Browsing by Author "Mager, Anne"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    "The advancement of art" : policy and practice at the South African National Gallery, 1940-1962
    (2004) Lilla, Qanita; Mager, Anne
    This thesis is an enquiry into the policies and practices that shaped the South African National Gallery in the 1940s and 1950s. Drawing on newspaper reports, the South African National Gallery's exhibition catalogues, pamphlets and annual reports, records of parliamentary debate and the crucial report of the Stratford Commission of 1948 the study has reconstructed a detailed history of the South African National Gallery. Established in 1871 as a colonial museum catering for a small part of the settler population of British descent, the museum came under pressure to accommodate the Afrikaner community after 1948. This did not mean that the liberal ethos at the museum disappeared, however. The South African National Gallery was strongly influenced by public pressure in this period. Public outrage over controversial art sales in 1947 led to the appointment of a commission of enquiry into the workings of the museum. At the same time, the head of the Board of Trustees, Cecil Sibbett, engaged the public on matters of Modern art. The museum's conservative and controversial Director, Edward Roworth was replaced in 1949 by John Paris who ushered in a new phase of development and management, encouraged the reconceptualization of South African art and reorganized the permanent collection. This initiative took place despite decreased autonomy for the Director and increased government imposition of Afrikaner Nationalist ideology. Nevertheless, the South African National Gallery avoided becoming a political instrument of the Apartheid regime.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Development as unfreedom : the role of mine migrant labour institutions as agents of development in the Transkei, 1886-1980s
    (2015) Glover, Michael John; Mager, Anne
    Early liberal historians predominantly criticised the migrant labour system for its economic irrationality. After high GDP growth and steady benefits from gold mining in the 1960s, Marxist scholars in the 1970s pointed to the destructive impact of the system. Since 1994, the challenge inter alia has been to forge a new developmental path for the economy. In 2012 the National Development Plan set out its aim to “eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by 2030”.1 This is the challenge. For the country or region to ‘develop’ and eliminate ‘poverty’ we need to know what we are trying to eliminate and what our development is trying to achieve. This thesis examines the migrant labour system in the Transkei through a lens of development and asks how and to what extent the system inhibited the development of the Transkei and its peoples. Using Amartya Sen’s conception of development - which sees development as a process of expanding social, political, and economic freedoms/capabilities - this thesis offers a view of migrant labour institutions in terms of how they created and engendered deprivation and unfreedom in the Transkei. It is an attempt to understand our ‘developmental past’ and to understand how development in the Transkei has been frustrated and inhibited by formal institutions. Amartya Sen’s notions of ‘development’ and ‘deprivation’ offer an autonomy- and freedom-centred approach to thinking about poverty and development. Specifically the thesis examines the nexus of formal institutions underpinning the migrant labour system - including state laws, the Native Affairs Department, and the Native Recruiting Corporation - in terms of how they acted to inhibit the development of mineworkers and labour exporting regions like the Transkei.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Gender, livelihoods and conservation in Hluleka, Mpondoland c.1920 to the present : land, forests and marine resources
    (2013) Emdon, Leila; Mager, Anne
    This thesis focuses on the Ngqeleni district of Mpondoland and particularly on the communities living adjacent to the Hluleka Nature Reserve from c. 1920 to the present. It aims to discuss the history of conservation in the area and the relationship of the local community and its leaders to conservation authorities. It seeks to demonstrate that conservation, both terrestrial and marine is experienced in different ways by men and women who consequently respond to the authorities in different ways. More particularly, it suggests that conservation both past and present has tended to be top-down and has failed to anticipate the effect of state measures on local livelihood strategies.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Leisure and the making of KwaMashu, 1958-1989
    (2010) Molefe, Siphesihle Cyril; Mager, Anne
    This thesis explains the role played by recreation and leisure in the making of the township of KwaMashu from 1958 to 1989. The study shows how the Durban Corporation provided housing, infrastructure and recreational amenities in KwaMashu, while extending its administrative control over the township. It explores the emergence of an urban African middle class and how the residents of KwaMashu organized and created new forms of leisure activities autonomous from the state. It also explores the extent at which the incorporation of KwaMashu under KwaZulu homeland, created conflict between Inkatha and the ANC/UDF supporters in KwaMashu and how this conflict affected the participation in leisure and recreational activities in the 1980s.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    “Of unsound mind”: a history of three Eastern Cape mental institutions, 1875-1910
    (2001) Swanson, Felicity; Mager, Anne
    This thesis investigates the origins, development and consolidation of a regional network of three publicly funded and regulated mental institutions in the colonial Eastern Cape, between the years 1875 to 1910. Fort England asylum in Grahamstown was established in 1875. Port Alfred asylum followed in 1889 and the Fort Beaufort institution was opened in 1894. Each asylum retained its own distinctive character and function based on the nature of its patient population. Although geographically dispersed the asylums were intimately connected to each other, forming one integrated system to treat and manage the mentally ill. This thesis critically examines the changing patterns of care in these Eastern Cape institutions, during an important period of social, economic and political change in the Cape Colony. It traces the social and ideological construction of mental illness that was shaped by the racial, class and gendered hierarchies of colonial society. Based on empirical research, this thesis draws on Foucault's insights into the character and uses of disciplinary power implicated in the production of 'regimes of truth' about the mentally ill. The Eastern Cape institutions provide an important record of the ways in which the power invested in psychiatric theory and practice was exercised in a colonial context. In a moment hailed for its reform and progress in the treatment and care of mental illness, strategies for the exclusion, regulation and control of black mental patients were expanded in these Eastern Cape institutions. The major legacy in the treatment of mental illness in the Eastern Cape was the establishment of a system of control for black patients that was to inform future policy decisions after Union.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Urbanizing the North-eastern Frontier: the frontier intelligentsia and the making of colonial Queenstown, c.1859-1857
    (2012) Voss, Megan; Mager, Anne
    The rich and varied literature on the eastern Cape frontier has not yet reached the north-eastern frontier of the mid-nineteenth century. Urban centres and towns have also been largely ignored. Moreover, the perspective of the Anglophone intellectuals in these towns has rarely been analysed, and has instead been subsumed within a uniform ‘frontier voice’.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Witzieshoek : women, cattle and rebellion
    (1995) Beerstecher, Shan; Mager, Anne
    This study focusses on the 1950 Witzieshoek rebellion from a gender perspective. It examines the context within which the rebellion occurred, spanning a period from 1930 to 1950 and looks at the impact of the rebellion on the state. The years leading up to the Witzieshoek rebellion were characterized by crisis as the government struggled to maintain authority over the African masses in general and African women in particular. Witzieshoek residents had to contend with growing deterioration of resources, migration and the implementation of a betterment programme. These had a differential impact on men and women in the reserve, leading to a loss of power in male authority structures and increasing autonomy for women. This fed into and moulded the development of a culture of resistance in the community which exploded in 1950 when the majority of the inhabitants revolted against the Native Affairs Department and the Trust. The Witzieshoek rebellion was a desperate bid to return to older and more familiar ways of organization which had been based on the productive and reproductive capacity of women. The men and women who rebelled were denouncing the organization of the community on Trust and Departmental terms. The response of the state to the rebellion was to appoint a Commission of Enquiry. The Commission, operating at a time when 'native' policy was being fiercely debated, was unable to offer the kind of solutions that Nationalist Party policy would eventually demand. Both the rebellion and the Commission of Enquiry failed to bring about any meaningful change to the conditions in Witzieshoek.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Women of St. Marks, Transkei : negotiating customary law, c.1940 - c.1960
    (2009) Kabandula, Abigail; Mager, Anne
    This thesis explores the ways in which customary law affected the women of the St. Marks district, Transkei between 1940 and 1960. In particular, it examines how women worked within and through customary law and the customary law courts in order to obtain redress for their problems. The thesis discusses the argument that the codification of customary law was the result of collaboration between older African men and colonial administrators and that its effect was to increase and render more rigid the patriarchal control of women. It argues that literature on women and customary law shows that after African customs were codified, their form and content changed in accordance with British administrators' legal and administrative needs. Women's legal and social status was negatively affected. The codified law emphasised the patriarchal aspects of the African custom and reduced women's social status in society. However, the thesis concludes that the question of how far customary law oppressed women has not yet been resolved. Using Customary Law Court Cases and records from the Chiefs Courts, the Native Commissioner Courts and the Native Appeal Courts of St. Marks District in Cofimvaba in Transkei from the late 1930s to the early 1960s, this thesis explores how women viewed themselves in relation to the law and also to the way it was applied by officials in the courts. It also explores and how women negotiated customary law in a bid to deal with the changes in the lives brought about by Christianity, capitalism and migrant labour. Missionary teachings, colonial rule, capitalism and migrant labour were significant social and economic factors that greatly affected the lives of the women of St. Marks. In court, educated women married by Christian rites were able to manipulate and challenge patriarchal values and frustrate men's attempts to prevent their access to property and inheritance or their efforts to demean women in various ways. The thesis shows that African women were not merely victims of customary law. Rather, they found ways of negotiating their agency within the confines of the customary law courts.