African Studies Institute - Seminar Papers

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Afrikaner nationalism, white politics and political change in South Africa
(1974-03) Van Zyl Slabbert, H.
By political change is meant a change in the constitution of groups and individuals who effectively control political decision-making in South Africa, The size and diversity of such groups and number of individuals can either decrease, - in which case there is an increase in authoritarianism, - or increase, - in which case there is a move towards a decentralization or diffusion of political control. A clear distinction must in this case be made between interest groups, socio-economic and demographic processes, external or internal to South Africa, that exert direct or indirect influenoe on the taking of political decisions and the groups and individuals who effectively control and are responsible for such decisions. This is simply another way of stating that more often than not there is a discrepancy between the pressures for change and the decisions taken to cope with such pressures..... This paper would like to emphasize the strategic significance of Afrikaner Nationalists in relation to the problem of political change in South Africa. As a group they control effective political decision-making within White politics and therefore within South Africa in general...
Populists and patriarches: The transformation of the captaincy at Griqua Town, 1804-1822
(1964-09-03) Kinsman, Margaret
The purpose of this essay is to trace, as far as is possible, the development of the agricultural faction at Griqua Town in the 1810s and 1820s and to illuminate its efforts to transform the settlement's administration. To do so, I shall first examine the origins of the Griqua community and describe the nature of the political system it evolved north of the Orange River. Next, I shall attempt to outline the development of agriculture at Griqua Town and various outstations, the growth of a agriculturalist faction, and the increasing efforts of this group to secure an administration which catered to its needs. Finally, I shall study how, although the new regime under Waterboer generated staunch and even violent opposition, it was able to shift its focus to encouraging agricultural production.
We can run, but we can't hide: The need for psychological explanation in social history
(2000-04-17) Dagut, Simon
There have been many occasions in my experience when the explanatory techniques normally used by social historians have seemed inadequate to deal with some particular process or event. No doubt this happens to every historian, but I sometimes suspect that the social world of British colonialism in nineteenth century South Africa - my particular interest - provides these moments more often than some other areas. This feeling is, no doubt, largely the result of not knowing as much about the peculiarities of other places and times, but I do think it is at least arguable that colonial encounters created more extraordinarily odd situations than many other social environments. In past work, have taken two approaches to these kinds of explanatory challenges. In the case of really bizarre material, I have simply avoided discussing it in writing and have rationalised my omissions on the grounds that this sort of thing is too atypical to be helpful in building up a broad general picture of British settlers' attitudes and experiences. In the case of more frequently occurring oddities, I have attempted to argue that they were the result of the construction of settlers' attitudes by the prevalent discourses concerning class identity and colonialism, which combined to create so great a social distance between settlers and African people that what would otherwise have seemed socially impossible became everyday and natural. Although I do, in general, stand by this analysis, I have increasingly come to feel that it needs to be supplemented. Firstly, really peculiar circumstances deserve some time in the historical spotlight by way of an adjunct to those which an historian has decided were 'normal'. Extreme cases can be very useful in revealing the limits of the normal. Secondly, explaining even the 'normal' seems to me to require the use of psychological terms and techniques, however much historians may wish that this weren't the case.
Local imperatives and imperial policy: The sources of Lord Carnarvon's South African Confederation policy
(1986-08) Cope, Richard
In February 1876 the General Manager of the Standard Bank of South Africa wrote that there was "a general spirit of enterprise abroad, which some ten years ago would hardly have been considered possible in such a country." It is a commonplace that the discovery of diamonds in 1867 set in train an economic transformation in South Africa, but its political effects were no less important. In the 1870s an attempt was made to construct a 'confederation' under the British flag, which it was intended would extend to the Zambezi in the north and to the Portuguese lines on the east and west coasts. To those whose interests lay in the development of a modern capitalist economy in South Africa, Boer republics and Black polities alike were anachronistic and obstructive, and the necessity for incorporating both into a united and efficient British dominion seemed imperative. In an article published in 1974 Anthony Atmore and Shula Marks argued that these "local imperatives" rather than Carnarvon's strategic preoccupations were the crucial forces pushing in the direction of confederation. I have sought to demonstrate elsewhere by an examination of the relevant evidence that Carnarvon's reasons for confederation were not strategic in nature, as Robinson and Gallagher and Goodfellow claimed,but that they were the sort of socio-economic considerations identified by Atmore and Marks. In this article I examine the question of how imperial policy came to correspond so closely to these 'local imperatives'.
The road to Sharpeville
(1986-09) Chaskalson, Matthew
The Sharpeville shootings are a landmark o-f the South African past. People with only a fleeting knowledge of South African history are aware of the events of 21 March 1960 and Sharpeville Day is annually commemorated by opponents of apartheid all over the world. Nevertheless, there is remarkably little awareness of the local history of Vereeniging that led up to the shootings. This history makes fascinating reading. For one of its distinguishing characteristics was the success of the Vereeniging Town Council's administration of its two African townships, Sharpeville and Top Location. Throughout the 1950s Sharpeville was recognised across the country as the model African township, and the Council was able to censor almost all local African political activity (1). In the light of this it was particularly anomalous that the declaration of the State of Emergency in I960 should have been prompted by events in Sharpeville- However, most accounts of the Sharpeville shootings have not even noticed this anomaly, let alone offered any explanation for it (2). Rather, they look at the background to the shootings only in terms of the PAC's national campaign against the passes. It is a central premise of this paper that such an approach to the problem of explaining the Sharpeville shootings is inadequate- For it begs the question of why it was in Sharpeville as opposed to anywhere else in the Union that the PAC's campaign received its strongest response, a question that can only be answered by examinining the local history that led up to the shootings. It is to this history, then, that I address myself in the following paper. The paper's first two sections describe the social and economic development of Vereeniging up to the 1950s and the administration of its African townships. I then examine tensions around police raids and rising rents that built up in Vereeniging's townships over the 1950s, and relate these to processes described in the first two sections. Finally I look at the Council's removal of Top Location residents to Sharpeville in 1958/59, and show how the PAC was able to capitalise on the residents' grievances relating to the removal and to the, issues of raids and rent (3).
"For future reference": The Mamathola Removal of 1958 and the making of apartheid
(1990-05) Starfield, Jane
"One may make one's own history", said Marx, "but not in the circumstances of one's own choosing". The argument in this paper is that, the production of particular versions of history may be inversely related to their makers' choice over the circumstances in which they are made. For example, in a situation of increasing powerlessness, one may be drawn to a sense of a time when one's power was greater. That sense may turn the past into metaphor. That sense is a kind of knowledge. It is not the knowledge that lives in facts and figures, but it certainly lives with them. It is their casing, their skin. To use another metaphor, a sense of the past is a basic perceptual operating system. This is not the carefully considered, philosophically integrated ideological position of the serious historian; nevertheless, most people have such operating systems. History in this sense is a system of narration, a way of apprehending the world.
History, experience and culture
(1983-03-21) Bozzoli, Belinda
Class community and ideology in the evolution of South African Society
(1985-05) Bozzoli, Belinda

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