Browsing by Author "Phillips, Howard"

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    100 years old and still making history: The centenary of the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town
    (2004) Phillips, Howard
    Observing institutional birthdays is not something academic historians readily undertake nowadays – their training makes them habitually wary of the constructed nature of such events and of the self-preening which usually accompanies them. All too often such occasions become part of a celebration of an invented tradition of origins, in which founders’ days are ‘seized on with alacrity for displays of pageantry, where, with high-ranking officials ever present, the narrative inevitably extol[s] … supposed progress and virtues’.1 However, commemorating a centenary is perhaps in a different category, for doing so has long roots in Western culture, dating back to the Biblical Jubilee, the Roman Catholic Church’s first Holy Year in 1300 and the veneration of the decimal system by the European Enlightenment. This makes marking a centenary seem quite natural, so easing the discomfort of historians with such an occasion. Moreover, when, as in the case of the centenary of the foundation of the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) chair of history in 2003, the original event also signalled the inception of history as a university discipline in its own right in subSaharan Africa, the inducement to commemorate this step is difficult to resist. Added to this, 100 years is a meaningful timespan for reflecting on an institution, being long enough for a degree of historical perspective but short enough to permit the voices of some of the actors to be clearly heard too, perhaps once and – thanks to the tape recorder and video camera – forever. In a centenary year, therefore, both a microscope and telescope can be employed to good effect. It was with such ideas in mind that in 2002 UCT’s Department of Historical Studies contemplated its coming centenary and decided not to let it pass unnoticed.
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    A Caledonian college in Cape Town and beyond: An investigation into the foundation(s) of the South African university system
    (Stellenbosch University, 2003) Phillips, Howard
    Adopting a historical approach, this article traces the origins of key features of the South African university system, namely the general nature of its undergraduate degrees, its heavy reliance on lectures to convey information and its extensive use of examinations to assess levels of student achievement. This historical investigation finds the roots of these features in the unreformed Scottish university system which was enthusiastically embraced by South Africa's first two teaching universities, the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Stellenbosch, in 1918, and which then was adopted by those universities which were set up in their image during the next 70 years. The article suggests that any attempt to reform the country's university system today must take account of the historical circumstances which produced it originally.
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    Becoming liberal : a history of the National Union of South African students : 1945-1955
    (2001) Larkin, Clare; Phillips, Howard
    The National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) was established in 1924 as a forum for white South African students. The rise of Afrikaner Nationalism in the 1930s and the establishment of the ultra-nationalist Afrikaanse Studentebond (ANS) led to the disaffiliation from NUSAS of the student bodies of the Afrikaans-medium universities. Until the end of the Second World War, two groups of students jostled for control of NUSAS. The first championed the ideal of a broad white South African national feeling and worked for the return of the Afikaans-speaking centres, while the second group, predominantly left-wing radicals based at Wits, called for NUSAS to become a racially more inclusive organisation and admit Fort Hare to membership.
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    Beyond the city limits : people and property at Wynberg 1795-1927
    (1996) Robinson, Enid Helen; Le Cordeur, B A; Phillips, Howard
    This study of peri-urban development in the Western Cape examines the acquisition and exploitation of property as an important feature in attaining economic power and high social status by upwardly-mobile people in a colonial setting. The choice of Wynberg in the southern Cape Peninsula as a focal point in this process is predicated upon its rapid growth during the nineteenth century in response to the need for a service centre in this comparatively undeveloped area, and the vigorous marketing which followed its recognition as a desirable and convenient place of residence. Its establishment owed much to the presence and requirements of the British military camp at Wynberg, but its continued growth and expansion can be attributed to the activities of the property developers, the efforts of a lively commercial sector and the construction of the Wynberg Railway. This process of residential and economic development is the main theme of the first five chapters of this thesis and is based, inter alia, on intensive primary research in the Cape Town Deeds Office. By 1880 Wynberg had become the centre of a new surge of growth beyond the city limits of Cape Town, eventually achieving smalltown status with its own independent municipality. There were substantial demographic changes in the area and this thesis contends that the multi-faceted development at Wynberg was facilitated both by particular individuals and interest groups. The inequalities in its evolving social formation which included not only landed proprietors but also many landless people, was not unique and was informed by the pervasive colonial belief in the dominance of European organising principles and capitalist market forces in relation to the exploitation of land. Historically, Wynberg resisted incorporation into the metropolitan area because it had achieved a high level of self-sufficiency by the end of the century. The institution of its municipal council and the defence of its independence prior to and after 1913 when the other Peninsula municipalities were amalgamated with Cape Town, forms the second major theme which is examined in Chapters 6 to 9 of this thesis. Its determined struggle to retain its autonomy ended in 1127 when it yielded to financial and other pressures, whereupon it was formally incorporated within the city limits of Cape Town.
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    Consumptive Cape Town : the Chapel Street TB clinic, 1941-1964
    (2002) Kilpatrick, Fiona; Phillips, Howard
    This thesis focuses on the history of the Chapel Street TB Clinic and Administration Centre in Cape Town from 1941 to 1964. The author set out to evaluate the Cape Town City Council's attempts to control the TB epidemic, through the lens of the Chapel Street TB Clinic, in order to provide a local perspective on the history of TB in South Africa. A number of questions informed the direction of this study. Firstly, what initiated and shaped the response of the Cape Town City Council's Health Department to TB? Secondly, what were the underlying assumptions and attitudes of the City's public health administrators and medical officers to a TB epidemic that predominantly affected blacks? Lastly, why did the City's TB campaign take the form that it did, with the establishment of a medically focussed anti-TB scheme guided by the concept of the "direct attack" on TB.
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    Epidemics in South African history
    (2013) Phillips, Howard
    by Professor Howard Phillips, Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town, this lecture series explores five major epidemics that have ravaged South Africa, namely smallpox, the bubonic plague, Spanish Flu, Polio and HIV. This lecture series will be useful for anyone interested in learning about epidemics in SA history.
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    A history of the Colonial Bacteriological Institute 1891-1905
    (2003) Madida, Ngqabutho; Phillips, Howard
    Africa was not a white man's grave just because it killed people, it was a white man's grave because it threatened to destroy the crops and animals that were the basis of the settlers' survival. Thus in 1891 the first research institute of its kind in Southern Africa if not in Africa was established in South Africa to deal with this threat. Its life span of fourteen years was accompanied by both personal and institutional achievement. Although still within the original aim of research, there was pursuit of 'breakthrough glory' that led to blunders and, in part, to the downfall of the man and the closure of the institute. The Colonial Bacteriological Institute (CBI) sometimes known as the Colonial Institute was the first bacteriological research laboratory set up in the Cape Colony to investigate human and stock diseases. This dissertation seeks to examine the history of that institute, from its beginning in 1891 to its closure in 1905.
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    Labour, capital and the state in the St. Helena Bay fisheries c.1856 - c.1956
    (1992) Van Sittert, Lance; Phillips, Howard
    This thesis deals with the history of the St Helena Bay inshore fisheries, 1856-1956. Fishing has long been neglected by social and economic historians and the myths propagated by company and popular writers still hold sway. The thesis challenges these by situating commercial fishing at St Helena Bay in the context of changing regional, national and international economies and showing how it was shaped and conditioned by the struggle for ownership of the marine resource between labour and capital, mediated by the state. The thesis is organised chronologically into three epochs. In each the focus moves from macro to micro, tracing the processes of class formation, capital accumulation and state intervention. The first epoch (c.1856-c.1914) examines the merchant fisheries, the second (c.1914-c.1939) the crayfish canning industry and the third ( c.1939-c.195) secondary industrialisation. It is argued that the common property nature of the marine resource and non-identity between labour and production time in fishing created obstacles to capitalist production, discouraging investment and allowing petty-commodity production to flourish. The latter mediated the vagaries of production through a share system of co-adventuring which enabled owners to avoid paying a fixed wage. This system's impact on the nature and consciousness of fishing labour is examined as is its vulnerability to capture by other capitals through insecure land tenure and credit. Fishing capital, in both its merchant and productive guises was dependent on articulation with petty-commodity production to provide it with commodities or raw material and bear the cost of reproducing labour. Articulation was hampered at St Helena Bay both by the persistence of merchant capital and the rent and labour interests of Sandveld agriculture. The origins and effect of this situation on the fisheries is detailed and discussed, highlighting the importance of agricultural capital's political influence with the colonial and provincial state in blocking or subverting the development of productive capital. The advent of the interventionist central state in the 1930s undermined merchant and farmer dominance of the fisheries and cleared the way for the articulation of petty-commodity primary production with secondary industry during and after the Second World War. This articulation was facilitated by the central state restricting access to the marine · resource and investing heavily in marine research and infrastructure to roll-back the natural constraints on fishing and create the conditions for the establishment of a stable capitalist production regime.
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    "Little Madeira": the Portuguese in Woodstock c.1940-c.1980
    (1993) Machado, Pedro; Phillips, Howard
    This dissertation seeks to trace the forty-year evolution or the Portuguese or Madeiran immigrant community of Woodstock between the 1940s and 1980s. As the majority of Portuguese in Woodstock came from Madeira the terms, Portuguese and Madeiran, will be used interchangeably when referring to the immigrants. Throughout this period, Woodstock began to attract significant numbers of Portuguese immigrants, earning it the name' Little Madeira'. It became, in fact, the first suburb in Cape Town in which a distinct, Portuguese ethnic community developed .The dissertation is an attempt, however tentative, at the reconstruction of the history of the Portuguese community whilst at (he same time endeavouring to stress the importance of the contribution of sustained immigrant study to parochial and national histories.
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    The making of rural health care in colonial Zimbabwe : a history of the Ndanga Medical Unit, Fort Victoria, 1930-1960s
    (2012) Ncube, Glen; Phillips, Howard
    This thesis adopts a social history of medicine approach to explore the contradictions surrounding a specific attempt to develop a rural healthcare system in south-eastern colonial Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) from the 1930s to the 1960s. Influenced by a combination of healthcare discourses and models, in 1930, the colony’s new medical director formulated the first comprehensive rural healthcare delivery plan, premised on the idea of ‘medical units’ or outlying dispensaries networked around rural hospitals. The main argument of the thesis is that the Ndanga Medical Unit, as this pioneer medical unit was known, was a variant of a typical colonial project characterised by tensions between innovative endeavours to control disease on the one hand, and the need to fulfil broader colonial ambitions on the other.
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    Reflections on writing and teaching history in Africa in the twenty-first century
    (2004) Phillips, Howard
    Given the predominantly South Africanist composition of those participating in the colloquium, it was not unexpected that the discussion throughout was heavily canted towards the historiography of South Africa, and especially to producing it rather than teaching and communicating it. This proved to be no less the case in the final session, which sought to provide space to stand back and reflect on what had been discussed during the preceding days. The observations which follow emerged jointly from the audience and a panel of four historians, Professors Toyin Falola (University of Texas), Shula Marks (London University), Nelly Hanna (American University of Cairo) and William Beinart (Oxford University).
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    Reports on Colloquium Sessions
    (2004) Adhikari, Mohammed; Phillips, Howard; van der Watt, Liese; Rijsdijk, Ian-Malcolm; van Sittert, Lance; Deacon, Harriet; Erlank, Natasha; Clowes, Lindsay; Worden, Nigel; Bickford-Smith, Vivian
    Since the late 1980s the environmental trope in South African history has been gradually elevated to a field of enquiry in its own right. The impetus to this transformation has been varied, the blossoming of environmental history in the North American academy and green politics and agrarian social history in South Africa being among the more influential.
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    The South African Library as a state-aided national library in the era of apartheid : an administrative history
    (2015) Coates, Peter Ralph; Phillips, Howard
    The Public Library in Cape Town was founded in the earliest days of British civil rule in Southern Africa, as a Government-funded free library of reference with the purpose of educating and enculturating the 'youth' of the Cape Colony along European (especially English) lines. Government funding being withdrawn in 1829, the Library became an autonomous subscription library while continuing to provide access to its reference collections free of charge. During the ensuing 125 years the Library (known as the South African (Public) Library) becameincreasingly dependenton Government financial aid to provide certain 'national' functions. By 1954 it was the pre-eminent research library in sub-Saharan Africa and enjoyed total autonomy within the limits of its 1893 Act of the former Cape Colonial Parliament. This study follows the transformation of the South African Library into a Stateaided national library after it had divested itself of its local circulating services in 1955 and its subsequent existence with limited autonomy and increasing financial difficulties. During the transformation process, the National Party came into office in 1948 and introduced its authoritarian, centralizing style of administration. Many of the new Government's policies conflicted with the ethos and practices of the South African Library, particularly the promotion ofWhite Afrikaner culture in the place of the Library's generally White Anglophile culture, and the implementation of racial policies in the place of the Library's non-racialism. By the time the implications of National Party 'apartheid' policies became evident, it was too late for the Library to revert to its previous state. The scope of this administrative history of the Library in this era is limited to an analysis of themes which illuminate the relationship between the State, the Library, the Library's users, and the library profession at large during the development and eventual downfall in 1994 of National Party rule. The central themes are the Library's struggle to retain maximum professional autonomy in the context of its almost total dependence upon the State for its funding; the degree of State funding being determined by Government's perception of the Library's legitimacy and contribution to its policy priorities. Despite providing distinguished services to research (both formal and informal), especially in the humanities, and having perhaps the best collection in the country of published and manuscript material relating to Southern Africa, the South African Library was unable to attract the funding needed to sustain its rapidly growing collections and overwhelming amount of use. When the National Party left office in 1994, the Library was already on the point of financial collapse, and the incoming African National Congress Government had more pressing priorities. The South African Library failed, and in 1999, together with the State Library in Pretoria (which was itself in difficulties), became part of the National Library of South Africa in a development which, fifteen years later, must still be considered a compromise. Since the author considers the two-site compromise to be unsustainable, the study concludes with a review of various proposals which were put forward by library professionals between 1955 and 1994 which may profitably be revisited. The research was based on documentary records in the extensive administrative archive of the South African Library. This has been supplemented from published sources and recollections of the author and former colleagues.
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    The role of the university in writing and teaching history in Africa in the twenty-first century
    (2004) Phillips, Howard
    On three scores this session differed from most other sessions of the colloquium. First, in Professor Robert Addo-Fening from the University of Ghana it had a nonSouth Africanist as lead-in speaker; second, half of its panel of discussants consisted of educationalists whose primary focus was history in schools rather than history at universities; and third, the session was chaired by a ‘historian manqué’ (as he termed himself), the sociologist Professor Robin Cohen, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at UCT. These features gave to discussions an unusually wide range, which helped broaden the perspectives of the South African historians who made up the bulk of those present at the colloquium.
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    The Van Riebeeck Society's journey: The origins and destination of the Van Riebeeck Society, 1918-2004
    (2005) Phillips, Howard
    Recognizing that the 86-year old Van Riebeeck Society for the Publication of South African Historical Documents is sui generis in South Africa, as a long-existing cultural organization dedicated solely to the publication of primary historical documents, this article investigates its origins, output and strategy for continued existence. The article locates the Society's origin in the ethos of white nation-building accompanying the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910. Keen to establish the historical pedigree of the (white) nation, supporters of the idea sought to publicize its heritage and history. After attempts to publish primary source material on the latter were initially unable to secure financial backing from the hard-pressed Union Government, recourse was instead had to the South African Public Library as a publishing body; however, when the second volume in its historical publishing series drew sharp political flak, this task was shifted to the new Van Riebeeck Society which was specifically set up in 1918 for this purpose. Since then, it has published 88 volumes containing rich original source material on southern Africa. The article analyses the nature of these 88 volumes and concludes that they represent a narrow conception of South African history, topically, chronologically, linguistically and authorially. How this conception is nowadays being broadened is the focus of the final section of the article.
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    Treating white poverty in interwar South Africa: 'Civilised labour' and the construction of Groote Schuur Hospital 1926-1938
    (2005) Phillips, Howard
    So central to the South African state's interwar labour policies was the notion of 'civilised labour' that contemporary scholars as distinguished as Hancock, De Kiewiet and Hutt used that label as chapter titles to characterise those policies as a whole. To them its significance in the bigger picture of South Africa's history was clear. In Hancock's opinion, it gave explicit expression to the fundamental conviction "that 'civilization' and 'whiteness' are aspects of the same thing".
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    Two far south : the responses of South African and Southern Jews to apartheid and segregation in the 1950s and 1960s
    (2003) Mendelsohn, Adam D; Shain, Milton; Phillips, Howard
    This dissertation uses the comparative historical method to compare and contrast the responses of Southern and South African Jews to apartheid and segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. It focuses on the interrelationship of the two communities with reform rabbis and international Jewish organizations. The dissertation argues that the nature of individual and institutional responses was significantly shaped by exposure to a set of factors common to the South and South Africa. The dissertation is thematic, employing a variety of case studies. The dissertation begins by examining the effect of frontier conditions on reform rabbis. The author argues that the dispersed reform pulpits prevalent in these two contexts, and the type of rabbi that they generally attracted, served to inhibit civil rights activism. Differential exposure to these conditions, together with the presence of various liberating features, determined the risks and opportunities that frontier rabbis encountered. Thereafter, the dissertation analyzes the interactions of the Southern and South African Jewish communities with northern-based national Jewish organizations (in the case of the former) and international Jewish organizations (in the case of the latter). The author compares the interplay of the Southern lodges of the B'nai B'rith with the Anti-Defamation League, and the interrelationship of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies with various overseas Jewish groups. Whereas in the first section, rabbinical responses in the South Africa and the South are analysed together, here the two communities are dealt with separately. The author argues that the responses of external organizations were shaped by pressure from constituencies in the South and South Africa. These pressures competed with other philosophical and political considerations in determining policy towards segregation and apartheid.
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    Writing and teaching national history in Africa in an era of global history
    (Taylor & Francis, 2004) Phillips, Howard
    This session of the colloquium began where the preceding one had left off, with the lead-in speaker, Professor Toyin Falola of the University of Texas, arguing that if ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ were meaningful concepts for historical understanding, so too was ‘nation’. For him, national history was both meaningful and vital in the current era of globalisation, when global history was being touted as the only paradigm within which seriously to understand modern processes and events. Indeed, he believed that national history was an essential defence – even means of survival – against the dominant brand of global history in the contemporary world, which in his view amounted to ‘a narrative of western power and its expansion, …[which sought to turn] the national history of one great power [the USA] into the metanarrative of global history … by eras[ing] the experiences of so-called local identities, sweeping the dust of the ethnic under the carpet of the national, and the national itself under the table of the universal’.