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

Filters

1974 - 197911980 - 19861

Settings

Subject: search.filters.subject.Riots. South Africa. Durban

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    The 1949 Durban 'Riots' - a case-study in race and class
    (1974-08) Webster, E.C.
    This paper was written as a response to the somewhat abstract discussions that sometimes take place in university seminars on the relative weight of class, race and ethnicity in explaining human behaviour. It rests on the assumption that conceptual clarification has limited value, unless conceptual analysis is followed by a concrete historical or sociological analysis of a particular social situation. The Durban 'riots' of 1949 was chosen as a case-study because it has been widely used by 'separate development theorists' as an example of the inevitability of conflict between the races, without any attempt being made to relate this conflict to the political economy. This paper is an attempt to develop a theoretical franework that recognizes the embryonic and partial nature of class formation in a 'plural society' through the notion of class 'suppression', but nonetheless attempts to derive a meaningful frame of reference for explaining a class based act. In Part 1 I will introduce the theoretical framework. Part II, III and IV is an attempt to give a portrait of the participants in the riot, analysing their composition, motives and how activity was generated among them. Here a note of caution needs to be introduced. I am still at a tentative stage in my research in two crucial areas; firstly, on the 'consciousness' of the participants I have to date only had access to written material such as newspapers and reports. These sources are a partial perspective - this includes in particular, the official Government Inquiry into the riots. Hopefully I will have a fuller picture when I have extended my data-gathering to interviews of participants. Secondly, I realise that in a crucial area of my argument among the African traders I am still at an early stage of research. Part V tries to place the conflict in a wider perspective of the social structure.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    The dispersal of the regiments: Radical African opposition in Durban, 1930
    (1986-03) La Hausse, Paul
    During the afternoon of 17 June 1929, 6 000 African workers abandoned their barracks, backyard dwellings, rented rooms and kias, and made their way through the streets of Durban towards the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU) Hall in Prince Edward Street. The more noticeable amongst the ranks of stickwielding workers included the barefoot dock workers, domestic servants in redtrimmed calico uniforms and ricksha-pullers displaying colourful tunics. The less noticeable comprised the majority - the labouring poor of the port town. The immediate reason for this mass mobilisation was the 'siege', by 600 white 'vigilantes', of the ICU Hall. Having beaten one African to death with pickhandles, the vigilantes comprising the 'well-educated', 'the elderly' and a 'large hooligan element1 attempted to storm the Hall. They mistakenly believed that two white 'traitors' - Communist Town Councillor S.M. Pettersen and A.F. Batty, an ICU organiser - were ensconced inside. When the "relief column" of workers finally reached the Hall they were greeted by 2 000 whites and 360 policemen. The violent clashes which followed left 120 injured and 8 dead. The riots of June 1929 in Durban occupy a brief moment within a wider process of sustained urban militancy. This popular opposition was an expression of both a particularly repressive and exploitative system of urban control and impoverishment in Natal's countryside during a period of economic depression spanning the years 1928 to 1933.