African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers
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Item The Transvaal Native Congress 1917-1920: The radicalisation of the Black Petty bourgeoisie on the Rand(1980-03-10) Bonner, PhilipItem Item Classes, the mode of production and the State in pre-colonial Swaziland(1976-09-13) Bonner, PhilipIn this paper I seek to do three related things; to identify the dominant mode of production in the Swazi social formation and other possible subsidiary modes; to establish the existence or otherwise of classes in Swazi society; and to elucidate the development of the Swazi state. Before I start however I should like to make two disclaimers. Firstly I make no pretence at theoretical rigour and have merely used the concepts employed in this paper to illuminate my material. Secondly the questions raised by such concepts are not easily answered by the data I have at my disposal. Swazi tradition I do not doubt will help to give answers to those questions, but first it will be necessary for those questions to be posed. This I did not do during my own fieldwork in Swaziland, and for that reason much of my paper will have a provisional ring. Nevertheless, despite these limitations I feel justified in venturing into this field. Swazi society does not as far as I can see fit into recent categorisations of pre-capitalist modes of production and its study may help in developing those categories further. At the same time the questions raised by this mode of analysis undoubtedly turn the spotlight on neglected areas of Swazi society and even if only partially or provisionally answered must help our understanding of how that society works. For that reason I make no apologies at undertaking such an analysis and merely ask that it be taken as much as a programme for research as the fruits of a completed project.Item Batons and bare heads: the strike at Amato Textile, February 1958(1983-10-03) Bonner, Philip; Lambert, RobItem "We are digging, we are seizing huge chunks of the municipalities land" (Siyawugubha, Siyawugubha Umhlaba Ka Maspala)": Popular struggles in Benoni, 1944-1952(1985-10-28) Bonner, PhilipThe Second World War transformed the face of South Africa like no other era since reconstruction. Unlike reconstruction however, the war years were no period of planned state initiatives or aggressive social engineering. State policy was reactive, tentative, piecemeal. State planning was informed by no broader vision with which to regulate and direct the massive social and economic transformations underway. All this left considerable space in which the major new force to appear in the political arena - the urban proletariat – could manoeuvre. Huge gaps opened up in the cities' ramshackle and improvised structures of social control. Real opportunities presented themselves to the new working class to shape and to mould the world in which it moved. However the very abruptness of these changes which injected such uncertainty, and incoherence into official policy making circles, also imprinted itself on the character of the new urban proletariat. The newly assembled urban communities were still too fluid, too diverse, too unformed to take sustained advantage of the state's fumbling indecision. Some important gains were won, and certain policy options foreclosed. However, the struggles of the urban masses were all too often, sectional, individual and introverted, and only incidentally and indirectly shaped or subverted state policy. A political movement with the programme and the tactics to take on this role did not emerge till the early 1950's, and then largely in reaction to the massive social engineering and political repression that accompanied the implementation of grand apartheid. By then the period of maximum opportunity had already passed by. It is to this period and these struggles that this paper draws attention. It focusses on the East Rand town of Benoni which was one of the major centres of wartime industrialisation on the Rand. It represents a preliminary attempt to order some of the data already collected and to define future directions of research.Item Company estate, company town: Pilgrim's Rest 1910 - 1932(1987-10-19) Bonner, Philip; Shapiro, K.