OpenUCT :: Browsing by Subject "African Studies"

Browsing by Subject "African Studies"

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African solutions to African problems: An assessment of the African Union (AU)'s policy implementation for peace and security in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since 2004
(2023) Yuksel, Aysegul; Bam-Hutchison, June
Despite the historical significance of states in Africa gaining political independence since the 1950s, the continent has struggled with the challenges of sustaining security and peace. African leaders, who set out with the ideals of the iconic Nkrumah's ‘Pan-Africanism' of the 1950s, as committed to in the launching of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, sought permanent solutions to problems rooted in this decolonial ideal when they founded the subsequent African Union (AU) in 2002. The stated aim of the AU was to create peace, security, and stability in Africa. Accordingly, the slogan ‘African solutions to African problems' is closely linked to Pan-Africanism as a decolonial philosophy and driving force that became a policy objective. The African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), implemented in 2002 at the founding of the AU, was established as a mechanism to obtain this objective. The AU has undertaken to take a leading role and responsibility in addressing violent conflicts in Africa as the root issue lies in the historical context that African problems are neither caused nor continued by sovereign African agencies; the point is historically, politically, and economically more complex. Hence, the stated ideal of the aphorism ‘African solutions to African problems' can only be meaningfully attained if the mechanisms to achieve peace and security are situated within sovereign African agencies and cultural political philosophies – the complexities of the global and post-colonial political and economic context notwithstanding. This mini-thesis critically engages the stated Africa-centred decolonial aspiration and approach for sovereignty and asks, therefore, to what extent the AU has succeeded in applying its sovereign agency in achieving ‘African solutions' designed for peace in the case study of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since 2004.
Open Access
"Ah, what an age it is, when to speak of trees is almost a crime" : national landscapes and identities in the fiction of Nadine Gordimer
(2016) Middleton, Jemima; Garuba, Harry
In this study, I will explore the ways in which Nadine Gordimer engages with the natural world in three of her novels: The Conservationist (1974), July's People (1981), and No Time Like the Present (2012). I argue for the importance of the relationship in her work, between the natural landscapes of South Africa and the responsibility of the author in 'meaning-making:' this is a literary study that brings elements of postcolonial ecocriticism into play. In particular, I will explore how and why she chooses to "speak of trees" at all. Gordimer demonstrates that there is a definitive agency in the non!human world that presses against the reductive binary of 'human' versus 'natural' environments. Her fiction highlights the fact that flattening the natural world into a series of symbols is overly simplistic and does not engage sufficiently with the political: a responsibility that she takes upon herself. In this study I will be arguing that Gordimer achieves a profound political meditation by creating meaning from a variety of natural landscapes, making use of images rather than symbols. I am particularly intrigued by the ways in which Gordimer imagines the landscape as a series of sign systems, whose various shifts and changes reflect and illustrate wider systemic shifts in South Africa. In the novels that I will examine, Gordimer demonstrates, by way of physical, visceral engagement with various landscapes, that historical and contemporary systemic shifts must be taken into account in order truly to understand the complexity of national identities in her country. The image of the trees ties poetry, politics and the environment together, in particular to witness a distinctive shift in political sign systems, and the identity crises that occur as a result. In The Conservationist, Gordimer takes issue with misplaced obsessions with autochthony and heritage, whilst simultaneously investing in the lexical field of botanical names and a fine delineation of literary ecology: the novel both takes apart and preserves a sense of how the landscape can be entwined in a cultivation of identity. In my examination of July's People, I will consider the matter and poetics of the interregnum via the question of "the bush": the environment, landscape and ecosystem contained or in fact uncontained by this term are at the heart of the shift in sign systems that plays out in the novel. The bush in July's People is a heterotopia: an 'other' place that signifies many different meanings, but simultaneously signifies, in the novel, a shift in an entire system of signs. In my final chapter, on No Time Like the Present, I will be continuing to examine the 'language' of trees in Gordimer's work! particularly noting the terminology of trees and plants to signify, and add value to the study of identity and the indigenous versus the alien
Open Access
An analysis of Twitter’s role between 2012 and 2018 in contributing to the new way Black Millennials of African Ancestry produce 21st Century PanAfrican Knowledge and Social Activity
(2019) Rasool, Amira; Bam-Hutchison, June
Social media has provided new opportunities for Black millennials1 (individuals born between 1981–1996) of the diaspora and Africa to communicate, learn, build social and political movements, and curate joint identities. As a result of this group’s active use of social media over the last decade, Black millennials of African ancestry — referred to collectively in this thesis as ‘Africans’ — have become primary research subjects in the study of social media patterns. This research reveals a contemporary tendency for these Africans to engage in Pan-African social and political activities online. Twitter, in particular, has emerged as one of the most useful tools for centralizing Pan-African ideas and activities. The inclusion of Twitter in Pan-African discourses is a new phenomenon that has only narrowly been explored by scholars that analyzed the impact of Twitter on the global African community (Black Africans and Black People of African Ancestry). These works, however, have neglected to illustrate the ways in which Twitter, and most notably ‘Black Twitter’ , has aided in developing a new 21st century definition of Pan- 2 African activity and knowledge. The research explores the way millennials of African ancestry — particularly American-born Africans who have the greatest access to internet channels amongst African millennials (Nielsen 2018) — used Twitter’s technological and communicative tools between 2012 and 2018 to build and promote a more inclusive and wide-reaching PanAfrican movement that encouraged new ideologies, including new social activity, political movements, and intersectional leadership that were not previously exhibited in mainstream 20thcentury Pan-African movements.
Open Access
Archaeology education in South Africa : developing curriculum programmes in three Cape Town schools
(2002) Sealy, Emma Georgina; Siebörger, Rob; Hall, Martin
The history of educational archaeology in South Africa and the intersection of the discipline and the South African school curriculum informed the choice of the research question for this project. This question is "What happens when an archaeologist develops educational programmes and curriculum materials for schools in order that the teachers' and learners have access to the archaeological knowledge and archaeological research skills?" The following assumptions were made at the beginning of the project and it was investigated whether they were valid or not, during the research process: 1. That the curriculum materials produced for an archaeological education programme should be able to be used by teachers without the intervention of an archaeologist. 2. That the teachers could be relied on to develop assessment exercises, which would satisfactorily test whether the learners had achieved the outcomes of the particular programme. 3. That the teachers would be willing to participate as critical partners throughout the research process by providing evaluations of the educational material and the particular programme in general. Three Cape Town schools were selected to participate in the project, which follows an action research paradigm, with each programme at each school being one action research cycle. Reﬂections on each programme informed the decisions made in the following one. Educational materials were developed for each school, with the assistance of educational editors and trialled in schools with assistance of teachers. Attention was paid to lesson structure, the pitching of questions and the sources of information used. The materials and the three programmes in general were evaluated with the use of questionnaires, which comprised open-ended and direct questions, formal interviews with teachers, which were recorded and transcribed, observation of classes and detailed note taking. The knowledge and skills learners developed as a result of their participation in the programmes was assessed in a variety of ways. Personal Meaning Maps (PMMs) were used by the researcher at Schools B and C in order to develop an understanding of the breadth of the learners' knowledge and opinion on the subjects of slavery and history. The teachers designed assessment exercises in the form of creative writing essays, a comprehension test and an assessment essay. It was found that the teachers at the three schools needed guidance in order to use the curriculum materials in their classrooms for the main aim of this research project to be achieved. The teachers understood the archaeological knowledge but not the archaeological research methods that were used to produce it, because of this it was also found that the teachers could not be relied on to produce satisfactory methods of assessment. In the process of undertaking research in the three schools in question, the teachers were willing to participate as critical partners if they felt that they were well informed enough about the discipline of archaeology.
Open Access
Between consolidation, promotion and restoration : trade unions and democracy in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Swaziland
(2007) Ranchod, Rushil; Maree, Johann
This thesis critically examines the ability of trade unions to consolidate, promote and restore political democracy in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Swaziland. The process of democratisation is premised on two transitions. First, is the transition from authoritarianism to democratic government, and second, is the transition from this government to the consolidation of democracy. Temporally, the focus of this dissertation is on the period after the first transition to democracy.
Open Access
Beyond the frame : a liminal space in contemporary South African photography
(2009) Hotsko, Jennifer; Shepherd, Nick; Godby, Michael
Anthropologists and ethnographers documenting the African subject – as soldiers of the colonial enterprise, dominated early practices of photography in Africa. These endeavors manufactured a visual narrative that was uniform in its approach to Africa's landscape, which largely persists in the popular imagination.In the early 1990s with the fall of apartheid and transition towards democracy, South Africa's landscape witnessed a new current in the medium of photography; photographers who had been documenting the 'struggle' were suddenly deprived of the central focus of their work. Creative artistic expression, which had been largely restricted, blossomed. This paper examines four of South Africa's 'new generation' of photographers who have seen unprecedented success both in South Africa and in the West. This paper examines whether these photographers and their images are confronting and challenging the stereotypical stock photographs that have misrepresented South Africa's landscape.
Open Access
Blackness as a question of freedom: racial blackness in South African emancipatory thought
(2023) Nkopo, Athinangamso; Haarhoff, Mandisa
This dissertation, using the theoretical framework of Afropessimism, discusses how Blackness is an ethico-political structure, in which the slave's natal alienation and social death establishes the resilient forms of Black (non)being. This project centrally argues against locating a theory of the production of Blackness in the socio-political relations of colonial subjugation, and instead proposes that Blackness is a structure, an ‘abstract code', that must be understood as deriving from racial slavery. This thought enterprise is explored in relation to South African histories of slavery to re-claim the concept of “social death” as inaugurating the structure of Blackness in Southern Africa. By suggesting how it is the absolute negation of the Black slave that creates the conditions for the possibility of the political, ethical, and civil subject – indeed, the very possibility of the Human, this study presents a discussion on how Black studies requires both a temporal and geographical reconstruction in understanding – firstly by extending much further ‘back' than the moment of South African colonialism, and secondly, by expanding the geographies of Blackness beyond European colonial rule. Furthermore, this study explores and exposes the limits of several major South African forms of political and philosophical thought and campaigns for Black emancipation: feminism, liberalism, Marxism, and Black Consciousness. An exploration which serves to highlight how the existing historiography of South Africa has disarticulated the conceptual significance of racial slavery to the making of Blackness in a way that locates it specifically in social death, with all its implications for Black (non)being. While recognizing that the political structure of Blackness precedes or cannot be located in the mechanics of South African colonial settlements, this dissertation exposes the limits and failures of a civil politics of Blackness in both national liberation and ‘progressive' struggles.
Open Access
Can intangibles be tangible? : safeguarding intangible heritage in the new South Africa : towards formulating policy for the conservation and sustainable management for living heritage
(2007) Manetsi, Thabo; Shepherd, Nick
This dissertation takes its lead from ongoing research associated with the process of formulating policy and developing instruments for safeguarding living heritage or intangible heritage as it is commonly known. In the absence of a national policy and management guidelines for the conservation and sustainable management of living heritage, the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) has initiated a process of formulating minimum standards and guidelines for the· protection of intangible elements of heritage associated with tangible heritage resources (objects and sites). In terms of the National Heritage Resources Act (NHRA) of 1999, SAHRA has a mandate to manage heritage resources to which oral tradition or living heritage is attached. Being the designated head of the living heritage unit at SAHRA, I have the responsibility to ensure the proper conservation and management of living heritage. As such I have been charged with a number of key responsibilities such as formulating policy and developing management guidelines for living heritage. As part of the process toward developing policy, a major facet of this research project reviews and draws a comparative analysis of existing heritage legislation, legal instruments and best practices in the world that may be useful in the South African context. Drawing from the review and comparative study process, this dissertation also seeks to identify and define key management issues for safeguarding aspects of intangible heritage. The outcome of the literature review stimulates a critical discussion about the findings which explore the challenges and opportunities related to the strengths and weakness of existing heritage policies and management guidelines for the protection of intangible elements of heritage resources. This eventually informs the conclusion and recommendations which provides not only a summary of closing remarks but also suggests a way forward regarding appropriate measures to be adopted for safeguarding living heritage. In this way, this project takes the form of research and policy recommendations, premised on a real-world situation in which I am personally responsible for guiding national policy on the issue at stake.
Open Access
Changing the lens of stigma : an exploration of disclosure in self-portraits by South Africans living with HIV in the Through Positive Eyes Arts Initiative.
(2012) Ress, Hanni Eran; Thomas, Kylie
This thesis analyses a collaborative arts initiative, Through Positive Eyes South Africa. The thesis focuses on how photography and personal narrative can contribute to changing the lens through which HIV-positive individuals see themselves and the way they are perceived while also problematising the complexities around disclosure and containment in the face of stigma. There are many projects that have sought to alter the dominant lens of stigma around HIV/AIDS in South Africa but the Through Positive Eyes initiative is unique in its process of self-documentation as the group openly confronts the complexities of living with HIV/AIDS. The thesis shows that challenging stigma through art is not as simple as the claim first appears; in fact, it emerges that even in giving full agency to the participants, the boundaries between the private therapeutic process and the public visual encounter are themselves intertwined and blurred by stigma.
Open Access
Constructing social reality in conversation : a generic and transitivity analysis of life history texts
(2003) Rowe, Joy
Language is a primary medium through which members of society construct a social reality in which they may meaningfully conduct day-to-day lives. The choices speakers make in language encode experiences and notions of the world in particular ways but may be constrained by context. In this study, I analyze the life history interviews of two gay black HIV-positive South African men to explore how speakers use contextually-available linguistic resources to negotiate meaning. Linguistic resources of speech genre, story type, and transitivity offer structural options to speakers but also introduce constraints. Using Fairclough's Foucauldian conception of 'orders of discourse', I establish that life history interviews are a unique hybrid of genre types that draw on conventions of casual conversation and interview genres, providing speakers with new resources for articulating their social world. Generic analysis, incorporating insights from Fairclough (1995), Eggins and Slade (1997), and systemic functionalism, is used to examine the story types that speakers may draw upon to structure their experiences. Given structural and functional constraints within story types, I look at the transitivity choices that speakers make to represent their social realities. Transitivity analysis, also based on systemic functionalism, is used to investigate choices of process (verbs) and their associated participants (nouns) that encode speakers' experiential meanings. The purpose of this study is threefold: to establish that the genre of life history interviews offers speakers opportunities to negotiate power relations and influence genre conventions; to demonstrate that generic analysis may be usefully applied to oral texts to understand speakers' deeper systems of life order; and to describe through generic and transitivity analysis the individual social realities of two gay HIV -positive men. Results include a structural analysis of life history interviews, a structural argument for including Observation and Reminiscence texts within the 'story' typology, and an in-depth analysis of two unrepresented voices of South Africa's HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Open Access
Culture, gender and patriarchy : a study of sixteen female teachers in gender specific schools of Lesotho
(2005) Monyane, Temelo; Field, Sean
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-109).
Open Access
Decolonial Daydreams │Taba Aiboli An exploration of the construction of female power Amongst the Lozi people
(2020) Matakala, Chaze; Clarke, Yaliwe
This thesis offers an exploration of the construction of female power amongst the Lozi people of the western province of Zambia, also known as Barotseland. Colonial empirical texts, contemporary literature on Lozi social history, heritage and public culture gloss over the matriarchal roots of Lozi society, leading to the collective, individual and intellectual imperative of this study. Insights necessary for engagement point to the dynamic role of gender in the origin, enactment and preservation of the Lozi royal kinship structure. Building on existing work on the origins of the Lozi royal kinship and the shifts of power through the (post)colonial political periods, the main objective of this research project is to conduct qualitative research into the dynamic role of gender in Lozi society. Data was based on a review of literature on the Lozi people and semi-structured interviews with nine Key Informants in Barotseland who bear embodied knowledge on the ideology of the Lozi royal kinship structure and the sociocultural systems apparent in Lozi society. A qualitative thematic network data analysis demonstrated political motherhood as a mechanism to act as a balancing check on the patrilineal system. The cross-cutting theme of political motherhood across generations and gender is manifested in the roles of Natamoyo and Mukwae Ngula, who are the respective male and female Ministers of Justice. In addition to these roles which emerge from an operative ethic of communalism are the council of women known as Anatambumu. The findings of this research indicate that there are cohesive interacting sociocultural systems that are focused on the mother figure (matrifocal) and also endorsing descent through the male line (patrilineal). Moreover, analysis of the responses shows that there is a strong correlation between the physical geography of Barotseland and the divine ancestresses, Mbuyu and her mother Mwambwa. On this basis it is recommend that the effects of the integration of Barotseland into the postcolonial state of Zambia be studied further, especially as it pertains to political motherhood, marriage and systems of descent amongst the Lozi.
Open Access
Die Boerseun in die volkspele rok = The Boer's son in the volkspele dress : (Mis)performing masculinity in the Afrikaner nation
(2007) Santillanes, Alexander V
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-109).
Open Access
Exploring Community Creation: Conversations of Young Black Women
(2024) Ngandi, Asemahle; Bennett, Jane; Hurst Ellen
In order to showcase the significance of the often-trivialised act of women talking to each other, the purpose of this research project was to explore how young black women use talking to create community with each other. The purpose of this research is to explore how young black South African women talking to each other, having conversations with each other, work to create bonds and ultimately community with each other – or, in bell hooks' (2000) terms, a Sisterhood. This act of women talking – black women, no less – to each other goes against the grain, it is a revolutionary act that they have been conditioned against precisely because of its revolutionary nature and because of the power that lies in the unpredictability of it. Along with staying silent, women are conditioned into not having bonds or relationships with each other because they are natural enemies, because all that would come from such relations would be unimportant, because they would tear each other down – as such, women cannot and should not bond with each other (hooks; 2000:43). This is reflected in the literature, particularly literature on Africa. The literature available on the socio-linguistic study of language and language varieties is expansive on the embodiment of these varieties by young African men. This solidifies the notion that [young African] women are not talking – not to young men, not to each other, not to anyone. Due to the COVID-19 induced travel restrictions, the research used virtual ethnography principles applied to past synchronous one-one-one WhatsApp chats to collect data. Using a Speech Act Analysis on the emojis used in the chats, it was discovered that these play various roles in these conversations, including mitigating serious conversations, to contextualise seemingly negative messages and to convey emotions between the interlocutors. Additionally, focussing on and analysing the code switches that occurred in the conversations revealed that switches were also used to provide comedic relief in heavy conversations and/or to make the other person laugh and code switches did friendship maintenance work. From the WhatsApp conversations, one can therefore deduce that these young black women's use of language and linguistic matter – albeit in a virtual space – play an important role in creating community in that both emojis and code switches insist on the fragility of the people in conversation and create a community that not only accommodates this fragility, but one that allows and accepts it.
Open Access
Exploring discourses of masculinity within women track athletes' lives in South Africa
(2022) Sauzier, Regine Francoise Eva Gabrielle; Bennett, Jane
This research dissertation explores discourses of masculinity among university-level women track athletes across South Africa. Many scholars have delved into the narratives of racialization and masculinity among black women athletes, muscularity as a premise of athleticism, ‘tomboyism' and gender fluidities, as well as the policing and disciplining of women athletes' bodies in accordance with gender ideals. Nonetheless, as it stands, literature on women's masculinities within sports in South African contexts, along with the idea of meshing masculinities and women's experiences together remains scarce. Interviews were conducted with women sprinters attending universities across South Africa on the online platforms, Microsoft Teams and Zoom, due to the state of the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions in place at the time. An analysis of their narratives surrounding experiences and discourses of masculinity as cisgendered heterosexual women athletes was carried out. The research concludes that upon reaching adulthood and maturation, the gender binary recloses around the women track athletes so that a "temporary boyhood" is no longer granted to them, and they must negotiate their performative proximity to discourses of masculinity without the safety of the "tomboy" label. Rigid power structures continue to dominate, leaving little to no room for the women track athletes within South Africa to explore a heteronormative female masculinity as part of their gender identities.
Open Access
Fast track land reform and belonging: examining linkages between resettlement areas and communal areas in Zvimba District, Zimbabwe
(University of Cape Town, 2020) Marewo, Malvern Kudakwashe; Chitonge, Horman; Matose, Frank
This study examines whether beneficiaries of Zimbabwe's Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) of 2000 in resettlement areas maintain linkages with communal areas of origin. Present studies about the FTLRP provide limited in-depth attention to the importance of understanding linkages with places of origin. The study sought to explore the extent to which beneficiaries of the FTLRP are connected to their communal areas of origin, as well as the implications of the ties. Analysis of linkages is through social relationships and labour exchanges between people in resettlement areas and communal areas. This was done through a conceptual framework of belonging, which helped explain the various attachments to places of origin. The study was guided by a qualitative research approach. A case study of Machiroli Farm, an A1 villagised settlement, and Zvimba communal areas (Ward 6), Mashonaland West, Zimbabwe was utilised. The study's main finding is that beneficiaries of the FTLRP in the A1 model on Machiroli Farm retain linkages with communal areas of origin; beneficiaries of the FTLRP acquired new land without discarding ties and relations with places of origin. Most respondents attached clear importance to maintaining linkages with places of origin. Some respondents did not maintain ties with places of origin because of conflicts and breakdowns in family ties, highlighting that belonging is not static. Evidence from this case study shows that maintenance of linkages assists with agricultural production and enhancing social relations. Another important finding is that belonging enforced the maintenance of relations through factors, such as familial relations, burial sites, clubs, ceremonies and labour exchanges with communal areas of origin. The study argues that belonging is an aspect that ties people together despite physical translocation. Thus, this study's contribution is that, within land reform debates, physical translocation does not break the bonds with, or ties to, places of origin. Belonging enables several functions, such as access to labour, mitigation of economic challenges and enhancement of social relations, as demonstrated by this case study. For scholarship, the study contributes to land reform debates by applying the concept of belonging, which has mostly been applied to border and migration studies policy. The framework of belonging within land reform reveals the importance of social, cultural, religious and economic effects in accessing labour and enhancing agricultural production in agrarian settings. The study draws the conclusion that beneficiaries of land reform desire to remain relevant to a host of political, economic, spiritual and social aspects anchored in places of origin. Therefore, resettlement does not break ties which people have with places of origin, people embrace the new without discarding the old relations.
Open Access
Frantz Fanon and the Dialetic of Decolonisation
(2010) Ndlovu, Siphiwe; Nash, Andrew; Garuba, Harry
It has been more than five decades since the wave of decolonization swept across Africa. For people on the continent, the rise to power by the former liberation movements brought hope for a better future in the post-colonial state. However later developments showed that independence would, in fact, not change the material and social conditions of the ordinary people. Although the national liberation movement took over the government of the former colony, colonial institutions and structures of power, which were founded on the economic exploitation of the colony, remained unchanged. Thus in this thesis I set out to examine Frantz Fanon’s thought in order to provide a critique of post-independence failures in Africa. I will argue that whilst Fanon shared the same ideals as the anti-colonial movements in their objective to remove colonial regimes from power, that Fanon, in fact, had a critical attitude towards the anti-colonial movement. Whereas the latter conceived of freedom as independence, Fanon conceived of freedom as disalienation, premised on the complete recovery of the black self from the negative effects of colonialism. Thus the study sets out to examine the extent to which Fanon offered an alternative idea of freedom and liberation to the one which was being advanced by the national liberation movements.
Open Access
From tin trunk to world-wide memory : the making of the Bleek collection
(2006) Weintroub, Jill; Shepherd, Nick
This research sketches the history of the Bleek-L1oyd collection by documenting the cataloguing and archiving of material which has occurred in the years subsequent to the recording of the original manuscripts and certain related material during the closing decades of the nineteenth century. It attempts to track the processes by which material elements (notebooks, manuscripts, printed documents, artefacts, objects and original artworks, correspondence, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, books, photographs, paintings) became consolidated - or separated - as part of the making of what is now known as the Bleek-L1oyd archive. In addition, this research examinesthe various projects of knowledge production and writing which have emanated from the archive in the 80 years since a small part of the notebook texts, edited by Lucy Lloyd, was published in 1911. In particular, I examine ways in which the notebook texts have been deployed in the service of emerging and established academic disciplines including philology, "native studies", folklore and anthropology, archaeology and rock art interpretation. In more recent times, the Bleek collection provides a case study of the archive reconstituted for the new nation, serving not only as a site for the recovery of lost or hidden histories, but also as location for an international, redemptive celebration of indigenous identities
Open Access
Historical process and the constitution of subjects : I.D. du Plessis and the reinvention of the "Malay"
(1987) Jeppie, Shamil; Merrifield, Andrew; Nasson, Bill
The purpose of this thesis is to examine how a ruling-class actor attempted to reinvent and reconstitute an ethnic subject. Dr I.D. Du Plessis was, among other things, an Afrikaner litterateur and Commissioner of Coloured Affairs between 1930 and 1962, the period covered by this thesis. In Cape Town he applied himself to "preserve" what was known as "the malays". Although having an historical presence in Cape Town, defining the "malays" was always a problem as their very basis was in the process of being eroded as industrialisation forced social and communal changes. But the specificity of the "malays" was not an ethnic specificity with a rigid system of control and leadership, and staunchly cast against other sets of "identities" (such as Indians or "coloureds"). As chapter one shows, Du Plessis initiated the project at a conjuncture when the existence of ethnic units was presumed and the efforts to "preserve" them were profoundly political. A background to his ideological location is also discussed. From his particular location he journeyed amongst the "malays" and attempted to reinvent them as a specific ethnic unit fixed in space and time. Chapter two presents Du Plessis' model of "malay ethnicity" and its roots in history.
Open Access
A history of the Breakwater Prison from 1859 to 1905
(1989) Deacon, Harriet; Thornton, Robert; Van Zyl Smit, Dirk
This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of a B.A (Hons.) degree in African Studies, for which my home department was Social Anthropology. The project arose out of my interest in the interdisciplinary work of Michel Foucault and its application to the history of Africa. This has been broadened into an interest in post-structuralist theory, and has been particularly focussed on the "institution". A prime example of Foucault's "complete" or "austere" institution is the prison. The Breakwater convict station, a colonial prison in Cape Town during the nineteenth century, suited both my theoretical and empirical interests. I chose this particular institution because it was the prison from which the linguist W.H.I. Bleek drew his San informants in the 1870s, and because the prison and its records were based in Cape Town. I wanted to incorporate ideas from secondary sources on Bleek and his work (e.g. Thornton 1983, Deacon 1988a). But the work took its own directions, and I have focussed here on the organization of the prison and on the prisoners in general rather than on the San.

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