tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/forced-removals-46211/articlesForced removals – The Conversation2023-12-07T14:13:10Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2193422023-12-07T14:13:10Z2023-12-07T14:13:10ZApartheid in Namibia: why human rights and women are celebrated on the same day<p>10 December is worldwide commemorated as <a href="https://www.un.org/en/observances/human-rights-day">Human Rights Day</a>. It marks the anniversary of the <a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights">UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> adopted on that day in 1948. Many countries and organisations acknowledge this as a significant marker.</p>
<p>It created a lasting, normative framework defining fundamental human rights. UN Member States, while in constant violation, have all ratified the principles. They remain a moral and ethical compass demanding recognition and respect. </p>
<p>In Namibia, the day is marked as both International Human Rights Day <a href="https://namibia.unfpa.org/en/news/commemoration-international-human-rights-day-namibian-womens-day">as well as Namibian Women’s Day</a>. The reason for this is that it marks an event that stands out in Namibian history as a reminder of human rights abuses in the past, as well as the significant role played by women in the struggle for the restoration of these rights. </p>
<p>An indiscriminate shooting by police took place on this date in <a href="https://www.namibiadigitalrepository.com/files/original/f1626d4c5966b3ae6527015e129afa71.pdf">1959</a>. Thirteen unarmed demonstrators were killed, among them one woman. More than 40 were wounded as they resisted their forced removal from an area known as the Old Location. </p>
<p>The events became a reference point for the national liberation movement, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/SWAPO-Party-of-Namibia">South West African Peoples Organisation</a>, which was formed in 1960 in response to the event. The actions of the demonstrators acted as a midwife to the organised anti-colonial liberation struggle that went on to gain new momentum, culminating in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/namibian-struggle-independence-1966-1990-historical-background">independence in 1990</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/namibia-pulls-down-german-colonial-statue-after-protests-who-was-curt-von-francois-195334">Namibia pulls down German colonial statue after protests – who was Curt von François?</a>
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<p>As diagnosed by the late South African historian <a href="https://www.baslerafrika.ch/projects/emmett-tony/">Tony Emmett</a> in his pioneering work on the formation of national resistance in Namibia:</p>
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<p>The authorities’ attempts to move residents of the old location to a new township and the resistance they met represent a significant point in the political history of Namibia. … it transcended parochial issues and united a broad cross-section of groups and classes in a confrontation with the colonial state.</p>
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<h1>The Old Location</h1>
<p>My research has included life in the <a href="https://www.baslerafrika.ch/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2016_3_Melber.pdf">Old Location</a>, its <a href="https://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/jch/article/view/5037/4005">history</a> and the <a href="https://upjournals.up.ac.za/index.php/historia/article/view/3827/3915">forced removal</a>. </p>
<p>Since the early 20th century, the Location was the biggest Black urban settlement in Namibia. A former German colony since 1884, the territory then called South West Africa was in 1918 transferred as a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/mandate-League-of-Nations">League of Nation mandate</a> to South Africa. Administered like a fifth province, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/apartheid">apartheid policies</a> institutionalised as “separate development” since the late 1940s, was also transferred to the adjacent country.</p>
<p>The Location was in walking distance to Windhoek’s town centre. Only a riverbed separated it from the suburb set aside for white people. Residents in the Location paid a fee for the area they occupied even though the constructions built for accommodation were their private ownership.</p>
<p>In line with apartheid policy, a decision was taken to move the people from the Location. Residents there were from a variety of indigenous communities in the country. Despite different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, they lived in peaceful cohabitation. </p>
<p>To remove them from the direct vicinity to the “White” city, a new township <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Katutura-place-where-not-stay/dp/B0006W2U1Y">Katutura</a> was created. It was separated by a buffer zone several kilometres apart from the city. It also divided the residents through ethnically (“tribally”) classified, strictly policed separate living quarters. </p>
<p>The houses there remained property of the administration, for which higher rents had to be paid. People of mixed descent, classified as so-called <a href="https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/c0a95c41-a983-49fc-ac1f-7720d607340d/628130.pdf">“Coloureds”</a> were until then living in the Location. They were now forced to relocate to another separate suburb <a href="https://memim.com/khomasdal.html">Khomasdal</a>. </p>
<p>Hardly anyone living in the Main Location volunteered to move. Instead, as of late 1959, women initiated a boycott of services.</p>
<p>Following weeks of campaigns, a meeting with White officials took place in the Location on 10 December. Stones were thrown, and the police opened fire. The sheer brute force executed to break resistance marked the end of the Location.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/namibia-and-south-africas-ruling-parties-share-a-heroic-history-but-their-2024-electoral-prospects-look-weak-204818">Namibia and South Africa's ruling parties share a heroic history - but their 2024 electoral prospects look weak</a>
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<p>As from 1960, people were moved to Katutura and Khomasdal. Their homes in the Location were bulldozed to the ground. It was officially closed in 1968, with no traces of its existence left.</p>
<p>Extensions to Katutura since then turned it into the biggest settlement in Namibia. The area of the former Location has been turned into <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02589001.2022.2081671">middle class suburbia</a>.</p>
<h1>Remembering</h1>
<p>Anna “Kakurukaze” Mungunda became <a href="https://www.facebook.com/nbcContenthub/videos/in-this-short-history-video-you-will-learn-about-anna-mungunda-also-known-as-kak/2019517574914081/">the most widely acknowledged face of the resistance</a>. </p>
<p>Narratives differ as regards her role. She was not a prominent resident before and had no involvement in the organised resistance. But police killed her when she was supposedly setting the car of one of the White officials on fire.</p>
<p>As the only woman killed, Mungunda is paid recognition and respect by a <a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/150256637/anna-mungunda">tombstone</a> erected at the Windhoek Heroes Acre, inaugurated in 2002.</p>
<p>There is also an ongoing fight in Germany to get a street in Berlin named after her. The idea is to rename some of the colonial street names in the <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/october/in-the-afrikanisches-viertel">“African Quarter” (Afrikanisches Viertel)</a>. In particular, efforts are under way to change the Petersallee into <a href="https://taz.de/Dekolonisierung-von-Strassennamen/!5899594/">Anna-Mungunda-Allee</a>. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/454592">Peters</a> was a notorious colonial perpetrator in imperial Germany.</p>
<p>Implementation is on hold due to a legal intervention by some of the residents.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/namibia-and-angolas-remote-ovahimba-mountains-reveal-a-haven-for-unique-plants-new-survey-213884">Namibia and Angola’s remote Ovahimba mountains reveal a haven for unique plants – new survey</a>
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<p>In Windhoek, parts of the neglected and dilapidated Location cemetery have been <a href="https://pickingupthetabb.wordpress.com/2019/12/01/windhoek-remembering-the-old-location-massacre/">restored and upgraded</a> to a memorial site and turned into an Old Location Cemetery Museum. It is a venue for commemoration and on the <a href="https://www.windhoekcc.org.na/tour_attractions.php">list of local tourist attractions</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/he-dr-zedekia-j-ngavirue-dphil-politics-1967">Zedekia Ngavirue</a> was employed as social worker in the Location in 1959/60. Politically active in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/South-West-Africa-National-Union">South West Africa National Union</a> he founded and co-edited the first African newspaper “South West News”. Its nine issues have been reproduced <a href="https://www.baslerafrika.ch/a-glance-at-our-africa/">in a compilation</a> and are a treasure trove documenting discussion of the time.</p>
<p>In his introduction to the collection, “Dr Zed” (as he was later fondly called) might have captured the spirit of these days best:</p>
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<p>It was, indeed, when we owned little that we were prepared to make the greatest sacrifices.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber is a member of Swapo since 1974. </span></em></p>Anna “Kakurukaze” Mungunda became the most widely acknowledged face of the resistance to the apartheid policy of forced removal.Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1942762022-11-15T13:28:34Z2022-11-15T13:28:34ZWoman King is set in Benin but filmed in South Africa - in the process it erases real people’s struggles<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495062/original/file-20221114-13-qvejj0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy Ilze Kitshoff/Sony Pictures Entertainment</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The latest film by director <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0697656/">Gina Prince-Bythewood</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-woman-king-is-more-than-an-action-movie-it-shines-a-light-on-the-women-warriors-of-benin-190466">The Woman King</a>, is about a legendary all-woman African army in the 1800s, the <a href="https://thisisafrica.me/politics-and-society/benins-30m-amazon-statue-honours-the-women-warriors-of-dahomey/">Amazons</a> of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Dahomey-historical-kingdom-Africa">Dahomey</a>. It takes place in what is today the Republic of Benin in west Africa. It wasn’t filmed in Benin, but in South Africa, in the KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape provinces using locations that look like west Africa.</p>
<p>The film has had an overwhelmingly <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/the-woman-king-review-b2194801.html">positive</a> <a href="https://www.essence.com/entertainment/the-woman-king-opening-weekend/">reception</a>, but some <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/20/what-woman-king-gets-wrong-right-about-dahomeys-warriors/">critics</a> have <a href="https://theconversation.com/woman-king-is-worth-watching-but-be-aware-that-its-take-on-history-is-problematic-191865">cautioned</a> against ignoring history in favour of crowd-pleasing storytelling. I would like to draw attention to the film’s use of the African landscape, as Hollywood tells new stories while ignoring the struggles of the present.</p>
<p>I am a curator of African art in Kingston, Ontario. I arrived in Canada from Cape Town around the time The Woman King was being filmed in the coastal town of <a href="https://southafrica.co.za/history-kleinmond.html?gclid=CjwKCAiA68ebBhB-EiwALVC-Nl6e0BM8x1tEdji_4bBuskGYsljgwthlHZEs7QOn7LoGqDSKG4hrWxoCAusQAvD_BwE">Kleinmond</a> in the Overstrand, where I’d lived with my family. I was struck by how the town was depicted.</p>
<p>The film uses Kleinmond as the site of great battles that glorify Africa’s history. But the town’s actual history is one of struggle and the oppression of black people that lives on to this day. The Woman King shows a pristine version of Kleinmond, digitally altering the landscape to erase black lives and settlements.</p>
<p>Cheating one film location for another is common practice. Film infrastructure exists in the Western Cape and there are financial incentives that attract international film makers. Not only is the natural diversity of South Africa appealing, it’s also marketable. </p>
<p>But film locations in Africa are often used as a generic Hollywood backdrop or African cities are easily traded. For example, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450259/">Blood Diamond</a> is set in Sierra Leone and was filmed in Cape Town. More recently <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2395427/">Avengers: Age of Ultron</a>’s battle scenes <a href="https://brandsouthafrica.com/4221/see-joburg-on-the-big-screen-in-the-new-avengers-movie/">played out</a> in downtown Johannesburg.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/woman-king-is-worth-watching-but-be-aware-that-its-take-on-history-is-problematic-191865">Woman King is worth watching: but be aware that its take on history is problematic</a>
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<p>These distortions are part of the global film industry, but they can also lead to a distortion of a continent and its history. The Woman King’s use of Kleinmond’s setting may seem like just a technical gimmick, but it points to a bigger issue: even when telling African stories, Hollywood reimagines the true history and geography of the continent to serve western audiences.</p>
<h2>Kleinmond</h2>
<p>Kleinmond bears witness to <a href="http://thehda.co.za/index.php/multimedia/single-media-statement/apartheid-spatial-planning">apartheid town planning</a>. During <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>, white minority rulers implemented a policy of separate development, and allocated racial groups to different living areas.</p>
<p>The original town was settled from the 1850s by fisher families who made their living from the Atlantic Ocean. In the 1950s, when it became part of a “<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/group-areas-act-1950">white group area</a>”, Kleinmond was bulldozed by the apartheid government, its people forcibly removed to Protea Dorp on the mountainside near the town dump. A letter by a local fisher, <a href="https://www.pjfca.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Fredericks-family-fish-history.pdf">Petrus Johannes Fredericks</a>, attests to growing up in Kleinmond harbour and to his family’s forced removal. He writes about the ongoing struggles to secure scarce government fishing quotas.</p>
<h2>Retelling Africa and cinematic erasure</h2>
<p>It’s ironic that Kleinmond was the backdrop for The Woman King’s battle scenes, and appropriated into a story of a glorious, fictitious African past. Frequent <a href="https://ewn.co.za/topic/kleinmond-protest">violent protests</a> in the area show that the real life struggle for the ocean and the land is still underway. During recent protests for better housing, burning tyres were positioned around an area called Perdekop and it became a true battleground for its inhabitants.</p>
<p>In a similar way, Kleinmond’s complexities and its embattled people are erased for the purposes of tourism. According to <a href="https://kleinmondtourism.co.za">local authorities</a>, the natural beauty and biodiversity are the “finest example of mountain fynbos in the Western Cape and (the Kleinmond biosphere is) a world-renowned World Heritage Site”. But this heritage has yet to yield enough sustainable jobs, and for many Kleinmond men, the illegal trade in endangered <a href="https://www.aquarium.co.za/species/entry/abalone">abalone</a> is one of only a <a href="https://www.groundup.org.za/article/poaching-abalone-matter-survival-says-kleinmond-community/">few forms of employment</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495063/original/file-20221114-22-sxseen.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A moody still of an old port with ships approaching in a rough sea and the sun breaking through the clouds." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495063/original/file-20221114-22-sxseen.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495063/original/file-20221114-22-sxseen.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=248&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495063/original/file-20221114-22-sxseen.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=248&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495063/original/file-20221114-22-sxseen.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=248&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495063/original/file-20221114-22-sxseen.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495063/original/file-20221114-22-sxseen.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495063/original/file-20221114-22-sxseen.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The port of Ouidah in Benin was filmed in South Africa’s Western Cape.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy Ilze Kitshoff/Sony Pictures Entertainment</span></span>
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<p>The white South African art world also has countless examples of black erasure and distorted storytelling. The apartheid state’s favoured painter <a href="https://www.everard-read.co.za/artist/J.H._PIERNEEF/biography/">JH Pierneef</a> painted empty, detailed landscapes of South Africa that were hung in government buildings across the country. He never showed the conflicted human life inhabiting those landscapes, erasing black people, the original inhabitants. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/irma-stern">Irma Stern</a>, favoured by white liberals, preferred painting scenes in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/homelands">Bantustans</a> or black reserves of South Africa to show an “authentic” African life. She ignored the everyday trauma of living under apartheid to capture what she considered the African ideal. </p>
<h2>Pristine Africa</h2>
<p>The Woman King continues this elided narrative by presenting Africa as largely uninhabited and pristine. But what does it mean when the real, battle-worn Perdekop is not acknowledged and becomes part of an elaborate computer graphic of a white settlement instead? Or a graphic of fictional houses is overlaid on the Overhills settlement? </p>
<p>As a curator, I think about which stories we tell in the present, which stories will endure, but most importantly what shape our collective responsibility takes. Kleinmond is close to my heart, which is perhaps why I’m especially troubled by this new kind of historical erasure, as the African landscape is digitally emptied and its people ignored so that its image can be used as the canvas for a redemptive story.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-woman-king-is-more-than-an-action-movie-it-shines-a-light-on-the-women-warriors-of-benin-190466">The Woman King is more than an action movie – it shines a light on the women warriors of Benin</a>
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<p>All this is not to say that The Woman King does not carefully counter harmful African stereotypes; it does. It presents African women as strong, healthy and independent, Africans as the inheritors of a rich cultural tradition and Africans as majestic purveyors of lost ideals. But at what cost does this fictional black redemption come? </p>
<p>In erasing the past, the film undermines Africa’s struggles, creating a false impression of the continent to please western viewers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194276/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Qanita Lilla 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>Hollywood undermines Africa’s struggles, creating a false impression of the continent to please western viewers.Qanita Lilla, Associate Curator Arts of Africa, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1588582021-05-27T17:53:19Z2021-05-27T17:53:19ZEnding food insecurity in Native communities means restoring land rights, handing back control<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403177/original/file-20210527-14-8c975g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C31%2C3535%2C2539&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Handouts from food banks are no substitute for self-sufficiency.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/native-americans-of-the-navajo-nation-people-pick-up-news-photo/1214295994?adppopup=true">Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For Indigenous people in the U.S., <a href="http://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyr089">food is</a> considered <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10460-014-9548-9">a sacred gift</a>. Healthy and bountiful produce is received when we care for the land.</p>
<p>Yet, with <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/National%20Projections%20Brief_3.9.2021_0.pdf">one in four Native Americans lacking reliable access</a> to healthy foods and Indigenous peoples <a href="https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=4&lvlid=40">disproportionately affected by diet-related diseases</a>, something clearly isn’t working as it should.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://scholars.okstate.edu/en/persons/valarie-blue-bird-jernigan">expert on Indigenous health and food insecurity among Native populations</a>, I argue that the high rate of food insecurity and poor dietary health of Native Americans can be traced to the events that disrupted Indigenous people’s relationship with the land: <a href="https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/assimilation-integration-and-colonization">colonization and</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/indigenous-peoples-day-comes-amid-a-reckoning-over-colonialism-and-calls-for-return-of-native-land-147734">the widespread theft of territory</a> by white settlers. Any attempt to improve access to sufficient, nutritious foods today needs to focus on <a href="https://www.indigenousfoodsystems.org/food-sovereignty">Indigenous food sovereignty</a> and <a href="https://knowledge.unccd.int/publications/land-justice-re-imagining-land-food-and-commons">land justice</a> – giving control and land back to Native communities to enable them to grow culturally appropriate, healthy produce and become self-sufficient.</p>
<h2>A broken system</h2>
<p>“A healthy food system is an indicator of a healthy community; one cannot exist without the other,” noted the Native Hawaiian activist <a href="https://onipaa.org/pages/kamuela-enos">Kamuela Enos</a>.</p>
<p>This view is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1159/000487605">increasingly being echoed</a> by public health experts. Diet is the <a href="https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=4&lvlid=40">number one risk factor for preventable disease</a> in the U.S. and is driven by a food system that comprises <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19320248.2011.597705">food production, access, marketing and individual dietary intake</a>.</p>
<p>Since the 1980s, an <a href="http://doi.org/10.1017/s1368980007001097">influx of fast food restaurants and convenience stores</a> and an exodus of supermarkets in poorer neighborhoods across the U.S. have led to <a href="http://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djh296">chronic disease</a> disparities in <a href="https://www.doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2004.06.007">low-income communities and racial minorities</a>. This is especially true <a href="https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=4&lvlid=40">among the U.S.’s Native population</a>.</p>
<p>American Indian and Alaska Native adults are 50% more likely to be obese and 30% more likely to suffer from hypertension compared to white Americans. They are also 50% more likely to be diagnosed with coronary heart disease, and three times more likely to have diabetes.</p>
<p>Native Americans also experience <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/National%20Projections%20Brief_3.9.2021_0.pdf">high rates of food insecurity</a>, meaning they don’t have enough food to live an active, healthy life. </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://doi.org/10.1300/J477v01n04_04">study of a Northern Plains reservation in Montana</a>, 43% of tribal households were found to be food-insecure. In Oklahoma, <a href="http://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303605">more than 60% of American Indians surveyed were food-insecure</a>. This compares with a <a href="https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/National%20Projections%20Brief_3.9.2021_0.pdf">national food insecurity rate of 11%</a>.</p>
<h2>Structural, not short-term approaches</h2>
<p>Government and social service organizations have tried to address food insecurity by promoting <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-food-banks-help-americans-who-have-trouble-getting-enough-to-eat-148150">food banks</a> or encouraging use of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-snap-can-help-people-during-hard-economic-times-like-these-133664">Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program</a>, or SNAP, benefits. </p>
<p>But the <a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jada.2011.06.002">limited existing</a> <a href="http://doi.org/10.1080/19320248.2015.1112755">research shows</a> Indigenous communities are less likely than non-Native groups to use those services. This is due to a number of reasons including lack of access to places that accept SNAP or discriminatory practices such as being refused service at stores.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, public health efforts focused on encouraging healthy lifestyles – through eating more fruits and vegetables, for example – fail to acknowledge the systemic barriers that Native Americans face when it comes to accessing healthy, sustainable and traditional foods.</p>
<p>Feeding people is important, no doubt. But I believe it will never result in long-term health improvements in Native communities without looking and addressing the underlying roots of the problem.</p>
<h2>Stolen land, forced removal</h2>
<p>Indigenous people in the United States <a href="http://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2487-2">share a common deep ancestry</a> and a contentious colonial history with the U.S. that resulted in <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/a-nation-rising">land removal and confiscation</a> on a massive scale.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/native-american/removing-native-americans-from-their-land/">forced removal of Native people</a> from their traditional homelands in the 19th century to often unfamiliar and barren reserves disrupted Indigenous food systems and diets.</p>
<p>For example, in my own Native population, Choctaw, a type of river cane, <em>Arundinaria tecta</em>, was used not only as a food source but also in medicine, for clothing, to build houses and to make baskets. In the places where my people <a href="https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/279.html#:%7E:text=The%20Removal%20Act%20that%20President,more%20than%20500%2Dmile%20journey.">were forced to move</a>, this species of river cane did not exist.</p>
<p>Moreover, Choctaw are an agricultural society, yet many portions of reservation lands where Choctaws were forcibly moved to were arid plains or flood zones – places that were not able to be farmed. As a result, many people starved to death.</p>
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<p>This disruption was the impetus for the nutritional crisis seen today in Native communities. Forced removal was accompanied by a new reliance on government-issued foods for Native communities. From the earliest treaties with the U.S. government, <a href="https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerfolk.126.499.0055">Native Americans were promised food rations</a>. This reliance continues today through the <a href="https://www.fns.usda.gov/fdpir/fdpir-fact-sheet">Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations</a>, through which the U.S. Department of Agriculture provides canned and packaged foods to around 270 tribes with limited access to SNAP. It constitutes the primary food source for 60% of rural and reservation-based American Indians, but the foods tend to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/69.4.747S">high in fat and sugar</a>. Fresh vegetables <a href="http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/07/AI-AN-obesity/">are rarely offered</a>. </p>
<h2>Toward food sovereignty</h2>
<p>To end reliance on government-provided foods, many Native communities are seeking a different approach: a <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302447">return to traditional foods and practices</a> that are healthy and culturally centered. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A child uses a spade to break up soil during a gardening exercise with the American Indian Center in Chicago." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403185/original/file-20210527-18-cva7ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/403185/original/file-20210527-18-cva7ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403185/original/file-20210527-18-cva7ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403185/original/file-20210527-18-cva7ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403185/original/file-20210527-18-cva7ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403185/original/file-20210527-18-cva7ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/403185/original/file-20210527-18-cva7ey.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=557&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Native American youth are being taught in urban gardens about the importance of their connection to the land.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/NativeAmericansUrbanGardens/1038b41f20d94b6fb629e62fef17bba8/photo?Query=NAtive%20American%20land&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=228&currentItemNo=30">AP Photo/Stacy Thacker</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indigenous food sovereignty – the right and responsibility of Indigenous people to produce healthy and culturally appropriate foods <a href="https://www.canadianscholars.ca/books/indigenous-food-systems">through traditional Indigenous food systems</a> – has emerged as an important strategy to support Indigenous communities.</p>
<p>It involves Native communities <a href="https://www.indigenousfoodsystems.org/food-sovereignty">taking greater control over their land and health</a> and reducing dependence on packaged and fast foods and government-provided food.</p>
<p>For example, the Osage Nation in Oklahoma is supporting the development of sustainable agricultural practices <a href="https://www.ncai.org/ptg/Osage.Nation.Case.Study.pdf">that provide a sustainable source</a> to increase their access to fresh vegetables, fruits and meat to their community.</p>
<p>“For us, food sovereignty means self-sufficiency,” <a href="https://www.ncai.org/ptg/Osage.Nation.Case.Study.pdf">explained</a> Osage Nation’s Assistant Principal Chief Raymond Red Corn in an interview. “If we fed ourselves for thousands of years, I don’t know why we can’t feed ourselves now.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158858/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Valarie Blue Bird Jernigan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Indigenous people in the US have high rates of food insecurity and dietary-related health problems. Any attempts to address the problem must start with land justice, argues a scholar of Native health and food.Valarie Blue Bird Jernigan, Professor of Rural Health, Oklahoma State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1372192020-05-07T14:55:31Z2020-05-07T14:55:31ZPostwar forced resettlement of Germans echoes through the decades<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332844/original/file-20200505-83736-1ej54b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2926%2C2075&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A trainload of expelled ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia arrives in Bavaria, Germany, after World War II.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/refugee-train-with-sudeten-germans-has-arrived-at-transit-news-photo/1060983050?adppopup=true">dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Seventy-five years ago, Allied Forces declared victory in Europe on May 8, 1945. Millions across the continent had been persecuted, displaced and killed because of their national, ethnic or religious backgrounds. </p>
<p>For some, including those Jews and <a href="https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/nazi-persecution/the-porrajmos/">Roma</a> who had survived the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust">Holocaust</a>, the war’s end took power away from their persecutors and executioners. </p>
<p>My research traces the history of the roughly 14 million ethnic Germans expelled by national governments across Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, in reaction to the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. Their suffering would extend into German and European politics all the way to the present. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332838/original/file-20200505-83740-41ggcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332838/original/file-20200505-83740-41ggcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332838/original/file-20200505-83740-41ggcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332838/original/file-20200505-83740-41ggcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332838/original/file-20200505-83740-41ggcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332838/original/file-20200505-83740-41ggcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332838/original/file-20200505-83740-41ggcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332838/original/file-20200505-83740-41ggcf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A map from 1896 shows the prevalence of languages spoken across Europe; German (in darker red) is clearly spoken not only in present-day Germany and the surrounding territories, but in enclaves throughout Eastern Europe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_(1896),_ethnic_groups.jpg">The Times Atlas/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Centuries of history</h2>
<p>Going back at least a millennium, people who speak German and follow German cultural traditions had spread across Eastern Europe in waves of conquest and migration. When Europe’s borders were redrawn at the end of World War I, these people became substantial minorities in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Yugoslavia.</p>
<p>Between the two world wars, authorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781403973085">confiscated the lands of several thousand ethnic Germans</a>, justifying these actions as a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/central-european-history/article/national-mythologies-and-ethnic-cleansing-the-expulsion-of-czechoslovak-germans-in-1945/E5487CD2485BB95FFD55047A731DE698">response to past injustices</a> the Germans had inflicted on them when ruling those regions.</p>
<p>As he rose to power in Germany, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler championed the notion of a greater German national identity, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/260722">which appealed to these minority populations living outside Germany’s borders</a>. In the 1930s, the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/central-european-history/article/national-mythologies-and-ethnic-cleansing-the-expulsion-of-czechoslovak-germans-in-1945/E5487CD2485BB95FFD55047A731DE698">Nazi Party supported like-minded political parties</a> in surrounding countries. The far-right Sudeten German Party, in particular, was able to attract <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/central-european-history/article/national-mythologies-and-ethnic-cleansing-the-expulsion-of-czechoslovak-germans-in-1945/E5487CD2485BB95FFD55047A731DE698">a sizable ethnic German following within Czechoslovakia</a> prior to the onset of war. </p>
<p>During the early days of the war, Polish authorities <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781403973085">deported 15,000 ethnic Germans</a> to the east, fearing they would collaborate with Hitler’s forces. War paranoia also resulted in the killing of <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300198201/orderly-and-humane">over 4,000 civilians</a> from this minority population. While many ethnic Germans around Eastern Europe did support the Third Reich, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/260722">some did take up arms against the Nazi invasion of their countries</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332849/original/file-20200505-83779-6rmolo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332849/original/file-20200505-83779-6rmolo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332849/original/file-20200505-83779-6rmolo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332849/original/file-20200505-83779-6rmolo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332849/original/file-20200505-83779-6rmolo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332849/original/file-20200505-83779-6rmolo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332849/original/file-20200505-83779-6rmolo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332849/original/file-20200505-83779-6rmolo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">German refugees from East Prussia, 1946.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_175-S00-00326,_Fl%C3%BCchtlinge_aus_Ostpreu%C3%9Fen_auf_Pferdewagen.jpg">German Federal Archives/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A forced relocation</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333215/original/file-20200506-49565-19u633m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333215/original/file-20200506-49565-19u633m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333215/original/file-20200506-49565-19u633m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333215/original/file-20200506-49565-19u633m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333215/original/file-20200506-49565-19u633m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333215/original/file-20200506-49565-19u633m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333215/original/file-20200506-49565-19u633m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333215/original/file-20200506-49565-19u633m.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=641&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After World War II, the cream-colored areas east of Germany were allocated mostly to Poland, with a little for the Soviet Union.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map-Germany-1945.svg">52 Pickup after IEG-Maps/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Potsdam-Conference">Potsdam Conference</a> held in July and August 1945 to plan governance of Europe after the war, the victors – the U.S., the U.K. and the USSR – agreed to shift Germany’s eastern border with Poland westward. As a result, Germany lost about a quarter of the territory it had governed in 1937, before the war began. German citizens in these areas lost their lands, which became part of Poland, with a small portion allocated to the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>At Potsdam, the Allies also agreed to <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/dawn-of-liberation-1945/oclc/1086031970">remove ethnic Germans from central and Eastern Europe</a> and consolidate them into the new German state. They hoped this would prevent future conflicts that might arise if sizable German minorities remained within the boundaries of other nations. This forced relocation was to “<a href="https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945Berlinv02/d1383">be effected in an orderly and humane manner</a>,” according to the countries’ agreement.</p>
<p>However, violent expulsions had already begun. Europeans who had been conquered, oppressed and persecuted by the Nazis turned their anger toward the ethnic Germans in their own communities, many of whom had lived there for multiple generations. </p>
<p>Across Eastern Europe, ethnic German families were stripped of their land and property, and allowed to take just one suitcase of belongings. Much of their cash and other valuables were confiscated by both government authorities and citizens. In one instance, authorities in the Czech city of Brno <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/czech-city-remembers-expelled-ethnic-germans/a-18487935">forced 20,000 ethnic Germans to walk the roughly 40 miles to the nearest border</a> in May 1945. Some 1,700 of them died on the march. </p>
<p>Between 1944 and 1950, these expulsions resulted in the deaths of over half a million ethnic Germans, with some experts claiming a <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781349228386">death toll in excess of two million</a>. Deaths resulted from a variety of causes, including but not limited to <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/57897">malnutrition, disease, physical violence, and time spent in internment camps</a>. By 1950, Eastern Europe contained <a href="https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789024750443">roughly one-fourth of its prewar ethnic German population</a>. In contrast, the Holocaust killed <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/remaining-jewish-population-of-europe-in-1945">6 million Jews, or two-thirds</a> of Europe’s prewar Jewish population, and drove most of the rest of them out of Europe.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332846/original/file-20200505-83721-1pld4j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332846/original/file-20200505-83721-1pld4j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332846/original/file-20200505-83721-1pld4j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332846/original/file-20200505-83721-1pld4j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332846/original/file-20200505-83721-1pld4j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332846/original/file-20200505-83721-1pld4j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332846/original/file-20200505-83721-1pld4j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332846/original/file-20200505-83721-1pld4j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Germans from the Czech region of Sudetenland arrive in Munich on June 15, 1946.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/expellees-from-sudetenland-arrive-in-munich-on-15-june-1946-news-photo/1068507364">dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Experience in West Germany</h2>
<p>Roughly 12 million expelled ethnic Germans made it to postwar Germany. The 4 million who arrived in East Germany did get some social and economic aid from the Soviet authorities, but saw their <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/contemporary-european-history/article/taming-the-expellee-threat-in-post1945-europe-lessons-from-the-two-germanies-and-finland/B37AB2BB2C4A863061B332E029AA1F82">political activities tightly limited</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in West Germany, the governing Allied military administrations were overwhelmed by these newest European refugees. The devastation of war, including urban bombing and close-quarters fighting, had damaged or destroyed <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/57897">more than 20% of Germany’s prewar houses and apartments</a>. The new arrivals were sent to rural areas, with smaller populations and more housing availability.</p>
<p>Local residents in rural areas had escaped the worst of the war and had a hard time empathizing with the expellees’ suffering. Some of the local residents were <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/57897">forced to house their newly arrived compatriots</a>, crowding homes and building tensions between the two groups. Other new arrivals ended up, sometimes for years, in government-run camps described in one report as “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Report/wWBbChEhg50C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22absolutely+unsuitable+for+human+habitation%22+%22german+ethnic+origin%22&pg=PT224&printsec=frontcover">absolutely unsuitable for human habitation</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332834/original/file-20200505-83751-7xghu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332834/original/file-20200505-83751-7xghu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332834/original/file-20200505-83751-7xghu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332834/original/file-20200505-83751-7xghu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332834/original/file-20200505-83751-7xghu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332834/original/file-20200505-83751-7xghu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332834/original/file-20200505-83751-7xghu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332834/original/file-20200505-83751-7xghu9.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">German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks at the 2019 annual meeting of the Federation of Expellees in Berlin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/german-chancellor-angela-merkel-speaks-at-the-annual-news-photo/1135973393">Abdulhamid Hosbas/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Becoming a political movement</h2>
<p>To advocate for their needs, some expellees sought political power, creating a political party called <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/after-the-expulsion-9780199259892?cc=us&lang=en&">“All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights” in 1950</a>. Known by its German acronym, GB/BHE, the party lobbied to improve the economic and social conditions faced by expellees. The GB/BHE won 5.9% of votes in the <a href="https://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/en/bundestagswahlen/1953.html">1953 federal election</a>, making it the fifth-largest party in West Germany.</p>
<p>Its <a href="https://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/en/bundestagswahlen/1957.html">electoral power waned</a> as expellee economic fortunes improved during <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/57897">West Germany’s postwar economic boom</a>. Some leaders from the now defunct GB/BHE <a href="http://library.fes.de/library/netzquelle/zwangsmigration/en-41intro.html">helped found</a> the far-right National Democratic Party in 1964. A number of early expellee political leaders also had ties to Nazism, including <a href="https://www.thelocal.de/20121122/46327">eight of the 13 founders</a> of the more politically moderate national umbrella group, the <a href="https://www.bund-der-vertriebenen.de/">Federation of Expellees</a>. Both the Federation and the National Democratic Party are still active today.</p>
<p>The expellees’ cause remained important in German politics. During the 1960s, all the country’s major parties maintained a commitment to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23740553">reclaiming territories lost under the Potsdam Agreement</a>. However, this demand proved politically unfeasible. The international community held Germany and its people responsible for the Holocaust, and were not interested in fulfilling expellees’ political demands. Mainstream parties gradually abandoned the issue.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332850/original/file-20200505-83769-mvbq9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332850/original/file-20200505-83769-mvbq9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/332850/original/file-20200505-83769-mvbq9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332850/original/file-20200505-83769-mvbq9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332850/original/file-20200505-83769-mvbq9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332850/original/file-20200505-83769-mvbq9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332850/original/file-20200505-83769-mvbq9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/332850/original/file-20200505-83769-mvbq9m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A memorial to the German expellees in Biatorbágy, Hungary.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:German_Expellees_Memorial,_(S)._-_Torb%C3%A1gy.jpg">Globetrotter19/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Expellee concerns have continued to cause tensions between Germany and its Eastern neighbors. In the late 1990s, some expellee groups <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/1995/0829/29011.html">demanded that Poland and the Czech Republic apologize</a> for their treatment of the expellees before being allowed to join the European Union. In the early 2000s, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/aug/15/victimsandvillains">calls for a museum and archive documenting their fate</a> resulted in tensions with Germany’s eastern neighbors.</p>
<p>In 2019, the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany created a working group to “<a href="https://www.afdbundestag.de/arbeitskreise/heimatvertriebene/">preserve the legacy of the German East</a>,” keeping the legacy of expulsion active in German politics even to the present day.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anil Menon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After World War II ended in Europe, millions of ethnic Germans faced an uncertain future. The political repercussions of their expulsion continue even today.Anil Menon, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1345932020-04-06T14:18:37Z2020-04-06T14:18:37ZBook review: lessons from a township that resisted apartheid<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323612/original/file-20200327-146678-103wrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Oukasie residents protest over poor service delivery in 2010.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jaco Marais/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Can people on the wrong end of power change the world by working together? Or are the moments when the powerless take control of their own lives doomed to be snuffed out?</p>
<p>The question is raised by Kally Forrest’s <a href="https://jacana.co.za/our-books/bonds-of-justice-the-struggle-for-oukasie-hidden-voices-series/">book</a> Bonds of Justice: The Struggle for Oukasie. It is another in the <a href="https://jacana.co.za/our-books/?filter=Hidden%20Voices%20Series">Hidden Voices</a> series which aims to recover and preserve writings on society which would otherwise fall through publishers’ nets. The book is short and highly readable, and so is accessible to a non-academic audience. It has been some years in the making – it uses information gathered in 2011 and 2012. But the story it tells raises topical issues.</p>
<p>Forrest details the fight, in the last years of apartheid, of the people of Oukasie, a township near Brits in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/north-west">North West</a> Province, against an attempt to force them to move to Lethlabile, 25 km from Brits, primarily because their presence offended white residents. While it was common under apartheid for black people to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/18/world/south-africa-orders-the-removal-of-10000-blacks-to-new-site.html">removed</a> to areas where they would be out of sight to whites, it was uncommon for those who faced this threat to resist it successfully. Oukasie did manage to defeat the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/archive-files/ChOct89.1024.8196.000.028.Oct1989.5.pdf">attempted removal</a>. </p>
<p>It organised to do this despite a sustained campaign by the apartheid authorities. This included the murder of anti-removal leaders and members of their family, but its chief strategy was to divide residents. So, resistance could only succeed if the resisters were <a href="https://learnandteachmagazine.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/oukasie-yes-letlhabile-no/">organised and united</a>. While thousands were induced to move, enough stayed to force the authorities to abandon the removal and agree that Oukasie be developed.</p>
<p>Unusual circumstances made Oukasie an ideal site for strong grassroots organisation in which people remain united because they share in decisions.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323285/original/file-20200326-133040-hlg1a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323285/original/file-20200326-133040-hlg1a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323285/original/file-20200326-133040-hlg1a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323285/original/file-20200326-133040-hlg1a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323285/original/file-20200326-133040-hlg1a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323285/original/file-20200326-133040-hlg1a3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323285/original/file-20200326-133040-hlg1a3.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hidden Voices/Fanele</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The resistance</h2>
<p>Brits was the site of strong worker organisation, largely the work of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Catholic-Action">Young Christian Workers</a> (YCW), founded by Roman Catholic priests as a vehicle for European workers to change exploitative conditions through organised efforts. YCW, which in Brits was open to non-Christians, stressed democratic grassroots organisation based on careful strategy summed up in its motto – “See, judge, act” – which encouraged members to reflect on what they saw before deciding what to do about it.</p>
<p>Young Christian Workers was political, since it challenged the effect of economic power on its members. But it was wary of the political movements which, it believed, wanted workers to act in ways which advanced the movements’ interests but not their own. It was able to maintain this stance because, in contrast to much of the rest of the country, the political organisations were not active in Oukasie.</p>
<p>Its attitude was identical to that of a section of the trade union movement which happened to be strongly represented in Brits. Its vehicle was the union which became the <a href="https://www.numsa.org.za/history/">National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa)</a>. Young Christian Workers’s members gravitated to it and it developed a strong presence in Oukasie. The resistance to removal relied on the same stress on grassroots participation and careful strategy which Young Christian Workers and Numsa adopted in the workplace.</p>
<p>The Oukasie resistance became, therefore, a test for an approach which relied on the efforts of grassroots people rather than high profile political leaders to change the world.</p>
<p>In one sense, this route to change worked. Oukasie was reprieved, and this was followed by a <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-08-31-wr-29871-story.html">period of development</a>. The Brits transitional local government which was elected in the mid-1990s was led by Levy Mamobolo, a unionist and anti-removal leader who, until his untimely death, led the area effectively and honestly. The first few years seemed to show that democratic local organisation could also produce political leadership which serves the people rather than itself.</p>
<p>But, as Forrest shows, the Oukasie story does <a href="https://ewn.co.za/Topic/Mothotlung-service-delivery-protests">not end happily</a>. Leaders committed to public service were forced out of the local government; public services declined and corruption increased.</p>
<p>Forrest therefore frames her book not as a story of the triumph of a particular way of fighting for change but as evidence of what is possible if people organise themselves in the way Oukasie did. The author of an important <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/metal-that-will-not-bend/">book</a> on Numsa, she is an advocate of the approach followed by Young Christian Workers, Numsa and the Oukasie resisters. She contrasts this with the selfish elitism which gained control of Brits. </p>
<p>But she leaves unanswered the key question: is the grassroots organisation which saved Oukasie a realistic route to change, or is it doomed to give way to the top-down leadership to which Brits <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2019-05-03-mayor-suspended-in-difficult-but-necessary-decision-by-anc/">succumbed</a>?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323609/original/file-20200327-146699-pc8td4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323609/original/file-20200327-146699-pc8td4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323609/original/file-20200327-146699-pc8td4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323609/original/file-20200327-146699-pc8td4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323609/original/file-20200327-146699-pc8td4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323609/original/file-20200327-146699-pc8td4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323609/original/file-20200327-146699-pc8td4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2010 Oukasie rose again, in furious protests over poor service delivery. More than 100 were arrested.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What does the ultimate defeat mean?</h2>
<p>Given the importance of this question, it is a pity that Forrest does not analyse the defeat of grassroots democracy in Oukasie. We are left wondering how and why control passed from the “good guys” to the “bad guys”.</p>
<p>One reason may well have been that the governing African National Congress’s (ANC’s) politics turned out to be more powerful than those who supported the Oukasie resistance hoped. Forrest records that key figures in the resistance to removal joined the ANC and served in its committees once it was unbanned. This suggests that Oukasie’s ability to maintain an independent path was purely a result of happenstance (the lack of a political presence in the area).</p>
<p>Despite these limitations, the book makes an important contribution. Forrest’s sympathy for the Oukasie campaign does not prevent her from highlighting weaknesses. She acknowledges that the campaign failed to prevent thousands leaving Oukasie, and she documents the defeat of the politics she champions as Oukasie moved from resistance to local governance. This makes the book a highly credible account of the events it describes.</p>
<p>The book should, therefore, be read by anyone concerned with democracy’s future in South Africa, but in other contexts too. It should also trigger a debate on whether the political approach it describes is feasible.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://jacana.co.za/our-books/bonds-of-justice-the-struggle-for-oukasie-hidden-voices-series/">Bonds of Justice</a>: The Struggle for Oukasie is <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/search?cat=b&terms=Bonds+of+Justice%3A+The+Struggle+for+Oukasie">available</a> <a href="https://www.exclusivebooks.co.za/search?expedite=&keyword=Bonds%20of%20Justice:%20The%20Struggle%20for%20Oukasie">online</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134593/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Friedman 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 readable and important new book on the struggle for justice in South Africa’s Oukasie township does not go far enough to question the feasibility of grassroots resistance.Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1339422020-03-22T08:49:44Z2020-03-22T08:49:44ZThe story of a remarkable Hindu temple in Pretoria’s inner city<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321545/original/file-20200319-22632-6u67py.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1076%2C815&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alain Proust/Hidden Pretoria</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Apart from Pretoria’s legacy of grand <a href="https://theconversation.com/between-care-and-neglect-pretorias-grand-architectural-legacy-128635">institutional buildings</a>, South Africa’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Pretoria">capital city</a> and historical seat of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> government, also contains some unique architectural masterpieces that have been built and cared for by various religious communities. These buildings reflect the stories, traditions and resilience of diverse community groups. Also made visible are the precarious conditions that have threatened the conservation of these special places over time. And the continuous efforts of community groups to preserve their buildings and their cultural identities. A number of these sites have recently been documented by architect Johan Swart and photographer Alain Proust in a publication called <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/hidden-pretoria/9781432304652">Hidden Pretoria</a>. This is an edited extract from the book.</em></p>
<p>Among a variety of remarkable religious buildings in Pretoria’s inner city are the likes of the iconic <a href="https://www.artefacts.co.za/main/Buildings/bldgframes.php?bldgid=73">Gereformeerde Kerk Pretoria</a> (or Paul Kruger Church), built by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/South-African-Republic">republican</a> founding fathers of the city in the late 1800s, still utilised today by a small <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dutch-Reformed-Church">Dutch Reformed</a> congregation for Sunday services. The busy <a href="https://www.artefacts.co.za/main/Buildings/bldgframes.php?bldgid=10108">Queen Street Mosque</a>, on the other hand, is hidden among the densely packed high-rise buildings of a city block. Abandoned in the inner city is also the <a href="https://www.artefacts.co.za/main/Buildings/bldgframes.php?bldgid=581">Old Synagogue</a>, the early home of Pretoria’s Jewish community that was later appropriated by the apartheid state to house the treason trial of Nelson Mandela and his co-accused. Perhaps the most remarkable of the religious sites, though, is the Mariamman Temple, the home of Pretoria’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/gandhi-tamils-and-satyagraha-south-africa-es-reddy">Tamil League</a> and located in the historical and turbulent suburb of <a href="http://www.aglimpseintomarabastad.co.za/index.html">Marabastad</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321544/original/file-20200319-22602-11olw7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321544/original/file-20200319-22602-11olw7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321544/original/file-20200319-22602-11olw7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321544/original/file-20200319-22602-11olw7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321544/original/file-20200319-22602-11olw7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321544/original/file-20200319-22602-11olw7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321544/original/file-20200319-22602-11olw7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321544/original/file-20200319-22602-11olw7c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">View from within the maha mandapan (pavilion), where spiritual gatherings take place. An altar is visible in the foreground.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alain Proust/Hidden Pretoria</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Mariamman Temple</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.artefacts.co.za/main/Buildings/bldgframes.php?bldgid=1238">The Mariamman Temple</a> is a small complex of buildings constructed from 1928 onwards within the fine urban grain of the Asiatic Bazaar. This is a historical part of Marabastad that managed to survive apartheid-era clearances in the area. A visible landmark is the <a href="https://www.templepurohit.com/significance-symbolism-temple-gopuram/">gopuram</a> or entrance portal on 6th Street, considered the most impressive of its kind in South Africa. Especially since its renovation in the early 1990s and the subsequent reintroduction of colour and detail by the Tamil community.</p>
<p>Groups from India arrived in the Natal Colony on South Africa’s east coast as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/indian-indentured-labour-natal-1860-1911">indentured labourers</a> as early as the 1860s, and settled in the Pretoria region in central South Africa from the 1880s onwards.</p>
<p>After its establishment in the early 1890s, the Asiatic Bazaar became home to most of Pretoria’s Indian communities. The Tamil-speaking Hindu community founded the Pretoria Tamil League here in the early 20th century. They developed the temple complex as the heart of their community life and still act as custodians.</p>
<p>Marabastad developed in parallel to the ‘white’ inner city as a mixed-race precinct. But, as with other ‘non-white’ suburbs it fell victim to demolitions and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/forced-removals-south-africa">forced removals</a> of the apartheid-era government in their enforcement of racial segration as dictated by legislation such as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/list-laws-land-dispossession-and-segregation">Slum Clearance Act of 1934</a> and the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/group-areas-act-1950">Group Areas Act</a> of 1950.</p>
<p>Over time, the residents of Marabastad were moved to areas designated for various groups which apartheid defined by race and colour. These included <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pretoria-segregated-city">Atteridgeville, Eersterust and Laudium</a>. The Asiatic Bazaar, however, was left intact as a non-residential trading area. Historical landmarks such as the Mariamman Temple, Ismaili Mosque and the Orient Cinema have survived to the present.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321601/original/file-20200319-22606-9ms87m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321601/original/file-20200319-22606-9ms87m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321601/original/file-20200319-22606-9ms87m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321601/original/file-20200319-22606-9ms87m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321601/original/file-20200319-22606-9ms87m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=363&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321601/original/file-20200319-22606-9ms87m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321601/original/file-20200319-22606-9ms87m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321601/original/file-20200319-22606-9ms87m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Detail of the intricate gopuram or entrance portal, with decorative elements made from precast concrete or bought from ceramics catalogues.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alain Proust/Hidden Pretoria</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Harmony with the cosmos</h2>
<p>Replacing an earlier structure of wood and iron, the first phase of the current temple was planned around 1928 and constructed in phases. First the sacred elements were erected, the cella (inner area) and arda mandapam (pavilion) which were built according to strict proportional systems. Then the maha (large) mandapam was added to accommodate spiritual gatherings. Lastly, the gopuram was completed in 1938 as the main architectural feature. </p>
<p>The temple was dedicated to <a href="https://www.vedicvaani.com/blog/post/mariamman-goddess.html">the goddess Mariamman</a>. It was built in the south Indian <a href="http://glimpsesofhistory.com/temple-architecture-dravidian-style/">Dravida Style</a> known for its large tiered gopurams (entrance portals) and the close integration of temples and their urban surroundings. Research has shown that the designers, P Govender and G Krishnan, followed strict design norms derived from guidelines or precedent. The building can be seen as a textbook example, achieving its intended mathematical harmony with the cosmos.</p>
<h2>Restoration</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321598/original/file-20200319-22590-1s8vzay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321598/original/file-20200319-22590-1s8vzay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321598/original/file-20200319-22590-1s8vzay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321598/original/file-20200319-22590-1s8vzay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321598/original/file-20200319-22590-1s8vzay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321598/original/file-20200319-22590-1s8vzay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321598/original/file-20200319-22590-1s8vzay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321598/original/file-20200319-22590-1s8vzay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&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 imposing gopuram (entrance portal), its stepped tiers covered in decorative elements, is seen here amid the urban decay of the Marabastad area.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alain Proust/Hidden Pretoria</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Tamil community built a new temple when they were relocated to Laudium. But the Mariamman Temple remained in use, even as parts of the building fell into disrepair. In the early 1990s, an academically researched restoration was executed by architects Schalk le Roux and Nico Botes. They worked in close partnership with the Tamil community who actively contributed to the research and design processes. </p>
<p>A new navakaragam was added while the gopuram structure was repaired and its external tiers returned to their colourful appearance. This prompted the community to commission new murtis (figurative sculptures) which were made by artisans from India and installed over time, a clear sign of continued care and ownership.</p>
<p>Marabastad has declined over the decades and the area seems to be stuck in a development impasse. But, within this context, the Mariamman Temple can be seen as a remarkable success story.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321605/original/file-20200319-22627-lfd8rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321605/original/file-20200319-22627-lfd8rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321605/original/file-20200319-22627-lfd8rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321605/original/file-20200319-22627-lfd8rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321605/original/file-20200319-22627-lfd8rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=624&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321605/original/file-20200319-22627-lfd8rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321605/original/file-20200319-22627-lfd8rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=784&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321605/original/file-20200319-22627-lfd8rl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=784&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">Hidden Pretoria/Penguin Random House</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The complex is evidence of the close interaction between architecture and social practices, and the restoration project has shown that architectural conservation is most sustainably done in partnership with communities. </p>
<p>Marabastad is a significant historical area in desperate need of more projects that will contribute to its renewal as a living neighbourhood.</p>
<p><em>You can order a copy of Hidden Pretoria <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/hidden-pretoria/9781432304652">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133942/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Johan Swart 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>Built by Tamil immigrants almost 100 years ago, the temple has survived apartheid and urban decay to remain at the heart of its community.Johan Swart, Lecturer, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1267862019-11-14T15:29:58Z2019-11-14T15:29:58ZHow Zulu radio dramas subverted apartheid’s grand design<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301548/original/file-20191113-77310-2xouqx.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">Paul Weinberg/Cambridge University Press</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Johannesburg, during the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/11/story-cities-19-johannesburg-south-africa-apartheid-purge-sophiatown">Sophiatown era of the 1950s</a>, gangsters would routinely order a writer or journalist like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/biography-can-themba-aisha-ahmed">Can Themba</a> or <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/william-bloke-modisane">Bloke Modisane</a>, to recite Shakespeare to them on street corners. </p>
<p>For a time, Shakespeare became part of the rhetoric of the streets. One of the favourite requests was for the revolutionary funeral oration by Mark Anthony, in <a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-plays/julius-caesar/">Julius Caesar</a>: “Friends, Romans, Countrymen…” </p>
<p>This may be because the writer and broadcaster <a href="http://www.durban.gov.za/City_Government/street_renaming/Biographies/Pages/KE-Masinga.aspx">King Edward Masinga</a> had earlier translated and put on air Zulu language versions of Julius Caesar and many other Shakespeare plays. Cable radio, very popular in the hostels and in the townships of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Witwatersrand">Witwatersrand</a>, was the main means of transmission for early programmes.</p>
<p>Masinga’s version of the famous oration at Caesar’s funeral that began, “Zihlobo, Bakwethu, maRomani …” is all that remains in the South African Broadcasting Corporation archives of this rich aural treasure of Shakespeare in isiZulu. Modisane, who wrote in exile for BBC radio drama, would later take the same speech and setting as the crisis moment of his superb play, <a href="https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/c0e9c957c4354c7d9929222f1a94cd5f">The Quarter Million Boys</a>.</p>
<p>These dramas were part of a bouquet offered to South Africa’s large population of isiZulu speakers during apartheid through a radio service that was designed for <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media/1997/9709/s970915d.htm">very different purposes</a>. But the original design did not deter the producers of the programmes: they subverted the apartheid agenda and delivered riveting drama that from its first moments produced culturally rich and intriguing reflections of black life.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301308/original/file-20191112-178525-1p3ou1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301308/original/file-20191112-178525-1p3ou1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301308/original/file-20191112-178525-1p3ou1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301308/original/file-20191112-178525-1p3ou1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301308/original/file-20191112-178525-1p3ou1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301308/original/file-20191112-178525-1p3ou1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301308/original/file-20191112-178525-1p3ou1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">King Edward Masinga broadcasts on Durban’s SABC Bantu programme in 1956.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Drum photographer/ BAHA/ AMO/ Courtesy Cambridge University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Something went wrong</h2>
<p>There is a cliché that lingers about African language radio in the apartheid era and after. Baldly stated, it is that during apartheid the South African Broadcasting Corporation had total control of the airwaves, and that the pliant African language stations which the broadcaster set up through Radio Bantu in 1960, dripped out only endless streams of propaganda to passive black listeners. Designed to control minds, and hold back the liberation struggle and the sounds of freedom coming from the north even before 1960, as it indeed was, it seemed the perfect tool of the master. </p>
<p>And yet. Something went wrong. </p>
<p>For sure, the apartheid state was producing an earlier version of today’s <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/0/fake-news-exactly-has-really-had-influence/">fake news</a>. Radio announcers had little control over the public broadcaster’s standard news bulletins, although a few brave broadcasters tried. At times a reader would preface the newscast with, “These are not my words”, or recite, with a flourish, the praise poems of one of the former Zulu kings, before launching into the doctored news script of the day. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thokozani-mandlenkosi-ernest-nene">Thokozani Nene</a>, one of the iconic figures of Radio Zulu and later Ukhozi FM did just that, until the order came that he was to desist. </p>
<h2>The communal power of radio drama</h2>
<p>Popular culture, largely in the form of Zulu radio drama, was one of the hidden weapons of sonic resistance that entranced and intrigued black radio listeners <a href="https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/item/19975/thesis_hum_2015_mhlambi_thokozani_ndumiso.pdf?sequence=1">even before</a> the inception of <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233183697_'You_are_Listening_to_Radio_Lebowa_of_the_South_African_Broadcasting_Corporation'_Vernacular_Radio_Bantustan_Identity_and_Listenership_1960-1994">Radio Bantu</a>. </p>
<p>Nearly six decades later, radio drama, usually in serial form, still has a strong following on <a href="http://www.ukhozifm.co.za/sabc/home/ukhozifm">Ukhozi FM</a>, one of the descendant stations of Radio Bantu. </p>
<p>How did the dramas become so important? The sound waves carrying the Zulu dramas, which spread quickly as a genre to other African language stations, became a platform for an ambitious, versatile and talented group of men and women who were script writers, performers and producers, all working in isiZulu, and making serial dramas, as well as shorter stand-alone radio plays or musicals. These ran not weekly but daily from Monday to Friday, often twice, even three times a day. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/33982826/Violence_the_occult_and_the_everyday_a_Radio_Zulu_drama_of_the_1980s_Liz_Gunner_Pages_124-139_Published_online_Social_Dynamics_06_Dec_2014_http_dx.doi.org_10.1080_02533952.2014.984456">They flourished</a>. </p>
<p>In 1986, the famous six-month long serial drama, Yiz’ Uvalo (In Spite of Fear), even had an episode played on Christmas Day. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301319/original/file-20191112-178516-1ilbagq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301319/original/file-20191112-178516-1ilbagq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301319/original/file-20191112-178516-1ilbagq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301319/original/file-20191112-178516-1ilbagq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301319/original/file-20191112-178516-1ilbagq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301319/original/file-20191112-178516-1ilbagq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301319/original/file-20191112-178516-1ilbagq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301319/original/file-20191112-178516-1ilbagq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A family group relaxes after work with the radio in Vaalwater, Northern Province.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reinhardt Hartzenberg/ AMO/ Courtesy Wits University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The radio plays set themselves deep in listeners’ memories and traditions, and became a way to tap into emotions linked to the fascination, strain and pleasure of plots that circled, usually, around the family. </p>
<p>Themes of love, divided loyalties and ethical dilemmas played out in intricate detail. The 1974 serial Ubongilinda Mzikayifani (You Must Wait for me Mzikayifani) was written and produced by Bhekisisa Kunene in the cramped Radio Zulu studios in downtown Johannesburg. Family secrets, rival suitors and a young woman’s strength of character were mixed with a twist of the occult and sprinkled with the poetic language of courtship. The setting was rural, but there was the added attraction of an eloquent male lead who was also a famous football commentator on Radio Zulu. </p>
<p>A few years later, a very different serial drama followed a more adventurous young woman as she picked her way between the advice of female family members and the attractions of off-beat men and noisy taverns. Abangane Ababi (Bad Friends) was written by Abigail Zondi. Power in the domestic space and fidelity in a fast changing society were among the themes brilliantly explored through the 1990s and into the new millennium. </p>
<p>The classic double drama, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/radio-soundings/radio-drama-in-the-time-of-violence/DAD96C0EF6F4AB5FF491DE9A93FED833">Yiz’ Uvalo/ Umanqob’ Isibindi</a> (In Spite of Fear/ The Victor is Courage) by M.V. Bhengu had a special power. Tense and full of eerie sonic features, it ran for six months from 1986 during the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-chief-defied-apartheid-and-upheld-democracy-for-the-good-of-his-people-121771">low-level civil war in KwaZulu-Natal</a>. As warlords ruled some urban and peri-urban areas in Durban and the Natal Midlands, its focus on fear, desperation, family and the occult resonated with powerful public events which threatened to overturn people’s lives. A man, Sigidi, back in rural Ndwedwe after working in Johannesburg, finds it impossible to provide for his family and turns to the occult for help, with terrible consequences. </p>
<p>What was being made through this theatre of the air, broadcast to an urban and rural listening community including migrant hostel-dwellers, was a public intimacy that sustained daily life and <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8a84/c2cae126edc5ebcc12d2c4f7c76466d086cf.pdf">fed the imagination</a>. The dramas were a means of accessing the self in a turbulent and changing world.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301337/original/file-20191112-178502-1s2o6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301337/original/file-20191112-178502-1s2o6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/301337/original/file-20191112-178502-1s2o6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301337/original/file-20191112-178502-1s2o6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301337/original/file-20191112-178502-1s2o6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301337/original/file-20191112-178502-1s2o6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301337/original/file-20191112-178502-1s2o6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/301337/original/file-20191112-178502-1s2o6zz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&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">Paul Weinberg/Cambridge University Press</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Radio created role models</h2>
<p>Listeners also modelled themselves on the radio personalities who had parts in the dramas, sometimes wrote them or produced them, and in some cases had their own programmes. They became cultural icons. </p>
<p>So King Edward Masinga, Guybon Mpanza, Thokozani Nene, Alexius Buthelezi, Winnie Mahlangu and Linda Ntuli, to name a few, each had a place over the decades on South Africa’s sonic stage. </p>
<p>Perhaps the broadcast voices produced a meta counter-voice to the dominant group. This was a resistant modernity, mediated by radio, producing worlds that were culturally dynamic and deeply invigorating. Looking back at it now, we can see it as part of an important black archive, not lost, but not entirely re-discovered.</p>
<p><em>Gunner is the author of Radio Soundings - South Africa and the Black Modern. <a href="http://witspress.co.za">Wits University Press</a> (2019). The <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/radio-soundings/">book</a> is also published by The International African Institute and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/">Cambridge University Press</a> (2019).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126786/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Gunner received funding from the National Research Foundation for her research project on Radio and the Making of Community in South Africa. She is visiting research professor in the Department of Languages, Cultural Studies and Applied Linguistics (LanCSAL), School of Languages, University of Johannesburg.</span></em></p>Even though they were a product of apartheid’s propaganda broadcasting machine, Zulu language radio dramas proved subversively powerful by reflecting communal black life and creating new stars.Prof Liz Gunner, Visiting Research Professor in the School of Languages, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1213842019-08-07T13:54:55Z2019-08-07T13:54:55ZCape Town’s bloody gang violence is inextricably bound up in its history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287054/original/file-20190806-84205-1gxkbed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Today's gang violence on the Cape Flats can't be divorced from Cape Town's history of forced removals.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EQRoy/Shutterstock/Editorial use only</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the apartheid government decided <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/how-group-areas-act-shaped-spaces-memories-and-identities-cape-town">to evict people</a> it <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/population-registration-act%2C-act-no-30-of-1950">called Coloured</a> from Cape Town’s inner city, it set off a chain reaction that now requires military intervention. </p>
<p>More than 50 years on from the mass evictions that drove anyone who wasn’t white from the city centre, the South African National Defence Force <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-army-is-being-used-to-fight-cape-towns-gangs-why-its-a-bad-idea-120455">has moved in</a> to guard the areas known collectively as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/places/cape-flats">Cape Flats</a>. It was to these places that Coloured people were pushed by the Group Areas Act. So it’s necessary to look to history – which I’ve explored in a number of my books, most recently<a href="http://donpinnock.yolasite.com/gang-town.php"> <em>Gang Town</em></a> – as <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-07-15-as-army-deployment-is-delayed-43-murdered-over-bloody-cape-town-weekend/">violence</a> in suburbs far from the city centre escalates.</p>
<p>Given the framework within which removals under the Group Areas Act took place in Cape Town, a social disaster was inevitable. As the familiar social landmarks in the closely grained working-class communities of the old city were ripped up, <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1991-38772016000100002">a whole culture began to disintegrate</a>. </p>
<p>Networks of kin, friendship, neighbourhood and work were destroyed. The streets, houses and corner shops that also formed networks were torn away. With this destruction the mixture of rights and obligations, intimacies and distances, solidarity, local loyalties and traditions that bound established communities dissipated.</p>
<p>Above all, what the Group Areas Act’s inroads into the culture of the older districts fundamentally disturbed was the organisation and role of the working-class family. One of the major problems that arose from all this was the collapse of social control over the youth. One of the greatest complaints about Group Areas removals was that individual families rather than whole neighbourhoods were moved to the Cape Flats.</p>
<p>Amid these complex developments and realities, gangs emerged. There <a href="http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/rejan85.3.pdf">had been</a> smaller, less hierarchical and organised gangs in areas like District Six from which people were forcibly removed. But harsh conditions on the Cape Flats saw much fiercer gangs forming and increasing use of knives and, later, handguns.</p>
<h2>Isolation and fear</h2>
<p>The first effect of the removals into the high-rise schemes on the Cape Flats was <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1991-38772016000100002">to destroy</a> the way the street, the corner shop and the shebeens in the “old” areas had provided the residents with a great measure of communal space. The new areas contained only the privatised space of small, nuclear family units.</p>
<p>These were stacked on top of each other in total isolation, juxtaposed with the totally public space surrounding them – a space that lacked any of the informal social controls generated by their former neighbourhoods. A key control was that houses in the old areas had verandas where older people would sit and informally police the streets. On the Cape Flats you were either behind a door or on the street.</p>
<p>The destruction of the neighbourhood street also blew out the candle of household production, craft industries and services. The result was a gradual polarisation of the labour force into those with more specialised, skilled or better paid jobs; those with the dead-end, low-paid jobs; and the unemployed. </p>
<p>As the new housing pattern dispersed the kinship network, so the isolated family could no longer call on the resources of the extended family or the neighbourhood. The nuclear family itself became the sole focus of solidarity.</p>
<p>This meant that problems tended to be bottled up within the immediate interpersonal context that produced them. At the same time, family relationships gathered a new intensity to compensate for the diversity of relationships previously generated through neighbours and wider kinship ties.</p>
<p>Pressures gradually built up, which many newly nuclear families were unable to deal with. The working-class household was thus not only isolated from the outside, but also undermined from within. The main, and understandable, product of this isolation was fear: fear of neighbours, of unknown people, of gangs and of the strange dynamics of the new environment.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RzpkLUGUg2w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The author discussing his book “Gang Town”</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These pressures weighed heavily on the house-bound mothers. The street was no longer a safe place for children to play in and there were no longer neighbours or kin to supervise them. The only play-space that felt safe was “the home”, the small flat. As stresses began to build up within the nuclear family, what had once been a base for support and security now tended to become a battleground, a major focus of all the anxieties created by the disorganisation of community.</p>
<p>One route out of the claustrophobic tensions of family life was the use of alcohol and drugs. This became the standard path of many men. Children were shaken loose in different ways. One way was into early sexual relationships and perhaps marriage. </p>
<p>Another was into the fierce youth subcultures on the streets which became ritualised in the violent youth-gang culture, reinforcing the neighbourhood climate of fear. The situation was to be compounded by rising unemployment at the younger end of a potential labour force and the consolidation of illegal markets that required “soldiers” to protect.</p>
<p>What these gangs did in order to survive in the face of tremendous odds was to rebuild the lost organisation and domestic economy in the new housing-estates. This time, however, their customers and they themselves were often also their victims.</p>
<p>Then came 1994 and the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-general-elections-1994">newly elected</a> African National Congress (ANC) government inherited, in Cape Town, a working class that was like a routed, scattered army, dotted in confusion about the land of their birth. </p>
<p>The ultimate losers in this type of claustrophobic atmosphere are the working-class families. For those scattered across the Cape Flats, the emotional brutality dealt out to them in the name of rational urban planning has been incalculable. The only defence the young people have had has been to build something coherent out of the one thing they had left – each other.</p>
<h2>Too little too late</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-soldiers-wont-end-gang-violence-a-co-ordinated-plan-might-120775">Bringing soldiers onto the Cape Flats</a> is too little and too late to unscramble the political omelette. What’s needed is not repression but contrition, better intelligence and the rebuilding of damaged communities whiplashed by gunfire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121384/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Don Pinnock consulted the Western Cape provincial Department of Community Safety in 2018 coordinating its gang strategy.</span></em></p>Given the framework within which removals under the Group Areas Act took place in Cape Town, a social disaster was inevitable.Don Pinnock, Research fellow, criminologist, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1063302018-11-13T00:59:03Z2018-11-13T00:59:03ZWhy controversial child protection reforms in NSW could lead to another Stolen Generation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245005/original/file-20181112-83564-mgbkal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C13%2C4608%2C3435&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The most commonly criticised feature of the bill is the arbitrary maximum period of two years within which a decision about permanent placement has to be made. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Among the most significant powers exercised by governments is that of removing children from their families. Potential <a href="https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/bills/Pages/bill-details.aspx?pk=3598">reforms</a> before the NSW parliament this week would <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-24/nsw-government-adoption-law-overhaul-proposed/10422140">expand this</a> power in frightening ways. </p>
<p>The reforms contained in the <a href="https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/bills/Pages/bill-details.aspx?pk=3598">Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Amendment Bill</a> represent a radical shift in basic child welfare principles. These changes could make removals more permanent, while dispensing with core safeguards and transparency measures. It is Aboriginal communities who stand to lose the most.</p>
<p>Children are already being removed from Indigenous communities at an unprecedented rate. Indigenous children make up <a href="https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/children-care">36.9% of children in out-of-home care</a> in Australia, despite being just 3% of the population.</p>
<p>And stakeholders ranging from the <a href="https://www.kinchelaboyshome.org.au/">Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation</a> to the peak body for <a href="https://www.clcnsw.org.au/">Community Legal Centres NSW</a> are fearful that, if passed, the NSW legislation <a href="https://www.clcnsw.org.au/nsw-forced-adoptions-open-letter">will force adoptions and create another Stolen Generation</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1060304328257241088"}"></div></p>
<h2>What’s been proposed?</h2>
<p>We’re especially concerned by four fundamental proposed changes: </p>
<ol>
<li>placing a two-year limit on creating a permanent arrangement for a child </li>
<li>making guardianship orders by consent outside of courts</li>
<li>amending how families can apply for restoration </li>
<li>removing parental consent to adoption for children on permanent orders.</li>
</ol>
<p>Proponents suggest the reforms are aimed at stopping children “flopping from one foster home to another”, as Pru Goward, NSW minister for family and community services, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-24/nsw-government-adoption-law-overhaul-proposed/10422140">put it</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245179/original/file-20181112-194519-wv7mb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245179/original/file-20181112-194519-wv7mb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245179/original/file-20181112-194519-wv7mb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245179/original/file-20181112-194519-wv7mb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245179/original/file-20181112-194519-wv7mb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245179/original/file-20181112-194519-wv7mb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245179/original/file-20181112-194519-wv7mb4.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">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pru Goward says the bill will bring ‘landmark reforms’ to the state’s child protection system.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dean Lewins/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, we are talking here about legally permanent care arrangements being made with arbitrary deadlines.</p>
<p>As Aboriginal advocates have argued, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/empowering-indigenous-communities-to-prevent-child-abuse-and-neglect-32875">as the evidence attests</a>, family and kin support is key to keeping Aboriginal kids home, safe and connected with their culture. The reforms proposed in the bill will make it much harder to achieve that goal.</p>
<h2>A permanent placement within two years</h2>
<p>The most commonly criticised feature of the bill is the arbitrary maximum period of two years within which a decision about permanent placement has to be made. </p>
<p>As governments increasingly outsource their child welfare responsibilities to private agencies, there is a danger that market incentives can intrude into decision-making. The incentive to cycle children into permanent arrangements, regardless of their suitability, to meet performance indicators and targets is particularly chilling. </p>
<p>In Australia, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse <a href="https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/contemporary-out-home-care">noted the vulnerability of children in care to sex abuse</a>. Yet, once children are placed on guardianship orders or adopted, they are on their own, with no further review or oversight. They are no longer counted in the out-of-home care statistics.</p>
<p>And the <a href="http://healingfoundation.org.au/">factors that cause children to enter into care</a> – especially Aboriginal children – aren’t usually solved within a two-year time frame. They’re often related to poverty and inter-generational trauma. These include insecure housing, drug and alcohol addiction, family violence, and mental health and behavioural problems. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/child-protection-report-lacks-crucial-national-detail-on-abuse-in-out-of-home-care-93008">Child protection report lacks crucial national detail on abuse in out-of-home care</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.facs.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/421531/FACS_SAR.pdf">Almost half</a> of all children in out-of-home care in NSW in 2014-2015 had a parent who had contact with the child welfare department themselves when they were a child.</p>
<p>Services to address these problems (such as support for victims of domestic violence and rehabilitation facilities) are either not available or have a lengthy wait list – sometimes two years or longer.</p>
<p>And it’s hard to see how the frequently backlogged NSW Children’s Court could cope with the additional pressure of a looming two-year deadline. </p>
<p>The changes create insurmountable conditions tantamount to permanent removal with no oversight.</p>
<h2>Guardianship orders ‘by consent’ outside of courts</h2>
<p>Under the bill, permanent care orders can be made “by consent” in alternative dispute resolution without necessarily establishing a child is at risk. As the Law Society of NSW <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/344/Letter_to_Minister_for_Family_and_Community_Services_-_Children_and_Youn....pdf?1542063294">says in its submission</a> to the state government: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>While the child’s safety and best interests are of course paramount, these provisions would allow the court to make a guardianship order with the parents’ consent, even where there is no finding that a child is at risk of significant harm or should be subject to a care and protection order. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>These decisions will be made in negotiations – without judicial oversight – between families, governments, agencies and carers with vastly different legal resources, powers and goals. Families will be assisted by lawyers who may be ill-equipped to deal with a sudden influx of new cases in an unfamiliar forum.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-children-in-institutional-care-may-be-worse-off-now-than-they-were-in-the-19th-century-104395">Why children in institutional care may be worse off now than they were in the 19th century</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The legislation provides limited safeguards, but these cannot make the alternative dispute resolution suitable in cases where fundamental legal rights - such as the state breaking up a family - are at stake. </p>
<p>This means thousands of children who have already been transferred from foster care to private guardianship arrangements - <a href="https://public.tableau.com/profile/facs.statistics#!/vizhome/Objective2-Improvingthelivesofchildrenandyoungpeople/Dashboard1">over 894 of them Indigenous as of June 2017</a> - could soon be adopted without their parents’ knowledge or consent.</p>
<p>Once a decision has been made, the reforms narrow the criteria for reviewing them. This makes it virtually impossible for families to get permanent placement decisions changed.</p>
<p>In its own <a href="https://www.facs.nsw.gov.au/download?file=633577">report</a> on the bill, the NSW government conceded most stakeholders opposed these changes.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1061807670116544512"}"></div></p>
<h2>Rushed process leaving little time for response</h2>
<p>Decisions such as these already take place in the <a href="http://aftertheapology.com/">context of the unconscious bias</a> and structural racism of the out-of-home care system. And Indigenous <a href="http://www.familymatters.org.au/aifs-releases-paper-examining-implementation-child-placement-principle/">child placement principles</a> – which aim to keep children safe while retaining their connections to family, community, culture and country – are not being properly implemented.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-qanda-are-indigenous-children-ten-times-more-likely-to-be-living-in-out-of-home-care-54825">FactCheck Q&A: are Indigenous children ten times more likely to be living in out-of-home care?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>We do not yet know the extent of that system failure. The NSW government is not waiting for the results of an <a href="http://www.familyisculture.nsw.gov.au/about-us/terms-of-reference">ongoing review into how it handles Aboriginal child placements</a>. A similar review in Victoria revealed that systematic failings have contributed to the over-representation of Aboriginal children in care and that over <a href="https://ccyp.vic.gov.au/assets/Publications-inquiries/always-was-always-will-be-koori-children-inquiry-report-oct16.pdf">60% of those children had been placed with non-Aboriginal carers</a>.</p>
<p>It is astonishing this bill is being rushed straight to the upper house in the last sitting days before the NSW election in March, leaving no chance for adequate debate and giving Aboriginal stakeholders just weeks’ notice to respond. A recent motion to send the bill to a short inquiry that would last mere days was voted down.</p>
<p>We know that NSW child protection laws need to change, but not this way. The Commonwealth government <a href="https://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/our-country/our-people/apology-to-australias-indigenous-peoples">has apologised</a> to the Stolen Generations, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOOJc1C6erg">the NSW government has apologised to survivors of forced adoptions</a>. Both apologies warned us of the need to learn from past policies. If this bill passes, we will have all but forgotten them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106330/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Terrri Libesman has a grant from the Law and Justice Foundation, together with the Aboriginal Legal Service NSW, to investigate Aboriginal participation in child protection decision making in NSW.. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Whittaker 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>One of the state’s most significant powers is the ability to remove children from their families. Potential reforms in NSW could expand this already racialised power in frightening ways.Alison Whittaker, Research Fellow, University of Technology SydneyTerri Libesman, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/969312018-05-21T15:22:24Z2018-05-21T15:22:24ZPhilip Tabane: the African musical genius who played for the spirit<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219736/original/file-20180521-14953-37fnn5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Philip Tabane</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oupa Nkosi/Mail & Guardian</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South African musician Philip Tabane, who <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-05-18-dr-philip-tabane-pases-on-leaving-malombo-to-the-next-generation">died</a> on 18 May 2018, hated being labelled. How he’d feel about the all official obituaries that confine him inside the jazz envelope is clear:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The jazz label – or any other label – has never worked in my case. Once, I went to play at a competition in Durban and in the end I was given a special prize because I could not be categorised. To this day, they still cannot categorise my music.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That was from my second interview with the artist, in 1997 at the old Kippies jazz club in Newtown, Johannesburg. The first had been almost a decade earlier, sitting close to the riverbank outside the Woodpecker club in Gaborone, Botswana. Clouds of smoke from the log fire he’d made kept the mosquitoes away, and began the slow, careful process of drying out his malombo drums, whose skins, he felt, were a bit damp and stretchy for that night’s gig. There was other smoke too, grey-green and herbally aromatic.</p>
<p>The rumour was that Tabane was a difficult interviewee. Sometimes he’d refuse to speak at all. Often, as was his constitutional right (South Africa has 11 official languages), he refused to speak in English. </p>
<p>I never found him anything but gravely courteous, as long as you listened. Tabane tolerated my linguistic inadequacies, calling in other band members when his flow of ideas simply couldn’t be pinned down in English. </p>
<p>His music was intimately woven into his cosmology and spirituality; he needed to talk about them all together and the English language was too culturally bounded to provide him with the right words.</p>
<p>I’m reluctant to attempt any kind of evaluative obituary. I’m not enough of an insider to provide one. But there are two fine pieces of writing that do get there. The <a href="https://mukurukurumedia.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/the-world-that-made-philip-tabane/">first</a> is journalist Lucas Ledwaba’s work-in-progress biography. For my money, Ledwaba touches the soul of his Malombo music and its origins in a way that few other writers have. </p>
<p>The second is author Bongani Madondo’s account of his expansive week-long interview for <em>Rolling Stone SA</em> in 2013, <a href="http://panmacmillan.co.za/catalogue/sigh-the-beloved-country/">reprinted</a> in his book <em>Sigh, the Beloved Country</em>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qX5pJlBMRbo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Pere fere’ from the album, Malombo.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A family of guitarists</h2>
<p><a href="https://mukurukurumedia.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/the-world-that-made-philip-tabane/">Tabane was born</a> in 1934 (though some biographies give other dates) in rural Ga Ramotshegoa northeast of South Africa’s capital of Pretoria. He came from a family of guitarists: his elder brother Mmaloki, he told journalists, was “better than <a href="http://www.wesmontgomery.com/home/">Wes Montgomery</a>”. The adulation radio stations gave to American players like Montgomery mystified him. </p>
<p>His mother Matjale was a spiritual healer, and from her he absorbed the music of her calling. His father was a devout Christian who fostered hymn-singing at family services. Tabane heard Ndebele and Sepedi traditional tunes from his local village band, and despite being chased away from social functions because he was too young, he did what many young South Africans did: he covertly improvised an instrument from an oilcan and a broomstick, and tried to learn. By his teens, his parents had relented and he acquired a real guitar.</p>
<p>Uprooted in 1953 by the brutal forced removals of the apartheid government, the family settled in urban Mamelodi – a Pretoria township. By 1959, Tabane had formed his first band. But as the 1960s progressed, he became more interested in exploring how traditional sounds could be interpreted and extended via a blend of modern and traditional instruments. He formed Malombo, which won first prize at the 1964 <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/the-sounds-punctuating-south-african-lives-1693503">Cold Castle Festival</a> – an influential annual South African jazz competition during the 1960s.</p>
<p>Malombo went through multiple personnel changes as participants sought other musical directions or chose exile, but retained its percussionist rock: <a href="http://www.melt.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=281:mabi-gabriel-thobejane&catid=24:melt-artist-catalogue&Itemid=74">Gabriel “Mabi” Thobejane</a>.</p>
<p>In the 1970s, Malombo spent time in the US, including an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, of which <em>Jet</em> magazine <a href="https://www.news24.com/xArchive/Archive/Philip-Tabane-musician-extraordinaire-20010330">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>One of the most pleasurable finds of the Newport Jazz Festival this year was Malombo from South Africa, Malombo create some weird and haunting music on a variety of African instruments. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The time in America convinced him of the necessity of holding fast to roots inspiration, which he saw as a springboard for limitless imagination and innovation in technique. Tabane worked with prominent jazz players such as pianist <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/herbie-hancock-mn0000957296">Herbie Hancock</a> and trumpeter <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/miles-davis-mn0000423829">Miles Davis</a>, and even in his later days, he relished Miles’s music. But, he often told interviewers:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He plays to make money, and I play for the spirit.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When it was suggested he played “like” Davis, he <a href="http://www.theconmag.co.za/2014/04/04/jazz-with-a-raised-fist/">responded</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No, I don’t play like Miles. Miles plays like me.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Resisting the hybrids</h2>
<p>Tabane always resisted the hybridising marketing label “Malombo jazz”, as his music was tagged. But during the 1970s and 1980s, when his recordings gained status overseas with aficionados as astounding music, it was hardly heard at home. Many Tabane albums were not even available in South Africa. It was only after 1994, that the re-releases started happening, and fresh recording and performance opportunities began – too slowly – to emerge.</p>
<p>Tabane was not “like” any other player. His various honorary doctorates were less than his status as an original creator of unique sounds merited. To hear him live was miraculous. Dressed in a blend of cowboy-guitarist suit and traditional adornments, he’d proceed to travel from delicate, poignant melodies (often recalling his first rural home and its ways of life) to fast, mercurial runs of astounding technical virtuosity and harsh, minatory chords that seemed to rip the guts out of the instrument. </p>
<p>His music took you to the spheres and back: he was Africa’s <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/sun-ra-mn0000924232">Sun Ra</a>, South Africa’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/mar/08/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries">Ali Farka Toure</a>, and a great deal more. <em>Hamba Kahle</em>: may his spirit rest in peace.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Tabane’s music</h2>
<p>Here’s a selection (with some links) of Tabane’s music:</p>
<p>1964 Cold Castle Jazz Festival</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Philip Tabane at the Castle Lager jazz festival 1964.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>1969 The Indigenous Afro-jazz Sounds of Philip Tabane and Malombo</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘The Indigenous Afro Jazz Sounds’ - the full album.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>1976 Pele Pele</p>
<p>1976 Malombo </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Malombo’ - the full album.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>1978 Sangoma</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The title track of the album, ‘Sangoma’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>1986 Man Phily (compilation)</p>
<p>1989 Unh!</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The playlist of the album, ‘Unh!’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>1989 Silent Beauty</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The full album, ‘Silent Beauty’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>1996 Ke a Bereka</p>
<p>1998 Muvhango</p>
<p>Filmography:</p>
<p>2010 Live at The Market Theatre</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Excerpt from a DVD of a concert at Johannesburg’s Market Theatre.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>2013 Bajove Dokotela (SABC documentary by Khalo Matabane)</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Excerpt from the documentary ‘Bajove Dokotela’.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96931/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>Philip Tabane was unlike any other musician. His music was intimately woven into his cosmology and spirituality.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/872072017-11-15T13:29:16Z2017-11-15T13:29:16ZCape Crusaders: why some South Africans (still) support the Kiwis, not the Springboks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194590/original/file-20171114-27635-vu78ou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The All Blacks after beating the Springboks 57-0 in New Zealand on September 16, 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nigel Marple/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Politics and sport are inseparable. To paraphrase the famous military thinker <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2017-06-21-battle-lines-war-is-the-continuation-of-politics-by-other-means/#.WgrBsluCwdU">Carl von Clausewitz</a>, sport could be politics – or even warfare – by other means. This is even truer of sport at a national level: teams represent the political entity of a nation-state. This close relationship between sport and politics has always been apparent in South Africa, during apartheid and after.</p>
<p>An example with its roots in apartheid still plays itself out during every southern hemisphere rugby season. It occurs during <a href="http://www.sanzarrugby.com/superrugby/">Super Rugby</a> when South African club/ provincial teams play against their New Zealand, Australian, Argentinian and Japanese counterparts, and also when the former three teams’ national teams <a href="http://www.sanzarrugby.com/therugbychampionship/">play</a> against South Africa’s Springboks.</p>
<p>It happens specifically when New Zealand’s <a href="https://crusaders.co.nz/">Canterbury Crusaders</a> or its national team, the <a href="http://www.allblacks.com/">All Blacks</a>, play against their local opposition at Cape Town’s Newlands Stadium. These matches invariably scratch open old political wounds as the so-called <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/why-i-support-the-crusaders-1494658">“Cape Crusaders”</a> – wearing the Crusaders’ red or All Blacks’ black replica shirts – support the Kiwi team.</p>
<p>The debate around the Cape Crusaders prominently came into the <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sport/rugby/2011-06-19-why-i-turned-my-back-on-the-boks/">public eye</a> in 1996 when Trevor Manuel, then South Africa’s Finance Minister, said he supported the All Blacks when they play the Springboks. </p>
<h2>Political and personal choice</h2>
<p>The Cape Crusaders are a sub-culture of South Africans of mixed race, also called <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/race-and-ethnicity-south-africa">coloureds</a>, mainly in the Western Cape province. They started supporting the Springboks’ opposition during apartheid: a deeply political and personal choice. </p>
<p>The apartheid government treated coloured people as inferior human beings. The white government brutally <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-6">evicted</a> them from neighbourhoods around the country, <a href="http://www.saha.org.za/news/2010/February/district_six_recalling_the_forced_removals.htm">moving</a> them far afield from the white areas.</p>
<p>This policy of apartheid manifested in a number of other hurtful, discriminatory <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/reservation-separate-amenities-act-no-49-commences">ways</a>. At Newlands for example, coloured people were <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/10580588/Ghost-of-apartheid-haunts-Cape-Town-rugby">not allowed</a> to sit with whites. They were allocated their own stand behind the poles; the worst seats at the field.</p>
<p>Some started to support the opposition of the white and mostly Afrikaans-speaking Springboks, who represented and resembled their oppressors. This started with tours by the British and Irish Lions in the 1960s and 1970s. But ultimately the main team to support were the All Blacks, who came to be the Springboks’ big foes in the latter half of the twentieth century.</p>
<p>The support for the All Blacks and also the Crusaders (with eight titles the most successful team in Super Rugby) still <a href="http://www.rugby365.com/article/53012-cape-crusaders-cause-new-row">remains</a> to this day for many coloured people, despite apartheid officially ending in 1994 with South Africa’s first democratic election.</p>
<p>Talk to Cape Crusaders at an All Blacks vs Springboks test match – as I did during the Soweto test in 2012 – and you will hear that their decision is rooted in a personal history of discrimination and oppression. Their decision to support the Crusaders or All Blacks is more often than not rooted in past trauma, such as violence or intense racism perpetrated against their family or community by big, burly white Afrikaans policemen. </p>
<h2>The fatherland begins at home</h2>
<p>The Cape Crusaders’ choice is therefore usually rooted in two reasons: Firstly, because their father or grandfather supports them. The support of a national team is about patriotism for many; but for others, loyalty to your father is more important. This is a motivation for support of sport teams in general. The fatherland begins at home.</p>
<p>Secondly, the Springboks still carry the same symbolic baggage of white Afrikaans oppression to Cape Crusaders. The racial composition of the Springbok squad has <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/rugby/international/south-african-rugby-still-a-black-and-white-issue-1.2608188">changed</a>. But the rub of the matter is that most men in the team still resemble the former oppressors, even if only physically. </p>
<p>The political but especially the psychological import of this baggage brings back painful memories: of the policemen who came to your door during apartheid and dragged a bloodied family member away in handcuffs, or of the government bulldozers that came to flatten your house.</p>
<p>There is usually a <a href="http://www.sarugbymag.co.za/blog/details/the-cape-crusaders-debate">public outcry</a> in the media about the Cape Crusaders’ continuing support of Kiwi teams. The main gripe is that they are being unpatriotic by not supporting the South African team involved. They are even branded as <a href="https://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Why-South-Africans-support-the-Crusaders-and-the-All-Blacks-20130402">traitors</a>; some say that they should put the past behind them and <a href="http://www.thebounce.co.za/articles/sports/hey-cape-crusaders-it039s-time-to-move-on/3710">just move on</a>.</p>
<p>Statements like these reveal ignorance of the Cape Crusaders’ choice being rooted in a violent and unjust past. It is also too convenient to make such a statement if you or your kin was the former oppressor. And the idea that being South African means you support South African sport teams is far too thin a definition. This kind of talk also treats history as a series of stops and starts, with the view that the end of apartheid in 1994 brought an end to oppression and injustice.</p>
<p>History is a process that continues in the present and many facets of apartheid still continue albeit in a different guise. The past that people speak of is still very much with South Africans, especially in terms of the poverty and domestic trauma found in many coloured communities. A hasty judgement about the Cape Crusaders reveals historical amnesia and simply reinforces racial prejudices.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87207/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Villet does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>South Africans supporting visiting New Zealand rugby teams took root in a tumultuous time as an expression of defiance against apartheid.Charles Villet, Philosophy Lecturer, Faculty of Social and Health Sciences, Monash South Africa, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.