African Historiography Research Articles

Some Reflections on ‘Life after Thirty’

More than thirty years have passed since the History Workshop (HW) was established in South Africa in 1977. Much has changed in these years. The 1970s was a conjuncture of struggle. In the universities a tradition of radical history had begun to take shape, and outside, workers and students movements were sweeping through the cities. Coming into being at a time of tumult, the identity of the HW became intimately connected to the battle against the apartheid regime. In the decades that followed, triennial conferences were mounted, efforts were made to understand the struggles of workers, explore popular culture and popular consciousness, and encourage local communities to write their own history. Inspired by Thompsonian social history and the pioneering efforts of the HW at Ruskin, historians set out to restore to the oppressed their agency, and give voice to those silenced by history. The consequence was a revolutionary transformation of South African historiography, a flowering of a vibrant new radical tradition, a displacement of earlier conservative and liberal narratives. By the mid-1990s the apartheid regime was gone, the social context that sustained the new history had changed, and many of the assumptions and categories that framed its projects were being debated. The HW has sought to face the challenges, broaden its projects, and re-invent itself in the new political context. This article suggests that this process of re-thinking needs to be deepened. The ideas that inform the projects of social history, local history, oral history, community history, or public history need to be subjected to critical scrutiny. A dialogic engagement with new critical traditions will be productive.

The significance of the minerals-energy complex in the light of South African economic historiography

Fine and Rustomjee's conceptual project of the minerals and energy complex as a way of understanding power and key networks in the development of the modern economy of South Africa tends to be taken as read and respected. Here their work is conceptualised and placed in the larger economic history of South Africa. The radical critique of apartheid, the understanding of the limitations of apartheid in developmental terms and the arrival of so-called heterodox economic assessments have all played their part in opening the way to this form of thinking. In today's climate the ruling party may also be more inclined to listen to structural critiques of the historic biases of the economy which still play an important part in shaping policy after the end of the apartheid system.

‘An Unknown People’: Reconstructing British South African Identity

This article is part of a wider project, the writing of a biography of South Africans of British origin or descent. As a group, they have been neglected in South African historiography and the article traces the evolution of their identity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, placing it in the context of studies both in South Africa and elsewhere in the Anglophone world on Britishness and also of studies on South Africanism. While acknowledging that there were a variety of British identities in South Africa, the article distinguishes the emergence of a hegemonic identity and teases out characteristics common to most of the group. The article concludes with an examination of how British, or, as they became known in the twentieth century, English-speaking South Africans, reacted to the changes taking place in the country since first 1948, and then 1994.

Délinquance et zones équivoques de la structuration coloniale

Discrepancies in normative definitions of delinquency are not specific to colonial situations with the inequalities and the cultural confrontations they involve. We see them happen in European history as well. The imposition of the State goes hand in hand with an invention of delinquency, be it in xixth century Europe, or in xxth century Africa, as usual behaviour and habits become reprehensible, with repression provoking reactions that can go as far as rebellion. With this similarity in view, we suggest a comparative approach of the construction of States. Such comparisons will, no doubt, benefit European as well as African historiography.

Unfulfilled promise: radical discourses in South African educational historiography, 1970–2007

This paper examines the discourses and modes of representation embodied in educational historiography from the 1970s to the present and their implications for intellectual identity construction in SA. The paper shows how the theoretical foundations of the liberal and Afrikaner nationalist discourses, which vacillated between race and ethnicity, shifted to social class and gender in radical and neo‐Marxist discursive formations of the 1980s. It highlights how the decline of radical scholarship has resulted in a synthesis of constructivist and postmodernist discourses that privilege nation‐building, identity and cultural diversity after apartheid within a predominantly neo‐liberal paradigm. It argues that the transition to post‐apartheid education came to be thought about within a horizon of possibilities different from the rigid paradigmatic tradition of the short‐lived neo‐Marxist school of the 1970s and 1980s.

Rereading the History and Historiography of Epistemic Domination and Resistance in Africa

The process of narrating and interpreting the African past has long been an intellectual struggle against European assumptions and prejudices about the nature of time and history in Africa. As the historian David William Cohen states, “The major issue in the reconstruction of the African past is the question of how far voices exterior to Africa shape the presentation of Africa's past and present” (1985:198). Many historians, especially those without any background or training in African historiography, have assumed, incorrectly, that prior to European contact with Africa, indigenous “traditions” were ancient, permanent, and reproduced from generation to generation without change. This is the false image of cultural isolation and temporal stagnation that has been assiduously disseminated in many parts of the world.

Agony and Ecstasy at the End of the Rainbow

ABSTRACT The three books are reviewed together because of their shared concern with public history. The review starts with a consideration of the Stolten volume because it incorporates a variety of diverse perspectives, reflecting the present state of South African historiography. Following a detailed discussion, three major themes emerge: (1) whether or not South African historians are agreed on a single ‘master narrative’ (2) the relationship between History and Heritage (3) the role of university History Departments. The books by Coombes and Callinicos are both more coherent than that edited by Stolten but their very coherence, in the opinion of the reviewer, is only made possible by the omission of key areas of concern which are identified and discussed.

The impact of role reversal in representational practices in history textbooks after Apartheid

History became a mere sub-section in the broad category of social sciences in the (then) new Curriculum 2005, significantly diluting it as a school subject. Yet the rewriting of South African history textbooks after the seminal democratic elections in South Africa during 1994 became a tool to counter the Apartheid stereotypes, previously loaded with strong cultural and political content. The focus during the past 10-12 years in South African historiography, on the reversal of the colonial portrayal of Africans, has resulted in the de-mystification of Eurocentrism in textbooks. New myths and new silences were re-instated and ensured that again only one voice is dominant - the voice of black South Africans. Multi-perspectivity, one of the non-negotiable pillars of post-modern historiography, is being disregarded in a country attempting to write a sound report of its past. In this article I address the extent to which white and black role reversal is reflected in representational practices in current South African historiography perspectives. A research group of six academics examined the illustrative material of nine series Grades 4-6 primary school history textbooks to identify the extent of racial representation. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted. Of all the illustrations in the textbooks, 15% depicted whites, 50% blacks, and 35% blacks and whites together. The qualitative findings suggest that so-called 'white history' is marginalized in the exemplars. White role models are downplayed and portrayed only as peripheral figures, making their race indistinct. The butterscotch-effect (the light colouring of faces) contributes to the fact that there are no racially marked identities. Learners will therefore have difficulty in identifying with the characters and narrators, especially since attempts to portray multi-perspectivity were found in only two textbooks. The data suggest that Afrikaner nationalist views are being replaced by African nationalist views and that history is again serving an ideological objective by striving to establish a single, simplistic perspective on the past.

Towards a critical interdisciplinarity? African history and the reconstruction of universal narratives

This article examines the question of whether interdisciplinary research has the potential of radically transforming current understandings of the historical discipline by looking at the case of African historiography. It starts by explaining current debates about the nature of history by looking at the arguments of reconstructionist, constructionist and deconstructionist historians. It acknowledges that the majority of Africanist historians subscribe to a practical-realist position and explores whether their interdisciplinary work challenges or endorses this perspective. After making a distinction between critical and instrumental interdisciplinarities, the article goes on to examine the collaborations between historians and archaeologists, linguists and anthropologists. These experiences demonstrate that Africanist interdisciplinarity can be characterized as instrumental since it has not effected radical change in the definition of the discipline. However, Africanists' interdisciplinary experiences do highlight the difficulties of maintaining a practical-realist understanding of history while using sources that have been filtered through modern theoretical and methodological filters. The article concludes that interdisciplinary practices are necessary for the broadening of the frontiers of historical research, but this can only be achieved if new definitions of the goals and standards of validity are established.

Recent trends in South African water historiography

The discipline of water history is relatively young but since the 1990s there has been growing interest in the field. In this article an exposition is provided on the origins of the discipline of water history as a subdivision of environmental history. The discussion then turns to an outline of recent developments in the historiography of water history in South Africa. Attention is also given to the possibility of extending the study of this discipline into a number of allied fields.

‘High Horses’ – Horses, Class and Socio-Economic Change in South Africa*

This article examines an aspect of the growth of an Afrikaner bourgeoisie in the platteland through the ‘things’ they desired. It discusses the introduction of the American Saddlebred horse from the USA, to the agrarian sectors of the then Cape Province and Orange Free State. Analysis of breed discourse affords us insights into the role of status symbols, the socio-economic context of their acquisition, and the cultural impetus for their rise in popularity and wide geographic diffusion in rapidly upwardly-mobile, predominately Afrikaans-speaking rural communities in South Africa. In addition to the material context, the article analyses the elite – and, to an extent, internationalist – rhetorical space the American Saddle horse inhabited, by contrasting it with the self-consciously egalitarian and ethnically unifying discourse surrounding another horse used by primarily Afrikaans-speakers, the Boerperd. This article seeks to contribute to an area that is perhaps neglected in southern African historiography: the ‘cultural web of consumption’, with an emphasis on ‘things’ and their meanings. Historians have shown how consumer items and sports, for example, were invested with ethnic identity. This article, however, explores another nuance – the role of class. Past historiography on the culture of national identity has largely focused on the ways in which shared understanding of ‘history’ was mobilised to produce group (ethnic/national) identity, but identity could also be predicated in part on the embrace of ‘modernity’ and consumerism. The comparison between the supporters of American Saddlers and Boerperde, both factions within the (largely male) Afrikaans-speaking society, and an analysis of their quite different discourses reflect two ways of conceptualising identity, especially in the way they mobilised consumer hunger. The Saddle horse discourse reflects the development of a new class, with manifestations of fresh desires and a need to demarcate class boundaries. It reflects a way of thinking about self-identity that is not the traditional view of Afrikaner identity politics: a confident, internationalist, pro-American, elite – above all, embracing of ‘modernity’, the future, and not invested in the past. Instead of ‘Afrikanerising’ the American horse, it became more prestigious to maintain a foreign link. Antithetically, the Boerperd discourse offered a demotic weltanschauung, and the Boerperd breeders contested the notion of a horse as an effete relic of a higher class, revelling instead in nativist history, classlessness, usefulness, and autochthony.

Perspectives on Fifty Years of Ghanaian Historiography

This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate on African methodology—sources, issues, methods, challenges—by presenting a Ghanaian case study, for, whereas there are a number of broad overviews of African methodology, some of which include surveys of regions such as eastern or southern Africa, as well as countries like Nigeria and Senegal, a study specifically devoted to examining historical production in Ghana is yet to be essayed. This paper, however, shares common concerns with African historiography in general in terms of the quest for distinctly African constructions of history as well as the manifold ways in which African historical production might be made to relate more effectively to local contexts.In a recent contribution to a volume dedicated to honoring Bethwell Ogot, David William Cohen (2001:53) echoed a call which was by no means new but which still has relevance for African historical production today as it did in the 1960s. Emphasizing the need for African voices, he asserted that “…there are realms of knowledge and programs of knowledge production outside the academy, and outside the field situation, that might be understood and drawn upon to work at the reconstruction of the African past.” It is in this light that this piece was originally prepared in connection with Ghana's fiftieth independence anniversary in 2007.Ghana has had a long span of historical writing dating back several centuries, but a tradition of Ghanaian historiography is only about 50 years old, as is the case with the development of national historiographies throughout much of Africa.

The Troubled Encounter Between Postcolonialism and African History1

This paper examines the complex engagements between what it calls the “posts” – poststructuralism, postmodernism and postcolonialism – and African studies. Specifically, it analyzes the analytical connections and contestations between postcolonial theory and African historiography. The paper interrogates some of the key ideas and preoccupations of both postcolonialism and historiography and explores the intersections between them. It is argued that the ambivalence and sometimes antagonism to postcolonialism by many African scholars is largely driven by ideological and ethical imperatives, while the troubled encounter between African history and postcolonialism is rooted in apparent intellectual and epistemic incongruities. Linking the two is the powerful hold of what I call nationalist humanism in the African imaginary, the nationalist preoccupations of African intellectuals, and the nationalist proclivities of African historiography. Productive engagement between African history and postcolonialism is of course possible, but it requires mutual accommodation, the incorporation in postcolonial studies of the insights developed in African historiography, and within the latter of some of the constructive interventions of postcolonial theory. Ultimately, however, I believe postcolonialism has serious limits in its methodological and conceptual capacities to advance what I would call the historic agendas of African historiography.

JEREMY KRIKLER. White Rising: The 1922 Insurrection and Racial Killing in South Africa. New York: Manchester University Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 405. $59.95

This book tackles one of the best-known episodes of violence in twentieth-century South African history yet brilliantly succeeds in offering a novel interpretation that changes our understanding of the race-class nexus at the center of South African historiography. Jeremy Krikler's sensitive and penetrating book immediately draws the reader into the lives not only of the main protagonists in the strike but also of black “bystanders” who suffered grievously at the hands of white mobs. The result is a first-rate narrative that honors the ordinary men and women who expired on the barricades as well a subtle analysis that does justice to the complexities of white workers' cause against the powerful gold mining industry in a campaign that dismantled the authority of the state. Krikler wisely forsakes the many, often “structural” debates about the origins of racial segregation in South Africa in favor of an approach that reconstructs the uncertain evolution of forces that culminated in pitched warfare between white miners and General Jan Smuts's pro-mining government. The book employs multiple archival sources to trace the interlocking strategies of white mineworkers, union leaders, mine owners, and state officials and demonstrate how a strike that all parties knew was coming became an explosion marked by two forms of violence. The first, the pitched battle between white “revolutionary” strikers and the state, is familiar but is nevertheless analyzed in such meticulous and lively detail that much of it appears fresh. By contrast, the second episode of violence will strike even seasoned scholars of South African history as a revelation. Because no previous scholar has explored the “racial pogrom” (p. 15) that rampaging white workers inflicted on innocent blacks, Krikler rescues the cold-blooded “racial killing” from oblivion. He also uses the event to illuminate the ambiguities of white workers' racial and class politics. White workers who were fired by increasingly militant socialist rhetoric were also infamously racist. Yet this book convincingly demonstrates that the “racial pogrom” was an accidental event that stemmed from a fortuitous fracas between African mining guards and a passing commando of white workers. Drawing on analyses of the “Red Summer race riots” that rocked several American cities immediately after World War I, Krikler argues that the “pogrom” was sparked by a combination of immediate circumstances and wild rumors. When the “pogrom” ended, militant white workers resumed their focus on their primary antagonist—the police and army forces that were also assembling in the streets of Johannesburg, and who had decisively brought the pogrom to an end. Both the accidental nature of the pogrom as well its subsidence confirms a major argument that runs through this book. Like white workers in the American South, South Africa's militant white workers may have been driven by “the fear of competition” with cheaper black workers, but they were not long distracted by it. Class militancy trumped racial animosity and culminated in the violent strike against the state-supported mining industry. Krikler's conclusion that “black people were not identified as the enemy by plebian whites” (p. xi) therefore invites comparisons with the American South, where “race baiting” frequently overshadowed and diluted white labor militancy.

Boserup backwards? agricultural intensification as ‘its own driving force’ in the mbulu highlands, tanzania

. Why do farmers intensify their agricultural practices? Recent revisions of African environmental historiographies have greatly enriched our understanding of human–environmental interactions. To simply point at poor farming practices as the main cause of deforestation, desertification and other processes of land degradation is, for example, no longer possible. The contemporary analytical focus is instead on the complex and often unpredictable set of causal relations between societal, ecological and climatic factors.In the literature on agricultural intensification, conventionally defined driving forces, such as population pressure and market demand, remain important explanatory factors despite a growing body of research that suggests more dynamic scenarios of agricultural development and landscape change. This article reports on a case where the common‐sense logic of population pressure theory has dominated the historical narrative of a local process of agricultural intensification among an agro‐pastoral people in north‐central Tanzania. By way of a ‘detailed participatory landscape analyses’ a more complex and dynamic historical process of intensification is suggested, in which the landscape and the process of agricultural intensification itself are in focus.It is concluded that the accumulation of landesque capital has been incremental in character, and that the process of agricultural intensification in the study area has largely been its own driving force based on self‐reinforcing processes of change, and not a consequence of land scarcity and population pressure. This result demonstrates the possibility and usefulness of reversing the Bose‐rupian argument in analyses of agricultural intensification.

Don C. Ohadike: The Man, his Intellectual Legacy and African Historiography

It is difficult to completely understand the life history of an intellectual excluding an understanding of his family upbringing and formative years. Family upbringing and childhood environment, often the less known part of a life history, play crucial roles in shaping the ideas and values individuals espouse in their adult life. Notwithstanding, this paper is not concerned with Don C. Ohadike’s childhood. It rather focuses on the professional career of our able historian – that is the part of his life as revealed by his most outstanding published writings. Ohadike’s published works contain a wellspring of idioms that tell much about his values, quality of mind, and his mission as an African historian. Ohadike was a humanist, an African patriot, and a nationalist crusader. His entire philosophy centered on safeguarding his African identity in an emergent world of cultural imperialism.

The Place of Dutch Historians in South African Historiography

The Place of Dutch Historians in South African Historiography

South Africa and American Jazz: Towards a Polyphonic Historiography

AbstractThis article provides an overview of issues pertaining to the creation of a global jazz historiography, with particular focus on the South African case study. It outlines challenges inherent in thinking globally about jazz; reflects on these issues in relation to the South Africa case; provides an overview of the state of South African jazz research and scholarship; and concludes with a discussion of a democratic and globally imagined agenda for South African historiography.

Introduction: Symposium on African American Historiography

Introduction: Symposium on African American Historiography

Contradictions at the Heart of the Canon: Jan Vansina and the Debate over Oral Historiography in Africa, 1960–1985

Oracy is a hallmark of human society. So too is historical inquiry, as societies seek to identify and transmit those remembrances (or “imaginations”) considered important to defining collective social identity; in the process, they establish meaningful patterns by sifting and culling discrete perceptions through the analysis and critique, the repetition and elaboration, of competing testimonies. Yet, while oral communication and historical sensitivities have been present in all human societies for all time, the western historical profession was slow to mesh the two—slow to accept oral accounts as historical sources. In Africa initiatives to bring them together systematically emerged only in tandem with the growth of nationalism outside the hegemony of colonial constructs and, in particular, with decolonization.To be sure, many people outside the discipline had considered the relations of oracy and history. But both advocates and adversaries alike saw a turning point when Jan Vansina forced the issue on the historical discipline (most decidedly against its will) in the late 1950s and early 1960s. While others before him had argued for the historical validity of oral sources, Vansina framed his position in broader perspective, as a conceptual bedrock essential to understanding Africa. Historical sources abounded in Africa, he argued. They could be identified and understood, and they were subject to the same critical apparatus as western written sources; therefore Africa not only had a history, but it was knowable in the same terms as history in Europe. This was the reference point that drove his work. Whatever position one takes on his work, Vansina is seen as among the first to challenge the professional discipline, to sustain the argument, to push a broad range of methodological tactics, to master the empirical material, and to produce work based on such methods, in such a way that his innovations could not be dismissed out of hand.