Apartheid Regime Research Articles

Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements by Trevor Ngwane

Reviewed by: Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements by Trevor Ngwane Mueni wa Muiu Ngwane, Trevor. Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements. London: Pluto Press, 2021. Can people who live in shacks teach us about democracy? Trevor Ngwane begins this book with the following question: Ngingalitholaphi ikomiti lalendawo? Where can I find this place's committee? To answer this question, Ngwane sets out to study four informal settlements of South Africa's nine provinces. Organizing among shack communities can be traced back to protests [End Page 222] against forced removals by the apartheid regime. They occupied private land because the state failed to provide adequate housing. Sometimes communities were forced to live in "temporary" housing for forty years. In seeking to answer this question, Ngwane draws back a curtain and reveals a world that few know about. He visited forty-six informal settlements, of which forty-five had committees. He distinguishes between autonomous committees and people's committees. The latter are formed by the state or NGOs. His focus is mainly on the self-organization of the committees, not their physical organizations. These include ten settlements each in Gauteng, North West, and Kwa Zulu Natal, and sixteen in Eastern Cape. The smallest settlement had twenty shacks, and the largest had eight thousand. Most had between one hundred and five hundred shacks, with Alexandria (Johannesburg) having a thousand shacks a month. The number of informal settlements increased between 1990 and 1994 with the elimination of bans on political organizations and apartheid laws. Most of the settlements are named after the pioneers, how the place was occupied, or after major political leaders. Seventy percent of the settlements have electricity, while 65 percent have access to water taps and 39 percent have long-drop toilets. The first committees set up are the people's committees, which are followed by ward committees (state). There were people's committees in thirty-five settlements. Life in shantytowns is difficult. One has to struggle for every single thing that other communities take for granted, from being alive to getting water and toilets. Amakomiti (Zulu for "committee") people learned to depend on themselves from defense and plot allocation to basic services. Most of these committees rely on their experiences in rural areas to govern their communities. Sometimes they work alongside township organizations but on other occasions they don't, depending on the issues at stake. Ngwane calls the discussions and activities of these committees "democracy on the margins." This is the development and practice of local democratic practices and cultures by neglected communities. It gives them agency where they are not victims. This book explores different committees, their history and roles in democracy on the margins. Popular committees in the shacks are an aspect of a democratic practice and ethos that is not fully understood. The ANC had committees in eight of the forty-six settlements. There were community police forums in five settlements. Five settlements had community development forums, which monitor local construction and development. Twenty-five settlements had more than one committee. Whether committees succeeded or failed depended on their accountability and [End Page 223] transparency in meeting expectations. Relationships between committees and the state vary from antagonistic to symbiotic. Most communities are forced to connect their own services, from electricity to water. Most shacks in South Africa are located in close to mines in Rustenburg, where the unemployment rate is 40 percent. It is also the most unequal place in the world. Rustenburg produces 70 percent of the world's platinum. In-migration is 7 percent from neighboring countries. Based on official figures, 17.4 percent of the people live in twenty-four informal settlements, but independent researchers put the number at 40 percent. Fifty percent have no monthly income. There are two views about shack dwellers: shack dwellers as part of workers' movements, and therefore with a lot to gain, and shack dwellers as distinct from workers' movements, with little to gain. Shack dwellers organize settlement, order, and security. Some are better organized than others. For example, the Power Group in Crossroads, an informal settlement near Cape Town, was organized by women who led protests for services for four months...

Production Performance among The Restitution Farm Beneficiaries in Waterberg District, South Africa

Farmland was regarded as the most important asset used to enhance agricultural productivity in developing countries to improve the livelihoods of restitution farm beneficiaries. Most, unfortunately, recent reports show decreased agricultural productivity in most developing countries. In South Africa, the Land restitution program was introduced to restore land to people dispossessed by apartheid government after 1913. However, production in the restitution farms has declined. This study aimed to address the non-performance of the restitution farms in Waterberg District and evaluate their production performance. A questionnaire was administered to gather quantitative data on the farms’ production and the benefits accrued from the farms. Data was captured using Geographic Information System (GIS), and then a remote sensing analysis method was used to map restitution farms to illustrate farms performance. Statistical Package for the Social Scientists (SPSS) version 25 was used to compute statistics on-farm production. About 83% of beneficiaries have not benefitted from the 32 farms, while 61.6% did not have markets, and 64% reported a lack of farms income. Generally, lack of farm production impeded beneficiaries from receiving benefits and employment. The study recommended that private organizations and sector departments work together to assist beneficiaries with capacity building, marketing of farm produce, and funds to improve production.

Apartheid's Endless Itineraries

Apartheid's Endless Itineraries Timothy Wright (bio) REMAINS OF THE SOCIAL: DESIRING THE POST-APARTHEID EDITED BY MAURITS VAN BEVER DONKER, ROSS TRUSCOTT, GARY MINKLEY, AND PREMESH LALU. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2017 For many decades now South Africa has worn the mantle of global exemplarity. During the 1980s, South Africa was, in Derrida's phrase, "racism's last word" (le dernier mot du racisme), a place where European racial thinking had reached its apogee (and, one hoped, its culminating endpoint). Following the collapse of the apartheid regime and the democratic elections of 1994, it became, under the sign of Nelson Mandela, the "rainbow nation": a concrete illustration of the quasi-miraculous overcoming of racial oppression through empathy and forgiveness and a beacon for other nations struggling with violent histories. In recent years, however, even as the burnished image of Mandela has been iconized around the world, South Africans themselves have come to suspect, with some discomfort, that their country means something else: a disappointment by or betrayal of political ideals. Promises made—regarding jobs, land, housing—have not been kept; an endemic corruption has set in to consolidate an elite political class; coarse and explicit varieties of racism, after strategically keeping their heads down, have resurfaced; and the country has found itself in the thrall of economic and social disparities often greater than those of the apartheid era. In this new configuration, as Andrew van der Vlies has put it, it is not so much that South Africa is becoming more like the rest of the world, but rather that the world is increasingly becoming more like South Africa, "more unequal, but also concerned [End Page 162] with the legacies—and in some cases the resurgence—of restrictive and exclusionary ideologies, and at the whim of non-state actors and speculative capital" (ix). Remains of the Social grapples with two crucial issues that emerge from the above sketch. First, the book addresses the question of where exactly South Africa is now. This is not a simple question to answer, as is attested to by the range of hyphenated periodizations that have proliferated in academic scholarship: the post-post-apartheid, the postanti-apartheid, the post-transitional—all attempts to come to terms with the nation's inability to move beyond its apartheid past. Certainly, the South Africa of today can no longer be called in good faith the rainbow nation, although occasional lip service is still paid to ideals of nonracial harmony and nation building. But neither is it simply an extension of the apartheid nation, although many aspects of apartheid persist, often in unaltered form. The key term in Remains of the Social, the unhyphenated "postapartheid," marks an unwillingness to accede to clean delineations of historical periods. The postapartheid, as the editors indicate, does not name a historical period so much as a condition in which apartheid cannot be disavowed. This is more than a lexical gimmick: it methodologically opens the scope of the study to an archive that straddles the nation's pre-1994 and post-1994 histories. It also signals the collection's break from a powerful tradition in South African cultural studies that has aimed to move beyond the apartheid episteme. In an influential 2004 article, Sarah Nuttall argued that South African studies had been "over-determined by the reality of apartheid" (732) and proposed that the fixation on apartheid had led critics to overlook the emergence of new cultural and temporal formations—forms of what she called, in a later work, "entanglement." By contrast, Remains of the Social repeatedly insists that apartheid cannot be imaginatively outmaneuvered but must instead be "worked through" (this psychoanalytic term recurs throughout this collection). I take the broad argument of this collection to be that the "post-apartheid" focus on new instantiations of the social as such has led to a dangerous blindness to the present-day mutations of apartheid, which, it is implied, is always already lodged within global modernity. Rather, therefore, than asking their contributors to take the social as an end in itself—that is, to imagine ways in which the social realm might be transformed, repaired, unified, or [End Page 163] rethought—the editors have asked...

The Malady of Perpetual Municipal-finance Mismanagement: Designing a Leadership Framework as a Panacea

The post-1994 new democratic government had an obligation to address the social injustices that the apartheid government enacted. These injustices were to be addressed by municipalities in combination with the national and provincial government. Municipalities in South Africa are to provide critical services to the citizens. Apart from political turmoil and instability in South African municipalities, research suggests that administrators lack knowledge of financial management. This has negatively affected how financial resources are managed, thus affecting service delivery. It has resulted in some municipalities being placed under administration by the provincial governments. Thus, this study aimed to develop a conceptual framework for effectively managing ever-eroding municipal finances in South Africa. This study adopted a qualitative research approach by looking into the key factors affecting leadership and financial management in municipalities to develop a leadership framework. This study contributed to a solid understanding of the need for change in the municipality's existing financial management activities and long-term viability. Furthermore, once the conceptual structure is implemented appropriately, it can assist South African municipalities and African countries in managing their finances effectively and ultimately improve their service delivery.

Re-examining the notion of local economic development (LED) post democratization: anticipated outputs, impediments and future expectation(s)

This article critically assesses the notion of Local Economic Development (LED) and utilizes South Africa as a case of reference, through which the conceptualization and underpinnings, associated with LED, are understood. South Africa has come through what one may call three waves of development change, which comprise the apartheid period (1949–1990), the transition period (1990–1994) and the post-apartheid era (1994–present). During both the apartheid and transition period, South Africa was at war with itself and neighbouring countries and economic growth, resources, employment and service delivery were scarce, particularly to the black majority because of the apartheid regimes destabilization policies. Post democratization, and with the inauguration of the democratic elected African National Congress (ANC) government, there were envisioned blueprint frameworks that ought to reverse the erstwhile apartheid regimes policies of racism, inequality and segregation. These were earmarked to alter South Africa’s development and economic growth landscape through the lens of LED. Hence, the promotion of LED was identified as a noteworthy strategy that can ultimately lead to community development, economic growth and poverty relief.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the universality of health and human rights

The UN adopted the Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid in November, 1973, making this systematised form of racial discrimination an international crime.1 The vote was overwhelmingly in favour of the designation, with only Portugal, South Africa, the USA, and the UK voting against it. Subsequently, the 1998 Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court, further established apartheid as one of 11 crimes against humanity.2 Initially linked specifically to the apartheid regime of South Africa, the crime has been since been more broadly invoked—in the war crimes tribunals of the former Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide,3,4 and in the abuses against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar.

8 - The Western Super-Powers and the Liberation Struggle in Africa: The Politics of Imperialism, Domination and Resistance, 1948-1980s

Controlling South Africa during the Cold War era was geostrategic to the West- ern super powers because of its 1,900-mile coastline with harbours at Durban, East London, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and Walvis Bay (a seaport in the then South West Africa, now Namibia). Being the southernmost country on the Af- rican continent, South Africa abuts on both the Indian and the Atlantic Oceans and its fascist leaders vociferously pledged to ‘defend the free world from the communist threat’ during the Cold War era. Thus, apartheid South Africa played a vital role in the global strategy of imperialism led by Western super powers such as the United States of America and United Kingdom to make the Indian Ocean area a region for their dominance and total control. South Africa was thus regarded as a ‘second Gibraltar’ or ‘gatekeeper’ to the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. This article is about imperial interventions in the African continent spearheaded by Western super powers, and the pivotal role of apartheid South Africa in this regard. It also discusses the actions of African countries whose leaders acted in solidarity with the apartheid regime which had divisive for- eign policy. But those African leaders who acted in solidarity with the racist South African government represented a minority group vigorously opposed by a majority of Organisation of African Unity member states and the African National Congress (ANC).

Analysing the impact of taxi violence on commuters in South Africa

Taxi violence in South Africa was the tool that the apartheid regime used to pursue their interest by dividing the people so that they could acquire what they needed (Sekhonyane and Dugard, 2004:15). Taxi violence is one of the most burning issues faced by Department of Transport, Police, commuters and taxi industry in South Africa. This industry plays a vital role in commuting people to and from work or different destinations, and in most cases it is caught in the wrong doing in terms of fighting for routes where many innocent lives are lost due to infighting. The inability by government to regulate taxi industry is a serious problem for taxi operators, taxi associations, commuters and society. The deregulation of taxi industry brought many problems such as conflict, violence and mafia type assassinations in South Africa. This article focus on preventive measures to curb taxi violence in South Africa. This article utilised qualitative, case study based approach and the approach is supported by analysis of primary and secondary sources. The article further draws on the findings from the world on taxi violence and formulate steps to counteract taxi violence in South Africa. The research based key steps leading to the prevention of taxi violence in South Africa. The first process related to regulation of taxi industry, awareness campaigns on taxi operations, the control of routes and multidisciplinary investigation team should be established to overcome taxi violence in South Africa.

National Socialism, Colonialism and Antifascist Memory Politics in Postwar Dutch–South African Exchanges

ABSTRACT This contribution addresses the dynamics of Dutch memory politics in the Dutch–South African exchanges between 1948 and 1975. The 1948 election victory of the Nationalist Party and their Apartheid policies brought about painful memories of Nazi attrocities, antisemitic persecurtion and anti-fascist struggle in the Netherlands. Soon, however, the Dutch government acquired an interest in highlighting a different history in relation to South Africa when referring to the notion of stamverwantschap. This implied an ethnic–racial identification of the Dutch with White, Nationalist South Africans on the basis of an alleged shared history of Dutchness. These memory politics changed after ‘Sharpeville’ in the 1960s. Once more memories of racist exclusion during National Socialism were revived in relation to the Apartheid regime. These memories facilitated and were strengthened by a growing anti-Apartheid movement. Yet, in their effort to be ‘on the right side of history’, the grassroots memory politics of the anti-Apartheid movement ignored the Dutch colonial implementation of racial inequality and its effects, not only on the Apartheid policies but also in contemporary Dutch society. This article aims to explore spaces for a synergy between narratives of historical catastrophe such as colonialism and Nazism, both with deep historical and intellectual roots in many parts of the world.

South African Landscapes: Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country in Translation and on the Screen

The present survey is part of a project on southern African literary landscapes and translation. In this context, Alan Paton’s novel Cry, the Beloved Country (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948) is emblematic of a new eco-critical consciousness, juxtaposed with the devastation of space by the dynamics of colonialism and the enforcement of the apartheid regime from 1948 to the early 1990s. Topophilia, common among other South African authors, is more than a simple literary theme for Paton; rather, it lies at the core of his spirituality and his resistance against apartheid. Likewise, the biblical symbolism and linguistic features inspiring descriptions in Paton’s work enhance textual cohesion and relevance, while also representing a challenge for translation in the context of different African languages. Following a diachronic perspective, this article examines intralingual, interlingual, and intersemiotic translations, focusing on landscape, language, and identity. One intralingual abridgement, multiple interlingual translations into European languages (Italian, French, Spanish), and two intersemiotic translations (in the form of screen adaptations of the novel) are comparatively analysed. The approach relies on studies of literary description, intersemiotic translation, and multimodality.

Between emptiness and superfluity: funeral photography and necropolitics in late-apartheid South Africa

Documentary photography has undergone a process of devaluation in post-apartheid South Africa. In response, Patricia Hayes has introduced the term “empty photographs” into the scholarly conversation, using it to designate images that have been derided as “‘bad,’ ‘boring,’ or repetitious” in post-apartheid settings (“The Uneven Citizenry,” 189). This article revisits a subset of such images to contest their seeming emptiness—pallbearers escorting dead activists to their graves during political funerals in late-apartheid South Africa. Focusing specifically on Afrapix photographer, Gille de Vlieg’s images of Themba Dlamini’s funeral in Driefontein in 1990, the paper restores their local history to view and unpacks the visual cultural and material cultural circuits of militant mourning in which they were embedded. It then uses various orders of metonymy in the visual field to comment on the “necropolitics” of the apartheid regime (Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics”). The paper concludes with a reflection on Ariella Azoulay’s notion of the “civil gaze” (Civil Imagination) and considers what unfolds when a reckoning with the differential distribution of death that characterizes necropower reorients this faculty away from the individual photograph towards series, genre or corpus.

“Now Let's Speak about the Trash” (about Collaborationists in the ANC)

The struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa gave rise to many heroes, whose symbol was Chris Hani, an underground fighter, a participant in the fighting in Zimbabwe, the chief of staff of the People's Army of the African National Congress — “Umkhonto we Sizwe” (MK), who was killed by a Polish emigrant on April 10 1993. But she also gave birth to traitors, or as they are now preferred to be called, collaborators. The article discusses their complicity with the apartheid regime, starting with state witnesses and ending with “askari”, as Africans who served in the colonial forces were called in East Africa, and in South Africa and Namibia — fighters of Umkhonto we Sizwe and the People's Liberation Army of Namibia, who went over to the side of the racist regime.

Colonial Kenya: socio-political forces and lines of contradiction

The presented article is devoted to the study of the structure of society and the relationship of various ethnic and social groups in Kenya during the era of colonialism. There are four main centers of power - European colonists, missionaries, immigrants from South Asia and the local African population. The main lines of contradictions between them are traced, common interests and conflict zones are outlined in the conditions of the dominant importance of the metropolis, which plays the role of an arbitrator. Particular attention is paid to the channels of arrival in Kenya, the dynamics of growth in the number and socio-political weight of Europeans and Indians, their main claims against each other, resources of influence, methods of achieving goals and defending their positions are analyzed. With the unconditional political domination of immigrants from Europe, the British authorities were forced to recognize the huge contribution of Indian capital to the development of the local economy, to attract Africans to serve in law enforcement and the armed forces, and rely on local resources to cover the needs of the colony during the years of economic crises and World War II. The rise of Indian nationalism contributed to the strengthening of anti-colonial sentiments in Kenya and the consolidation of part of the African and South Asian elite in the simpler struggle for independence. Missionary organizations made a significant contribution to the spread of education and medicine among the indigenous people, gave impetus to the development of their own Christian churches in the region, but undermined the confidence of Africans in themselves, taking an irreconcilable position in relation to some local customs and traditions. Colonial Kenyan society was highly segregated, although the apartheid regime did not officially exist there. In the early years of Kenya's independence, the frictions and contradictions that had been smoothed out earlier by London made themselves felt with renewed vigor, which provoked the emigration of people of Indian and European descent from the country.

A Study of Political Struggle In Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer’s 1979 novel, Burger’s Daughter, makes a valuable contribution to the corpus of prison writing by responding to the socio-historical specificities of the South African prison during the apartheid regime. Drawing on Barbara Harlow’s work on women and political detention, and with reference to Ruth First’s memoir, 117 Days: An Account of confinement and interrogations under the South African ninety-day detention law (1965), this article offers an analysis of the potential for writing—both as fiction and memoir—to reinstate to the official historical record women’s roles in the anti-apartheid movement and their subsequent political detention. It explores how the apartheid regime intended prison not for rehabilitation but as a space of deactivation and invisibility. Prison is, however, a world apart, a liminal space which is simultaneously conducive to political struggle and deactivation, violence and communitas. This article begins by exploring how apartheid prison was both a space of deactivation and of resistance for women activists. It then moves to examine how both these contradictory aspects are registered, briefly, in Ruth First’s memoir, 117 Days and, to a larger extent, in Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter. First’s memoir depicts the prison as a space that imposes inertia while also allowing for moments of solidarity between incarcerated activists. Similarly, in Gordimer’s novel, the journey of Rosa, the eponymous Burger’s daughter, takes her from outside of the prison to inside it, and from feeling alienated to feeling belonging as she endures transformation that is spatial and spiritual, personal and political.

Apartheid, authoritarianism and anticolonial struggles viewed from the Right

After his commitment to the eventually failed defence of segregation in the United States during the 1960s, political scientist A. James Gregor (1929-2019) created an extensive oeuvre on the history of Fascism and its ideology. While personally remaining an éminence grise, his ideo-centric approach proved influential in international academic discussions. He helped foster an approach centred on the representation of ideological aspects of Fascism at the expense of the critical analysis of other historical elements, thus obscuring Fascism’s societal roots. Moreover, Gregor’s definition of Fascism, intrinsically linked to his understanding of a developmental dictatorship, blurs the line between colonialism and anticolonial struggles. In his works on Fascism in the Global South, written during the Cold War, Gregor does not find developmental regimes akin to the Mussolini dictatorship among the largely pro-Western right-wing authoritarianisms that emerged in the Tricont, but rather within the largely left-wing national liberation fronts and the political systems they built up. This peculiar verdict is linked to Gregor’s own apologia of historical Italian Fascism and more recent right-wing dictatorships in the so-called Third World, like, for instance, the Apartheid regime, and to his simultaneous denigration of anticolonial struggle as it was pursued i.a. by the anti-Apartheid movement. Through a critique of ideology which delineates and analyses Gregor’s argument evolving around these themes, this article contests his political compass in his search for Fascism in a historical-critical manner and offers an alternative proposition on how to identify the historical and contemporary role of far-right politics in the world system of capitalism.

The phenomenon of the Khoisan community’s revivalism in South Africa: Social and political aspects

The article analyses the phenomenon of the Khoisan community’s revivalism and its key socio-political aspects. Since the fall of the apartheid regime in 1994, the interest in ancestral heritage among South Africans has grown significantly. This process did not bypass the “Coloured” community of South Africa and many of them began to abandon the “colonial nickname”. They began to identify themselves as descendants of the aboriginal Khoikhoi and San. This phenomenon, which took the name as the Khoisan revivalism, had not only genealogical interest, but also a socio-political dimension. Democratic South Africa has inherited the state racial classification from the apartheid era, according to which the Khoisan is continuing to be classified as “Coloured”. Activists of the Khoisan revivalism demand its revision and seek to be recognized as the “First Nation” of South Africa. This status would not only allow to raise the prestige of the Khoikhoi and San, but also to secure special rights for them. In particular, the right to restitution of land that has been taken away by any non-Khoisans. The South African leadership agrees to classify the Khoisans under their name, however, the leadership is not ready to recognize them as the “First Nation”. This could equate the expansion of Bantu-speaking Africans to Southern Africa and the European colonisation of the region. According to the government, it is incorrect to compare these two phenomena, and the required status will only cause a split within the South African society. Materials for the research were obtained during my postdoctoral studies from 2018 to 2020 in South Africa.

What Future for Constitutional Democracy in South Africa?

South Africa embraced constitutional democracy in 1994 following the collapse of the Apartheid regime. The constitution that was finally passed in 1996 promised the development of a social democratic society. Within two decades, much of the promise contained in its constitutional instrument had been hollowed out. This paper considers the manner in which the ruling party, the African National Congress, embraced a project termed State Capture in which the key guardrails of constitutional democracy were transformed into instruments for the perpetuation of rent seeking by a political elite who effectively eschewed the social democratic project begun in 1994. Apart from the rapacious effect of rent captures the ANC continues to be guided by the idea of democratic centralism in which all its members of the National Parliament place the interests of the party above those of the constitution and thus the nation. Within this context constitutional democracy is viewed as the enemy of the people, personified by the Party. In addition, the paper describes the rise of political populism, the continued high levels of inequality and the vested interests of traditional leaders. It then examines the manner in which these conditions may bring about the replacement of constitutional democracy with a form of autocratic legalism.

Is democracy still relevant in South African higher education?

At least, over the past four decades post-colonial African higher education has undergone significant changes in the quest to cultivate democratic educational / pedagogical actions in universities. From its early insistence on deliberative action (Waghid 2001), more recently, it assumed the forms of both ethical pursuits (Davids and Waghid 2016) and caring (Waghid 2019). Yet, as South Africa continues its unprecedented transition into a democracy, it is becoming abundantly evident that what is needed in higher education should surpass deliberative, ethical, and caring encounters. The expectation that a democratic climate would ease the deep inequalities in higher education, would somehow set the scene for a renewal of knowledge, and restore opportunities for historically marginalised communities, lies in limbo. Instead, what we witness is the awakening of renewed resistance – this time, not against an unjust apartheid regime, but against a democracy that seems incapable of yielding to its own ideals. In this article, therefore, we argue that for higher education to enact its democratic imperative – that is, its transformative ideals, necessary not only for its own public thriving, but for its citizenship – it ought to invoke the idea of resistance (Davids and Waghid 2021).

Spurious Satanists and Christian Cults

This article explores the historical and contemporary entanglements of race, religion and media as it plays out through a four-part documentary series about deviant, dangerous and criminal Christian group Electus Per Deus, who were responsible for a spate of murders known collectively as the Krugersdorp Killings. Headed by a self-proclaimed powerful ex-Satanist witch, who was actively involved in on-going spiritual warfare, the group’s primary religious activity was to help educate about and assist with escape from the ‘Occult’ in general and Satanism in particular. A curious element of Electus Per Deus’ modus operandi was that the group’s members often masqueraded as Satanists, in order to advance their cause and secure the legitimacy of their claims. The community in which they were positioned vehemently rejected the Christian status of the group despite members claims to the contrary. This article argues that within the historical and contemporary political economies of race, religion and media, White Afrikaans Christian communities, such as those featured in Devilsdorp were inordinately favoured through the policies and practices of the apartheid regime and more recently the Afrikaner capture of commercial media. This re­ligious and racial privilege is reproduced by the series and serves as a reminder of the importance of intersectional, contextually informed approaches to the study of religious diversity, deviance, and danger.

"Mother City": Mothering Work, Coloured Respectability, and the Making of Contemporary Kaapse Klopse

"Mother City"Mothering Work, Coloured Respectability, and the Making of Contemporary Kaapse Klopse Francesca Inglese (bio) francesca inglese notes on racial terminology The apartheid regime's Population Registration Act (1950) constructed four racial categories: (Black) African, Indian, white, and coloured (mixed). I maintain the South African spelling of coloured to distinguish it from the racially offensive term once used in the US to refer to African Americans. Although some scholars put "coloured" in quotation marks, I have chosen not to because it can imply that coloured racial identity is constructed, unlike purportedly authentic, stable, and primordial Black and white identities. In klopse practice, the term "coon" is often used to refer to individuals who participate in klopse. While the term stems from the American racist slur for African Americans that was circulated to Cape Town via blackface minstrelsy, in Cape Town it would come to take on quite different meanings among troupe members themselves and continues to be used colloquially to signal someone who participates in Carnival. Despite the racial violence connoted by the term, it is, in this particular context, perceived as a nonderogatory term, often even a source of pride for participants. When I, for example, joined the Fabulous Woodstock Starlites (FWS), I was affectionally referred to by my fellow troupe members as a coon. I intentionally italicize the term to distinguish it from its meanings in an American racial context. notes on language and typography Though klopse songs feature lyrics in both English and Afrikaans, Afrikaans is the home language for the majority of klopse participants. Many of my personal interviews were conducted in English, and some were conducted partially in Afrikaans. Any portions in Afrikaans have been translated into English by the author. Names that have been changed for reasons of privacy are marked with an asterisk. [End Page 1] Article Introduction scene 1: saturday music school It was the last Saturday meeting of the Fabulous Woodstock Starlites (FWS) free music school before the summer holiday, and we had just finished clearing away the remainders of our small celebration: samosas, spicy tomato-flavored crisps, neon green Sparletta cream soda, and portions of candy for each participant. Some children went in groups to use the restroom at the elderly housing unit across the street—the school's once-barely-workable upstairs bathroom had been closed ever since the toilet had been ripped out of the wall and stolen in one of a string of break-ins at the disintegrating facility by those in search of quick money for drugs, mostly tik (methamphetamine). Mogamat Ismail, who paid the school's teacher each week and provided each child with workbooks and pencils, spoke to the children in Afrikaans. "You must have fun during the summer months but also stay out of trouble." Referencing the Islamic concept that emphasizes moderation in all things, he said, "Don't stay to the right, or the left, but stay on the middle path." The school's teacher, Abraham "Abey" Swartz, then turned toward the eight mothers on the edges of the room: "You must help your children stay focused. It is your work." Shariefa "Poppie" Collins closed her eyes and nodded in agreement. Abey continued, "Disciplined practice, hard work, and staying clear of temptations and trouble." Poppie turned toward her daughter Sadia*, who had participated for a full year in the school despite not being able to afford an instrument, to ensure that the comment had registered.1 "It is your work," Mogamat repeated. scene 2: on the bus to the competition Our troupe, the FWS, was making its way to the Athlone Sports Stadium, where we would be competing that day. As was tradition, our circuitous bus route would take us through various Cape Flats townships—the extensive, flat, dry, inhospitable floodplain outside the city and lush suburbs, on which the apartheid government created segregated townships for Indian, coloured, and Black South Africans and forcibly resettled families during apartheid's Group Areas Act. We would pile out of the bus, parade through the streets in our satin gear, greet residents, maybe be offered some cool drinks, and pile back on. As we approached the stadium, already exhausted from the heat, a fight...