Magister Artium - MA (History)

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The politics of representation in the inanda heritage route: A case study of the Phoenix Settlement, Ohlange Institute and Inanda Seminary
(University of the Western Cape, 2023) Simelane, Ayanda Siphesihle; du Toit, Marijke
The thesis is a case study of three main sites on the Inanda Heritage Route, namely, the Phoenix Settlement, Ohlange Institute and Inanda Seminary. This is an important heritage route in post-apartheid KwaZulu-Natal, established in line with national government projects aimed at transforming the cultural landscape. As such, the route represents a particular approach to South African public history, strongly focused on a narrative of opposition to racial segregation and apartheid. The thesis provides a detailed analysis of the exhibitions found at the Phoenix Settlement, Ohlange Institute and Inanda Seminary. I discuss the overall dominance of biographical narration?featuring the lives and achievements of mission educated Africans and in which Gandhi is also presented as an important figure.
Popular history in South Africa in the 198Os: the politics of production
(University of the Western Cape, 1994) Rousseau, Nicky; Minkley, Gary; Witz, Lesley
Popular history, like indeed other histories, is informed by different ideas about the relationship between the past, the present and the political uses of history. However, a major problem in trying to explore these ideas as they developed in South Africa in the period under review, is that they remain for the large part embedded in popular history texts. A consistent and conscious theorisation has not been much evident - at least not at a published level. The triennial conferences of the WHW are thus perhaps unique in the opportunity they accorded to projects to reflect on their experiences and more generally to raise issues and debates relating to popularisation. At the same time, and perhaps precisely because it was one of the few arena6 where such reflection was happening, the relative paucity of research to emerge from these quarters is particularly regrettable. while not all would agree with Crais' assertion that the programmatic separation of the popularisation section2 from the mainstream academic one resulted in "exclusionary practices"3, it does seem undeniable that they enjoyed a different and lesser status.
Being and neoliberalism: A conceptual history of the subject
(University of the Western Cape, 2022) Naidoo, Kiasha; van Bever Donker, Maurits
The idea of neoliberalism, as both a guiding principle for economic policy decisions and a governing rationality, is a pertinent issue of our time. The concept itself is often used to describe the contemporary mode of political economy but when we look closer, it is notoriously elusive. Scholars such as Michel Foucault and Wendy Brown seek to conceptualize neoliberalism as a governing rationality. What these scholars share is a reading of neoliberal governmentality in terms of the subject. In social and political philosophical critiques of neoliberalism which inherit from this Foucauldian line of thought, the subject is a central figure. However, thinking on the subject did not begin with a consideration of neoliberalism, it has a long philosophical history. I discuss this through a conceptual history of the subject and in doing so, understand the neoliberal subject as another iteration of subjectivity.
Visual technologies and the shaping of public memory of disappeared persons in Cape Town (1960-1990)
(University of the Western Cape, 2021) Rahman, Ziyaad; Hayes, Patricia
The starting point of this thesis is the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Missing Person�s Task Team (MPTT), two instruments of the post-apartheid government, both of which have directly attended to the disappeared dead. The disappeared dead are defined in this thesis as persons abducted and subject to enforced disappearances, as well as those killed in other political circumstances whose bodies were buried by the apartheid state, in some cases as unnamed paupers, thus denying families the opportunity to bury and mourn according to familial or cultural norms. Today the MPTT still seeks to locate the gravesites of the disappeared dead, to exhume, identify and to return the mortal remains to their families.
The African child and the hidden curriculum at Blythswood Institute: Three snapshots
(University of Western Cape, 2021) Nogqala, Xolela; Rousseau, Nicky
This mini-thesis seeks to understand how the colonial and apartheid state imagined the African child in South Africa through education policies and their associated hidden curriculum. It asks what educational project was deemed suitable for the African child and how did this project configure her future? At the core of this enquiry is a preoccupation to understand how institutions, their curricula and objects rid themselves of colonial precepts. In working through this, I employ Blythswood Institute as a provocation to think and to historicise the education of African children, such as those at Blythswood, in three moments: colonialism and the founding of Blythswood in 1877; apartheid and the passing of the Bantu Education Act of 1953, and the post-apartheid times of democratic South Africa.
Listening and reading: Leon Levson�s �native studies� photographs in the anti-apartheid Mayibuye archives
(University of the Western Cape, 2021) Mashiqa, Gcotyelwa; Du Toit, Marijke
The thesis focuses on Leon Levson�s �native study� photographs, taken in the 1940s in the rural areas of Transkei and Bechuanaland. These photographs are housed at the UWC-Robben Island Museum-Mayibuye Archives as part of the International Defence Aid Fund (IDAF) photography collection. I am interested in the archival glitch of the �native study� as located at an anti-apartheid archive and how Leon Levson has been situated at the centre of the South African social documentary photography tradition in this archive. Levson�s desire was to produce a pictorial testimony of �natives�.
Gender politics and problems in Southern Africa: KwaZulu-Natal, Swaziland and Namibia in the post-colonial/apartheid era.
(University of Western Cape, 1997) Mngomezulu, Bhekithemba Richard; Hayes, Patricia
The study of gender is crucial for the achievement and sustainability of the democratic ethos in Southern Africa. The substantial�literature in this field attests� to this notion1 '. It could help us understand why certain gender stereotypes are viewed by societies as given.rat could also help us explain such problems as the unequal representation in most political structures, and the gendered labour system!. In addition, as the quotation a~ove suggests, the way we talk has gender connotations of which most people are unaware. Many males however, distance themselves from public debates on gender issues on the grounds that gender is about women.
The 1945 General Strike in Northern Nigeria and its Role in Anti-Colonial Nationalism
(University of the Western Cape, 2014) Yohanna, Stephen; Rousseau, Nicky
This thesis follows the course of the Nigerian general strike of 1945 in the Northern provinces, a previously under-researched region. It examines some of the many ways in which the strike has been understood in the academy, focusing in particular on the works of Alkasum Abba, Kazah-Toure and Bill Freund who have regarded the strike as well supported and successful. By employing Ian Phimister and Brian Raftopoulos's analysis of the 1948 general strike in colonial Zimbabwe, this thesis re-reads the narrative of success by bringing to the fore previosuly ignored issues relating to questions of planning, tactics, propaganda, solidarity, leadership, and execution of the strike. This re-reading reveals a considerably more varied and uneven response across and within the different categories of workers than has been previously assumed by scholars. Such unevenness challenges notions of "solidarity" and "steadfastness" attributed to the industrial action, with implications for how workers struggles have been incorporated into wider narratives of decolonization and anti-colonial nationalism.
The function of marked word order in Biblical Hebrew prose: An evaluation of existing theories in the light of 2 Kings.
(University of the Western Cape, 1996) Jackson, Leolyn M.; Van der Merwe, C.H. J.
This thesis .investigates the function of a topicalized constituent .in the narrative non-direct speech texts .in 2 Kings. Many traditional BH grammarians described the :function of a topicalized constituent as "emphasis". Recent BH grammarians pointed out that extralinguistic factors like the total communicative context should also be considered in the description of a function for a topicalized constituent. The shift from the structural to a more pragmatic approach is illustrated in this study. The pragmatic approach proved to be not only possible, but also advantageous to the study of function in BH. The aim of this study was to test the viability and results of the various theories and categories of the BH linguists. This study also researched whether their linguistic approaches are indeed an improvement on the descriptions as defined by the traditional grammarians. In other words, to see whether and in which way more recent studies of BH could aid the understanding of the function of a topicalized constituent in BH word order. The methodology utilized in this study is briefly outlined as follows: 1. This study examined the description of word order in terms of the traditional and more recent approaches. The categories used to describe the function of a topicalized constituent were our main focus. At the end we compiled a theoretical frame of reference that we regard as representative of modem attempts to acquire a more refined comprehension of BH word order. A theoretical linguistic framework was formulated which could be used in our description of a sentence in BH in 2 � Kings. This attempt could be described as eclectic because it used the diverse perceptions from the various linguistic approaches. Richter's theoretical linguistic framework (with its limitations) together with contributions of Van der Merwe, Buth and Gross were used as a basis for the description of the sentences. 3. Sentences were analysed systematically and holistically at the different levels of description, namely morphology, morphosyntax, sentence syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Because of the difficulty in defining semantics and with pragmatics still in disarray, this study defined some semantic-pragmatic concepts it worked with. 4. In the description of sentences we incorporated and tested the viability of the different categories of various grammarians. By carefully considering the context of each sentence, this study posed the question: which, if any; of the categories could adequately describe the semantic-pragmatic function of a topicalized constituent in 2 Kings.
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.
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.
�It�s My House and I Live Here�: The Mobilisation of Selective Histories for Claims of Belonging in Cape Town
(University of the Western Cape, 2020) Africa, Keenan; Benson, Koni
This mini thesis seeks to explore two legacies of apartheid: the insecurity of decent and available housing that has led to a housing crisis, and the insecurity of Coloured identity as caused by apartheid�s racial and identity politics and its aftermath in a democratic South Africa. Furthermore, it is an examination of identity and its relation to place, specifically Coloured identity in the place of Cape Town. It focuses the ripple effect of belonging, as this research starts with Cape Town then expands to further find cause for this growing cause of belonging by focusing on racism, the housing crisis, nation-building, globalisation, capitalism. Through interviews and archival research, I explore questions of belonging, identity, and its relation to the housing crisis in Cape Town. This is done through a case study of tensions that erupted in Siqalo, in Mitchell�s Plain on 1 May 2018. Siqalo is a land occupation of isiXhosa speakers in the apartheid-era �Coloured� area of Mitchell�s Plain in Cape Town. When Siqalo residents organised a protest around issues of electricity and housing they faced violent retaliation by neighbouring community and residents of Colorado, populated mainly by people classified as Coloured, with claims being made by an organisation called Gatvol Capetonians for Siqalo residents to return to Eastern Cape. I examine the role of identity in the creation of narratives of Cape Town and establish two narratives, one in which Cape Town is represented as a home for all and one in which it is not, this is done to show how belonging is made through identity and narrative and the effect that this creates. This comes to frame this mini-thesis as the question of a home is represented in the symbolic and physical sense and highlights the tension between Gatvol�s protest of Coloured belonging and Siqalo residents� protest for decent housing. Chapter Two reflects on this through the use of interviews from both sides of the protest. This chapter is written as an imagined debate that not only reflects on critiques of oral history but ways of writing history experimentally or speculatively Through investigating the source of the tension from the Siqalo protest, I argue that desegregation was, in theory, one of the first nation-building projects in South Africa, and its failure has deepened apartheid and colonial forms of classification that divide people. The views of Mahmood Mamdani, while rarely applied to African people classified as Coloured, are very important, as his book, Citizen and Subject was a premise for this research as it highlighted the pitfalls and requirements of African countries after independence from colonialism. At the same time, the literature on Coloured identity rarely brings up the question whether Coloureds can and do practice racism on those classified as black or African and how these categorisations have persisted in the post-apartheid era. This research asks: to what extent do present conditions enable a predatory dynamic to claims of Coloured identity? Based off the predatory argument which focuses on intensified competition for scarce resources under globalisation put forward by Arjun Appadurai, I highlight the influence that contemporary globalisation has had on both the dynamics of Coloured identity and on the housing crisis in Cape Town. This mini thesis concludes by providing two alternatives as to how the question of race can be assessed in South Africa.
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.
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.
Re-humanisation, history and a forensic aesthetic: Understanding a politics of the dead in the figuring of Ntombikayise Priscilla Kubheka�
(University of the Western Cape, 2020) Luthuli, Vuyokazi; Moosage, Riedwaan
In 1987 Ntombikayise Priscilla Kubheka was abducted, tortured, killed and her body dumped by apartheid security police. She was an uMkhonto WeSizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), commander based in Durban and was in charge of weaponry storage and organised safe houses for those returning from exile. Amnesty applications and perpetrator testimony given at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission�s (TRC) amnesty hearings alleged that Kubheka had died, while being interrogated, from a heart attack. The perpetrators claimed the heart attack was possibly as a result of Kubheka being overweight.
Re-humanisation, history and a forensic aesthetic: Understanding a politics of the dead in the figuring of Ntombikayise Priscilla Kubheka
(University of Western Cape, 2021) Luthuli, Vuyokazi; Moosage, Riedwaan
In 1987 Ntombikayise Priscilla Kubheka was abducted, tortured, killed and her body dumped by apartheid security police. She was an uMkhonto WeSizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), commander based in Durban and was in charge of weaponry storage and organised safe houses for those returning from exile. Amnesty applications and perpetrator testimony given at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission�s (TRC) amnesty hearings alleged that Kubheka had died, while being interrogated, from a heart attack. The perpetrators claimed the heart attack was possibly as a result of Kubheka being overweight. In 1997 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) exhumed skeletal remains and items of clothing, including a floral dress, from a pauper grave in Charlottedale cemetery, Groutville. The exhumed skull indicated a bullet wound. The post-mortem and numerous forensic examinations confirmed the identification of the skeletal remains to be those of Kubheka. The forensic examinations of the items of clothing confirmed the findings of the skeletal examinations in establishing identification. These forensic examinations and its findings contested testimony given by the perpetrators. Through the TRC investigations and its findings, a question of what it may mean to re-humanise the once missing emerges. This mini-thesis underscores a notion of re-humanisation through the work of the TRC in its investigation into the enforced disappearance of Kubheka. It suggests that figuring Kubheka through a notion of re-humanisation in the context of the TRC requires one to understand both de-humanisation and re-humanisation and the ways in which gender complicates these understandings. It does so by examining testimonies, t he exhumation, the forensic examinations, the emergence of a forensic aesthetic and the productions of biographies and forensic memory to understand how these might be processes and strategies of re-humanisation. This mini-thesis then is a forensic history that navigates a politics of the dead by examining the figuring of Kubheka through various fields and in various forums. In so doing, the argument presented in what follows is that the notion of re-humanisation is an inherently unstable one but at its core is a politics of the dead that misses gender it its figuring of the human.
Artistic Interventions in the Historical Remembering of Cape slavery, c.1800s
(University of the Western Cape, 2020) Lewis, Mischka Jade; Mnyaka, Phindi
This mini-thesis thesis intends to grapple with silences by looking the possibilities of reconceptualising archives through notions of �traces,� �absence,� and �fragments.� Examining archives as bodies of knowledge, a window to telling us something about pastpresent- future representations is to think about navigating archives of colonialism and slavery as sites of historical memory. The aim of this paper is to enter the pedagogical problem of remembering and gendered representational voids by seeking to explore how artistic representations offer insights in the absence of detail in the colonial archives. In exploring the relationship between bodies, remembering and the historical trauma of slavery and colonialisation, specifically in relation to historical corporeal and flesh narratives attached to indigenous black women, and how women negotiate these meanings through embodied interventions in (post-) slavery South Africa. The positioning of the body as an archive probes questions on how the memory of traumatic wounding in a (post-)slavery South Africa body politics are inscribed to convey meaning, memory and identity. The notions of embodiment that this thesis is concerned with asks in what ways can we creatively and imaginatively re-construct, outside of conventional historiographies and knowledge(s), that which has been disembowled through colonial dominating narratives of enslaved subjects?
A People's History of South Africa: Gold and Workers
(University of the Western Cape, 1980) Callinicos, Luli; Kirkwood, Mike
In black societies, 'cattle were used for religious ceremonies and also for lobola, which was an important part of the economy. Lobola. was an exchange of cattle for a fruitful marriage. If the This volume is the first in wife proved infertile, her family would be obliged to give in marriage a second daughter. Lobola also enabled the bride's brothers in turn to afford the lobola for marriage and children themselves. Lobola circulated wealth and helped to build up the population and labour power of the family. A man's wealth and power were therefore measured by his cattle. Because of people's close ties to the land. in subsistence society, it was important to have enough labour to work it. More labour produced more food. This labour came from the family. Families in subsistence societies were large they usually consisted of the father, his wives and children, plus any unmarried relatives who might be needing a home. The members of the family worked together to produce their basic needs. They shared many of the daily tasks. At the same time, each member of the family had his or her own job. The women would usually grow the food and prepare it. They also raised the children. The older girls helped the adult women in their tasks. The men hunted and supervised the older boys, training them to look after the animals. In time, a man became the head of a family, with a duty to protect it in times of danger.
"Have we no right to organise?" Black political organisations and farmworkers struggles in the Western Cape: 1912 - 1930
(University of the Western Cape, 1991) Taft, Trevor; Keegan, T
This study is primarily a history of black political organisations and their attempts to organise farmworkers in the rural Western Cape (1912 1930) with special reference to the Boland. The attempts made by these organisations to organise farmworkers in the Boland between 19:2 1930 raises a number of important issues which will be addressed in this study. Firstly, there is the issue to what extent capitalist agriculture existed in this area before and during the period under observation. On a general level there is a question to what extent capitalist relations of production existed in the agricultural production in the Boland. This would clearly have an effect on organisations attempting to organise farmworkers as well as the nature and form farmworkers struggles would develop into. Secondly, it is clear that the attempts at organisation the ANC(WC) was more successful than the A.P.O. and the I.C.U. put together. This raises a whole series of issues concerning the nature and form of these organisations, for example the strategies and organisational methods that were used, the issues that were addressed and the discourse and ideology of the A.P.O., I.C.U. and ANC(WC). Lastly, an attempt is made at evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the three organisations under consideration with a view to draw important lessons from these struggles for the organising of farmworkers in the future.
The everyday life and the missing: Silences, heroic narratives and exhumations.
(University of Western Cape, 2020) Mendes, Ros�lia; Rousseau, Nicky; Moosage, Riedwaan
This mini-thesis draws on the biographical materials of activists; Zubeida Jaffer, Nokuthula Simelane and Siphiwo Mthimkulu in order to investigate their representation as South African Anti-Apartheid activists. Within Post-Apartheid South Africa there seems to be a strong tendency to focus on the spectacular violence that occurred between the National Party government and Apartheid activists. This almost singular focus has led to an overwhelming promotion of the heroic narrative and as a result the structural violence of daily life under apartheid has been side-lined

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