Post-apartheid Society Research Articles

Editorial

The articles in this general issue display a disciplinary spread fairly typical for this journal – anthropology, development studies, geography, history, literature, politics. We begin, though, with something of a new departure, an assessment of the state of a particular discipline, in this case, archaeology. We plan to carry coverage of this sort on a regular, if intermittent, basis in the future. However, rather than focusing on the findings of research as such, Nick Shepherd looks at archaeology in South Africa as a process of knowledge construction. He probes the social and political context and impact of the discipline at key moments of transformation in the past and explores where archaeology is and could, or should, be located in the present, in relation to science, culture and national identity.Current political and economic concerns drive the next three articles. Sara Rich Dorman throws light on the polarisation of Zimbabwean society in the run-up to the referendum on the constitution in 2000, with many in NGOs, churches and trade unions voicing devastating critiques of the regime's policies. The voting public affirmed the claims made by the National Constitutional Assembly to speak and act outside the remit of the state, while popular rejection of the government set the stage for the violent and coercive politics of 2000 and beyond. Mary Galvin and Adam Habib are likewise concerned with civil society and community empowerment in their analysis of the rural water sector in South Africa. They argue that donor aid has largely tended, through neglect of NGO involvement and local capacity building, to promote state-centric rather than community-oriented decentralisation. The European Union (EU) is one of the main funders examined, and it is South African trading relations with the EU which Richard Gibb analyses in the article that follows. South Africa's reintegration into the world economy via, for example, a vital trade agreement with the EU in 1999, has taken place on profoundly unfair terms, he contends, with the EU promoting fair trade where it could compete and yet being very protectionist about its uncompetitive agricultural sector.Isidore Diala takes us back to the apartheid years in his exploration of ideas of tragedy in the novels of André Brink, while also pointing to the contrasting political line in the writer's work since the democratic transition in South Africa. Despite Brink's seemingly proactive political stance against apartheid, his doomed, tragic (often liberal Afrikaner) political heroes are granted little agency, remaining passive in the face of powerful, implacable metaphysical forces. In post-apartheid society, however, Brink's 1990s work suggests the Afrikaner can invest in social action and hope to help transform the country and rewrite history.Heterosexual masculinity is the focus of the next two articles, albeit in very different eras and settings. Glen Elder challenges accounts of migrant worker hostel violence of the last two decades for over-emphasising ethnicity and failing to employ gender, sex and space sufficiently as analytic categories. A feminist geography alert to patriarchy's links with compulsory heterosexuality can also help interpret the marginalisation of women from contemporary debates about hostel conversion. While Natasha Erlank's historical gaze is rural, not urban, and centred on the eastern Cape, not the Rand, she too is portraying male solidarity, in this case in the face of colonial and missionary disapprobation of customary practices around gender and marriage. Regardless of whether they were Xhosa, Thembu or Mfengu, Christian or unconverted, African men testifying to the 1883 Commission forged, she argues, a certain commonality of approach, perhaps even an embryonic ‘nationalism’, based on the subordination of women.

Die Christelike lewensvisie van aartsbiskop Desmond M. Tutu: Sy mens- en samelewingsbeskouing

The Christian worldview of Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu: His view on being human and on society The previous article discussed the following components of the Christian worldview of Archbishop D.M. Tutu: (1) his view of God, (2) of God’s laws for creation, (3) of time and history and (4) of our natural environment. This article completes the exposition about his worldview by paying attention to the last two – very important and relevant – components: (5) his view of being human (anthropology) and (6) of society. In the exposition of his anthropology the following aspects are highlighted: (1) religion as integral, total surrender to God and service to our fellow human beings; (2) the need for humaneness and being human; (3) the idea of ubuntu or human interdependence and (4) human freedom and responsibility. Regarding his perspective on society the following aspects receive attention: (1) his rejection of three unsound views of societal life (apartheid, communism and capitalism); (2) his proposals for a better society in future and (3) his inability to visualize a post-apartheid society in the light of the possible solution offered by a Reformational, pluralist model. The two articles are concluded by a brief evaluation of Tutu’s contribution to a genuine Christian worldview. In spite of some deficiencies, we would have beeng much poorer without it. As dwarfs we will have to stand on the shoulders of this giant to be able to see further, deeper and sharper.

Hitting Apartheid for Six? The Politics of the South African Sports Boycott

In the political struggle against apartheid, protesters and opponents of the South African regime adopted a range of strategies and tactics, including a boycott of sport. This article analyses and evaluates the effectiveness and significance of the sports boycott that passed through various stages with respect to objectives and goals. Boycotters initially sought to deracialize South African sport. By the early 1980s, the sports boycott was one of a raft of resistance strategies aimed at forcing the South African regime to abandon apartheid; by the end of that decade, supporters advocated the boycott as a strategy to build non-racial democratic sporting structures that would assist the transition to a post-apartheid society. While proponents insist that the boycott contributed directly to the abandonment of apartheid, this article suggests that the contribution was more indirect, that the deracialization of sport in the mid-1970s (under the impetus of the boycott) may have had a greater impact on the discarding of racial ideology in South Africa than commentators have thus far admitted.

The art of nation-building: (re)presenting political transition at the South African National Gallery

This paper examines the relationship between museums and representations of national identity in South Africa. From their early development in Western Europe in the nineteenth century there has been a close relationship between museums and other exhibitionary spaces and the production of national identities. In South Africa, museum displays have historically supported colonial and apartheid ideologies, but with the transition to a post-apartheid society museums have reassessed their divisive roles and repositioned themselves within South Africa’s contemporary nation-building project, organized around building unity from diversity. The development of this new relationship between museums and democratic nation-building is examined here through discussing the attempts of South Africa’s museums to become more inclusive in their exhibitions, and analysing debates in the museological community concerning the challenges facing museums in a post apartheid society. These issues then inform an analysis of an exhibition at the South African National Gallery titled Contemporary South African art 1985-1995. The exhibition attempted to use art to document the political transition and contribute to building national unity. However, by discussing the political operation of classification in museums I argue that the exhibition ultimately fails to represent this period inclusively, and I question, more generally, the possibility of art museums engaging in a properly inclusive nation-building project.

Narrating survival and change in Guatemala and South Africa: the politics of representation and a liberatory community psychology.

Peace accords and international interventions have contributed to the suspension of armed conflict and the censuring of repressive regimes in many parts of the world. Some governments and their opposition parties have agreed to the establishment of commissions or other bodies designed to create historical records of the violations of human rights and foster conditions that facilitate reparatory and reconciliatory processes. This paper explores selected roles that community psychologists have played in this process of remembering the past and constructing new identities towards creating a more just future. With reference to two community groups (in Guatemala and South Africa) we show how efforts to "speak out" about one's own experiences of political and military repression involve complex representational politics that go beyond the simple binary opposition of silencing versus giving voice. The Guatemalan group consisted of Mayan Ixil women who, together with the first author, used participatory action research and the PhotoVoice technique to produce a book about their past and present struggles. The South African group, working within the ambit of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and in collaboration with the third author and others, explored ways of speaking about their roles in apartheid and post-apartheid society. Although both these initiatives can be seen as moments in on-going struggles to overcome externally-imposed repressive practices that censor the voices of marginalized communities, they also serve to dispel overly romanticized notions of "univocal" communities now liberated to express themselves in an unmediated and unequivocal fashion. The paper discusses how each group of women instead entered into subtly nuanced relationships with community psychologists involving a continual interplay between the authenticity of their self-representational accounts and the requirements of the discursive technologies into which they were being inducted and the material conditions within their sites of struggle. In both cases the group's agenda also evolved over time, so that what emerged was not so much a particular account of themselves, or even the development of a particular "voice" for speaking about themselves, but an unfolding process--for the groups and for the community psychologists who accompanied them--of becoming active players in the postmodern, mediated world of self-representational politics and social struggle.

From apartheid to affirmative action: the use of ‘racial’ markers in past, present and future articulations of identity among South African students

In light of the recent socio-political transformation in South Africa, the article examines whether post-apartheid society offers young adults new and different possibilities for constructing their identity, or whether ‘race’ still constitutes a central defining feature of their representations of Self and Other? It draws on findings from a study that examined the self-articulated self-conceptions and future identity aspirations and threats of 542 undergraduate South African students of differing socio-historically constructed ‘cultural’ and ‘linguistic’ backgrounds. Respondents’ open-ended self-identity responses were content-analyzed and examined in light of their reported desire to stay in South Africa, and their perceptions of being able to succeed (both personally and professionally) as compared to other South Africans. The findings indicate that while respondents rarely made overt use of ‘racial’, ‘cultural’ and national markers in their present and future self-articulated self-conceptions, their future identity aspirations and threats contained indirect references to an apartheid past and the transition to a non-racial democracy. Moreover, an empirically derived grouping variable—‘language orientation’—summarizing the use of one (monolingual) or more (bilingual or multilingual) of the colonial (English and Afrikaans), vernacular or immigrant languages across family, social and university life-contexts, was found to reliably distinguish between the self-reported self-conceptions, desire to stay in South Africa, and perceived opportunities to succeed of previously advantaged and disadvantaged South Africans. These findings are discussed in light of their implications for understanding identity dynamics and the politics of self-representation in post-apartheid South Africa.

The Mundanacity of Violence Living In A State Of Disgrace

This essay explores the ways in which the post-apartheid nation, the 'disgraced' state of Coetzee's novel, makes violence a mundanacity: an ordinary, everyday, ubiquitous, and commonplace occurrence, especially against women. A crucial component of Disgrace is the silence around the violence, and the inability to resist it. Post-apartheid society has learned, at considerable historical and moral cost, to accommodate the violence and its disruptive consequences. The effects of this violence are such that it problematizes race relations, enabling black acquisition and rendering white women complicit in their own subjugation. The most deleterious consequence of the violence is that it has eradicated almost every form of resistance, of oppositionality, through its normalization.

South Africa's evolving jurisprudence on socio-economic rights: An effective tool in challenging poverty

The drafters of the Constitution clearly envisaged a far-reaching role for it in the transformation of post-apartheid society. Among the key aims of the Constitution is to improve the quality of life of all citizens and free the potential of each person. This constitutional concern with the socio-economic well being of people is especially evident in the entrenchment of a wide range of justifiable socio-economic rights in the Bill of Rights.

`WHAT DO THEY KNOW OF CRICKET WHO ONLY CRICKET KNOW?'

This article charts developments in cricket during the past decade to explore issues related to social transformation and redress in post-apartheid South Africa. It examines who is benefiting from change, whether change is driven by or being resisted by Whites, and whether there is tension among Blacks regarding transformation. This study found that the attitude of Blacks has evolved from acceptance of all-White cricket teams to calls for inclusion of some `players of colour' to demands for selection quotas and, finally, demands for African control. Cricket has failed to create an imagined South African community. Change is being forced on unwilling Whites, while there is increasing tension among Blacks regarding opportunity and resource allocation. This mirrors how the demands for transition are being negotiated in the wider society in post-apartheid South African society. The calls for Africanization have become inexorable in all sectors and organizations. Though race-based, change is significant because of the historical legacy of apartheid, and given that the economy and spatial arrangements continue to sustain racial identity in post-apartheid South Africa.

“There is plenty of play left in South Africa's race game”: Race, cricket and nation in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract This paper focuses on charges of match-fixing in April 2001 by Indian police against Hansie Cronje, cricket captain of South Africa, and the Commission of Inquiry that followed in order to probe the construction and persistence of race stereotypes in South Africa. It examines the historic construction of boundaries between Indians and Whites, their reactions to Hansiegate and the implications for the ‘rainbow nation’ project. White prejudices against Indians during this affair are documented and it is argued that these reveal the fragmented nature of post-apartheid South African society Hansiegate indicates that race remains the hidden arbiter in popular consciousness in post-apartheid South Africa in circumstances where race identities are sustained by new dynamics. The paper suggests that the historical, social, economic and cultural legacy of South Africa's conflicting pasts, as well as post-apartheid discrepancies in economic and social conditions, are perpetuating and creating separatist ide...

Religion and Political Violence in Apartheid South Africa

This article analyzes the impact of religion in the South African polity. Special attention is paid to events from as far back as the 14th century, leading to the democratic settlement in 1994, and the integral role of key religious figures therein. It argues that, had it not been for their timely intervention, the violence that erupted could have escalated beyond control, perhaps scuttling the whole process. In analyzing religion and violence in apartheid South Africa, the article expresses the hope that churches and other civil society organs will reclaim their watchdog role in entrenching democracy even more deeply in a post-apartheid South African society. (The Journal of Cultural Studies: 2001 3(1): 108-123)

An early image of apartheid and postapartheid society: Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm

ABSTRACT Although conspicuously missing in discussions of South African antiapartheid literature these days, Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm was one of the earliest novels to campaign against racial injustice in what was later to become the Republic of South Africa. Capturing a vivid sense of the emotional and psychological toll that apartheid exerted on its earliest victims, Schreiner expressed the grieviances that racial oppression engendered and attempted to nip the evil in the bud. Through examination of her novel and of its relation to later works of fiction from Africa, I argue that though her hope for a liberated future did not materialize in her own lifetime, Schreiner's place in the canon of anti-apartheid literature as well as in feminism, and the historical importance of her example, should be central to any effort to understand literature's contribution to the struggle for a free South Africa.

African drumbeats: a first conference on emergency medicine

Africa's first conference on emergency medicine was held in October 1998 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Attended by 305 delegates from 13 countries, it was an important milestone in the development of Africa, emergency medicine's last frontier. The violence of South Africa's post-apartheid society was portrayed in mock scenario demonstrations of the private sector emergency medical services (EMS) system. Many of the presentations had a distinctly African flavour; they dealt with penetrating trauma and with making the best of extremely limited resources. A session reviewing the activities of traditional healers was not only terrifyingly revealing, it also upset and offended a segment of the African audience. The conference ended positively with the creation of the Emergency Medicine Society of South Africa, a step toward recognition of emergency medicine as a specialty in Africa.

'Will It Happen Again?' Reflections On Reconciliation and Structural Contraception1

AbstractThe essay deals with the inability of churches and individuals to take the indispensable next step of radically recasting their reading practices of the Bible in a post-apartheid society. Failure to remodel the premises and practices of Bible interpretation results in a sense of betrayal. Although the theological justification for apartheid might be confessed as a sin, the reading practices of the Bible that allowed for a theological justification never changed. However, a confession regarding apartheid entails a critique of the values embedded in the stories of the Old Testament in particular. Once this is recognised, it will be easier to argue a case for a better dispensation for women in those churches in which they are excluded from church offices. The essay discusses the recent female uproar in the Gereformeerde Kerke of South Africa against gender discrimination in their structures of power. The essay also responds to the crisis of faith generated in the laity by some of the confessions. It is argued that the laity had no means of recognising the falseness of the previous ideologically inspired apartheid readings of the Bible, because the leadership of the churches never provided them with the tools of responsible criticism. The reading practices of the past acted as a protective sheath for the theological justification of apartheid. For the confessions of the churches to become meaningful at all, and not tainted by smacks of political opportunism, a call is made for a more critical approach to the values embedded in the Bible stories.

Changing Lives in Changing Times: Preservice Teacher Education in Postapartheid South Africa

* This conceptual analysis addresses some of the challenges of preparing English language teachers during the reconstruction and development of the South African education system in the postapartheid society (after 1994). The legacy of the apartheid education system and its impact on language teaching and learning are the backdrop to the policy initiatives promulgated in 1997. The article describes what it means to educate teachers in a transforming society. The response to the problems of apartheid school education is to develop teachers who can view themselves critically as products of separatist ideologies within the school and the society and as agents for the achievement of new, liberating ideologies of teaching and learning languages within their (future) classrooms. In this way, teacher education can contribute to the renewal of the education system and the society in general.

The men march

‘Real Men Do Not Abuse Women and Children’ was the slogan of the men who marched in Pretoria, writes KUMI NAIDOO. There is an urgency to finding non-violent ways of behaving in our fractured post-apartheid society, he writes

Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse

Within the movement towards a post-apartheid society in South Africa, questions concerning the nature of apartheid and the identities it fostered are inevitably raised. This book addresses these issues by revealing both their historical specificity and the implications for the full development of a democratic post-apartheid order. The analysis covers the institution of apartheid as a new form of social division, the transformationist project which characterized it during the 1970s and 1980s, and the disarticulation of that project from the mid-1980s to the present. Central to this analysis is the contention that apartheid, as a failed hegemonic project, can only be understood in its full complexity if attention is given to the specificity of the mode of social division it instituted. The book thus seeks to trace the construction and contestation of the central axes around which its political frontiers were organized. Drawing on a combination of post-Marxist and post-structuralist theorizations of social division and identity formation, the book develops an account of apartheid discourse which avoids the twin pitfalls of essentialism and objectivism.

The Men March

‘Real Men Do Not Abuse Women and Children’ was the slogan of the men who marched in Pretoria, writes KUMI NAIDOO. There is an urgency to finding non-violent ways of behaving in our fractured post-apartheid society, he writes

The new South Africa and the socialist vision: positions and perspectives toward a post-apartheid society

The new South Africa and the socialist vision: positions and perspectives toward a post-apartheid society

Urban struggles and the transformation of the apartheid local state: the case of community and civic organizations in Durban

Although the global focus on South Africa has been at the national level, the struggle for the transformation towards a post-apartheid society is being played out largely at the local level. In fact it has been pressure for change at the local level from civic, community, ratepayers and residents' associations that has significantly informed national events. This paper examines the role of civic and community struggles in influencing the transformation of the local state in Durban from the early 1980s to the present time. The Durban Housing Action Committee resisted rent increases for low-income groups and opposed evictions, while the Campaign for a Democratic City initiated demands for a non-racial democratic city. These grassroots initiatives forced the local state to negotiate with the civic and community organizations. This paper also addresses the neglected question of the impact of social movements on local state transformation. It suggests that civic organizations represent powerful agents for socio-spatial transformation.