Contemporary Southern Africa Research Articles

Hyenas of the Limpopo: “Illicit Labour Recruiting,” Assisted Border Crossings, and the Social Politics of Movement Across South Africa’s Border with Zimbabwe

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the negotiation of undocumented cross-border movement, or assisted border crossings, at Beitbridge, South Africa’s border with Zimbabwe. By reading border practices as arising from a complex synthesis of state regulatory norms with social relations that shape everyday encounters with the Beitbridge border space, the article argues that assisted border crossings are temporally, structurally and experientially determined. The article proposes the local concept of ukutshokotsha as a way of understanding “border struggles” that shape this “morphogenesis.” Located in historical, regional, political-economic, as well as experiential contexts, assisted border crossings are analyzed as rooted in everyday encounters with a fraught border space, as opposed solely to the border’s official institutional norms. The article argues that a focus on border practices is important in as far as it privileges the complex agency of disparate border actors, of the border, and of the shifting meanings of borders that emerge from everyday practices. By describing the colonial style “illicit labour recruiting” and post-independence “assisted border crossings” as a socio-historical, phenomenological, and political process, the article emphasizes the active role of middlemen in shaping the nature and meaning of the Beitbridge border and of the political economic organization of cross-border movement in contemporary Southern Africa. The article argues that the social politics of movement across the Beitbridge border is as much a contingency of history, a material, social and existential aspect of contemporary border practices, and a characteristic of everyday forms of Southern African state formation in a general context of socio-economic crisis.

Exile biography and un-national history: the story of Kaufilwa Nepelilo

ABSTRACTIn the history of Namibia’s liberation struggle, Kaufilwa Nepelilo’s story is largely unintelligible. As one of hundreds of contract laborers to leave Namibia during the early 1960s in search of opportunities in postcolonial Tanzania, Nepelilo soon found himself living at Kongwa, the site of the first guerrilla camp granted to the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) and other liberation movements then supported by the Organization of African Unity. A reluctant “freedom fighter” at best, Nepelilo’s account of life at Kongwa focuses not on preparations to liberate Namibia from colonialism but rather on escalating tensions between rank-in-file guerrillas and the camp command. Nepelilo’s story is not a well-worn “dissident” narrative either, however. In contrast to this narrative, which introduces Kongwa in the context of SWAPO’s 1968 “Kongwa Crisis,” Nepelilo focuses on the inequities of camp daily life over seven years. Moreover, he highlights other personal experiences of exile which have fallen outside repeated narratives, including his motivation for traveling to Tanzania in the 1960s, his imprisonment in Tanzanian and Zambian jails in the 1970s, and his repatriation as an “Angolan refugee” in the 1980s. As I maintain, the discrepancy between Nepelilo’s story and Namibian struggle histories reflects both the politics of exile in contemporary Southern Africa and the times and places where exiles lived in Africa’s frontline states. Nepelilo’s story has not been “silenced,” however. Rather, it has been repeated often among friends who share stories about their experiences in exile to establish valuable relationships. The biographical details articulated in such stories may easily be drawn into a new national history. At the same time, they have the potential to push against nationalism altogether, allowing for different forms of historical narration and new insight into struggle pasts and their transnational legacies.

Labelling black male genitalia and the ‘new racism’

This article explores the discursive construction of sexual racism through names assigned to the black penis by black male college students in Southern Africa. This analysis reveals use of three frequently occurring metaphors: zoomorphs, weapons and heroic historical figures. Collectively, these frequently occurring metaphors associate Southern African black men with notions of (i) wild, animalistic sexuality, (ii) dangerous, violent behaviour, and (iii) large sexual organs, which were prevalent racist ideologies of black male bodies during the colonial period. In addition, perceptions of sociocultural power dynamics attributed to patriarchy are foregrounded through metaphors related to royalty, indicating that names assigned to male genitalia align not only with the colonial construction of sexual racism but also with patriarchal gender relations. The article concludes by suggesting that names assigned to the black penis embody inherent contradictions that are not only characteristic of Southern African masculinities but also significantly complicate the dichotomy between ‘self’ and ‘other’, or ‘us’ and ‘them’, in contemporary Southern Africa.

An Independent Caprivi: A Madness of the Few, a Partial Collective Yearning or a Realistic Possibility? Citizen Perspectives on Caprivian Secession

The case of Caprivi in Namibia represents an example of independence movements operating within the (multi-)national states in the contemporary Southern Africa. An armed secessionist uprising in August 1999, although quickly stifled by the Namibian government, revealed the singular historical roots of this movement, as well as a presently widespread popular feeling of discontent and aspiration for separate Caprivian citizenship. This article explores some key visions of the local population's experience of their membership of the Namibian state and seeks to explore the possibility – real or not – of an independent Caprivi equipped with a shared ethnic identity. The aim is to address (at least partially) the gap found in research scholarship about Caprivian secession in terms of the views and preferences of the Caprivian population itself. On the basis of ethnographic field research, it has been possible to explore popular perceptions of the events of 1999, the idea of independence, and the general feeling of neglect by the Namibian government.

Cross-border Languages in Southern African Economic and Political Integration

Although the subject of southern African regional integration has attracted the most attention from a political, economic and trade perspective, it has remained least understood or researched sociolinguistically. This article deals with the questions about the role of the state and local community agency in the formation and legitimation of identities. It provides a counter-narrative on the subject of cross-border languages and their intersection with cross-border activities in contemporary southern Africa. Various ways by which southern African cross-border languages can be positively deployed to enhance regional economic, political and cultural integration are discussed and illustrated. The main argument is that the recognition and mainstreaming of cross-border languages promises to provide a foundation for a regional integration framework that accommodates all stakeholders including people involved in informal cross-border activities. In conclusion the article posits that the incidence of multiple cross-border languages in southern Africa is another form of bonding and bridging social capital relevant to the realisation of an inclusive and broad-based regional integration project.

Rehearsals of genocide in South Africa: thinking with and beyond Francis Nyamnjoh and Michael Neocosmos

How do we know when a state is rehearsing genocide? This question has been answered in spectacular fashion in contemporary Africa: the veiled language of the Biafran war in Nigeria, which masked mass murder; the state-sponsored near-annihilation of the Tutsis within 100 days in Rwanda; the unbridled love for power by Islamic militias in Somalia that has rendered the country stateless; and the violation of Darfurians with impunity in Sudan. Such obvious cases make Africa appear to be a place where anything that can go wrong will destroy social norms overnight. Such instances also mask the violations of humanity occurring in neoliberal democracies such as South Africa. For example, the xenophobic attacks on resident black Africans from elsewhere are the product of the revived neurosis of separate development in the aftermath of 1994. South Africa's black middle class condones xenophobia and colludes in the state's failure to deliver real independence to the masses of unemployed South African blacks. Many of South Africa's black academics collude in the popular discourse that accuses black foreigners of taking their jobs and their women. The persecution of black foreigners, derisively known as Makwerekwere in South African official and local parlance, is also a consequence of the contradiction of globalisation and its bounded citizenship. Some have suggested ordinary South Africans have their own parochial biases, even though both local and national leaders have inspired them to assault and berate black foreigners. I draw on Francis Nyamnjoh's book, Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa (2006), and Michael Neocosmos' work, From ‘Foreign Natives’ to ‘Native Foreigners’, Explaining Xenophobia in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Citizen and Nationalism, Identity and Politics (2006), to discuss how xenophobia choreographs everyday life in South Africa. The paper argues that beyond the role that South African leaders and the masses continue to play in persecuting individual and black foreigners, other African countries have not stood up against South Africa's chauvinistic behaviour and its crimes against humanity. Whatever the source of this silence from the rest of the continent, the South African state and a significant portion of the country's population has felt free to deploy its resources to persecute, undermine and exploit foreign blacks without censure either from the African Union or from the United Nations.

Property rights, land tenure and the racial discourses

A persistent theme in land and agrarian studies is the appropriation of land and natural resources by mostly Western foreigners and the inequitable division of land and natural resources between Indigenous people and white settlers. It was this overt racial inequality in land ownership and the accompanying structures of oppression that led to the rise of liberation movements in Africa, South America and Asia. Most, if not all, land and agrarian reform programmes in the former colonies take the racial inequality in land as their point of departure. The same applies to the process of changing the inequalities in the use and ownership of natural resources such as wildlife, fisheries and forests. Whereas critical scholarship and social movements vehemently opposed the racialized nature of land dispossession, less attention has been paid to the persistence of racialized tenure systems. The silence on the racial character of land and natural resource tenure is rather surprising given that colonial tenure systems were based on race and racist grounds. This paper draws on examples from nature conservancies and communal land reform in southern Africa to argue that the dual land and natural resource tenure inherent from colonialism and apartheid remains intact in contemporary southern Africa. It also suggests that the democratic governments in the region and critical scholarship have failed to challenge the racialized character of land tenure. Instead, they continued to reinvent orthodox views of society and culture. Race seems to matter most in property regimes in the region in as far as it relates to equity rather than its initial categorization of people. The consequences of the persistence of the racialized tenure systems are that the success or failure of land and resource use and management reproduces racial explanations.

Continuity in the Traditional Initiation Practice of Boys and Girls in Contemporary Southern Africa Society

The traditional initiation of boys and girls in South Africa and Lesotho has made a major comeback following a change of attitude of the different religious and educational institutions. Many people have taken advantage of the situation but with differing agenda. The paper therefore discusses the practices in the face of modern technology and disease and makes a comparative analysis with past experience. It also discusses the research methodological problems in the study of such traditions that come with a changed face.

Migration Regimes and the Politics of Difference in Contemporary Southern Africa

The issue of migration and in particular the increase in irregular or undocumented migration has become highly politicised in Southern Africa. This has involved a rise in social intolerance towards migrant populations and outright xenophobia in many countries. This brief article examines the dynamics and complexities of migration in current-day Southern Africa and contextualises it in relation to the most salient issues, discourses and practices that characterise migration governance at the international level. The article highlights that predominant approaches to the governance of migration in the region reflect some of the dynamics which have marked migration discourse and praxis in the international sphere, but that they also carry some distinct characteristics. Trends of securitisation and related exclusionary practices of citizenship, which have become more pronounced in the international sphere, are emulated in Southern Africa. State and societal processes and reactions to higher levels of regional migration have created a context in which social polarisation and the entrenchment of difference prevails. This has meant that prime questions about how to ameliorate the socio-economic and political circumstances which evoke migrant flows in the first instance, and on how to deal with the inefficiencies in Southern Africa's current migration policies, have remained largely unasked by the region's rulers. Overall, Southern Africa's migration regime evidences two contradictory thrusts, one which seeks to encourage closer regional and specifically economic integration, and the other which resists the assumed threats posed to national sovereignty by increased migrant flows and which leads to a fractious regional governance system.

Insiders & Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa By Francis B. Nyamnjoh UNISA, CODESRIA and Zed Books, 2006. 273 pages. $29.95 (paper)

Insiders & Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa By Francis B. Nyamnjoh UNISA, CODESRIA and Zed Books, 2006. 273 pages. $29.95 (paper)

Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa. By Francis B. Nyamnjoh. New York: Zed Books, 2006. Pp. 273. $85.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).

Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa. By Francis B. Nyamnjoh. New York: Zed Books, 2006. Pp. 273. $85.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).

Francis B. Nyamnjoh. Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa. Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA/London: Zed Books, 2006. Distributed in the U.S. by Palgrave Macmillan, New York, x + 273 pp. Notes. References. Index. $85.00. Cloth. $29.95. Paper.

Francis B. Nyamnjoh. Insiders and Outsiders: Citizenship and Xenophobia in Contemporary Southern Africa. Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA/London: Zed Books, 2006. Distributed in the U.S. by Palgrave Macmillan, New York, x + 273 pp. Notes. References. Index. 29.95. Paper. - Volume 50 Issue 1

Da'wah movements and Sufi tariqahs: Competing for spiritual spaces in contemporary south(ern) Africa

This paper provides a brief survey of the contemporary da'wah movements and Sufi orders (tariqah) that have redefined and reformulated some of the social institutions among the Muslim community in southern Africa. After a theoretical discussion of the definition of movements and orders, the paper provides a brief overview of Islam's presence in contemporary southern Africa. This is followed by a historical review of the various Sufi tariqahs and Muslim movements in the region, focusing on the Tabligh Jama'at and including the Chistiyyah, Murabitun, Qadriyyah, Alawiyyah and Naqshbandi tariqahs. In the final section of the paper comparisons are made between the growth of da'wah movements and Sufi tariqahs and the reasons for their relative influences and successes are analysed.

Understanding Black Households: The Problem

Households can be taken for granted in the West because the nuclear family system with its bilateral descent ensures a fairly standard pattern of co-residence, with predictable patterns of pooling resources. In contemporary southern Africa, the tradition of patrilineal descent in black families entails a much wider set of options for co-residence as relatives disperse to make a living in the new global economy. The agnatic idiom continues to give coherence to volatile, contingent black households. The paper traces the distinctive historical roots of Western and African households and argues against the assumption that black South Africans are engaged in some sort of transition to a Western pattern.

REVIEWS

REVIEWS A nderson , Allan, Zion and Pentecost: The Spirituality and Experience of Pentecostal and Zionist/Apostolic Churches in South Africa (African Initiatives in Christian Mission 6), Pretoria, Unisa Press, 2000, 328 pp., 1 86888 1 143 1, £15.20/US$23.40 (paper). This book makes a signiŽ cant contribution to the study of AICs in particular and to the religious life of contemporary southern Africa in general. It is based on and incorporates material from Anderson’s exist- ing publications ( Moya: The Holy Spirit in an African Context and Bazalwane: African Pentecostals in South Africa —now both out of print—and articles) as well

Fertility in Southern Africa: The Quiet Revolution

Over the past twenty to thirty years, a silent revolution has occurred, and is still occurring, in human fertility across the region of southern Africa. In a number of countries - most notably, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa and Lesotho - there is hard evidence of really significant declines in fertility. In these countries, the total fertility rate (TFR)' today is around three to four children, and in the first three countries this represents a decline of 40-50 per cent from its peak level.2 The starting point for these changes varies: in South Africa, the transition among the black population was probably under way by the 1960s, although the most significant shift probably came in the 1980s;3 by comparison in Botswana it was not evident until the 1980s. In contrast with many other demographic variables, where national data are often unavailable or have to be treated with caution (e.g. for migration or rates of urban growth), reasonably reliable data on fertility are generally accessible for most southern African countries, although the official South African data only became available in the 1990s and remain the subject of debate. The changing aspect of fertility in southern Africa largely informed our decision to hold the workshop that was the precursor to this special issue. The 'fertility transition' was evidently happening to a greater or lesser degree across the region, but it was also clear that the cultural 'value' (rather than just the 'economic' value) of children remained high. The workshop attempted to explore the articulation of these two factors in contemporary southern Africa and focused on addressing fertility in its social context rather than in purely technical demographic terms. In general, the interplay between fertility, the adoption of contraceptives, education, income and the usual range of socio-economic factors is taken as read by the contributors to this volume - these issues are well addressed in the, often highly quantitative, demographic journals. Similarly, the significance of fertility in traditional cultures is also largely assumed, and is well covered in the ethnographic literature. Contributors were encouraged instead to explore the underlying reasons for fertility-related decisions and outcomes in the region and, rather than focus on the general causes of the trend to lower fertility, to examine those factors that result in variations in the downward regional trend. We were led in this direction by the belief that a close study of these regional variations would be a more illuminating way of understanding the complex

Our Gendered Past: Archaeological Studies of Gender in Southern Africa

Gender stereotyping is, it seems, as old as the study of and archaeologists are as guilty of it as any other section of the community. Labels such as man the hunter and woman the child nurturer had the effect of rendering women invisible in the archaeological record. Awareness of gender issues in southern African archaeology is relatively new and few publications have attempted to engender the past. The research documented here reveals that changes in gender roles and ideologies have been a natural part of southern African history for thousands of years and will continue to be a natural part of the historical process. The book focuses on the variability of gender roles through time, and on how these roles have played their part in shaping or maintaining social mores. It is a study which is of direct relevance to contemporary southern Africa where, through timidity, scepticism or ignorance, some still argue that traditional gender roles are proper and therefore immutable.

Educational Reform and the Transformation of Southern Africa

Preface Introduction Some Facts About Southern Africa Map of Southern Africa Southern Africa in Crisis: A Region in Need of Reform The Imperative of Educational Reform in a Historical Context The Purpose of Educational Reform in Southern Africa Prerequisites of Educational Reform Theory of Educational Reform in Contemporary Southern Africa Approaches to Educational Reform Results of Educational Reform Educational Reform and the Transformation of Southern Africa: Summary, Conclusions, and Implications Bibliography Index

History and environmental education- A review of agar's thesis with specific reference to southern Africa

History has a major contribution to make to the understanding of the present day environment, and consequently a significcnt role to play in environmental education. Agar's (1973) arguments for this are reviewed in the context of contemporary Southern Africa.

The Zulu Revolution: State Formation in a Pastoralist Society

One cannot comprehend the demographic and political maps of contemporary Southern Africa, as well as the cultural-historical dynamics of the region during both the colonial and post-colonial periods, without first studying the changes caused by the Zulu revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and by the accompanying Nguni-Sotho migrations into Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and even Tanzania. Among the Nguni who occupied the present Natal province of South Africa, the revolution essentially was a violent counter-elite overthrow of the traditional political system and a transformation of the social order. The revolution was conducted throughout the reigns of five monarchical leaders: Dingiswayo (c. 1800-1818) who laid the foundations; Shaka (1816-1828) who established the Zulu kingdom and ruled at the peak of the revolution; Dingane (1828-1840) who was the first to encounter European encroachment upon Zululand; Mpande (1840-1872) who became a vassal of the Boers and the British; and Cetshwayo (1872-1884) who died in an armed resistance against British colonialism. The prolonged period of revolutionary warfare and the accompanying deprivations, known as the Mfecane among the Nguni and the Difaqane among the Sotho-Tswana, resulted in widespread migrations of peoples in different directions and destinations. Regionally, the Nguni-Sotho migrations led to militarization, conquest and nation-building, and to the absorption of alien peoples. The whole process resulted in the intermixing, intermarriage and assimilation of peoples of diverse origins, languages, and cultures and gave them an enduring sense of corporate identity.