Department of History

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https://hdl.handle.net/10566/96

The Department of History is one of the leading History departments in South Africa. Areas of specialization in the Department are women and gender studies, public history, visual history, land and agrarian history, liberation history, urban history, African history, and teacher education.

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Now showing 1 - 12 of 12

Anthropology and literature: Humanistic themes in the ethnographic fiction of Hilda Kuper and Edith Turner
(University of Western Cape, 2021) Shaik, Zuleika Bibi; Bank, Andrew
This mini-thesis makes an argument for the significance of a female-dominated hidden tradition of experimental ethnographic writing in British social anthropology. It argues that the women anthropologists who experimented with creative forms of ethnography were doubly marginalised: first as women in an androcentric male canon in British social anthropology and American cultural anthropology, and second as creative writers whose work has been consistently undervalued in sombre scholarly circles. The study proposes that Hilda Beemer Kuper (1911-1995) and Edith Turner (1921-2016) should be regarded as significant in a still unexcavated literary tradition or subgenre with Anglo-American anthropology. It showcases the narrative craft of Kuper through a detailed textual analysis of her two most accomplished experimental ethnographies A Witch in My Heart (written in 1954, performed in 1955, and published in siSwati in 1962 and English in London in 1970) and A Bite of Hunger (written in 1958 and published in America in 1965). I highlight Kuper?s multiple literary techniques in evoking of the fraught position of young Swazi co-wives, modern women and women accused of witchcraft in a patriarchal culture with particular attention to her gifts in creating dramatic plots, complex characters and dialogue rich in vernacular metaphor and proverbs. It then celebrates the even more experimental creative writing of Edith Turner. While Turner has sometimes been acknowledged for her hidden contributions to the co-production of her deeply loved and more famous husband Victor, she has not been given her due as an experimental ethnographer, also placing the experiences of African women centre-stage. In what she overtly advertised as �female literary style�, Turner?s belatedly published 1987 novel The Spirit and the Drum. A Memoir of Africa is analysed with meticulous attention to the literary techniques by which she seeks to explore an anthropology of experience and empathy. These accomplished but under-acknowledged women creative writers sought to explore what they both explicitly conceived of as gestures of humanist cross-cultural engagement.
Anthropology and literature: Humanistic themes in the ethnographic fiction of Hilda Luper and Edith Turner
(University of Western Cape, 2020) Shaik, Zuleika Bibi; Bank, Andrew
This mini-thesis makes an argument for the significance of a female-dominated hidden tradition of experimental ethnographic writing in British social anthropology. It argues that the women anthropologists who experimented with creative forms of ethnography were doubly marginalised: first as women in an androcentric male canon in British social anthropology and American cultural anthropology, and second as creative writers whose work has been consistently undervalued in sombre scholarly circles. The study proposes that Hilda Beemer Kuper (1911-1995) and Edith Turner (1921-2016) should be regarded as significant in a still unexcavated literary tradition or subgenre with Anglo-American anthropology.
Christianity, education and African nationalism: an intellectual biography of Z.K. Matthews (1901-1968)
(University of the Western Cape, 2013) Nombila, Ayanda Wiseman; Bank, Andrew; Pillay, Surendren
My study begins by looking at the ways in which ZK Matthews has been remembered. I raise questions about his legacy in the post-apartheid period, in relation to the limited ways in which he has been studied and in relation to the broader politics of memory. What follows this is an analysis of ZK�s political and educational writings, as a new way of thinking about his intellectual contributions to nationalist thought. Chapter one of this thesis will raise questions about the legacy and memory of ZK in the postapartheid moment. I analyze both the popular and the scholarly representations of ZK as have been attempted by people and organizations to remember him. The popular representations of ZK have been produced by the University of Fort Hare, through an exhibition of his life and legacy and an Annual Memorial Lectures. ZK we must recall, was once a student, a lecturer and Rector of the university. On the scholarly side there is only one existing attempt to produce an auto/biography, one by ZK himself and edited with memoirs by Monica Hunter Wilson. The name of the book is Freedom For My People published in 1981. I analyze the circumstances of the production of this book. And secondly I point out that the interest here was on the liberal-Christian view of ZK. It focused on ZK�s relationships with people of different kinds, his service at Fort Hare and the public society, and the ANC. I also provide an analysis of two seminar papers by Paul Rich (1994) and Cynthia Kros (1990), and one long essay by William Saayman (1996). All these studies so not attempt to produce a discourse on the nationalist thought of ZK, rather they focus on limited archival work and they rely on the ambit of liberalism and Christianity to understand ZK.
From homestead to roadside to gallery: The social life of late twentieth century and early twenty-first century Zulu ceramics
(University of the Western Cape, 2018) Buss, Julia Louise; Bank, Andrew
My research considers the vessels of select women ceramists in and from rural KwaZulu-Natal and reflects on the changing contexts in which their work is utilized, consumed and displayed. The emphasis of my research is on the significance of ceramics in cultural practices and how this has changed or been maintained due to altered social and political circumstances and the changing dynamics of research. Additionally, when ceramic vessels are purchased by tourists, collectors and patrons they are subjected to a range of dialogues between maker and buyer. Finally, vessels may be selected to be displayed in exhibitions or held in collections of museums and galleries; once again, then they will be spoken about and they will speak to us on different terms. Each one of these movements in the life of a pot is reflected in the artist�s consideration of form, pattern, balance, shape, colour and symmetry of the vessels. Similarly, each one of these steps in the process engages with a different type of audience in a dynamic and significant way. I investigate how the authors of these vessels become involved in and negotiate a dialogue between themselves, their work and an exterior context that always projects its own voice about the artists and their work.
From Volksmoeder to Igqira: Towards an intellectual biography of Dr Vera B�hrmann (1910-1998)
(University of the Western Cape, 2020) Landman, Andre Louis; Bank, Andrew
This biography of Dr Vera B�hrmann is an intersectional and interdisciplinary investigation of an unusual Afrikaner woman who occupied several unusual places in South African society. Through rigorous archival research and a wide reading of English and Afrikaans secondary sources, I examine the mythology that has grown up around Dr B�hrmann and expose contradictions and inaccuracies inherent within these myths. I adopt a chronological approach but focus on certain key motifs. I dwell on her family background in order to demonstrate the depths of the Afrikaner nationalist tradition to which she was heir. I uncover the impact that physical anthropology had on her during her initial medical training at Wits and UCT in the 1930s. I highlight the intensity of her commitment to, and leadership roles in, the Ossewa-Brandwag and Dietse Kinderfonds, both extremist right-wing Afrikaner nationalist organisations. Vera�s marital crises reveal something of her �human� side but are an important component of her story because she reinvented herself following her divorce in the early 1950s, furthering her medical qualifications as well as training as a Jungian analyst. I investigate the various fields in which she worked following her return to South Africa in late 1959 but focus on her cross-cultural psychiatry research with a Xhosa igqira in the 1970s and 1980s since much of the mythology that surrounds her is based on publications that flowed from that research. I engage critically with her published works and associated archival records and present evidence which shows that the view that she underwent a �Damascus Road� experience with respect to her racial politics is unfounded. The racial politics of her ancestors and the ideology of the radical right-wing Ossewa-Brandwag remained with her throughout her life, despite attempts (by Vera and others) to camouflage it. In addition, I show that her use of Jungian depth psychology as a framework for cross-cultural psychiatry research contributed to the reification of apartheid racial politics. This study draws attention to the many pioneering achievements of this remarkable woman but argues that a more nuanced approach to her legacy is needed in light of the evidence of her persistent racial prejudice.
Remaking /Xam narratives in a post-apartheid South Africa
(University of the Western Cape, 2010) Hendricks, Mona; Bank, Andrew; Dept. of History; Faculty of Arts
Public history has become a dynamic new field of study in South African historiography during the post-apartheid period. As a field of applied history, it has been engaged with analysing the highly contested nature of knowledge production across a wide range of public sites. These include museums, art galleries, archaeological digs, theme-parks, shopping malls, tourist attractions and heritage sites. The wider national cultural and political challenge has been that of working towards restoration, healing, and reparation in the wake of a colonial and apartheid history marked by particularly acute brutality and dispossession. This thesis analyses the attempts of one public institution, the Iziko South African Museum, to negotiate the remaking of public history in the post-apartheid period. Unlike some of the newer sites of cultural production, such as the Cape Town Waterfront and the West Coast cultural village of !Kwa-ttu, the South African Museum has a century-long history of complicity in generating images of racial and cultural others, notably Khoisan communities. The thesis begins by exploring this history and the ways in which the South African Museum has tried to come to terms with this legacy in its post-apartheid policies: firstly, in the discussions and debates around the closing of the Bushman diorama (2001), and secondly, in the creation of a new exhibition on San rock art which draws extensively on the Bleek-Lloyd Collection (/Qe: The Power of Rock Art. Ancestors, Rain-making and Healing, 2003 to the present). The Iziko South African Museum has not been successful in its attempts to meet the challenge of coming to terms with its history of collecting human remains and creating body casts and putting them on display. I argue that the measures it has introduced over the last twenty two years, including the ‘revision of the Bushman diorama exhibition’ (1988-89), to Miscast (1996), and the closure of the diorama (2001), are little more than window-dressing and staged productions, with lip-service being paid to transformation. In the place of the effective opening out of debate and discussion about the Museum’s history of racial scientific research, we have seen the presentation of a new framework of knowledge about Khoisan communities through the ‘lens of rock art research’ and the Bleek-Lloyd-/Xam records. I see these as a way of sanitising the story about colonialism and apartheid. In making these arguments I draw upon a number of scholarly works by academics involved in public and visual history; recent literature on trauma narratives; Foucauldian discourse; and newspaper.
Saul Januarie: Biography of a wagon-maker and blacksmith from Worcester, Western Cape, South Africa
(University of the Western Cape, 2007) Esau, Cecyl; Bank, Andrew; Dept. of History; Faculty of Arts
Saul Januarie was born in Worcester in 1903. He spent his childhood years in the town of Touwsriver and then returned to Worcester as an adult where he married and spent the remainder of his life. He became well-known as a blacksmith from Worcester from the 1930's omwards. His skills were sought after in the town as well as on the farms in the surrounding area. Januarie was also renowned as a leader of the Independent Order of True Templars (IOTT). This study was an important starting-point to contribute to the exploration of a more inclusive social history of Worcester. The biography of Saul Januarie that has been constructed lends itself eminently to complement and enlarge the present exhibitions on wagon-making and the work of blacksmiths.
A triangulation of relationships: Godfrey Wilson, Zacharia Mawere and their Bemba informants in Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia, 1938�1941
(University of the Western Cape, 2015) Mbewe, Mary; Bank, Andrew
The rich corpus of postcolonial scholarly engagement on indigenous intermediaries, interpreters, clerks and assistants has a made a strong argument for the active participation of African agents in social scientific knowledge production on Africa. This literature has highlighted the complex and negotiated nature of fieldwork in African anthropology. While this literature has begun to deepen our understanding of the knowledge work of anthropologists and their research assistants, it has not adequately explored the relationship between anthropologists and informants in what one scholar has recently called �a triangulation of relationships� between the anthropologist, the assistant and the informant. This research project proposes to explore these relationships in a detailed case study: that of the British anthropologist Godfrey Wilson (1908�1944), his interpreter Zachariah Mawere, and three primary informants, during three years of pioneering research into the effects of migrant labour at Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) between 1938 and 1941. Using a close textual reading and detailed analysis of Wilsons Bemba and English fieldnotes held in the Godfrey and Monica Wilson collection at the University of Cape Town�s African Studies Library, the study will apply a micro-historical and biographical approach. It will seek to reconstruct the biographies and anthropological contributions of one interpreter and three central Bemba informants in order to explore the micro-politics of knowledge production in African anthropology.
Untangling the Lion's Tale: Violent masculinity and the ethics of biography in the 'Curious' case of the apartheid-era policeman Donald Card
(Routledge Taylor Francis Group, 2013) Bank, Leslie J.; Bank, Andrew
Donald Card (1928�) is a former policeman in South Africa who became the subject of international media attention on 21 September 2004. In a highly publicised and symbolic ceremony of reconciliation inaugurating the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory Project, he handed back to Mandela two notebooks containing 78 hitherto unknown letters written by Mandela on Robben Island. A starkly contrasting image of Card as a torturer had, however, come to light during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings in the Eastern Cape in 1996 and 1997. This article begins by making a case for a direct connection between these two events. We argue that the sanitised version of his life history in recent scholarship traces back to his own attempts to defend his reputation from these allegations of torture and that the Mandela notebooks served both to obscure these allegations and provide Card with a respectable, even heroic, biography. We then present our alternative version of his life history. Drawing on Robert Morrell�s periodisation of masculinities in southern Africa, we read the story of Card�s life in early�mid-twentieth century South Africa in terms of changing masculine identities, each strongly associated with violence: first the �oppositional� masculinity of a child growing up in an abusive patriarchal Irish settler family, second the �settler� masculinity of an athletic teenager at a white school in the former Transkei, and third his �hegemonic� white South African masculine identity defined in opposition to emergent black masculinities into which he was initiated as a young adult during four months of intensive training at a police college in Pretoria. It is in this context, along with extensive new independently acquired oral and documentary evidence of his human rights abuses in East London in the 1950s and the early 1960s, that we situate the TRC testimonies about Card�s torture between 1962 and 1964.
Visual Storytelling in the Cape Flats Gang Biopics Noem My Skollie (2016) and Ellen: Die Storie van Ellen Pakkies (2018)
(University of the Western Cape, 2021) Arendse, Lesle Anne; Bank, Andrew
This M.A. mini-thesis seeks to open up the post-apartheid South African biopic as a topic for serious historical scrutiny. While book-length written biographies published in the post-apartheid (and apartheid periods) are the subjects of a now quite extensive historiographical literature, biography on film � including in the form of filmic dramas � has been hitherto entirely ignored. Social history or marginalised lives and not political lives of struggle against apartheid have been the predominant subgenre within this emerging field: with sixteen biopics having been produced in the 2010s. But the field is dominated by white men. This thesis showcases the story-telling gifts of one young coloured film-maker through a meticulously detailed analysis of �visual story-telling� and �visual language� used in his two award-winning gang biopics, Noem My Skollie (2016) and Ellen. Die Stories van Ellen Pakkies (2018). Read in the context of the extended processes of production of these two films in which the central protagonists played a shaping background role, the thesis explores and compares the linear chronological, four-chapter, narrative structure of Noem My Skollie with the architecture of �the parallel narrative� used in the deeply disturbing Ellen. Die Storie van Ellen Pakkies (2018) The thesis is a celebration of the film-making talent of Daryne Joshua.
Visual Storytelling in the Cape Flats Gang Biopics Noem My Skollie (2016) and Ellen: Die Storie van Ellen Pakkies (2018)
(University of the Western Cape, 2021) Arendse, Lesl� Ann; Bank, Andrew
This M.A. mini-thesis seeks to open up the post-apartheid South African biopic as a topic for serious historical scrutiny. While book-length written biographies published in the post-apartheid (and apartheid periods) are the subjects of a now quite extensive historiographical literature, biography on film � including in the form of filmic dramas � has been hitherto entirely ignored. Social history or marginalised lives and not political lives of struggle against apartheid have been the predominant subgenre within this emerging field: with sixteen biopics having been produced in the 2010s. But the field is dominated by white men. This thesis showcases the story-telling gifts of one young coloured film-maker through a meticulously detailed analysis of �visual story-telling� and �visual language� used in his two award-winning gang biopics, Noem My Skollie (2016) and Ellen. Die Stories van Ellen Pakkies (2018). Read in the context of the extended processes of production of these two films in which the central protagonists played a shaping background role, the thesis explores and compares the linear chronological, four-chapter, narrative structure of Noem My Skollie with the architecture of �the parallel narrative� used in the deeply disturbing Ellen. Die Storie van Ellen Pakkies (2018) The thesis is a celebration of the film-making talent of Daryne Joshua.
Visualizing Volkekunde: Photography in the Mainstream and Dissident Tradition of Afrikaner Ethnology, 1920-2013
(University of Western Cape, 2020) Daries, Anell Stacey; Bank, Andrew
This mini-thesis explores the role of photography in the mainstream and dissident tradition of Afrikaner ethnology (volkekunde) from the time of its establishment at Stellenbosch University in the 1920s through to its development at Pretoria University in the 1950s to 1970s, to its period of decline in the era of dissidence from the 1970s to the 2010s. I use a biographical approach, tracing the career biographies and photographic portfolios of three volkekundiges: the German-trained government ethnologist Nicolaas J. van Warmelo; little known dissident volkekundige Frans Hendrik Boot (1939-2010) who founded the Volkekunde Department at the University of the Western Cape in 1972 and for whom fieldwork photography was an expression of his humanist digression from the racialised mainstream volkekunde tradition; and Cornelis Seakle �Kees� van der Waal (1949-) whose �Long Walk from Volkekunde to Anthropology� has been textually demonstrated but also takes on visual expressions in his use of photography. My thesis seeks to demonstrate that photography and visuality was important in displaying the different traditions of volkekunde. The central argument in this thesis postulates that fieldwork photographs, read in relation to the ethnographers intellectual focus offers us insight into an individual�s orientation. Furthermore this thesis explores the degree of a photographers technicality and aesthetics skill

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