Browsing by Author "Bradford, Helen"

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    Agriculture, farm labour and the state in the Natal Midlands, 1940-1960
    (1991) Mazower, Benjamin Louis; Bradford, Helen
    This thesis analyses agrarian development in the Natal Midlands during the 1940s and 1950s. Based predominantly on archival and primary sources, it seeks to provide some empirical evidence in an area where such information is sorely lacking. The first chapter briefly analyses the national agricultural economy in the 1940s before turning to the Natal Midlands. The importance of urban factors in fuelling the post-war boom is examined, as is the way in which different groups of farmers reacted to these developments. The second chapter discusses the position of farm workers. The system of labour tenancy is considered and stress is laid on the various tensions within the system which became prominent at this time. The use of the courts and the police in helping farmers control their workers, informal methods of control and labourers' resistance are also examined. The next chapter discusses the severe farm labour shortage and shows how it emerged from the tensions within labour tenancy and the increasing urban opportunities seized by farm workers. Attention is also paid to the farm labour policies of the pre-apartheid state and these are compared with the policies demanded by organised agriculture. The final chapter examines these processes during the 1950s. The effect of the slowdown in agricultural growth is discussed as is the limited success of the apartheid state's farm labour policies. It is suggested that the key to understanding the state's lack of success lies in differentiating between different categories of farmers. The agricultural crisis in the late 1950s and its effects are also analysed. Finally, it is suggested that the key determinants of agrarian development are accumulation and struggle rather than state policies.
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    Akuko Ntaka Inokubhabha Ngephiko Elinye ( No Bird Can Fly on One Wing): The 'Cattle-Killing Delusion' and Black Intellectuals, c1840-1910
    (2008) Bradford, Helen
    The agenda was set a century and a half ago. In a war zone in southern Africa, bureaucrats manning the states of the Cape Colony and adjacent British Kaffraria were witnessing – and transforming – what they deemed an extraordinary event.They coined names for it: ‘Cattle-Killing mania’, ‘Cattle-Killing’, ‘delusion’. They delineated its spatial boundaries: the mania was confined to Xhosaland and colonised Thembuland. They periodised it: the delusion lasted a year, beginning one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six years after the birth of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. They defined its racial and gender dynamics: the central actors were black men (who virtually monopolised cattle); they were inspired by a male prophet, Mhlakaza, assisted by his niece, Nongqawuse. Subsidiary pathologies were noted, including goat-killing, a ‘non-planting mania’ and preparations for an apocalypse, when the English would be replaced by peace, prosperity and black rulers, headed by resurrected forefathers bearing resurrected cattle.
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    Making it work : aspects of marriage, motherhood and money-earning among white South African women 1960-1990
    (1994) Clowes, Lindsay; Bradford, Helen
    This study provides a feminist perspective on aspects of change in white women's lives in South Africa between 1960 and 1990. Changing patterns of women's work, where work encompasses unpaid domestic labour as well as paid employment outside the home, are traced. The different ways in which women have combined their socially defined obligations as wives and mothers, as employees or employers, are considered. The primary sources used include open-ended interviews with women, magazines and the publications of women's organisations. The period 1960-1973 was one in which most white women left the paid labour force after marrying. Towards the end of the period, in the context of a booming economy and a perceived shortage of skilled white labour, more white wives were remaining in employment after marriage. The media, women's organisations, the state, big business and white male workers were addressing, in different ways, the conflict between white wives entering paid employment and the necessity to protect traditional values whereby 'good' wives stayed at home. 1974-1984 saw large and increasing numbers of white wives taking up paid work, both part-time and full-time. The period saw employed wives becoming increasingly commonplace, while the range of occupations open to them expanded. Observing that most remained in the lower levels of corporate hierarchies, women's organisations focused on eliminating the 'glass ceilings' said to block women's entry to higher paid positions. By 1985-1990, women were encouraged to be ambitious, assertive and to strive for self-fulfilment through their careers. The conflict of trying to achieve in the male dominated business world, combined with a sexual division of labour that persisted in defining the home and the family as women's work, saw many women leave the work place to start up home-based businesses.
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    A modernised man? : changing constructions of masculinity in Drum magazine, 1951-1984
    (2002) Clowes, Lindsay; Bradford, Helen; Van Sittert, Lance
    This study explores changes in the way that Drum magazine constructed manhood from the first edition of 1951 to its sale in 1984. The exploration is undertaken from a feminist post modern perspective that sees gender as a social construct and masculinity as a complex and multifaceted identity that is actively and creatively produced by men in relation to women and through the intersections with other identities such as sexuality, race, class, and ethnicity. I argue that Drum's constructions of the masculinity of black men were infused with both black and white notions of race and sex, informed by both western and African discourses of gender. At times these different discourses were in competition, at other times they were more compatible; together they shaped the representations of manhood found in Drum, which in turn helped legitimise and normalise particular ways of being a man in mid to late twentieth century South Africa.
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    Not only 'the younger daughter of Dr Abdurahman': a feminist exploration of early influences on the political development of Cissie Gool
    (2002) Van der Spuy, Patricia; Bradford, Helen; Bennett, Jane; Nasson, Bill; Adhikari, Mohamed
    Cissie Gool was an extraordinary presence on Cape Town's political and social scene in the first half of the twentieth century. She was the first black woman to preside over a national liberatory organisation, the National Liberation League (1935), and the Non-European United Front (1938). She was the only black woman to be elected to the Cape Town City Council before 1994, where she served for 25 years. She was the first black woman to obtain a Master's Degree in Psychology at the University of Cape Town, where she studied on and off from 1918 to the year of her death, 1963. In 1962 she graduated with a BA (LLB), and was the first black woman to be invited to the Cape Bar. This thesis explores the childhood and early life of Cissie Gool. I examine influences on her political development before she became the leader of the National Liberation League in 1935. This period of her life has left few material traces. Methodologically, this thesis confronts a challenge facing those who wish to discover hidden lives in the South African past. I argue that it is possible to trace influences on such a life if one shifts the lens through which one conducts historical research. Working with a paucity of sources, where most of the people who knew Cissie Gool as a young person are deceased, this thesis searches for and highlights key influences on Gool's early personal-political development. The thesis rests on a number of premises rooted in feminist theory. I begin from the position that 'the personal is political' and take seriously the argument that the family is a key engine of historical process. I take issue with the statement in much of the secondary literature that Cissie Gool was (merely) 'the younger daughter of Dr Abdurahman', which obscures the fact that this relationship was embedded in a family, in which Cissie's mother was at least as important as her father, and where being a younger daughter with an older sister was significant too. While recognising the significance of the fact that Cissie Gool was fathered by Dr Abdurahman, I underline the centrality of women in a patriarchal society where early socialisation is the specific task of women, and where women and girls experience some degree of social segregation from men and boys. In addition to focusing the lens on family dynamics, I trace sometimes tenuous but nevertheless, real threads linking Cissie Gool to particular political circles on the left in Cape Town in the 1920s and 1930s. I suggest that the leftist heterodoxy which characterised the mature Cissie Gool may be linked to a kindred political spirit among some of her early acquaintances, specifically those at the University of Cape Town, counterposed with the more rigid orthodoxies of friends of the Communist Party on the one hand, and on the other, the so-called Trotskyite purists with whom she was linked by marriage. Cissie Gool, may have been unique in her involvement in all three circles, which intersected at socials hosted by herself and her husband, Dr A H Gool. The androcentricity of both the secondary literature and contemporary documentary sources obscures the specifics of Cissie Gool's political development in this period. Nevertheless, this thesis is based on the premise that, in the absence of more concrete sources, an exploration of the various political circles with which Cissie Gool was associated, in the wider political and socio-economic context of 1920s and 1930s Cape Town, permits one to gain insight into key influences on the political development of Cissie Gool.
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    Not only 'the younger daughter of Dr Abdurahman': a feminist exploration of early influences on the political development of Cissie Gool
    (2002) Van der Spuy, Patricia; Bradford, Helen; Bennett, Jane; Nasson, Bill; Adhikari, Mohamed
    Cissie Gool was an extraordinary presence on Cape Town's political and social scene in the first half of the twentieth century. She was the first black woman to preside over a national liberatory organisation, the National Liberation League (1935), and the Non-European United Front (1938). She was the only black woman to be elected to the Cape Town City Council before 1994, where she served for 25 years. She was the first black woman to obtain a Master's Degree in Psychology at the University of Cape Town, where she studied on and off from 1918 to the year of her death, 1963. In 1962 she graduated with a BA (LLB), and was the first black woman to be invited to the Cape Bar. This thesis explores the childhood and early life of Cissie Gool. I examine influences on her political development before she became the leader of the National Liberation League in 1935. This period of her life has left few material traces. Methodologically, this thesis confronts a challenge facing those who wish to discover hidden lives in the South African past. I argue that it is possible to trace influences on such a life if one shifts the lens through which one conducts historical research. Working with a paucity of sources, where most of the people who knew Cissie Gool as a young person are deceased, this thesis searches for and highlights key influences on Gool's early personal-political development. The thesis rests on a number of premises rooted in feminist theory. I begin from the position that 'the personal is political' and take seriously the argument that the family is a key engine of historical process. I take issue with the statement in much of the secondary literature that Cissie Gool was (merely) 'the younger daughter of Dr Abdurahman', which obscures the fact that this relationship was embedded in a family, in which Cissie's mother was at least as important as her father, and where being a younger daughter with an older sister was significant too. While recognising the significance of the fact that Cissie Gool was fathered by Dr Abdurahman, I underline the centrality of women in a patriarchal society where early socialisation is the specific task of women, and where women and girls experience some degree of social segregation from men and boys. In addition to focusing the lens on family dynamics, I trace sometimes tenuous but nevertheless, real threads linking Cissie Gool to particular political circles on the left in Cape Town in the 1920s and 1930s. I suggest that the leftist heterodoxy which characterised the mature Cissie Gool may be linked to a kindred political spirit among some of her early acquaintances, specifically those at the University of Cape Town, counterposed with the more rigid orthodoxies of friends of the Communist Party on the one hand, and on the other, the so-called Trotskyite purists with whom she was linked by marriage. Cissie Gool, may have been unique in her involvement in all three circles, which intersected at socials hosted by herself and her husband, Dr A H Gool. The androcentricity of both the secondary literature and contemporary documentary sources obscures the specifics of Cissie Gool's political development in this period. Nevertheless, this thesis is based on the premise that, in the absence of more concrete sources, an exploration of the various political circles with which Cissie Gool was associated, in the wider political and socio-economic context of 1920s and 1930s Cape Town, permits one to gain insight into key influences on the political development of Cissie Gool.
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    Pondoks, houses, and hostels : a history of Nyanga 1946-1970, with a special focus on housing
    (1996) Fast, Hildegarde Helene; Bradford, Helen
    In this thesis I outline the history of Nyanga up to 1970. Diverse aspects are covered, including location politics, women's protests, rent arrears and boycotts, and gangsterism. There is a special focus on housing issues, for they were related to most facets of location life and demonstrated the contradictions within apartheid policy. Four themes are followed throughout the thesis. First, the extent to which the state achieved control of the African urban population is assessed, particularly in terms of its housing and influx control policies. I argue that the formulation and implementation of policies were influenced minimally by pressures "from below", and that central and local authorities achieved extensive control over the lives of urban Africans. Nevertheless, government officials did not succeed in curbing African urbanisation or controlling the residential movement of urban Africans, as witnessed by the high number of "illegal" Africans and consistently high tenancy turnover. A second topic that threads its way through the thesis is the role of African constables and clerks in Nyanga. I show that residents working with the location administration were attracted particularly to the material benefits of collaboration. Utilising their linguistic skills and knowledge of location inhabitants, they extracted money and sexual favours from Nyanga residents and were given first priority in the allocation of Old Location houses. They did not, however, form an identifiable social group as they came from diverse occupational and educational backgrounds and did not associate closely with one another. A third theme is the differential impact of apartheid laws on African women. I outline the laws that applied to urban African women and describe the actual process by which they were expelled from the Cape Peninsula. Arising from this, the changing nature and scope of women's demonstrations in Nyanga is described. My research shows that the protests of the early 1950s, which were small, infrequent, and centred on local issues, broadened in the late 1950s to include the application of pass laws to African women. The reasons for the change are shown to be both political and material in nature, with their origin in the forced removals from Peninsula shack settlements. Fourthly, I have concentrated on spatial dynamics at various points. There were significant differences in physical space between Mau-Mau and the Old Location, which contributed to the social distance between the two neighbourhoods. During the massive "black spot" clearance campaign of the 1950s, the authorities succeeded in gaining spatial control over Africans by forcing them into segregated, fenced locations where entry and exit was monitored. To counteract this, residents asserted their control over the transit camp by constructing shacks in such a way as to impede raiding pass officials and make administrative surveillance of their lives difficult. The contradictory effects of placing contract workers in accommodation next to families are also examined: on the one hand, there was considerable socialising and cooperation between the two groups; on the other, much friction developed over the relationships between women in the married quarters and men in the hostels.
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    Women, welfare and the nurturing of Afrikaner nationalism : a social history of the Afrikaanse Christelike Vroue Vereniging, c.1870-1939
    (1996) Du Toit, Marijke; Bradford, Helen
    This thesis focuses on the Afrikaans Christian Women's Organisation (ACVV), placed within the context of Afrikaner nationalist activity, and traces the variety of ways in which white, Afrikaans, middle-class women sought to construct a racially exclusive 'Afrikaner' people. Stereotypical portrayals of Afrikaner women as passive followers of an ideology constructed by men are challenged. The gendered construction of nationalism is initially examined by tracing the transition from a religious, evangelical, late nineteenth century gender discourse to an increasingly explicit Afrikaner nationalist discourse in the early twentieth century. The ACVV participated in the construction of a popular Afrikaner nationalist culture that portrayed Afrikaans women as mothers of the people or volksmoeders. The first ACVV leaders were acutely aware of the 'New Women' who abandoned conventional notions of femininity - they tried to construct a public, political identity for Afrikaans women that met the challenges of the 'modern' world, yet remained true to Afrikaner 'tradition'. The ACVV sought to fashion Afrikaans whites into 'Afrikaners' through philanthropic activity. At first, this was especially true of rural branches, but from the early 1920s, Cape Town's ACVV also responded to the growing influx of 'poor whites' by focusing specifically on social welfare work. One particular concern was the danger that women working together with blacks posed for the volk. Research on the ACVV's philanthropy is complemented by a study of the lives of landless and impoverished whites in the Cape countryside and Cape Town. Archival material and 'life history' interviews are used to explore the working lives of white, Afrikaans-speaking women who moved from rural areas to Cape Town during the 1920s and 1930s. Complex and contradictory strands made up the private and political lives of female Afrikaner nationalists. During the 1920s, they sought to create a political role for themselves by constructing a 'maternalist', nationalist discourse that articulated the notion of separate spheres for men and women -but extended vrouesake (women's issues). In many ways these were conservative women - yet they adjusted, even challenged, conventional gender roles in Afrikaans communities. In the 1930s, the four provincial Afrikaans women's welfare organisations sought to shape state-subsidised social welfare programmes. The ACVV and its sister organisations had increasingly fraught dealings with Afrikaner nationalist men in the state and church. who did not share the women's vision of female leadership in social welfare policy.