Apartheid Research Articles

Financing white rule: How Luxembourg became a banker for the Belgian Congo and Apartheid South Africa

Abstract In this article, I offer a historical analysis of how bankers in Luxembourg came to be important service providers to borrowers in the Belgian Congo and Apartheid South Africa. I demonstrate how a series of unique political and cultural factors linking Luxembourg and these two (neo)colonial regimes account for the financial activities that developed between the three jurisdictions. As such, I show that officials in the Belgian Congo and Apartheid South Africa were able to count on their Luxembourg-based bankers for a variety of finance-related services, including the provision of Eurocurrency loans and the formation of offshore companies. In doing so, the article contributes to a body of literature in the social sciences of finance that has grown significantly in recent years: on the imperial and neocolonial basis of the contemporary global financial system.

Essay review: technopolitics, development and the residues of the South African state.

It has been thirty years since the end of political apartheid in South Africa in 1994. Those decades have been marked by single-party dominance under the African National Congress (ANC), and the expansion of democratic rights and public goods like education, as well as neoliberal economic policies, growing inequality and, in recent years, corruption and maladministration scandals. On the heels of a historic election in May 2024, one which marked the end of the ANC's electoral dominance and was shaped, in part, by government mismanagement of the energy sector and extensive infrastructural decline, it is a timely moment to consider the history of South Africa's state and its relation to industries of extraction and energy production. Two new books do just that. Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures, by Gabrielle Hecht, takes a long view of the impact of extractive industries, arguing that contemporary South Africa may offer a cautionary tale of the devastating impacts of the Anthropocene, one that 'foretells planetary futures' in the way that the state has failed to reckon with the enduring communal and environmental impacts of the mining industry. Apartheid's Leviathan: Electricity and the Power of Technological Ambivalence, by Faeeza Ballim, historicizes the development of South Africa's electricity sector under the apartheid state and traces the roots of the current energy crisis back to the pursuit of authoritarian high modernism in the mid-twentieth century.

SENSORY EXPERIMENTS, SENSORY ORDERS, AND AESTHETIC EDUCATION

ABSTRACTErica Fretwell's Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling (2020) raises crucial questions about the making of a concept of difference through marshaling the senses to the ends of a sensory order in postbellum United States. In this essay, I argue that Fretwell's book has opened a crucial horizon for rethinking how race and ideas of difference marking gender and disability were remade through the short‐lived but deeply consequential science of psychophysics. While the study focuses on how psychophysics and its aftermaths recast questions of difference in the US, Fretwell indirectly poses a major challenge for the critique of the twentieth‐century experience of race elsewhere—for example, of apartheid in South Africa. In this review essay, I argue that, beyond the US, Fretwell's meticulously elaborated argument renews approaches to the problem and problematization of race and difference. Read in relation to the making of race in South Africa, the book inadvertently brings into view a deceptive plot of petty apartheid, a banal everyday constitution of a sensory order that shares its origins in the discourse of psychophysics. When placed alongside the more pronounced forms of grand apartheid, the resultant psychophysical aesthesis conscripts the human sensorium to a cybernetic mode of power that shifts between a racialization of labor and a racialization of desire. Fretwell effectively invites us to consider the endpoints of psychophysics in a hierarchy of the senses, for which an aesthetic education may yet be required to short‐circuit and reroute the senses through intervals of synesthesia.

Nakba and the US-Israel Imperial Regime

Abstract The US-Israeli genocide is best understood as the end game of empire, the culmination of failed Anglo-American and Zionist policies in the Middle East and, indeed, virtually the entire non-Western world. It is the outcome of a US-sponsored apartheid system in Israel, largely carried out by the IDF and other militarist forces in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and Israel itself and funded by American financial assistance and weapons transfers to the Israeli army. The threats of multipolarity to US/NATO hegemony, Britain being the major junior partner, pushed the Trump and Biden administrations, along with the British Tories and post-Corbyn Labour Party, to support de facto the “final solution” in Gaza and the rest of Palestine. This article puts the Israeli assault on the people of Gaza, the Hamas-led attack on October 7 being the main pretext, in historical perspective. It argues that it is a logical sequence of the pre-war Zionist idea of an exclusive Jewish state and US and UK post-war power politics in the Middle East and in two imperial states’ respective domestic electoral politics.

Segregation in the Reserves: The Winter Family in Sekhukhuneland 1913–1948

ABSTRACT The role of the reserve areas in both the genesis and implementation of segregation and apartheid is an especially well-worn topic in South African historiography. But much less attention has been given to the impact of the implementation of racial segregation in society in the areas set aside as rural locations and reserves in the ninteeenth and early twentieth centuries. The experiences of the Winter family of the Sekhukhuneland area provides an illuminating case study of the processes at work in the interregnum between the 1913 and 1936 Land Acts. Their family history highlights the emergence in reserve areas of networks of interconnected families spanning both old and new elites and the racial boundaries a segregationist ideology sought to entrench. It also shows how rapidly, profoundly, and painfully these emergent social forms were dismembered after 1936, long before the enforcement of apartheid policies after 1948.

“Her Prim Answering Smile”

To date, disability readings of J. M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K have engaged with the implications stemming from the protagonist’s neurodiversity; however, this discourse can be expanded to account for his physical alterity. From birth, K is stigmatized for his cleft lip, a defining corporeal trait that aptly informs his “life and times.” In response, this article argues, K develops a method for negotiating the ableist politics underscoring apartheid South Africa. He studies the body part for which he is stigmatized—mouths. Encountering a series of oral expressions, K gauges each to determine the extent of his participation within his war-torn milieu. Whereas his mother’s smile conjures happiness and prompts engagement, the soldier’s mocking grin is a threatening gesture from which K distances himself. This article suggests Coetzee’s novel questions the state of personhood, asking not who is granted the dignities afforded to the liberal individual in apartheid South Africa, but what that individual must look like in order to experience affections such as compassion and respect.

A scoping review of street homelessness: What can Papua New Guinea learn from South Africa?

Homelessness is a global social issue that has affected various nations around the world, including South Africa. The instances of homelessness began during the apartheid era in South Africa and have since risen to alarming levels in provinces such as Gauteng, Western Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal, as reported in the 2022 census. Despite the lack of comprehensive research on homelessness in South Africa, this study conducted a scoping review to evaluate research completed on homelessness from independence to 2020 in the country. The scoping review followed the Preferred Reporting Item for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and involved a systematic search of the Development Southern Africa and Urban Forum databases. A total of 72 research articles were identified, with 10 meeting the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the review, which were then analyzed using thematic analysis. The study identified several key themes, including homelessness as a reflection of patriarchal systems, gender-based conflicts leading to homelessness, proactive and reactive interventions by non-state actors for homeless individuals, and the quantitative focus of research on homelessness in South Africa from independence to the present day. The study presents the applicability of these findings to tackle homelessness in Papua New Guinea and recommends the use of mixed methods approaches to research homelessness in South Africa to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the various dimensions of homelessness in the country.

“Twists and Turns”: Chief Leabua Jonathan and Cross-Border Collaborations with South Africa, 1965–1976/7

Chief Leabua Jonathan’s term as prime minister of Lesotho (then Basutoland) began in 1965, the year before the nation’s independence from Britain. During his tenure, he remained one of the few regional leaders whose leadership until the end of his term in 1976/7 was marked by a pattern of inconsistency and contradiction towards apartheid South Africa. This article attempts to illuminate the nexus between his relationship with South Africa and the consequences thereof. Furthermore, it discusses how the mid-1960s and late 1970s became a crucial period for his leadership. His prime ministership and the “twists and turns” in his foreign policy vis-à-vis South Africa are discussed. Here the diplomatic role he played within the ambit of “small states theory” and his country’s foreign policy is investigated. The article shows how under Jonathan, state politics and regional cross-border struggles and collaborations led to disputes regarding the sovereignty of Lesotho.

Engineering under oppressive regimes: exploring the role of engineers during apartheid South Africa

ABSTRACT Engineers’ contribution to society tends to be located in rational, technical constructs devoid of social and political interests. This paradigm presents a challenge to engineering educators tasked with undergraduate engineering curriculum content that links to society in some way. This article reports on a study undertaken by engineering educators who were motivated to understand the role of the social and political on the work of engineers. It explores how engineers conceived of their role during apartheid, an oppressive political regime for the majority of South Africans that officially ended in 1994. Interviews were conducted with engineers and academic staff to examine how participants’ navigated engineering practice and academic work during that period. The thematic findings allow for a conceptualisation of the apartheid ‘system’ they encountered, depicts how they saw their role in this system and explores the underlying reasons for why they behaved in the ways that they did.

Julius Malema, from Masupatsela to the Formation of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF): Historical Narrative

Julius Malema was born in 1982 during the apartheid era in South Africa and began his political journey at an early age. As he rose in the political space, he became prominent, playing a critical role in reviving the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL). He was exposed to formal politics from the age of nine when he joined Masupatsela (Trailblazers), the youth brigade of the African National Congress (ANC) at the time. He rose to positions of power through joining the ranks of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS), the ANCYL, and post his expulsion from the ANCYL, established his own organisation, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), of which he is the current president, also known as the commander in chief (CiC). The article interrogates Malema's role in South African politics, and how he contributed to growing factionalism in the ANC. First, the article discusses Malema's early stages of joining politics, and his gradual growth, until he became the president of the ANCYL in 2008. Second, the article discusses his role in the politics of the mother body, the ANC, that is, in policies. Third, the article scrutinise why Malema was expelled from the ANCYL and, last, the emergence of the EFF in 2013 and its radical stance in the politics of South Africa.

CRAFTING A FOUCAULDIAN GENEALOGY METHOD FOR ANALYZING CURRICULUM-AS-DISCOURSE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Introduction/Frame: (Contextualization/Justification) Viewing curriculum as discourse can enable educators to identify how historical markers of discrimination are repeated. Historical markers are archaeologically embedded in the various dimensions of a curriculum and find expression in preferred ways of thinking, speaking, doing, and being. Such historical hypernorms are often maintained by practical rationalities, or technologies of power that reify their taken-for-granted legitimacy as ‘truth regimes’. Research Question/Objectives: This phase of the study aimed to critically explore and disclose how the (socio/politico-historically constructed) rules of knowledge-formation in a contemporary occupational therapy curriculum-as-discourse, are reproduced and maintained as truths at a university that historically supported apartheid in South Africa. Methodology: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) approach was used to systematically craft a genealogy analysis method from foundational Foucauldian theory. Adjacent, a lens of the ‘dimensions of the curriculum’ was employed: i.e., the formal, the informal, the hidden, and the negated curriculum. Various data sources were categorized accordingly, e.g., overarching policy documents; social events; timetables and prescribed texts; physical teaching spaces; espoused values, and underlying assumptions modelled during assessment in teaching and learning spaces. Results: Following the four rules of knowledge-formation that ensued from an archaeology analysis, the contemporary reification of the historical markers was problematised through various technologies of power and self, as well modes of reasoning. Examples are pervasive white demographics of both students and faculty reifying cognitive monopoly and mono-cultural epistemologies; the rationalization of highly ritualized (over)assessment of students suppressing adult-to-adult transactionalism in andragogy practices; the reproduction of mono-cultural epistemologies in clinical training operating in the hidden curriculum. Final considerations: Consciously dismantling the rationalising strategies for the continuation of discriminatory patterns of inclusion and exclusion in a curriculum, can open a space for critical dialogue, disruption, and reconfiguration of a curriculum-as-discourse towards social justice, and epistemic freedom in (higher) education.

Theorizing and Understanding Corporate Involvement in Atrocity Crimes

Abstract Corporate involvement in atrocity crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, has become an important topic for ngo s, activists and scholars from different disciplines, often focusing on the important question how to achieve a better regulation of and accountability for corporate roles in atrocities. This contribution, instead, is focused on the aetiology of this phenomenon. A theoretical framework is proposed based on, on the one hand, what follows from criminological research on corporate crime, state crime and state-corporate crime and, on the other hand, in-depth case studies of three contexts: Nazi Germany (1933–1945), Apartheid South Africa (1948–1994) and the drc (1996–2016). The proposed framework identifies the motivational drivers, opportunity aspects, and elements of the (lack of) control that, together, can explain why that corporation became involved in atrocity crimes. The framework is intended to—through application to new case studies—improve knowledge about and understanding of corporate involvement in atrocity crimes and to expand the conceptual and theoretical understanding of this phenomenon.

‘A Fly in the Ointment’: Apartheid South Africa’s Transnational Nuclear Network during the Cold War, 1953–1976

ABSTRACT This article focuses on apartheid South Africa’s nuclear sector and the regime’s attempts to cooperate with overseas energy companies to provide financial investments and crucial technologies. It highlights the connectedness of the South Africans in the global nuclear marketplace and their ability to secure technical support from Western states during the Cold War between 1953 and 1976. The article analyses the parallel negotiations with French and German firms to engage with the regime in sharing of sensitive knowledge and bargaining lucrative contracts. Using newly discovered archival records it is shown that French-German competition was at a boiling point at least twice in the 1970s. Moreover, the regime in Pretoria managed to garner enough support in the nuclear field to further the growth of its domestic industry, ultimately being capable of enriching uranium and obtaining a turnkey nuclear power reactor. The white minority government in Pretoria however failed to position itself as an important uranium supplier on a global scale, because of sanctions targeting domestic racial apartheid policies and a more robust international non-proliferation regime towards the 1980s.

Miscegenation Madness

Abstract In this article, I examine how the fear of miscegenation developed as a raison d’être for the construction and maintenance of apartheid. I argue that despite its efficacy at reproducing racial-caste formations, miscegenation taboo ultimately undermined its own hegemonic mythology by constructing contradictory erotic desires and subjectivities which could neither be governed nor contained. I consider how miscegenation fears and fantasies were debated in public discourse, enacted into law, institutionalized through draconian policing and punishment practices, culturally entrenched, yet negotiated and resisted through everyday intimacies. While crime statistics show that most incidences of interracial sex involved White men and women of color, the perceived threat to “White purity” was generally represented through images of White women—volks-mothers and daughters—in the Afrikaner nationalist iconography. White women’s wombs symbolized the future of “Whiteness.” This article offers a critique of the prevailing South African “exceptionalism” paradigm in apartheid studies. Detailed analyses of government commission reports (1939, 1984, 1985) and parliamentary debate records (1949) reveal considerable American influence on South Africa’s “petty apartheid” laws, and especially the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act (1949) and Immorality Amendment Act (1950). While these “cornerstone” policies of apartheid developed from local socio-political conflicts and economic tensions, they were always entangled in global racial formations, rooted in trans-oceanic histories of slavery, dispossession, and segregation. This historical anthropological study of race/sex taboo builds on interdisciplinary literatures in colonial history, sociology, postcolonial studies, literary theory, art history, cultural studies, feminist theory, queer studies, and critical race theory.

The Dutch Reformed Church (1974–2024): From Dancing with the Devil to Waltzing to Heavenly Music

The jubilee celebration of Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae (SHE) reminds church historians of important events that have taken place during the past 50 years. This article gives an overview of important events that took place in the history of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC). Being the largest white Afrikaans-speaking church and the church which biblically supported the political policy of apartheid, the history of Christianity in South Africa cannot be understood without taking note of the DRC’s journey. For the DRC, 1974 was an important turning point in its history as the policy document Ras, Volk en Nasie en Volkereverhoudinge in die Lig van die Skrif (hereinafter Ras, Volk en Nasie) was approved by the General Synod of the DRC. This document explained how the church motivated apartheid from a biblical point of view. It was – metaphorically speaking – the official start of the DRC’s dance with the devil. During the past 50 years, the DRC has taken important decisions that ended its dance with the devil and started a new dance, waltzing to heavenly music. This happened when the church decided to take a new road to reconciliation which was the primary goal. The article revisits Ras, Volk en Nasie, but also some of the important milestones along the road to reconciliation. It concludes with an example of how a congregation of the former apartheid church succeeded in making a difference in the local community. This confirms the fact that the dance with the devil has indeed ended and that many congregations of the church are now waltzing to heavenly music.

‘It took courage to die in Angola’: Umkhonto we Sizwe’s War versus UNITA, 1975–89

Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress, is reputed to have been a largely ineffective guerrilla army which hardly challenged the apartheid war machine. Instead, this army in exile was mostly confined to its bases in post-independence Angola, thousands of kilometres from the land they sought to liberate. While in Angola, MK forces were largely kept on the defensive as they were compelled to join the Angolan government in its war against the armed group UNITA, which received extensive support from the South African apartheid regime and the United States. Yet within this context, on the periphery of the Cold War and the anti-apartheid struggle, MK managed a degree of battlefield success against UNITA, thus helping to pave the way for negotiations with South Africa. Although constrained by structural factors, MK nevertheless managed to assert an agency that has largely gone untold in the history of southern Africa’s national liberation movements. This article reinterprets MK’s military history by putting its Angolan battles at its heart. Relying on oral testimonies and memoirs of former MK combatants as well as scholarly sources, I argue that MK’s containment of UNITA offensives in northern and eastern Angola has been overlooked as an important battlefield contribution that helped Angola’s MPLA government to endure the apartheid regime’s onslaught and shaped the Cold War endgame in southern Africa. Moreover, combat narratives from Angola have proved pivotal in shaping the memories and identities of former MK personnel, even as contemporary South African elites have deployed these narratives for their own political ends.

Climate apartheid: the failures of accountability and climate justice

PurposeSevere inequality from climate change exists between the Global North and Global South. The North significantly contributes to climate change yet retreats to protect itself against its harmful impacts. Conversely, members of the Global South bear the brunt of the climate crisis with limited protection against its destructive effects. Climate justice aims to address this inequality. This paper explores the effects of climate change reforms and policies that have been established to foster accountability and climate justice.Design/methodology/approachThis research follows a qualitative exploratory case study method. It draws on a supply- and demand-led approach and local accounts to analyse the (in)effectiveness with which six national and international reforms and policies have achieved accountability for climate justice. The research analysed a variety of empirical documents including contemporary research, reports, academic literature, non-government and government documents and policies, media releases and Pacific Islander accounts.FindingsClimate change reforms and policies, which come together to form supply-side accountability, have largely failed to engender accountability in the Global North for the impacts of climate change. Nor have they mitigated climate change to any tangible extent at all. This has created a system of modern-day climate apartheid. Improving accountability and remediating climate injustices going forward will require a focus on demand-led instruments and accountability, which includes the voice of citizens.Originality/valueThis paper responds to AAAJ’s special issue call for examining accounting and accountability with regard to environmental and climate racism. Limited research to date explores the issue of climate apartheid and climate justice and its relationship with accountability. This research attempts to fill that gap.

A systematic literature review of sustainable water management in South Africa

Addressing global challenges of inequitable and unsustainable natural resource management is imperative. South African water management serves as a critical case study allowing for the deep exploration of the intricate complexities surrounding these issues. South Africa's apartheid era witnessed inequitable water distribution and, despite the efforts made through the post-apartheid National Water Act of 1998 to prioritise equity and sustainability, challenges still persist in its implementation. This review aims to bridge knowledge gaps in sustainable water management in South Africa, focusing on environmental justice and sustainable development within the framework of the three pillars of sustainability. Through a systematic literature review of 57 scientific papers published in the Web of Science database between 1995 and 2021 this study aims to provide a comprehensive examination of the complex dynamics shaping water management in South Africa. Major themes, challenges, and solutions in sustainable water management are identified, emphasising the importance of stakeholder interactions, insufficient collaboration, and a lack of capacity building. The study also explores water policy implementation, environmental impacts of business, particularly in agriculture and mining, and the management of freshwater sources and their overexploitation. Economically, the mining industry's role and associated challenges such as acid mine drainage and water use competition are assessed. The Water-Energy-Food Nexus's influence on water management, water pricing efficiency, user willingness to pay, and the potential of decentralised systems and corporate social responsibility are also explored. With South Africa facing urgent challenges of water scarcity and resource management, integrated approaches that consider environmental, social, and economic dimensions, alongside robust multi-stakeholder collaboration, are essential. This review offers valuable insights for policymakers, water managers, and researchers working toward a sustainable water future in South Africa.

Penal-welfare systems in a (post)colonial world: The rise and disregard of alcohol and drug rehabilitation centers in South Africa

Apartheid South Africa developed a notoriously punitive and racist approach to alcohol and drug use. Less reported is that the state gave significant attention to rehabilitation, first for the minority white population and later for black South Africans. This paper asks why in the post-apartheid era—despite a huge influx of cheap heroin, methamphetamines, and other drugs—the government showed a relative disregard for rehabilitation. Addressing this question, the paper points to the configuration of forces driving public rehabilitation in the colonial era included the upliftment of “poor whites,” the need to maintain black workers’ productivity, and the ascendancy of the disease concept of addiction. In the post-1994 period these forces waned as a multiracial middle class came to purchase treatment in private rehabilitation facilities, the disease concept fell into retreat, and mass unemployment helped to position poor black drug users as an “undeserving poor.” The paper contributes to comparative studies on penal-welfare systems and the recent attention to drug histories from the global South.

‘The statue is a painful reminder of the past’: South African staff and students’ perspectives on MT Steyn statue removal

ABSTRACT This study draws on qualitative research to explore students’, academic, and support staff perspectives on the processes of the removal of the MT Steyn statue from the Bloemfontein Campus. The findings demonstrate that the majority of participants thought the Steyn statue brought back memories of the past. They associated it with apartheid. The results of this study indicate that the majority of participants believed the MT Steyn statue reopens old wounds, especially in black people’s memories. They believed that keeping the monument in place would compel them to recall the horrific memories of the apartheid era. Some participants, though, did not feel impacted or see the statue as a reminder of the past. The study’s findings lend more credence to the idea of moving the monument off the Bloemfontein Campus.