African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

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"A documentary drama": The case of Malisela Letsoalo and the Banareng tribe versus the union government
(1988-03-28) Starfield, Jane
Tuesday 28 January 1958 was a tepid 20.8 degrees C in St George's Street, Cape Town. Not far off, the Houses of Parliament were considerably hotter. Generator of this heat was none other than the 'Famous Lawyer' and former Native Senator, Mr Hyman Meyer Basner. Basner had just bombarded every MP, including the Senate, with copies of an affidavit rebutting the Minister of Native Affairs' attack upon his integrity the day before.
"Because your yard is too big": Squatter struggles, the local state and dual power in Uitgenhage, 1985-1986
(1988-03-14) Swilling, Mark
By focussing largely on the struggle Langa's squatters waged against forced removal, this chapter will attempt to analyse the complex interactions between local township administrators, the white establishment, employers, community organisations and trade unions. To understand this complexity, the romantic conception of unstratified communities united against a monolithinc state needs to be jettisoned. Instead, the internal workings of both the social movements and state apparatuses must be studied. This cannot be achieved, however, without taking into account the impact social movements have on the state and how the actions of state officials affect the strategies of social movements. Furthermore, this relationship does not exist outside the influence employer interests exert on the local state and the way this influence is mediated by trade union pressure. As this chapter will show, once the object of study is extended in this way, social processes come to light that call into question two teleologies. The first is the optimistic view that social movements are only important to the extent that they contribute to the build-up of a national movement that will, at some moment in the future, detonate the collapse of the state. The second is the pessimistic view that social movements only win those concessions that structural conditions allow ruling class interests to concede (1). In both cases, the impact of local movements and how they determine the terms of social organisation is ignored. For the former, the structure of society will only be transformed when the moment of revolution arrives and not before. As far as the latter is concerned, any changes that do take place, occur on terms determined almost entirely by the ruling class.
The complexities of sustained urban struggle: The case of Oukasie
(1990-06) Morris, Alan
On the 7 December 1985, the local community council, elected in a low poll in 1981, summonsed Oukasie residents to a fateful meeting. The residents were informed that they would have to move 24 kilometres north to Lethlabile on the border of Bophuthatswana. The 55 year-old township of approximately 12 000 people situated 90 kilometres north-west of Johannesburg and two kilometres from the Brits town centre was to be demolished. This paper will briefly reconstruct the history of the anti-removal struggle in Oukasie and in the process illustrate the potential difficulties of township struggle. Three key arguments are made. Firstly, it is argued that in order to understand the different responses of Oukasie residents to the planned removal, cognizance must be taken of the fact that like all townships, Oukasie at the time of the announcement, was composed of different social classes and groupings with different material interests and perceptions. Only by taking cognizance of this can the issue of why some residents decided to move and others decided to stay be explained. Secondly, it is argued that the occupation of key leadership positions by unemployed residents fueled the development of vanguardist organisation. Finally, it is argued that this vanguardism, in the context of high and lengthy unemployment, contributed to the rise of factionalism and coercive politics.
Ons dak nie ... ons phola hierso: politics, protest and proletarians in Sophiatown, 1930-1955
(1991-03) Lebelo, Steve
Existing interpretations of the failure of resistance to the forced removal of Sophiatown in 1955 have been grossly inadequate. The emphasis has been on the political programmes and strategies of organised politics which articulated the interests of property owners. Sophiatown's marginalised and underprivileged classes - tenants and sub-tenants - have been largely ignored. This study focuses exclusively on tenants and sub-tenants in Sophiatown. It explores their urban experiences as shaped by the patterns of migration that chareterised them; the nature and function of the rural ties that they evolved in the city and forms of accommodation that they desired and procured. Further the study attempts to analyse elements of political apathy and acquiescence among the largest proportion of Sophiatown's population. Sophiatown and Martindale (henceforth Sophiatown) were inhabited by a community that did not share similar characteristics of urban culture with Newclare and Western Native Township (WNT). It is argued in this study that, theoretically, Sophiatown developed in sharp contrast with the other two townships. The violent unrest of 1949 and 1950 was a result of the conflict of interest between the local state and the communities in Newclare and WNT. It was a conflict in which the Sophiatown community was relatively uninvolved. This paper is divided into four sections. In section I, Sophiatown's early history is examined. Initially, the township was inhabited by White home-owners. By 1912 Africans, most of whom were living in family circumstances and who were relatively affluent were obtaining properties in Sophiatown. However, for three decades population growth remained relatively insignificant. Section II focuses on the growth of tenants and sub-tenants in Sophiatown against the backdrop of slum clearance in the center of Johannesburg. In section III the paper examines political protest in the Western Areas of Johannesburg and how Sophiatown’s tenant classes were affected by and responded to conflicts between the "agents of external authority" - the local state - and the community in the region. The concluding section focuses on the implications of the Western Areas Scheme on Sophiatown's tenants and sub-tenants. It is argued that conflicts with landlords and promises of more living space in Meadowlands were not the overriding concerns of Sophiatown's tenant classes. The threat of forced removals in 1950 would have resolved the crisis that affected tenant classes' reproductive capacity created by changing material conditions in the rural districts. However, at this stage such a hypothesis is only speculative as evidence remains inconclusive.

African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

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