African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/7319

For information on accessing African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers collection content please contact Peter Duncan via email : peter.duncan@wits.ac.za

Browse

Has files: YesSubject: search.filters.subject.South Africa. Social conditions

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Economy and society in South Africa
    (2011-05-09) Schlemmer, Lawrence
    Between 1974 and the time of writing, dramatic political events in the Southern African region have tended to shift the ongoing debate on the economy and change in South Africa somewhat into the background. There has been a primacy accorded to the political rather than the economic in discussions of change. However, the events over the period since the Portuguese coup in 1974 until the time of writing will have to be seen in retrospect as having changed the political environment of Southern Africa rather than as having introduced changes of a meaningful kind within South Africa. Not that the South African political climate has been unaffected. Far from it; the very recent (mid-1976) disturbances in Soweto, other Black townships and in black educational institutions as well as a minor spate of political trials and detentions way very well attest to a heightened restiveness among South African Blacks partly as a consequence of events in Southern Africa. Yet a lull in the tempo of events seems inevitable with White Rhodesia preparing for a long drawn-out resistance to Black incursions and responses in South West Africa - Namibia dominated by the same Major issue of extended, inconclusive querilla warfare and what are likely to be extensive constitutional debates.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Major patterns of group interaction in South African society
    (1974-03) Savage, Michael
    Although recent historians have stated "the central theme of South African history is interaction between peoples of diverse origins, languages, technologies, Ideologies and social systems, meeting on South African soil", scant attention has been paid to such interaction by social scientists. Instead, most work in such disciplines has been segmentary, and focuses on the Internal arrangements or attitudes of one group rather than on the relationships that that group has to other groups or to the wider society. This in itself may be one reflection of the polarities of the society that have influenced the pattern of social research itself. The result however, is that outside of the work of historians, there has been insufficient study of the consequences of interaction between the different groups in the population. Yet, such interaction is one vital key to an understanding of the social structure. In this paper, an attempt will be made to overview the most important patterns of group interaction across the lines - ( political, ethnic, economic and class - that so clearly demarcate the major groups in South African society. The primary focus in this exploration of the contact and cleavages between such groups will be the present, with some attempt to indicate emerging trends.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    'We are being punished because we are poor'. The Bus Boycotts of Evaton and Alexandra, 1955-1957
    (1979-03) Lodge, Tom
    This article concerns itself with two bus boycotts, one well known, the other less so. They are interesting in themselves, but here it is suggested that they are relevant towards an understanding of South African black resistance in general, and in particular in the context of the 1950s when African political organisations were attempting to mobilise large numbers of people in campaigns which had the ultimate aim of hastening the collapse of the existing political structure. A problem of that period , noted by many commentators both hostile and friendly to the liberation movement, is that despite the Congress Alliance's efforts to articulate its long-term aims through immediate issues: pass laws, wages, and so forth; despite the government's lack of concern to effectively legitimise its authority in the eyes of the masses; despite this being a period of economic stagnation relative to the preceding decade, so wages rose only very slowly and probably declined in real terms, nevertheless, mass response to African political organisation was uneven and often disappointing. Ben Turok, a former activist within the Congress movement, tells us that by the second half of the 1950s, after an initial promise at the beginning of the decade, support for the national movement was falling off in urban areas; that frustration and repression were beginning to promote political apathy (Turok 1973: 333). The boycotts will therefore be discussed within the general context of the problems of political mobilisation.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Class conflict, communal struggle and patriotic unity: The Communist Party of South Africa during the Second World War
    (1985-10-07) Lodge, Tom
    The years of the Second World War witnessed a revival in the fortunes of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA). At the beginning of the war the Party's following numbered less than 300, it s influence in the trade unions was negligible, it was isolated from other political organisations among blacks, while it s efforts with whites had succeeded neither in checking the growth of fascism or Afrikaner nationalism nor in building class unity. Six years later the Party could count it s adherents in thousands rather than hundreds, it was capable of winning white local government elections, and its members presided over the largest-ever African trade union movement as well as contributing significantly to the leadership of the African and Indian Congresses. From 1945 knowledge of the Party’s development becomes vital for any understanding of the mainstream of black politics in South Africa. This paper will examine and attempt to explain the wartime expansion in the Communist Party's influence, first by referring to the social and economic conditions as well as the overall political environment of the time, and then by discussing the Party's policies and strategies’ CPSA responses to three different sets of movements or organisations will be discussed: movements of the urban poor, of peasants, and of labour. The paper will conclude with an evaluation of the Party's role and development during the period.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Domestic racial interaction in later nineteenth century
    (1996-02-26) Dagut, Simon
    This paper is primarily concerned with the ways in which white men and women - mainly the latter - interacted with their African, coloured and Indian domestic servants in the second half of the nineteenth century. Its second concern is to argue that the study of this (and related) topics is of considerable, importance in the causation of the oppressive forms which South African states and social orders have taken. The topic of this paper is situated at the intersection of two areas which have been largely neglected in South African historiography. While the attitudes and experiences of "ordinary" African people in nineteenth and twentieth century South Africa have received considerable (and distinguished) attention in the last twenty years, comparatively little "history from below" has been written about whites, whether "Boer" or "Briton." Equally, while nineteenth century European, American and British empire domestic service has been fairly extensively examined, this is a relatively neglected area of South African historiography.