of South Africa’s political leadership. That the ANC today in its internal discourses still uses the jargon and phraseology employed by the party’s commissars in the Angolan training camps 40 years ago is testimony to their enduring effectiveness as educators. Indeed, the concept of “national democracy” that the ANC uses to describe the kind of social order it is trying to build, itself derives from a Communist notion of a transitional stage between capitalism and socialism developed in Eastern Europe after the Second World War.</p>
<p>A final example of the party’s pioneering role in shifting political norms: earlier than any other South African political movement, the Communist Party brought women into leadership. The pioneers whom the Party should be recalling on its birthday include key women: <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/rebecca-bunting">Rebecca Bunting </a>, <a href="https://ourconstitution.constitutionhill.org.za/josie-palmer-mpama/">Josie Mpama</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/molly-wolton">Molly Wolton</a>, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/mama-dora-tamana-posthumous">Dora Tamana</a>, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/elizabeth-sophia-honman-posthumous">Betty du Toit</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ruth-heloise-first">Ruth First</a>.</p>
<h2>Communist Party today</h2>
<p>The Communist Party is in a <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv03161.htm">tripartite governing alliance</a> with the ANC and <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/">the Congress of South African Trade Unions</a>, the labour federation.</p>
<p>Communists have held important positions in ANC governments for nearly 30 years. For example, in Cyril Ramaphosa’s first cabinet communists were appointed to a number of ministerial portfolios, including <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/business/communist-trade-minister-wins-praise-from-imf-1.312267">Trade and Industry</a> and <a href="https://www.dhet.gov.za/SiteAssets/Minister's%20Profile/Minister's%20Profile.pdf">Higher Education</a>. Former communists have held other key positions, including the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/kgalema-petrus-motlanthe">presidency</a> itself as well as the <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/jabulani-moleketi-mr-0">Finance Ministry</a>.</p>
<p>Party leaders can count their membership in hundreds of thousands. But are they still shaping history?</p>
<p>South African communists argue that their participation in government makes a real difference, reinforcing its commitment to public employment programmes, to re-industrialisation, to better foreign trade policies, and increased financial aid for students.</p>
<p>But they also concede that much of their effort is undone by political corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency, and that they have failed to shift the government’s “neo-liberal” macroeconomic policies significantly. They would prefer more market regulation and more support and protection for local industry. They dislike the extent to which public services are “contracted out” to private firms. </p>
<p>They do suggest that they play a role in limiting public venality. This may be true though initially they helped to defend President Jacob Zuma against his critics as well as contributing to his victory <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=y5NYMWQ5tiwC&pg=PA259&lpg=PA259&dq=Zuma,+Polokwane+2007&source=bl&ots=PIdtyCYPjc&sig=imwB-O1Rc_2MbpxeNedOSOcCLkk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBDhGahUKEwiw6IGBqI3JAhVLVRQKHYn7Dlc#v=onepage&q=Zuma%2C%20Polokwane%202007&f=false">to become ANC president at its 2007</a> conference, and subsequently the head of state.</p>
<h2>Looking to the future</h2>
<p>With such a large signed-up following you’d think Communists would constitute a powerful grouping within the ANC and in the wider political domain. But does their membership really matter? </p>
<p>The party’s following doesn’t constitute a disciplined electoral bloc, either within the ANC’s own internal voting procedures nor in national or municipal polls. Nor is it a membership that draws solidarity from its participation in manufacturing in the classic Marxian sense. The largest social group from whom the party recruits is young unemployed people, a group that keeps growing.</p>
<p>The party’s <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/socialism-is-the-future-build-it-now--blade-nziman">present strategic purpose</a> is about “building capacity for socialism”. This includes promoting local industry and strengthening the provision of public services. </p>
<p>In following this course, it is fair to say that its present challenges are as formidable as anything it has confronted in the past. Global markets make it very difficult to rebuild declining industries anywhere, but particularly in a country in which workers have rights and as a consequence are comparatively well paid. </p>
<p>South Africa’s earlier industrialisation happened under a forced labour regime. Then, arguably, South Africa’s developmental trajectory – its history – was on the party’s side, building an increasingly skilled industrial workforce. But industrial employment has stagnated or declined. Under such conditions constructing a unified political base is so much more difficult. Under modern conditions hopes and faith have to replace old certainties.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165556/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Lodge has received funding from the Irish Research Council, Irish Aid, and the Swedish International Development Association but not for any research connected with this article.
I am a member of the Board of the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa. </span></em></p>The Communist Party draws most of the members from South Africa’s mainly young, unemployed people, a group that keeps growing.Tom Lodge, Emeritus Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of LimerickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.