From Tram Shed to Assembly Hall: Solomon Plaatje, De Beers, and the Lyndhurst Road Native Institute in Kimberley, 1918-1919
Date
1977-11
Authors
Willan, Brian
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Abstract
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.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented November 1977
Keywords
Plaatje, Solomon Tshekisho, 1876-1932, De Beers Consolidated Mines