Research Articles (Centre for Humanities Research)

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Government by grants: The post-pandemic politics of welfare
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020) Dubbeld, Bernard; Pinto de Almeida, Fernanda
In April 2020, with South Africa in national lockdown, president Cyril Ramaphosa announced the Covid-19 relief program on a scale he called �historic�. He affirmed that the state would not only reestablish the economy but forge a new economy and ultimately a new society in what he called a �new global reality�. Already at the end of March, his government had announced a special Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant of R350 a month to be paid to currently unemployed individuals who did not receive any other form of social grant or unemployment benefit. Existing Child Support Grant beneficiaries also received an additional sum. With Statistics South Africa announcing in September the unprecedented loss of 2.2 million jobs in the second quarter of the year, in October the government extended the special unemployment grant for another three months.
Apartheid and the unconscious: An introduction
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2023) Truscott, Ross; van Bever Donker, Maurits; Hook, Derek
This special issue invited contributors to revisit J.M. Coetzee�s �The Mind of Apartheid,� first published in Social Dynamics in 1991. Here, Coetzee asks what it might mean to come to terms with apartheid:It is not inconceivable that in the not too distant future, the era of apartheid will be proclaimed to be over. The unlovely creature will be laid to rest, and joy among nations will be unconfined. But what exactly is it that will be buried? (Coetzee 1991, 1)Responding to his own question, Coetzee reads the texts of sociologist and Broederbond intellectual, Geoffrey Cronj�. Drawing on psychoanalysis, Coetzee diagnoses the version of apartheid Cronj� set out during the period between 1945 and 1948 as an obsessional neurotic �counterattack upon desire� (18). What so disturbed Cronj�, Coetzee argues, was the �blunting [afstomping]� of psychological resistances to �race-mixing� (18). But Cronj�s texts, as Coetzee reads them, also betray a psychic investment in precisely �the dissolution of difference� against which he set himself, a �fascination� with �the mixed� (21�22). Railing against miscegenation, it was always on Cronj�s mind.
Worrier state: Risk, anxiety and moral panic in South Africa
(SAGE Publications, 2023) Scott, Lwando
While reading Nicky Falkof�s Worrier State: Risk, anxiety, and moral panic in South Africa, I couldn�t help but think of the video of Nina Simone being interviewed that often floats around social media where she is asked about her idea of freedom. She answers, unequivocally: No fear! Simone�s association of freedom with no fear speaks to the African American experience of everyday terrorism of racism in the United States, where black people, up to the contemporary moment, fear for their lives from white people�s anti-black violence. Ironically, in South Africa, post-apartheid democracy was supposed to bring freedom, not fear, but post-apartheid South Africa, as demonstrated in Worrier State, is gripped by risk, anxiety and moral panic. Worrier State is a timely contribution to a better understanding of cultures of fear that have come to shape post-apartheid reality.
Auditing and the unconscious: Managerialism�s memory traces
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2023) Truscott, Ross
This paper takes J.M. Coetzee�s �The Mind of Apartheid� as a point of departure in thinking about audits in universities. Using the psychoanalytic framing of apartheid that Coetzee puts in place, audit is likened here to a form of obsessional neurosis. If this is indeed a plausible diagnosis of audits � and this should remain a question for deliberation � then a set of questions emerges for post-apartheid universities, which the paper seeks to develop. By what scenes from the past are audits haunted? What memory traces do audits reactivate? What phantoms do audits seek to exorcise? Can we speak of the demons by which auditing is possessed? And what sort of working through the past would this call for?
Between racial madness and neoliberal reason: Metonymic contagion in apartheid biopower
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2023) Naidoo, Kiasha
I will seek to consider the simultaneous workings of race and capital in apartheid biopower. J.M. Coetzee offers a reading of apartheid racism as racial madness which is imbricated with economic reason. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed instances of the biopolitical making live and letting die. The Strandfontein homeless camp set up just outside Cape Town in 2020 is an instantiation of a particular normative order, wherein contagion was used to justify the movement of black, homeless people outside of the city�s cordon sanitaire. This is resonant of apartheid racial segregation in which the fear of race mixing is sometimes described in terms of contagion where whiteness repre-sents that which is pure while blackness that which is dirty and infectious.
Performing the struggle against apartheid opposing apartheid on stage: King Kong the musical
(Cambridge University Press, 2023) Layne, Valmont Edward
Tyler Fleming�s book provides an account of the first production of �King Kong� � a musical theatre production based on the life of the boxer Ezekiel Dlamini � in 1959. This musical rankled the apartheid state partly because it affirmed the aspirations of a Black urban class against an official state narrative which preferred a Black rural population. As a story of Black urban life that crossed over for mainstream white audiences, and became part of the canon and lore of South African theatre and popular music, the play stands as a landmark in South African cultural history. Fleming�s well-researched study considers the ways in which the multiracial production confronted petty apartheid legislation. The author offers an abundance of empirical detail on the play�s production, its human and sociopolitical context, and furthers our understanding of African participation in cultural trends � in this case, musical theatre � by invoking Paul Gilroy�s �Black Atlantic� to argue for a multiplicity of perspectives on cultural production. Yet Fleming�s narrative exegesis remains firmly within the discipline of social history, at the expense of accounting for broader theoretical implications of the work.
Religious leaders as agents of Lgbtiq inclusion in east Africa
(Oxford University Press, 2023) Van Klinken, Adriaan; Bompani, Barbara; Parsitau, Damaris
When Ugandan parliamentarians passed a new Anti-Homosexuality Bill in March 2023, they reportedly did so under pressure from, and with the enthusiastic support of, religious leaders.1 In other African countries, too, recent legal and political struggles around LGBTIQ rights often feature religious leaders as key actors in campaigns that incite hate speech against, and contribute to the marginalization of, LGBTIQ communities and actively support or promote anti-LGBTIQ legislation and policies.2 Given this situation, it is easy to view religious leaders as drivers of what has been described as the �homophobia spectacle� that can be witnessed across the continent.3 Even in countries that recently decriminalized same-sex relationships, such as Botswana, church pastors continue to argue that homosexuality is �against Christianity� and therefore �should not be allowed in this country�.
A �poor man�s pleasure�: The cinema house and its publics in twentieth century South Africa
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2023) de Almeida, Fernanda Pinto
What do cinema houses have to tell us about the experience ofcollective leisure in early twentieth-century South Africa? Thisarticle considers how the cinema house points to unprecedentedsocial conditions that allowed the emergence of new publics.Drawing on scholarship on the development of cinema in SouthAfrica, the article considers how the historical transformationsthrough which the cinema has passed since the 1910s suggestattempts to domesticate the space of projection of the cinema aswell as the formation of new cinema audiences. Diverging fromreadings of the cinema in South Africa that focus onfilm, thearticle considers how the cinema house is inscribed in thisscholarship as an evocative cipher of incipient publics and as ametaphor for the containment of a new public sphere during theperiods of segregation and Apartheid.
Crime, community and the governance of violence in post-apartheid South Africa
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2008) Pillay, Suren
The South African government has embarked on a programme ofencouraging social cohesion in South Africa first to address concerns stemmingfrom high levels of violent crime which characterise the society, and second, tofoster positive national identity in a complex, heterogeneous, racialised andstratified nation. Through a discussion of the impact of violent crime on emergentforms of community, this paper argues that the practices of communities evolvingin the post-apartheid period show tendencies toward fragmentation rather thanunification, undermining efforts of �nation-building�.
Understanding refugee durable solutions by international players: Does dialogue form a missing link?
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2018) Bidandi, Fred
This study evaluates durable solutions in relation to refugees from EastAfrica. It particularly focuses on the Great Lakes countries of Rwanda, Burundi,Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. The study is based on the conviction thatthese four countries have never had peaceful transfer of power which in essence hasbeen a major contributing factor to political violence that has caused forced massmigration in the region to this day. The use of force or military suppression has been anorm since independence of these countries in the early 1960s. This suppression hascontinuously forced many people to fleetheir homes facing abuse of their humanrights, dictatorship, persecution, indiscriminate arrests, ethnic wars and politicalviolence.
Martyrdom, violence, and dignity
(Escola Superior Teologia, 2019) Brown, Alease
This article reconsiders historically based arguments for Christian martyrdom, subjecting the tradition to an analysis suited to liberation of the marginalized. It begins with a description of the historical development of scholarship on martyrdom. From there, the essay analyzes Moss�s arguments regarding the discursive use of the image of the martyr, alongside Recla�s arguments regarding the Christian martyr as autothanatos, one who enacts self-death. Moss and Recla demonstrate the simultaneous fabrication and erasure of violence from the narratives of martyrdom. The article reconciles these opposing conclusions by applying the contextual lens of honor/shame to the analysis of martyrdom. Doing so reveals that, more than attempts to emphasize violence and/or suffering, martyrs, as culturally marginalized persons, represent for early Christians, the ideal Christian life- -attitude of the marginalized, which is that of making radical claims of and to human dignity
Elusive Jannah: The Somali diaspora and borderless Muslim identity, by Cawo M. Abdi
(York University Libraries, 2018) Hadebe, Rutendo
Overall, Belonging and Transnational Refugee Settlement should be applauded for emphasizing the need to recognize the complexity of refugee lives, and to rethink the dominant assumptions that so often render refugees through singular frames of victimhood. With its accessible theoretical frameworks and diverse case study analyses, Belonging and Transnational Refugee Settlement is highly recommended for undergraduates, graduate students, and practitioners who are interested in refugee settlement from fields of migration studies, sociology, social work, health, policy, and other applied fields.
Insights and current debates on community engagement in higher education institutions: Perspectives on the University of the Western Cape
(SAGE Publications, 2021) Bidandi, Fred; Ambe, Anthony Nforh; Mukong, Claudia Haking
This study investigated the insights and current debates on community engagement in higher education institutions with specific reference to the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa. The article argues that although community engagement seems to present some challenges, it has become an integral part of higher education in South Africa and beyond. The article examines community engagement in higher education institutions and evaluates its contributions based on the research question. The article evaluates community engagement from the perspective of the UWC, community, and students. Data were collected through semi-structured with key informants. In total, 12 participants participated in the interviews. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The results of the study show that community engagement is dependent on institutions� relationships built between particular communities, which are easily lost if the people involved change. The results also show that community engagement has become a requisite for promotion and policy development. However, it reveals that issues of Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) often take time affecting students and researchers. Moreover, the findings indicate that there is no standard procedure for community engagement as departments, individual lecturers, and students have unique and different interests.
Navigating ethnicity, nationalism and Pan-Africanism � Kimbanguists, identity and colonial borders
(AOSIS, 2021) V�h�kangas, Mika
The Kimbanguists, whose church is based on the healing and proclamation ministry of Simon Kimbangu in 1921 in the Belgian Congo, challenge colonially defined borders and identities in multiple ways. Anticolonialism is in the DNA of Kimbanguism, yet in a manner that contests the colonially inherited dichotomy between religion and politics. Kimbanguists draw from holistic Kongo traditions, where the spiritual and material/political are inherently interwoven. Kimbangu�s home village, Nkamba, is the centre of the world for them, and Kongo culture and the ancient kingdom form the backdrop of the Kimbanguist view of the new eschatological order to come. The reunification of the kingdom from the two Congo states and Angola will mark the inauguration of the new era. This will not, however, mean a splintering of the Democratic Republic of Congo but rather a removal of the colonial borders. That hints towards a Pan-African vision of a united Africa and even a universally united Black race that will play a central role in the eschatological salvation historical drama. The Kimbanguist vision also contains global dimensions, and their view of borders and identities is like Nkamba-centred ripples in water. This vision wipes away colonial borders and relativises ethnic, national and racial identities whilst strongly subscribing to a salvation historical narrative that places Africa and Africans in the centre.
Little Amal
(Jos� Frantz, 2020) Lalu, Premesh
When South Africa celebrated Heritage Day this year, Boschendal Estate in Franschhoek provided an ideal backdrop for the first steps of Little Amal, a three-metre puppet created by the Handspring Puppet Company from South Africa to represent the plight of a refugee child. Guided by puppeteers from Ukwanda Puppetry and Design Collective of the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at the University of the Western Cape, Little Amal took the first steps of what promises to be a spectacular international event as she will embark on a 8 000 kilometre walk across Europe in 2021
Looking back
(Jos� Frantz, 2020) Odendaal, Andr�
Professors Patricia Hayes and Premesh Lalu have in this edition of Signals provided useful insight into the importance of theory, history, archives and the humanities in South Africa, and how they can help �assist us in building an ongoing capacity to resist oppression and develop a politics of care in the present and future�. Their reflections on how to develop new ideas for the way forward in a country and �post-truth� world mired in crisis invite us to look back for lessons to the 1980s and 1990s when UWC famously started redefining itself as an �intellectual home of the democratic left�, challenging the traditional roles played by universities in South Africa. UWC questioned the whole system of knowledge production in South Africa and changed its mission to serve primarily excluded and marginalised narratives, seeking in the process to develop �an open and critical alignment � with the political movements and organisations committed to the struggle for liberation�.
An archive of the future
(Jos� Frantz, 2020) Lalu, Premesh
The University of the Western Cape (UWC) recently entered into a partnership with photographer Rashid Lombard to house his substantial archival collection, which promises to offer expanded perspectives on the everyday cultural and political life of the Cape Flats. Consisting of a vast photographic record of Cape Flats history from the 1960s onwards, as well as an equally vast documentation of the history of jazz in South Africa, the Rashid Lombard Collection brings into view a hitherto repressed and often neglected feature of life under apartheid.
Memory burns
(Jos� Frantz, 2020) Hayes, Patricia
Among the photograph collections at Mayibuye, especially from IDAF, are numerous contact sheets. The contact sheet was part of the toolkit of the photographer in the time of analogue photography. The contact sheet is an assembly, the vertical layering of horizontal lines of film so that one synoptic glance can show what is represented in a roll of processed negative film that holds 36 frames. If the strips are placed in the correct order, you can see the number of each frame in the right order from one to 36, which represents the sequence in which the photos were taken.
The enchantment of freedom at University of the Western Cape
(Jos� Frantz, 2020) Lalu, Premesh
The history of the modern university is ,first and foremost ,the history of the unfolding of complex problematics of a planetary condition through established scientific and humanistic inquiry. Defined as such, the work of the university is not only to advance solutions for those problems that interchangeably favour state and public use of reason but also to discover, in the framing of the problem, the very conditions for constructing perspectives about a future that is radically other. In this sense, the demand placed on the university is always doubled, so that its interpretive, analytical, and critical work cuts into the non-identity of past and future. To this extent, the ideals of higher education mimic the processes of research and define the relationship established between the professoriate, the student body, and the university�s allied publics. The scientific revolutions
Inxeba (The Wound), Queerness and Xhosa Culture
(Taylor & Francis, 2020) Scott, Lwando
This article focuses on the controversy caused by the release of the film Inxeba (The Wound). Inxeba depicts a complex intersection of rites of passage, masculinities, queerness and the relationships between men in a homosocial environment within a Xhosa cultural setting. I argue that the subject matter of same-sex intimacy in the film challenges dominant constructions of Xhosa masculinities by going to the foundation of dominant Xhosa masculinities, namely the male initiation process. The film poses a challenge to Xhosa culture by boldly asking: what is the position of Xhosa culture on same-sex intimacies? The film depicts same-sex intimacy that takes place in one of the most sacred of Xhosa cultural spaces. In the article, the film is analysed as a conversation initiator, through which ideas about same-sex desire, Xhosa culture and ultimately African sexuality can be scrutinised and debated.

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