Africana Library

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Start date: 1976End date: 1979

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    Women and squatting: A Winterfeld case study
    (1979-05-21) Yawitch, Joanne
    This paper is an examination of the political economy of Black women in South Africa in terms of a case-study of women in Winterveld. As such it deals with three issues, each of which is vast. These are: (1) Women; (2) Winterveld; (3) The nature of the South African economy at present. Given the confines of a paper such as this it is obviously impossible to deal with all three in full detail. There is thus much in the analysis that will only be referred to in passing and much that is implicit in it will hopefully be explained during discussion.
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    Stay-aways and the black working class since the second World War : The evaluation of a strategy
    (1979-04) Webster, E.C.
    There is a widespread belief, among some who hope for change in South Africa, that if only all Blacks withdrew their labour, the whole structure of South Africa would collapse. It is a subject which has received little academic attention. It is my intention in this paper to examine this notion in three parts.. In Part I a brief history of stay-aways between 1950 and 1961 will be given. In Part II its reemergence in Soweto will be examined. In Part III the limitations of the stay-away as a tactic of working-class action will be discussed and contrasted with the more wide-spread plantbased action of the 1970s. (This is not meant to imply that limitations do not exist in plant-based action.) The Namibian general strike of 1971-2 is excluded from this analysis as its relative degree of "success" demonstrates the uniqueness of that situation - viz. the existence of a reasonably self-sufficient rural base to which striking workers could withdraw. Yet even in Namibia workers could ultimately, says Moorsom, not escape the major contradiction in their strategy "that although access to peasant resources considerably expanded their power to prolong resistance, they could no longer, as a matter of inescapable necessity, opt out of wage-labour indefinitely - the platform of the strike committee embodied a tacit acknowledgement of the irrevocable necessity of wage-labour."
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    From Tram Shed to Assembly Hall: Solomon Plaatje, De Beers, and the Lyndhurst Road Native Institute in Kimberley, 1918-1919
    (1977-11) Willan, Brian
    Little scholarly attention has been devoted to an analysis of the historical evolution of class differentiation amongst Africans in twentieth century South Africa, or to the ideological forms that accompanied this. Such work as has been done in related fields has been concerned not so much to investigate such connections as to trace the "rise of nationalism", a term that in fact provides the title for Peter Walshe's history of the African National Congress, in itself indicative of the extent to which it forms part of that genre of writing inspired by Africa's "independence decade", many of whose assumptions it shares (2). In Walshe's book, the extent to which "nationalism" expressed fundamentally class-based aspirations and attitudes has been obscured. More direct expressions of class interest (which did not necessarily assume a "nationalist" guise) have been neglected; and African political though: and action is - as a consequence of an uncritical acceptance of the stated aims of organizations like the ANC - characterized as "unrealistic", "naive", "inappropriate" and, in terms of these stated aims, as having "failed". The ideological element - taking ideology as constituting a set of beliefs and ideas that serve to explain or rationalize the interests of particular groups or classes as the general interest - is largely absent from the analysis.
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    A profile of unregistered union members in Durban
    (1978-09) Webster, E.C.
    The role and potential of trade unions among African workers has moved over the last five years from a peripheral to a central issue in industrial relations in S.A. Government attitudes have changed from a determination to exclude African trade unions by promoting an alternat. in-plant committee structure, to the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry into Labour Legislation with a clear indication on the part of the Chairman that trade unionism is a right for all workers (1). Some employer associations have chanqed from outriaht hostility to support in principle for the right of African workers to negotiate on the same basis as non-Africans (2). Although the antagonism or indifference of the registered trade union movement continues, the decision of TUCSA in 1973 to allow African trade unions to affiliate, signals a growing awareness among the more far-sighted registered trade union leadership that the future of the trade union movement lies with Coloured and African workers (3). The growing internationalization of industrial relations in S.A. through the publication of employers "codes of conduct" as a response to the increasing pressure on foreign investors to withdraw, is further evidence of this change (4).
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    Milner and the mind of imperialism
    (1979-02-26) Van Helten, Jean Jacques
    Capitalist development in Southern Africa, particularly in Kimberley and on the Rand, was very much the result of the penetration of British and foreign capital as well ac the rapid growth of commercial interests. The continued expansion of the mining industry, with its huge amounts of initial capital outlay, particularly after 1893 when the deep levels came into operation, depended upon the state of the capital markets of Europe: speculative booms in "kaffir" shares not only lined the pockets of investors but also provided new working capital, for little capital was raised by the issue of debentures, (l).
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    Ethnicity, language and national unity: The case of Malawi
    (1978-09) Vail, Leroy
    In late 1976, in the Mkuyu detention camp, outside Malawi's old colonial capital, Zomba, there were detained fifty-five university graduates. Forty-five were from the Northern Region (4). Between 1975 and 1976 many senior administrators and lecturers at the University of Malawi were detained. Over 90 per cent were from the Northern Region. In early 1976 sixteen people employed at the vital National Statistical Office were detained. All were from the Northern Region (5). Children from northern Malawi now being enrolled in school are being entered by their parents as non-Northern in origin and with new surnames. As a growing manifestation of a deepening 'Chewa' ethnic awareness, anti-Northern policies are common in Malawi today, destroying rapidly the remaining shreds of the national feeling inspired by the movement against the Central African Federation in the late 1950s and early 1960s and bring into question continued political stability once President Kamuzu Banda, already in his late seventies, passes from the scene.
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    Landlord and tenant in a colonial economy: The Transvaal, 1880-1910
    (1977-12) Trapido, Stanley
    A secret society with the professed aim of the 'promotion of all the interests of the Afrikaner nation'. (3) the Afrikaner Broederbond (hereafter the A.B. or Bond) has long been the bogeyman of South African politics. Its operations are attacked as detailed and lurid conspiracies, and defended as the innocent, confidential actions of public-spirited men. In the process, though much authoritative data on the Bond exists, its nature, functions and role have been thoroughly mystified. At the outset it must be stated that the A.B. has exerted a profound influence at all levels of South African politics. This paper attempts the beginnings of a demystification of the Bond's operations and an assessment'of its role up till 1946. Given its secret nature, this is necessarily sketchy and schematic. Yet such an assessment requires more than ideological forms with those of the new capitalism.
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    A long way to walk: Bus Boycotts in Alexandra, 1940-1945
    (1979-04) Stadler, Alfred William
    Bus boycotts assumed central significance in the political struggles in urban areas during the forties and fifties. The Alexandra boycott of 1957, which evoked sympathy boycotts across the country, even in areas in which bus fares had not been increased, reached the proportions of a major confrontation between the state on the one hand and African communities and political organisations on the other.
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    Class in white South Africa
    (1976-07) Stadler, Alfred William
    This paper sketches the broad lines of class structure in the white community in South Africa. Aside from the efforts of a small group of scholars, this issue has not received the attention it deserves in recent years. Indeed there is an implicit assumption that because there are no class parties, class is a negligible factor in white politics. While a general discussion of the literature is beyond the scope of this paper, the major assumptions which are embedded in recent analyses by liberal and conservative historians and sociologists might be summarised briefly as follows: Whites are members of a broadly egalitarian caste divided politically along language and cultural lines within a system of racial stratification. Political power reflects cultural groupings rather than class formations. Political elites are the representatives of cultural formations rather than dominant class interests. Class and community constitute alternative and exclusive bases for political action. Racial prejudice is seen as the determinant force in the present configuration of power.
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    Birds in the cornfield: Squatter movements in Johannesburg, 1944-1947
    (1978-04) Stadler, Alfred William
    The Government is beaten, because even the Government of England could not stop the people from squatting. The Government was like a man who has a cornfield which is invaded by birds. He chases the birds from one part of the field and they alight in another part of the field We squatters are the birds'. The Government sends its policemen to chase us away and we move off and occupy another spot. We shall see whether it is the farmer or the birds who get tired first (1). Thus spoke Oriel Monongoaha, one of the leaders of the Pimville squatters. The tenor and tone of his words suggests that while the squatter movements were in the first instance a protest by blacks in Johannesburg against the serious shortage of housing which developed during a period of rapid urbanisation, they assumed the proportions of open rebellion, mounted on a scale unprecedented in any urban area in South Africa. The squatter movements were remarkable, not only for the numbers involved(a), their duration, and their successes, but above all because their structure and organisation flowed out of an instinctual understanding of the contradictions developing in the South African political economy.