Browsing by Author "Bogues, Anthony"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Mbeki's Africanism : the intellectual and political thought of Thabo Mbeki
    (2009) Williams, Ryan; Garuba, Harry; Bogues, Anthony
    This dissertation examines and analyses the intellectual and political thought of Thabo Mbeki. The study examines Mbeki’s thought throughout his political career from his political activism during the anti-apartheid movement to his rise as major leader in the ANC and the government. The thesis argues that analysing the intellectual and political thought of a practicing politician requires moving beyond conventional ideas relating to the work of political intellectuals. The thesis establishes the importance of Mbeki's political activism and political career to the content of his political thought. The study locates Mbeki' s intellectual and political thought within the body of intellectual work that forms part of history of modern African political thought. The research also establishes that Mbeki's thought cannot be located solely in one political tradition and that the movement in his political ideas corresponds to the different phases of South African political history. The thesis argues that during the struggle against apartheid Mbeki's political thought has a distinctly revolutionary Marxist character but as result of the transition to freedom there is a movement towards issues of race and culture as well as the appropriation of certain features of Marxist-Leninism in Mbeki's idea of political leadership and political practice. The thesis concludes by arguing that Mbeki's political thought is a critical contribution to the history of modern African political thought.
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    The role of national museums in South Africa: A critical investigation into Iziko Museums of South Africa focusing on the representation of slavery
    (2017) Strydom, Carlyn; Bogues, Anthony
    This thesis is concerned with the ways in which museums have been used as vehicles to convey notions of the nation. It looks specifically at the Iziko Museums of South Africa's social history sites that deal with the subject of slavery. It is concerned with the absence of a narrative of slavery at Iziko museums before the demise of Apartheid and looks the historical and socio-political changes that lead to its emergence in South African historical consciousness. It is a study of the history of museums as well as the ways in which history has been used in museums. It looks at the ways Iziko, as a national museum, has guarded and promoted ideas of the nation as decided by the state. The thesis examines with the ways in which the museum has transformed since its inception in the colonial period up to the present day. The time period investigated is 1855 to 2016. Guiding questions for the thesis are: for what purpose were museums created in South Africa; what are the implications of colonial practice on the ways in which they functioned; why has the history of slavery has been disavowed in South African historical consciousness; what led to the rise of the study of slavery in South Africa; what has the emergence of the new museology meant for museum practice; how have heritage studies transformed the South African historical landscape. The thesis begins with a theoretical literature overview of museums more generally and its links with power and representation and the colonial regime. It then moves on to investigate the origin and history of Iziko museums by working through published literature on the subject, unpublished materials, other institutional materials found in the Iziko archive and interviews conducted with past and current employees. It then looks takes an historical survey of South African historiography and its exclusion of the history of slavery and later the emergence of such a narrative. Lastly it looks at how the nation has been narrated by the state after Apartheid and how the museum responded to the new dispensation. The thesis concludes that Iziko museums have transformed over the last two centuries in terms of the subject matter it studies. Museological activity has been diversified to include a range of subjects hitherto ignored in South African public consciousness due to the legacy of both colonialism and Apartheid. Most importantly it shows that the museum has continually responded to concepts of the South African nation and that national museums are inextricably tied to the nation-state.
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    Tonal Landscapes: Re-membering the interiority of lives of apartheid through the family album of the oppressed
    (2012) O'Connell, Siona; Bogues, Anthony; Shepherd, Nick
    This research seeks to be a methodological contribution to the fields of visual and memory studies. It enters these conversations through the family photograph found in the home of forcibly removed ex-residents of Roger Street, District Six, Cape Town in an attempt to think about ways of living during and after apartheid. Through this study, practically and theoretically, I engage with the challenges of restorative justice and contemplate how the family photograph may be engaged as a transactional object of translation in this contested area. I look at apartheid through District Six land claims and address as well, questions of trauma, memory, and freedom in the aftermath of apartheid. This dissertation therefore seeks to place three seemingly distinct literatures in the same frame: that of photography, that of memory, and that of justice and freedom. Conflicts over land, both local and global, range across the continuum, where long-term residents are displaced to make way for new developments and the other extreme where residents are forcibly displaced, violently evicted. What is clear in all of these instances, however, is that the problem cannot be reduced to one of monetary remuneration, that the land itself is imbued with meaning that cannot be measured in monetary terms. It is important to recognize - not only that land/place may mean different things to different people, but also that it can mean multiple "things" to the same person. Unless we recognize the multidimensionality of the meanings of land, as well thinking about what it means to be oppressed, any attempts to engage in restitution or restorative justice are destined to fail. This thesis attempts to think through how an ordinary object - the photograph - can be used to gain an interior look into how oppressed people lived during apartheid, and how they continue to live after its demise. Antjie Krog's book, Country of My Skull draws attention to the issue of death during apartheid. What this thesis does is to look at what happens to those who lived through apartheid and how they deal with the aftermath. It looks at the move from death to life. The family photograph may at first glance appear to have little in common with the issue of restorative justice. They both however speak of public and private, of remembering and mourning, of death and life, of absence and presence. They are both prone to multiple interpretations, as well as being at the cutting edge of contemporary and political debates. Taken together, the family photograph and visual studies form a forceful space, initiating interdisciplinary dialogue and providing a creative and scholarly engagement that has both local and global implications.
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    Tracing the passion of a black Christ: critical reflections on the iconographic revision and symbolic redeployment of the Stations of the Cross and Passion cycle by South African artists Sydney Kumalo, Sokhaya Charles Nkosi and Azaria Mbatha
    (2016) Macdonald, James; Skotnes, Pippa; MacKenny, Virginia; Bogues, Anthony
    In this research I consider ways in which black South African artists working during and after apartheid have both revised and symbolically redeployed the Stations of the Cross - and more broadly, the iconographic tradition of the Passion cycle. In so doing, I demonstrate the strategic application of Christ's episodic sufferings as a means of both analogously chronicling situations of historical trauma, as well as articulating more aspirant narratives of political resistance, selfliberation and reconciliation. Concentrating initially on church-commissioned projects realised in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I trace the reinterpretation (or 'Africanisation') of the Stations of the Cross by artists such as Bernard Gcwensa, Ruben Xulu and Sydney Kumalo. Noting the emergence of a black Christ and a localised Passion, I emphasise the complex cultural and political implications of this iconographic transformation - arguing that its hybrid realisation undermined the cultural bias of a European-styled Christianity, and the racial hierarchies of colonialism and apartheid. Following this, considered in more detail are the secular reimaginings of Sokhaya Charles Nkosi's Crucifixion (1976) and Azaria Mbatha's Stations of the Cross for Africa (1995) - as series wherein the episodes of Christ's Passion are consciously and symbolically redeployed. In the case of Nkosi's Crucifixion, I show as covertly documented in a black Christ's sufferings the incarceration and torture of political activists in apartheid South Africa. On a more ideological level, I demonstrate also, as embodied in the series, the aspirant directives of Black Consciousness and Black Theology. Turning to Mbatha's Stations of the Cross for Africa, I present its visual narrative as analogously envisioning, as well as critically rethinking, the mutually embedded traumas of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. Significant to my analysis is the future vision of reconciliation posited by Mbatha, and the extent to which it both reflects and challenges that maintained within the 'transformative' programme of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Demonstrated in my evaluation of these appropriative projects is the way in which a traditionally European iconographic tradition is critically redeployed - in chronicling situations of historical trauma, as well as in the envisioning of alternative futures. As such, I hope to afford a more nuanced and challenging appreciation of these reimagined Passion narratives, as significant projects of cultural and postcolonial memory. In keeping with this, I advance in conclusion a 'rethinking of pilgrimage'. Recalling the culture of participative witness associated with devotional programmes like the Stations of the Cross, I propose that in the case of both Nkosi's Crucifixion and Mbatha's Stations of the Cross for Africa, extended to viewers is a certain imperative: to imaginatively revisit, and rethink within the present, traumatic histories of black suffering and resistance.