Philosophiae Doctor - PhD (History)

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�n Histories-kritiese ondersoek na diei armoede-vraagstuk onder die gekleurde gemeenskap van Kaapstad 1910-1933
(University of Western Cape, 1993) Van der Ventel, Izak Jacobus; De Jongh, P.S
Hierdie verhandeling is die vrug van intensiewe nadenke en navorsing oor die armoedesituasie van gekleurdes van Kaapstad gedurende die jare 1910-1933. Die tydperk is gekies omdat dit besonderlik die teelaarde vir armoede was en vername gebeure soos die Eerste W�reldoorlog (1914-1919), die Groot Griepepidemie (1918). die Groot Droogte (1930) en die Depressies van 1920-1922 en 1930-1932 (Groot Depressie). Dit is egter me't "n historiese aanloop (1652-1909) voorafgegaan om die grondslag van die betrokke mense se voorsate se armoede sowel as di� van hulself deeglik uit te lig en op skrif te stel. Die gekleurde gemeenskap is as onderwerp gekies omdat die meeste gekleurdes in Kaapstad saamgetrek was. Hul regstreekse voorsate, die inheemse Khoi-khoi was reeds van die begin van die wit nedersetting in die omgewing van die Kaap woonagtig. Hulle was in di� vroe� stadium welvarend; gemeet aan destydse standaarde. maar is spoedig tot 'n verarmde. besitlose proletariaat gereduseer. Dit is deur die slinkse handels- en geweldsmetodes van die Europese nedersetters veroorsaak. Dit het die basis van die armoedeerfenis van hul nasate die Kaapse gekleurdes gevorm. Die Khoikhoi het met verloop van tyd 'n metamorfose ondergaan deur ondertrouery met ingevoerde slawe en van die nedersetters. Daaruit is 'n bepaalde groep gebore en ontwikkel wat mettertyd met die benaming "Kaapse gekleurdes" ge�tiketteer sou word.
Social welfare policy for a post-apartheid South Africa: A developmental perspective
(University of the Western Cape, 1995) Kotze, Frans Gabri�l; Redlinghuis, A.C.
This research project, in which social welfare constitutes the central focus of study, is undertaken within the broad field of development studies. The basic concern of the study is to determine the role and the place of social welfare in a post-apartheid South Africa. The study therefore seeks to produce some of the policy-making knowledge and a framework for formulating alternative social policies. With the emergence of the post-apartheid South Africa, social welfare as a system, and social policy in particular, finds itself at a water-shed. For many years social welfare has been practised on a racially-differentiated basis. Social policies were firmly rooted in the prevailing political ideology of apartheid. During its formal inception in the 193Q's, the primary objective of social welfare was to solve the Poor White problem. Currently we have reached a critical turning point in the history of our country. The establishment of an inclusive democracy should have a direct impact on the welfare of all citizens. In this new context we have to deal with mass poverty - the basic human needs of many South Africans not being met - and extreme inequalities. Meanwhile we are saddled with different models of welfare based on the fragmented social policies of the past. Various themes pertaining to social welfare are examined with the view to proposing some solutions to the dilemma. Theories of development constitute the frame of reference for the analysis and development of alternative social policies. Applying these theoretical foundations, a special study is made of the emergence and structuring of social welfare in South Africa. In an empirical study the views of stakeholders in the field are gathered using qualitative methodology. Theories of development, the Reconstruction and Development Programme, the idea of social welfare as a system to meet human needs, and the views of stakeholders, form the basis for the development of alternative social policies in the post-apartheid South Africa. Using this conceptual framework and analysis of contemporary realities, certain policy proposals are examined for their appropriateness to address post-apartheid challenges. The study demonstrates that a paradigm shift is absolutely necessary in order to deal with emerging realities in South Africa. This paradigm shift entails that social welfare adopt a developmental approach within an integrated policy framework.
Locating 'home': Strategies of settlement, identity-formation and social change among African women in Cape Town, 1948-2000
(University of the Western Cape, 2002) Lee, Rebekah; Beinart, William
This dissertation constructs a social history of African women in Cape Town from the vantage point of their varied attempts over the last five decades to map 'home' in the urban setting: in the physical structures of their homes; the character of their social and kinship networks; and in the ways a notion of 'place' was re-worked. An historiographical examination of existing research has shown that, especially in the South African context, much scope remains for a regionally specific historical analysis of the urbanisation process, and African women's unique role in it. The use of oral histories and the adoption of a trans-generational interviewing strategy have helped fashion a textured account of African women's settlement strategies, and the underlying social and personal transformations that their design and use suggested. 'First-generational' women, who entered Cape Town at mid-century, led an uncertain and highly regulated urban existence, by virtue of their enforced marginalisation under apartheid. Until the late-1980s, Cape Town retained a distinctive demographic composition, and an historical association as the 'home' of the Coloured population. This made state and local efforts to control the entry and residence of the minority African populace more coercive and successful, at least in the first two decades of apartheid rule. Despite these restrictions, African women constructed and managed a dense set of strategies which affirmed their material livelihoods in the city and increasingly enmeshed their identities in the workings of a modern and commoditised world. However, first-generational women also actively contested these developments to some extent, evident particularly in their efforts to regulate the movement of and compel financial support from their increasingly mobile daughters and granddaughters. Evidence from second and third-generational respondents show a growing reluctance to utilise first-generational women's settlement strategies and the conceptual frameworks which underpinned them. For instance, associational links were increasingly organised along non-racialised lines. Third-generational women's desire to establish residence in other areas of the city, or in other cities entirely, was indicative of a similar dynamic. This was also reflective of their embrace of mobility as an expression of greater economic and social freedoms possible in a post-apartheid world. This dissertation constructs a social history of African women in Cape Town from the vantage point of their varied attempts over the last five decades to locate 'home' in the urban setting. It charts the experiences of a group of women who first moved to Cape Town in the 1940s and 50s, and their children and grandchildren. My focus is on the way in which succeeding generations of women developed differing strategies of settlement, in the context of sometimes dramatic social and political change. The social as well as the physical elements of locating home are key elements in the analysis, including the redefinition of kinship and associational networks, as well as the re-casting of identities and a sense of place. Until the late 1980s, Cape Town retained a distinctive demographic composition, and an historical association as the 'home' of the Coloured- population. This made state and local efforts to control the entry and residence of the minority African populace more coercive and successful, at least in the first two decades of apartheid rule. Rather than painting a comprehensive portrait of urban African life in the apartheid era (1948- 1994), this dissertation hopes to map a few significant dynamics which were manifest in the encounters between a select group of African women and the distinctive terrain of this city during the apartheid years.
The individual, auto/biography and history in South Africa
(University of the Western Cape, 2004) Rassool, Ciraj; Bundy, Colin; Dept. of History; Faculty of Arts
This thesis is a contribution to the field of public history, which the author and others at the University of the Western Cape's History Department have over the last decade pioneered in defining and mapping out in South Africa. Rassool's theories about the relationship between history and biography were developed in relation to the life of the Unity Movement leader, I.B. Tabata.
A Space for Genocide: Local Authorities, Local Population and Local Histories in Gishamvu and Kibayi (Rwanda
(University of the Western Cape, 2010) Mulinda, Charles Kabwete; Hayes, Patricia
Soon after the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, in 1994, research around this horrific event flourished. Although a variety of authors of different expertise (journalists, human rights activists, witnesses, academics, both Rwandans and foreigners) produced a great deal of literature, it is mostly scholars who had conducted research in Rwanda prior to 1994 who after 1994 took the lead in the endeavour to write about this genocide. Certain of these scholars produced serious work that has advanced our knowledge about it. These include anthropologists, political scientists, historians, sociologists and economists. As their prior research had brought them close to Rwanda, they felt the need and the moral obligation to contribute to the understanding of this genocide. This serious literature has increased our understanding with regard to a number of problems. It has for instance challenged the view that the genocide was the result of popular anger following the death of President Habyarimana in the plane crash of April 6h,lgg4.It has rejected the western journalistic view of the war and genocide in Rwanda as a result of innate and secular "tribal" conflict and confrontation between the Hutu and the Tutsi. Most importantly, it has advanced knowledge about the causes,2 the making of the genocide at the national level,3 and at some local levels. In this respect, it has to some extent analysed the contexts of the genocide from the politicals economic,and social T and culturals perspectives. ln establishing the context of the genocide, many authors have turned to the whole history of Rwanda in order to understand the genocide. some extent analysed the contexts of the genocide from the political,s economic,6 social and culturals perspectives.e ln establishing the context of the genocide, many authorshave tumed to the whole history of Rwanda in order to understand the genocide.
A space for genocide: local authorities, local population and local histories in Gishamvu and Kibayi (Rwanda)
(University of the Western Cape, 2010) Mulinda, Charles Kabwete; Hayes, Patricia; Dept. of History
This research attempts to answer the following questions: How and why genocide became possible in Gishamvu and Kibayi? In other words, what was the nature of power at different epochs and how was it exercised? How did forms of political competition evolve? In relation to these forms of competition, what forms of violence occurred acrosshistory and how did they manifest themselves at local level up to 1994? And what was the place of identity politics? Then, what were economic and social conditions since colonial times up to 1994 and how were these conditions instrumentalized in the construction of the ideology of genocide? Finally, how did the Tutsi genocide unfold in Gishamvu and Kibayi?
Enduring suffering: the Cassinga Massacre of Namibian exiles in 1978 and the conflicts between survivors' memories
(University of the Western Cape, 2011) Shigwedha, Vilho Amukwaya; Hayes, Patricia; Dept. of History; Faculty of Arts
During the peak of apartheid, the South African Defence Force (SADF) killed close to a thousand Namibian exiles at Cassinga in southern Angola. This happened on May 4 1978. In recent years, Namibia commemorates this day, nationwide, in remembrance of those killed and disappeared following the Cassinga attack. During each Cassinga anniversary, survivors are modelled into 'living testimonies' of the Cassinga massacre. Customarily, at every occasion marking this event, a survivor is delegated to unpack, on behalf of other survivors, 'memories of Cassinga' so that the inexperienced audience understands what happened on that day. Besides survivors' testimonies, edited video footage showing, among others, wrecks in the camp, wounded victims laying in hospital beds, an open mass grave with dead bodies, SADF paratroopers purportedly marching in Cassinga is also screened for the audience to witness agony of that day. Interestingly, the way such presentations are constructed draw challenging questions. For example, how can the visual and oral presentations of the Cassinga violence epitomize actual memories of the Cassinga massacre? How is it possible that such presentations can generate a sense of remembrance against forgetfulness of those who did not experience that traumatic event? When I interviewed a number of survivors (2007 - 2010), they saw no analogy between testimony (visual or oral) and memory. They argued that memory unlike testimony is personal (solid, inexplicable and indescribable). Memory is a true picture of experiencing the Cassinga massacre and enduring pain and suffering over the years. In considering survivors' challenge to the visually and orally obscured realities of the Cassinga massacre, this study will use a more lateral and alternative approach. This is a method of attempting to interrogate, among other issues of this study, the understanding of Cassinga beyond the inexperienced economies of this event production. The study also explores the different agencies, mainly political, that fuel and exacerbate the victims' unending pathos. These invasive miseries are anchored, according to survivors, in the disrupted expectations; or forsaken human dignity of survivors and families of the missing victims, especially following Namibia's independence in 1990.
A historical and conceptual analysis of the African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studies (APMHS)
(University of the Western Cape, 2011) Morakinyo, Olusegun Nelson; Witz, Leslie; Rassool, Ciraj; Dept. of History; Faculty of Arts
In 1998 the University of the Western Cape together with the University of Cape Town, and the Robben Island Museum introduced a Post-graduate Diploma in Museum and Heritage Studies. This programme was innovative in that not only did it bring together two universities in a programme where the inequalities of resources derived from their apartheid legacies was recognised, but it also formally incorporated an institution of public culture that was seeking to make a substantial imprint in the post-apartheid heritage sphere as part of its structure. In 2003 this programme attracted substantial funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and was rebranded as the African Program in Museum and Heritage Studies (APMHS). While this rebranding of the programme might seem to be innocently unproblematic and commendable as part of the effort at re-insertion of South Africa into Africa after the isolation of apartheid, an analysis of the concepts employed in the rebranding raises serious theoretical, conceptual, and disciplinary questions for heritage studies as an academic discipline and for its connections with other fields, especially the interdisciplinary study of Africa. What are the implications of a programme that brings together the concepts of 'African-Heritage-Studies'? Does the rebranding signify a major epistemological positioning in the study of Africa or has it chosen to ignore debates on the problematic of the conjunction of the concepts? This study address these issues through a historical and philosophical analysis of the programme, exploring how it was developed both in relation to ideas of heritage and heritage studies in Africa and, most importantly by re-locating it in debates on the changing meaning of 'Africa' in African studies.
Omhedi: displacement and legitimacy in Oukwanyama politics, Namibia, 1915-2010
(University of the Western Cape, 2011) Shiweda, Napandulwe Tulyovapika; Hayes, Patricia; Dept. of History
This is a study of the contest over political and social legitimacy in a former precolonial kingdom, Oukwanyama, in northern Namibia, from 1915 to the present. It tracks the historical shifts in this long time frame through the history of one place, a site of important local power, Omhedi. The research begins with the colonial occupation of the kingdom by Portugal and South Africa during World War 1, which resulted in the displacement of the kingship to the southern half of the territory which was now bifurcated by an international boundary between Angola and South West Africa. Following resistance by the last king Mandume, the institution of kingship was abolished and a Council of Headmen installed in its place. Omhedi emerged as a site of important opposition to Mandume by a leading headman, Ndjukuma, and he became one of the senior headman elevated to new levels of authority by olonial rule. The thesis tracks the establishment and consolidation of the policy of Indirect Rule under South Africa, whose aim was the efficient supply of migrant labour to the south, and the selective preservation of traditional customs in Oukwanyama in order to maintain stability in a time of rapid change. The main contribution of the research however is to follow this story into the second half of the 20th century, when Ndjukuma was succeeded by Nehemia Shoovaleka and then Gabriel Kautwima, at a time when nationalist opposition to South African rule was growing and old political legitimacies were tested. Omhedi became a site of the enforcement of headmen�s authority over both striking workers and the educated elite in the early 1970s when Ovamboland became a Bantustan homeland under apartheid. After Independence in 1990 and the demise of Kautwima, Omhedi remained empty until the restoration of the Kwanyama kingship occurred under postcolonial legislation on Traditional Authorities. The question becomes one of how political legitimacy can be reactivated at such a contradictory site of �traditional� power like Omhedi, now the seat of the new Kwanyama Queen. The thesis engages with notions of gender, history, landscape and memory, as well as theories of space developed by Lefebvre and de Certeau, in order to understand the local reconceptualisation of Omhedi as different things over different times. It also analyses the textual, visual and cultural representations of the place, most notably under colonial rule, and the impact of this archive (or its limits) on postcolonial political developments
Photography and the spectacle of ASO? EB� in Lagos, 1960-2010
(University of Western Cape, 2011) Nwafor, Okechukwu Charles; Hayes, Patricia
This research charts the political and visual economies of aso? eb� in urban Lagos from 1960 to 2010. Under political economy I address the politics of aso? eb� dress in Lagos: the contestations surrounding the use of aso? eb� among friends, family members, organizations, among others. Under visual economy I engage the role of photography and other visual cultural practices in the practice of aso? eb�. From the 1960s aso? eb� began to be redefined in line with the cultural and socio-economic changes that came with late global capitalism. Within aso? eb� practice in the city of Lagos meanings of friendship, solidarity, camaraderie and wealth have undergone radical transformation as more people migrate to the city after Nigeria�s independence. From the 1970s through the 1980s, individuals were compelled by the economic conditions to adopt new modes of aso? eb� practice. For example new types of textile materials used for aso? eb� expanded to include cheaper textiles imported from China and elsewhere. Instead of offering aso ebi free, individuals sold it to their friends and within such transactions, politics of exclusion and inclusion ensued. From the 1990s through the 2000s, the rise of digital photography and the emergence of radical printing technology ushered a new mode of fashioning aso? eb�. In the process, photography and fashion magazines became a means of negotiating sartorial elegance and cosmopolitan modernity. In this thesis, therefore, the central argument resides in the contestations surrounding the use and meanings of aso? eb� within these transformations in the city of Lagos.
'Weaving the past with threads of memory': narratives and commemorations of the colonial war in southern Namibia
(University of the Western Cape, 2012) Biwa, Memory; Rassool, Ciraj; NULL
This study seeks to contribute to the literature on the colonial war, genocide and memory studies in Namibia. I review the way in which communities in southern Namibia have developed practices in which to recall and re-enact the colonial war by focusing on narrative genres and public commemorations. I also document how these practices in southern Namibia and the Northern Cape, South Africa symbolically connect and cut across colonial and national borders. I have used the idea of re-constructed and sensorial memory practices within which to view the various narrative genres which display a range of performance repertoire projected onto persons, monuments and land. The study also focuses on the ways in which these memory practices are engaged in order to develop strategies within which to historicise practices of freedom. These have been inserted in the dialogue on national reconciliation through the debates on reparations and the repatriation of human bodies exported to Europe during the colonial war. I argue that these practices depart from a conventional way in which to view an archive and history, and that these memory practices point to the ways in which the logic and acts of the colonial war and genocide were diametrically opposed through acts of humanisation.
Voices from the Kavango: A study of the contract labour system in Namibia, 1925-1972
(University of the Western Cape, 2012) Likuwa, Kletus Muhena; Mesthrie, Uma-Dhupelia
This thesis seeks to explore how the life histories and the voices of the contract labourers from the Kavango contribute to our understanding of the contract labour system in Namibia. In particular, it seek to ask what light do they shed on migration and on new living and working experiences, their experiences with recruiting organizations and local recruiting agents and the effect of the contract labour system on them? Is it possible to view the migration of the Kavango . workers as a progressive step or does the paradigm of exploitation and suppression remains dominant? Oral interviews were carried out among the former contract labourers and their narratives were used empirically for information about their experiences. Yet this thesis also pays attention to analyzing these narratives for meaning. Archival sources further provided insight into the colonial views about contract labourers and the operation of the system itself. This thesis points to the slow inclusion of the Kavango in the contract labour system. It also draws attention to how there is a silencing of the Kavango in the contract labour system due to the colonial counting of contract labourers earlier where they were often included under the 'Ovambo' label. During the South African colonial rule, traditional chiefs sided with South Africa for continued survival and they supported the colonialists in labour recruitment. Although contract labourers made their own decision to leave home to get recruited they did so because of the compelling social and economic hardships that resulted from the activities of the colonial officials. Labour narratives point to many journeys both within and outside Namibia. Contract labourers aimed to purchase clothing which they lacked locally, as a result of the stringent colonial laws. The 1923 Kavango workers' protest against being sent to the diamond mines in the south, where they heard workers were dying in high numbers, played a role in shaping their labour recruitment and distribution to the copper mines such as Tsumeb, Otavi, and Grootfontein according to their wishes. From the perspective of workers, the contract labour system was nothing but slavery. They felt treated like property to be sold. The naming of employers became a way to deal emotionally with this mistreatment. The memory of the 'missus' lingers on centrally because workers related to their home experience of the submissive role of women and, therefore, they could have found it traumatizing to be shouted at by a woman. The labourers adapted to new colonial times and a new rhythm of labour such as bells and whistles. They developed good inter-ethnic relations among them. Contrary to the literature, the workers' relation with the location residents was not always bad. The impact of the labour system was that there were but small benefits and these were not long lasting and necessitated a return to contract. The thesis points to this cycle of entrapment which led to the mobilizing of workers. The workers' mobilization extended to the Kavango and resulted in rebelliousness against SWANLA and its institutions. While this thesis hopes to contribute to ending silences about the Kavango's engagement within the contract labour system, it points also to the need for future research highlighting women's narratives about life in the Kavango as well as postcolonial labour migration to the charcoal and grape farms which, as narratives of the former Kavango contract labourers show, continues.
Theorising women: the intellectual contributions of Charlotte Maxeke to the struggle for liberation in South Africa
(University of the Western Cape, 2012) April, Thozama; Lalu, Premesh; Dept. of History; Faculty of Arts
The study outlines five areas of intervention in the development of women studies and politics on the continent. Firstly, it examines the problematic construction and the inclusion of women in the narratives of the liberation struggle in South Africa. Secondly, the study identifies the sphere of intellectual debates as one of the crucial sites in the production of historical knowledge about the legacies of liberation struggles on the continent. Thirdly, it traces the intellectual trajectory of Charlotte Maxeke as an embodiment of the intellectual contributions of women in the struggle for liberation in South Africa. In this regard, the study traces Charlotte Maxeke as she deliberated and engaged on matters pertaining to the welfare of the Africans alongside the prominent intellectuals of the twentieth century. Fourthly, the study inaugurates a theoretical departure from the documentary trends that define contemporary studies on women and liberation movements on the continent. Fifthly, the study examines the incorporation of Maxeke's legacy of active intellectual engagement as an integral part of gender politics in the activities of the Women's Section of the African National Congress. In the areas identified, the study engages with the significance of the intellectual inputs of Charlotte Maxeke in South African history.
Rural women as the invisible victims of militarised political violence: the case of Shurugwi district, Zimbabwe, 2000-2008
(University of the Western Cape, 2012) Marongwe, Ngonidzashe; Hayes, Patricia
Zimbabwe was beset by militarised politically-inspired violence between 2000 and 2008. How that violence has been imagined in terms of its causes, memorialisation and impact has been far from conclusive. As a derivative of this huge question that forms an important component of the framing for this dissertation, and to�visibilise� the subaltern, so to say, and to visualise �history from below�, I ask how the women of Shurugwi conceptualise it. This question has also polarised Zimbabweans into two, broadly the human rights and the redistributive, camps. But I ask, what do either of these frameworks enable or eclipse in the further understanding of the violence? Deploying genealogical and ethnographic approaches centred on the rural communities of Shurugwi that analyse the historical, socioeconomic and political factors that have engendered human rights abuses from pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial moments, the dissertation problematizes both discourses and invites a much more troubled analysis.As a way to complicate the reading and to attempt to open the analysis of the violence further, I draw on the theoretical insights from Michel Foucault�s theory on the relationship between power and war. Inverting Clausewitz�s aphorism of war as politics by other means, Foucault argues instead that politics is war by other means. This inversion allows for a nuancing of the connections between the violence and the Chimurenga trope in Zimbabwe. In this way, the labelling of farm takeovers and other force-driven indigenisation modes in the new millennium as the Third Chimurenga, I demonstrate, was not a mere emotive evocation, but was meant to situate the violence as the final stage in a sequence with, and in the same category of importance as, the earlier zvimurenga, that is the First and Second Chimurenga that targeted to uproot the colonial project. I thus argue that the violence represented, in a significant way, the continuation of war for ZANU-PF to retain power amid dwindling electoral returns. This mode further illuminates the deployment of the spectacles of punishment for the public disciplining of citizens to achieve their passivity. Throughout the dissertation the central and animating question is to what extent were women the invisible victims of the violence? This question attempts to interrogate the political role of women in the violence. I attend to this question by privileging the narratives of women. Also, by articulating an Africanist feminist discourse that contests the dominant western one which atemporalises, universalises and fixes victimhood with females, this dissertation invites a re-looking of the violence in a way that locates agency at the site of performance. In this way I show that women were not perpetual victims, but were also important political actors whose actions, however small, greatly extended the violence. To conclude, I propose the adoption of the �traditional� Shona practice of kuripa ngozi as a transitional justice mechanism to help stamp out the culture and cycles of violence and impunity that have scarred Zimbabwe especially from the late colonial to the post-colonial eras.
Street trading in the central business district of Cape Town 1864- 2012: a study of state policies
(University of the Western Cape, 2014) Tabe, Fidelis Ebot; Dhupelia-Mesthrie, Uma
This thesis seeks to examine the making of official policies on street trading in Cape Town�s city centre and the impact of such policies. It covers an extensive period from colonial times to the Union era and from apartheid to democracy. The local government and its role in controlling the trade is the centre of focus but the thesis also explores how the oral testimonies of street traders in the city centre contribute to our understanding of the activity as well as the impact of policy. This thesis poses several questions. What influences policy? What is the impact of policy? Are there continuities or discontinuities in policy? How does one understand street trading and the impact of policy from the perspectives of street traders themselves? Given that there are significant studies of street trading in other municipalities, how does a history of street trading in Cape Town compare? Is there anything distinctive about Cape Town?` Several factors have influenced policy. These have been similar to other local authorities. These have been the desire to raise revenue for the city, to protect the interest of established businesses who feared competition from street traders, the city�s desire to maintain a clean, beautiful and orderly city, as well as traffic and sanitation considerations. Like other local authorities, strategies have included: issuing licenses to street traders and the development and implementation of street trading regulations which either restricted or prohibited street trading. In contrast to studies of other cities, this thesis explores the practice of registration as a measure of control which nonetheless confers rights. This thesis marks the 1980s as representing a decisive shift in policy from one characterized by the prosecution of street traders to a more sympathetic and supportive approach towards street traders. The post-apartheid context saw significant changes in policy motivated by the desire to seek solutions to unemployment and poverty alleviation. Thus permanent stands for street traders in the city centre have been provided, traders have been involved in decision making and power has been devolved to associations. The latter practice has been significant in Cape Town. This thesis has also found that out of the major South African cities, Cape Town comes after Johannesburg in having progressive street trader policies. This measure of progressive is seen in the number of street traders, in the provision of infrastructure such as stands and the encouragement of the sector. While the Cape Town city council has a developmental continuum plan which sees street trading leading to formal businesses, it has yet to put resources to further this. Oral histories have been particularly useful in highlighting that street trading is not only the occupation of the urban poor. This thesis highlights individuals with skills and education and who see the sector as bearing many advantages. The thesis points to the sector as being differentiated. Further, the distinction between the formal and informal gets blurred in the contemporary era. This thesis highlights the hereditary nature of street trading in Cape Town thus challenging ideas of street trading as a transitory occupation. With regard to policy, interviews highlighted the negative impact of policy during apartheid. While traders see the advantages of the democratic era, they nonetheless argue too that the encouragement of the sector has seen an increase in the number of street traders but no significant increase in a customer base. There is thus some nostalgia for the pre-1994 years. This study has allowed one to track continuity and discontinuity and to explore the idea of a progressive policy and to make comparisons with other cities drawing from official and oral sources.
Teaching humanity: Placing the Cape Town Holocaust Centre in a post-apartheid state
(University of the Western Cape, 2015) Petersen, Tracey; Rassool, Ciraj
This dissertation examines the development of Holocaust education in South Africa, specifically in the period of political transition to democracy and the two decades after apartheid. The history of placing the Holocaust in post-apartheid South Africa shows the dynamics and tensions of identity construction by the state, communities and individuals as the country emerged from a history of violent conflict. Holocaust education was claimed by the newly democratic state as a vehicle of reconciliation. Using archival material, interviews and secondary sources, I examine how a minority community�s project of building a permanent Holocaust centre, came to be considered as part of a national project of reconciliation. I consider the impact of this framing of Holocaust education and the tensions that arose as the Cape Town Holocaust Centre�s founders attempted to define and contain, the place of apartheid in Holocaust memory. Holocaust education shaped the development of post-apartheid identities. It contributed to a collective memory of apartheid by suggesting a particular collective memory of the Holocaust. The Cape Town Holocaust Centre provided the South African Jewish community with a legitimate identity in post-apartheid South Africa and a way to bypass an examination of the implications of having benefited from apartheid. I examine the tensions and contradictions within this construction of the collective memory of the Holocaust and apartheid, and consider the implications for the process of justice, memory and history in South Africa as it emerged from apartheid.
(Re)collections in the archive: making and remaking the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) archival collection
(University of the Western Cape, 2015) Frieslaar, Geraldine Le Anne; Rassool, Ciraj
The work of the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) conducted between 1956 and 1991 gave rise to a collection of records that traverse 35 years of support work. As a solidarity organisation IDAF provided support to liberation movements in South Africa through their legal and welfare assistance programmes. Equally significant, IDAF also sought to highlight the oppressive machinery of the apartheid government through the deployment of their research, information and publications programmes as a way of creating awareness and �keeping the conscience of the world alive.� When the administrative records of IDAF were relocated to South Africa, with the Mayibuye Centre for History and Culture as chosen location, they were turned into an archival collection which also became a memorial to IDAF�s resistance work located in the foremost anti-apartheid university and politically in a new project that intended to create a museum about apartheid. Later the collection was incorporated into the Robben Island Museum (RIM) through an agreement between the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the Museum. The dissertation examines the cultural history and the political life of the IDAF archival collection and the processes through which it was made and continues to be remade.
Power relations in landscape photographs by David Goldblatt and Santu Mofokeng
(University of the Western Cape, 2015) Xakaza, Mzuzile Mduduzi; Hayes, Patricia
How far can landscape photographic images allow us to interrogate the extent to which collective socio-political, cultural and economic aspirations of marginalised South Africans have, or have not, been achieved since the dawn of democracy in 1994? In thinking about such aspirations, I posit that the victims of colonialism and the Apartheid system had expectations of living in a free, non-racial South Africa where equality would be realised in political, social, cultural and economic spheres. However, I use landscape as the basis for determining the extent to which such aspirations might or might not have been achieved within the context of post-Apartheid South Africa. What role can the work of David Goldblatt (born 1930) and Santu Mofokeng (born 1956) play in facilitating our ability to read a post-Apartheid diagnosis regarding this question? These issues are the primary focus of this thesis, and connect to a range of other questions. For instance, what methodological approaches do these practitioners employ in framing their photographed landscape scenes, be they populated or depopulated? Why is landscape in the centre of this thesis, and why are these practitioners considered relevant in the context of this study irrespective of their disparate racial and cultural backgrounds? The main body of the thesis traces these photographers� individual methodological approaches, distinguishing them from predominant modes associated with the Afrapix Collective (1982-1992) and the later Bang-Bang Club (1990-1994). It locates them within the context of �struggle photography� with which the Afrapix members and the Bang-Bang Club were primarily concerned. The Bang-Bang Club in particular had a preoccupation with the framing of violent scenes that ensued in the South African political arena during the early 1990s, leading up to the national democratic elections in 1994. My argument centres on what I consider the main element that distinguishes the practitioners in question from the Afrapix and the Bang-Bang Club � the everyday. I explore how specific examples of Goldblatt�s and Mofokeng�s focus on the everyday contribute to an articulation of the role of landscape as a medium of social critique. Instead of framing sensationalist and newsworthy episodes of violent political strife within pre-1994 South Africa, Goldblatt�s long career traces the underlying causes of the social injustices and resultant power contestations while Mofokeng, who was also a member of Afrapix, looks at what I term the spiritual or ethereal elements within landscape. It is this subtlety in their approach that sets them apart from their counterparts as they use landscape as a kind of proverbial text in which we can �read� human actions over time. Thus time and space are inevitably significant in the study of these photographers� oeuvre. But what do all these elements have to do with the challenging question of land in South Africa? What do they have to do with the construction of the South African landscape? What is the role of the camera in that construction? Using photographic images as important tools, I place the land issue, especially as it is mediated through landscape construction, at the centre of my interrogation of power relations in Apartheid and post-Apartheid South Africa.
Night writing: The textual ideation of Andrew Jeptha
(University of the Western Cape, 2015) Campbell, Kurt; Premesh Lalu, Premesh
The publication A South African Boxer in Britain contains the unique aesthetic of the Cape Town born boxer Andrew Jeptha, the first black fighter to win a British welterweight title in 1907. The booklet was published in 1910 to offer pecuniary relief to the blinded author (Jeptha) who incurred the affliction during the very match that secured him the title. Thus, although masquerading as a �light read� of sporting achievements and memories from abroad, I argue the booklet authorises a complex thinking on text, disability and boxing. The thesis takes care to present the publication as a crucial historical work that offers a level of psychic and racial strategy not naturally thought to exist in the genesis of a turn-of-the-century boxer. The textual ideation manifest in Jeptha�s booklet is mooted within the thesis as distinctive in its accommodation of both desire and difference, rendering a calculation that sees the text not as the deserted boundary where �mind� and �flesh� depart, but rather as a particular bibliographic configuration where both these worlds meet in a moment that remands reductive views of the gladiator and his words of care.
Traces of forced labour � a history of black civilians in British concentration camps during the South African War, 1899-1902
(University of the Western Cape, 2016) Benneyworth, Garth Conan; Witz, Leslie
During the South African War of 1899-1902 captured civilians were directed by the British army into military controlled zones and into refugee camps which became known as concentration camps. Established near towns, mines and railway sidings these camps were separated along racial lines. The British forced black men, women and children through the violence of war into agricultural and military labour as a war resource, interning over 110,000 black civilians in concentration camps. Unlike Boer civilians who were not compelled to labour, the British forced black civilians into military labour through a policy of no work no food. According to recent scholarly work based only on the written archive, at least 20,000 black civilians died in these camps. This project uses these written archives together with archaeological surveys, excavations, and oral histories to uncover a history of seven such forced labour camps. This approach demonstrates that in constructing an understanding and a history of what happened in the forced labour camps, the written archive alone is limited. Through the work of archaeology which uncovers material evidence on the terrain and the remains of graves one can begin to envisage the scale an extent of the violence that characterized the experience of forced laborers in the 'black concentration camps' in the South African War.

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