Kronos, 35 (2009)

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Land distribution politics in the Eastern Cape midlands: The case of the Lukhanji municipality, 1995-2006
(Published by History Dept, University of the Western Cape, 2009) Wotshela, Luvoyo (Univ. of Fort Hare)
Since its initiation, South Africa?s post-apartheid land reform programme has generated extensive analysis and critique that in turn has yielded a body of scholarship. Discussion revolves around the official policy of the programme, the challenges associated with its implementation and its reception at local levels. It cannot be overstated that much of the discourse on the formulation of the programme itself commenced in the dying years of apartheid, through a series of workshops, policy conferences, research projects and publications. Prompted by glaring disparities in the country?s social and living conditions and primarily by entrenched imbalanced landownership, contemporary land reform dialogue has a well-built backdrop. What, however, is our understanding of local community politics that played perceptible roles in triggering land redistribution and facilitating patterns of settlement? This article gives some insight into a veiled history of interplay between community mobilisation politics, governance and official land reform policy in the Lukhanji municipality of the Eastern Cape during South Africa?s transitional years of 1995 to 2006. After outlining how land redistribution was initially driven by forces operating outside government action, the article proceeds to illustrate the frailty of the government land redistribution accomplishment. Moreover, it demonstrates the complex nature of a rural setting that has arisen from community-facilitated and incipient government land redistribution achievements in the area.
Utopia Live: Singing the Mozambican struggle for national liberation
(History Department, University of the Western Cape, 2009) Israel, Paolo
This article engages a historical reconstruction of the formation of Makonde revolutionary singing in the process of the Mozambican liberation struggle. The history of ?Utopia live? is here entrusted to wartime genres, marked by heteroglossia and the use of metaphor, and referring to moments when the ?space of experience? and the ?horizon of expectation? of the Struggle were still filled with uncertainty and the sense of possibility. Progressively, however, singing expressions were reorganised around socialism?s nodes of meaning. Ideological tropes, elaborated by Frelimo?s ?courtly? composers, were appropriated in popular singing. The relations between the ?people? and their leaders were made apparent through the organization of the performance space. The main contention of the article is that unofficiality, heteroglossia, metaphor and poetic license, although they feature in genres that have been marked out as ?popular? in academic discourse, are by no means intrinsically ?popular?. Much on the contrary, they are the first victims of populist modes of political actions, that is, of a politics grounded on a concept of ?people?.
A flying Springbok of wartime British skies: A.G. "Sailor" Malan
(Published by History Department, University of the Western Cape, 2009) Nasson, Bill
This article, an expanded version of a 2008 public lecture, explores the life and times of Adolph Gysbert ?Sailor? Malan, a South African who rose to prominence as a combatant in the 1940 Battle of Britain and who, after his post-war return to the Union, became a notable personality in liberal reform politics. A classic Anglo-Afrikaner empire loyalist or ?King?s Afrikaner?, Malan became ?Sailor? through his interwar merchant marine service, joining the Royal Air Force in the later 1930s. An exceptional fighter pilot, his wartime role as an RAF ace in defending Britain turned him into a national hero, a migrating loyal Springbok who had sprung selflessly to the defence of Great Britain. Subsequently, as an ex-serviceman, Malan drew on his wartime sensibilities and beliefs to return to political battle in his home country, in opposition to post-1948 Afrikaner nationalism and its apartheid policies. The mini-biography of Sailor Malan analyses several key life-story elements, including his seafaring apprenticeship, British wartime identity and combat experience, and troubled relationship with post- 1945 South Africa as a gradualist liberal.
Demanding satisfaction: Violence, masculinity and honour in late eighteenth century Cape Town
(Published by History Department, University of the Western Cape, 2009) Worden, Nigel (Univ. of Cape Town)
This article analyses two separate cases of public violence which took place in Cape Town in the summer of 1772/3. At surface level they appear to be very different in character. One was a scrap among low-ranking soldiers who were playing cards at a shoreline outpost. The other was a formalised challenge between two captains of the VOC return fleet as they were lunching with the Governor, which resulted in a death and the flight of the murderer. Yet closer analysis suggests common ritualised codes of behaviour that intriguingly reveal how violence, masculinity and notions of honour operated at all social levels within the town. Both cases were complex and coded social conflicts, rooted in northern European early modern social beliefs and practices as transferred to a colonial context. However, none of these perpetrators of violence was viewed sympathetically by the VOC authorities at the Cape. By contrast, the assailant Captain who had escaped back to Europe was able to successfully appeal to the VOC directors in the Netherlands.
An early modern entrepreneur: Hendrik Oostwald Eksteen and the creation of wealth in Cape Town, 1702�1741
(Published by History Department, University of the Western Cape, 2009) Groenewald, Gerald
This article uses the career of Hendrik Oostwald Eksteen at the Cape between 1702 and 1741 to illustrate the mechanisms free burghers could use to create wealth in an economically restrictive environment. By making use of the concept of entrepreneurship and its attendant issues, the article describes Eksteen?s rise to fortune and prestige through his exploitation of a combination of economic opportunities afforded by Cape Town?s position as a port servicing passing ships. Crucial to Eksteen?s later success was his successful use of the opportunities provided by the monopolistic alcohol retail market at the Cape. Eksteen?s initial success in this arena provided him with a capital base to pursue other opportunities in agriculture, fishing and meat provision, making him the wealthiest man at the Cape by the 1730s. The article also illustrates how Eksteen?s upward mobility was linked to his use of social capital and the cultivation of large social networks through kinship. It demonstrates, furthermore, that economic success was wound up with social power and prestige. In using the biography of Eksteen, the article argues for the importance of economic history in the study of the early modern Cape, but calls also for a study which links economic developments with social and cultural ones through a focus on individual entrepreneurs. Shown, too, is the fact that the existing conception of the rise of a Cape gentry in the eighteenth century needs to be revised to take into account the role of entrepreneurship, the urban foundations of wealth creation, as well as the role of the free black community in this process.
Not quite fair play, old chap: The complexion of cricket and sport in South Africa
(Published by History Dept, University of the Western Cape, 2009) Nasson, Bill
This review essay explores the racial and social divides that have permeated cricket in South Africa.
Contestations over knowledge production or ideological bullying? A response to Legassick on the workers' movement
(Published by History Dept, University of the Western Cape, 2009) Sithole, Jabulani (Univ. of KwaZulu-Natal)
The key characteristic of the vast amount of literature on the South African workers ? movement in the post-1973 period is the denial that the class and national struggles were closely intertwined. This denial is underpinned by a strong ?antinationalist current? which dismisses the national liberation struggle as ?populist and nationalist? and therefore antithetical to socialism. This article cautions against uncritical endorsement of these views. It argues that they are the work of partisan and intolerant commentators who have dominated the South African academy since the 1970s and who have a tendency to suppress all versions of labour history which highlight these linkages in favour of those which portray national liberation and socialism as antinomies. The article also points out that these commentators use history to mobilise support for their rigidly held ideological positions and to wage current political struggles under the pretext of advancing objective academic arguments.

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