Apartheid Research Articles

“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.

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.

‘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.

Racialized Railway Mobilities: Repression and Resistance in the Anglophone South African Short Story During the Drum Decade

ABSTRACT South Africa has a complex history of racialized (im)mobilities. During the social engineering of apartheid, the city became a racialized white space that was dependent on black migrant workers who were forced to live in the marginal spaces on the edge of the city. This daily commute was enabled through the construction of public transportation systems and commuter railways. This mundane and banal form of mobility became a key site of both repression and resistance during the apartheid era. The present article explores how these racialized railway mobilities were represented during the ‘Drum decade’ of the 1950s in South Africa. It explores how the short story, as a liminal genre positioned within local and transnational literary cultures, is mobilized to narrate railway mobilities during this transitional decade. Texts analyzed include the news reports and short stories by Can Themba, Es’kia Mphahlele, and Nat Nakasa. This article explores how the mobile public spaces of the railways and the mobile figures of railway passengers were mobilized in the Anglophone South African short story as a form of resistance to the repression of the apartheid era.

Resistance against Gender-Based Violence and Discrimination in the Poetry of Sindiwe Magona

Sindiwe Magona (1943-) is a South African self-made black woman writer who rises out of difficult socio-economic conditions and turns out to be a well-accomplished writer who uses writing as a vehicle to struggle against the oppressive political system of apartheid, ongoing inner conflicts, criminality, and the infliction of gender-based violence. Gender-based violence remains an unresolved problem in South Africa where the apartheid regime and its adherents continue to nurture the patriarchal ideology which victimizes, alienates, and restricts women both in the domestic and public spheres. The focal point of this article, therefore, is to examine Sindiwe Magona’s Please Take Photographs (2009) which is embedded with her subversive strategy of unsettling the masculine authority constructed officially over women and conducted as a natural determinant of men and women’s unbalanced power relationship in South African society. An in-depth scrutiny of her poetry will reveal Magona’s exceptional endeavor to extricate gender-based violence out of the domestic sphere and reconfigure it as the greatest social and political problem of her country.

Historicising the unchanging face of Nigeria’s Foreign Policy Thrust from 1960 to 2015

Foreign policy is a tool. It is a means to an end, but not the end itself. What a nation gets from foreign policy on the international scene is dependent on its skill in negotiating, applying force and bargaining appropriately. In Nigeria for instance, foreign policy is seen as definitional or doctrine, and as such, using foreign policy thrust to advance the wellbeing of the country remains problematic. Since independence, the guiding principle of Nigeria’s foreign policy thrust has remained a reflection of its perception of the international political system. A constant feature that has remained central to Nigeria’s foreign relations posture has been Africa, with pre-occupations concerning fighting colonialism, then obnoxious apartheid policy in South Africa and the discrimination of black peoples in the African continent and elsewhere in the world. Nigeria’s foreign policy like those of countries all over the world is geared towards attaining the foreign policy objectives of the country’s leadership and its teeming population. Unfortunately, this expectation by the judgement of many informed Nigerians is yet to be fully achieved. The Nigerian Federal Government has often been accused of Big Brotherism and a Father Christmas outlook with little or no reciprocity. It must be noted that states relate globally in the conduct of inter-state relations. In this relationship, the international system provides a potent stage and theatre for Nigeria to come up with defined goals and collective concerns. Despite its clear goals and strong points, there is still a general feeling that Nigeria’s foreign policy plank is punching below its expected weight. Between 1960 and 2015, different foreign policy thrusts have been adopted with little or no reasonable result. This paper therefore examines the various foreign policy thrusts adopted from 1960 to 2015. And attempt to identify reasons why each of these Foreign Policy Planks could not live up to expectation, bring out why each of these foreign policy plank could not live up to expectations. Historical methods will be used in the collection and collation of data.

Racial segregation and the origins of apartheid in South Africa, 1919-36

No abstract available.

Segregation and plague: King William's Town and the plague outbreaks of 1900-1907

Studies in the history of bubonic plague in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth revealed the close connection between the Victorian obsession with sanitation and the development of urban segregation in South Africa. The response of the medical officials and local authorities in the cities was mirrored in King William's Town, where racial prejudges were compounded by the Town Council's incompetence and reluctance to incur any expenditure from its own coffers.

”Detta hav av orättvisa”

“This sea of injustice”. Motherhood and Colonialism in Sara Lidman’s Jag och min son Exploring Sara Lidman’s novel Jag och min son (1961,1963), this article delves into its nuanced intersection of motherhood and colonialism. The narrative scrutinizes Sweden’s role in the colonial system, with a particular focus on the South African apartheid regime. Through the lens of a Swedish single father navigating Johannesburg in pursuit of personal enrichment, the story highlights his strained relationship to several mother figures, unraveling complex threads that intertwine parenthood, colonial structures, and whiteness. Using the theoretical framework of motherhood studies, such as the concept of the other-mother, the analysis seeks to unveil the intricate capitalist dynamics of familial relationships within the context of international power hierarchies. These themes in Lidman’s works would only grow stronger in the years to come, and by examining Jag och min son, these early tendencies in Lidman’s writing are illuminated.

Apartheid in South Africa and Israel/Palestine: A Case of Convergent Evolution?

Abstract “Apartheid” is widely invoked to explain endemic conflict in Israel/Palestine. While oppression in South Africa and in Israel/Palestine bear striking familial resemblances, there are also fundamental differences. Analogy is not the same as rigorous comparison: It contributes little to the understanding of causality or process and may not be a sound guide for the development of political strategy. The two societies bear similarities with respect to their ethno-nationalist driving forces. Yet, whereas racial domination was a fundamental feature of apartheid racial capitalism, the displacement and expulsion of Palestinians has driven injustice in Israel/Palestine. Another key difference is that South Africa’s existence within its established borders was never seriously contested by the leading liberation movements, with the ANC holding firmly to the position that its struggle was to secure majority rule in a unitary nation-state with common citizenship. This presents a stark contrast to Israel, whose right to exist is frequently challenged. While Israel/Palestine and apartheid South Africa show more differences than similarities, this article concludes that they have been subject to convergent evolution, that is, the acquisition of similar characteristics, albeit from different starting points, and with subsequent divergence.

Towards decolonisation of primary school education in South Africa

Background: Despite the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, most black schools in the country still embrace coloniality through policies and practices. This leads to disempowerment, loss of identity, inequalities and inferiority in the learners, which are nurtured till their adulthood. It is therefore important to decolonise the inherited curriculum and recognise African identity, culture and system as valuable for Africans.Aim: This article aims to explore coloniality within the primary school education system in South Africa and aims to motivate curriculum transformation that will divest coloniality in Africa.Setting: This article centres around South African Primary schools.Methods: This article employs a desktop approach and a systematic literature review. To collect the data, the study selected articles from different search engines such as EBSCO, Science Direct and Google Scholar. This enables the synthetisation of previous works to provide knowledge on the topic. The decoloniality theory underpins the study.Results: Primary school education in South Africa is influenced by coloniality; hence, there is a need for transformation.Conclusion: The primary school curriculum in South Africa needs to be revised in a decolonised manner to suit a multi-racial or ethnic South Africa for the realisation of an equitable and just future for Africans.Contribution: This article provides knowledge about coloniality within the context of primary schools in South Africa and further recommends curriculum transformation to a truly African manner. It thus aligns with the journal’s theme and scope, which is the interrogation of coloniality in South African primary schools.

Sizwe Bansi is Dead:

This essay examines the relationship between politics, performance, and identity by entering into dialogue with the play Sizwe Banzi is Dead by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona. First staged in 1972, the play delves into questions of identity within apartheid South Africa, telling the story of Sizwe Banzi, a migrant worker who must adopt a new identity to secure a work permit in Port Elizabeth. After tracing the play’s origins, the essay provides a detailed analysis of its plot. This is followed by a brief theological exploration of the play, considering its enduring relevance in contemporary identity discussions, both in South Africa and globally.