The Politics of a South African Frontier

The Politics of a South African Frontier
Author: Chatfield Legassick
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2010-12-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 3905758555

This book publishes Martin Legassick's influential doctoral thesis on the preindustrial South African frontier zone of Transorangia. The impressive formation of the Griqua states in the first half of the nineteenth century outside the borders of the Cape Colony and their relations with Sotho-Tswana polities, frontiersmen, missionaries and the British administration of the Cape take centre stage in the analysis. The Griqua, of mixed settler and indigenous descent, secured hegemony in a frontier of complex partnerships and power struggles. The author's subsequent critique of the "frontier tradition" in South African historiography drew on the insights he had gained in writing this dissertation. It served to initiate the debate about the importance of the precolonial frontier situation in South Africa for the establishment of ideas of race, the development of racial prejudice and, implicitly, the creation of segregationist and apartheid systems. Today, the constructed histories of "Griqua" and other categories of indigeneity have re emerged in South Africa as influential tools of political mobilisation and claims on resources.

The Politics of a South African Frontier

The Politics of a South African Frontier
Author: Martin Chatfield Legassick
Publisher: BASLER AFRIKA BIBLIOGRAPHIEN
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 3905758148

This book publishes Martin Legassick's influential doctoral thesis on the preindustrial South African frontier zone of Transorangia. The impressive formation of the Griqua states in the first half of the nineteenth century outside the borders of the Cape Colony and their relations with Sotho-Tswana polities, frontiersmen, missionaries and the British administration of the Cape take centre stage in the analysis. The Griqua, of mixed settler and indigenous descent, secured hegemony in a frontier of complex partnerships and power struggles. The author's subsequent critique of the "frontier tradition" in South African historiography drew on the insights he had gained in writing this dissertation. It served to initiate the debate about the importance of the precolonial frontier situation in South Africa for the establishment of ideas of race, the development of racial prejudice and, implicitly, the creation of segregationist and apartheid systems. Today, the constructed histories of "Griqua" and other categories of indigeneity have re emerged in South Africa as influential tools of political mobilisation and claims on resources.

Zulu Warriors

Zulu Warriors
Author: John Laband
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2014-05-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300180314

"The Anglo-Zulu War, the most famous of Britain's lte ninetweenth-century campaigns of colonial conquest, was not fought in isolation. Along with the two Anglo-Pedi wars, the Ninth Cape Frontier War and the Northern Border War, it was one in a brutal series of interconnected and overlapping wars which the British waged between 1877-1879 to crush and disarm the remaining independent black states of South Africa. [Fusing] the widely differing African and European perspectives on events, [the author] probes the fateful decisions taken by statesmen and military commandrs, analyses military operations and their destructive impact on combatants and civilians alike, and explores why so many Africans chose to fight as auxiliaries and levies alongside the Bruitish instead of against them. ..."--Jacket.

From Enslavement to Environmentalism

From Enslavement to Environmentalism
Author: David McDermott Hughes
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2011-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0295800518

From Enslavement to Environmentalism takes a challenging ethnographic and historical look at the politics of eco-development in the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border zone. David Hughes argues that European colonization in southern Africa--essentially an unsuccessful effort to turn the region into another North America or Australia--has profoundly reshaped rural politics and culture and continues to do so, as neoliberal developers commoditize the lands of African peasants in the name of conservation and economic progress. Hughes builds his engaging analysis around a sort of natural experiment: in the past, whites colonized British Zimbabwe but avoided Portuguese Mozambique almost entirely. In Zimbabwe, chiefdoms that had historically focused on controlling people began to follow the English example of consolidating political power by dividing and controlling land. Meanwhile, in Mozambique, Portugal perpetuated traditional practices of recruiting and distributing forced labor as the primary means of securing power. The territory remained unmapped. For almost the entire twentieth century, a sharp disjuncture in the politics of land, leadership, labor, and resource use marked the border zone. In the late 1990s, as white South Africans began to establish timber plantations in Mozambique, that difference began to be effaced. Under the banner of environmentalism and economic progress, tourism firms were allowed to claim peasant farmland. The objectives of liberal conservationists and developers, though high-minded, led them to commoditize ancestral lands. Southern African policymakers supported this new form of colonization as a form of racial integration between white investors and black peasants, paving the way for an ironic and contentious situation in which ethnic tolerance, gentrification, and land-grabbing have gone hand in hand. From Enslavement to Environmentalism engages topics central to current debates in anthropology, resource politics, and development policy, and will be of interest to both regional specialists and generalists.

The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840.

The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840.
Author: Richard Elphick
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Total Pages: 646
Release: 2014-01-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0819573760

History is a powerful aid to the understanding of the present, and those who are concerned with the escalating crisis in South Africa will find this an invaluable source book. This is the story of the evolution of a society in which race became the dominant characteristic, the primary determinant of status, wealth, and power. Cultural chauvinism of the first European colonists – primarily the Dutch – merged with economic and demographic developments to create a society in which whites relegated all blacks – free blacks, Africans, imported slaves – to a systematic pattern of subordination and oppression that foreshadowed the apartheid of the twentieth century. From the beginning of the nineteenth century the new empire-builders, the British, reinforced the racial order. In the next century and a half the industrialized South Africa would become firmly integrated into the world economy. Published originally in South Africa in 1979 and updated and expanded now, a decade later, this book by twelve South African, British, Canadian, Dutch, and American scholars is the most comprehensive history of the early years of that troubled nation. The authors put South Africa in the comparative context of other colonial systems. Their social, political, and economic history is rich with empirical data and rests on a solid base of archival research. The story they tell is a complex drama of a racial structure that has resisted hostile impulses from without and rebellion from within.

Frontiers

Frontiers
Author: Noël Mostert
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 1355
Release: 1992
Genre: South Africa
ISBN: 9780712655842

This work of African and imperial history tells of the nine Kaffir wars, fought in the 18th and 19th centuries between the whites and the Xhosa nation. A small area of land, eastwards from the Cape, was the volatile border where colonial expansion met local intransigence and brutal warfare proved the only solution to the impasse. This story and its appalling aftermath left an indelible legacy which, to this day, shapes South African society. Noel Mostert won the National Magazine Award in 1974 for articles in The New Yorker. In 1974, his first book Supership was unanimously chosen to win the Pulitzer Prize, but was disqualified on the grounds of his Canadian citizenship.

Luka Jantjie

Luka Jantjie
Author: Kevin Shillington
Publisher: Aldridge
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2011
Genre: South Africa
ISBN: 9780952065128

Luka Jantjie is today a largely forgotten hero of resistance to British colonialism. His place in South African history has tended to be overshadowed by events elsewhere in the region. This book attempts to redress the balance by recording his remarkable story. In 1870, at the beginning of the Kimberley diamond mining boom that was to transform southern Africa, Luka Jantjie was the first independent African ruler to lose his land to the new colonialists, who promptly annexed the diamond fields. His outspoken stand against the hypocrisy of colonial 'justice' earned him the epithet: "a wild fellow who hates the English". As the son of an early Christian convert, Luka was brought up to respect peace and non-violence; his boycott of rural trading stores in the early 1890s was perhaps the earliest use of non-violent resistance in colonial South Africa. His steady refusal to bow to colonial demands of subservience intensified the enmity of local colonists determined to 'teach him a lesson'. As many of his people succumbed to colonial pressures, Luka was twice forced to take up arms to defend himself and his people from colonial attacks. His life ended in a dramatic and heroic last stand in the ancestral sanctuary of the Langeberg mountain range; its tragic consequences stretched far into the next century.

A Living Man from Africa

A Living Man from Africa
Author: Roger S. Levine
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 477
Release: 2010-12-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0300168594

Born into a Xhosa royal family around 1792 in South Africa, Jan Tzatzoe was destined to live in an era of profound change—one that witnessed the arrival and entrenchment of European colonialism. As a missionary, chief, and cultural intermediary on the eastern Cape frontier and in Cape Town and a traveler in Great Britain, Tzatzoe helped foster the merging of African and European worlds into a new South African reality. Yet, by the 1860s, despite his determined resistance, he was an oppressed subject of harsh British colonial rule. In this innovative, richly researched, and splendidly written biography, Roger S. Levine reclaims Tzatzoe's lost story and analyzes his contributions to, and experiences with, the turbulent colonial world to argue for the crucial role of Africans as agents of cultural and intellectual change.

Morning in South Africa

Morning in South Africa
Author: John Campbell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2016-05-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442265906

This incisive, deeply informed book introduces post-apartheid South Africa to an international audience. South Africa has a history of racism and white supremacy. This crushing historical burden continues to resonate today. Under President Jacob Zuma, South Africa is treading water. Nevertheless, despite calls to undermine the 1994 political settlement characterized by human rights guarantees and the rule of law, distinguished diplomat John Campbell argues that the country’s future is bright and that its democratic institutions will weather its current lackluster governance. The book opens with an overview to orient readers to South Africa’s historical inheritance. A look back at the presidential inaugurations of Nelson Mandela and Jacob Zuma and Mandela’s funeral illustrates some of the ways South Africa has indeed changed since 1994. Reviewing current demographic trends, Campbell highlights the persistent consequences of apartheid. He goes on to consider education, health, and current political developments, including land reform, with an eye on how South Africa’s democracy is responding to associated thorny challenges. The book ends with an assessment of why prospects are currently poor for closer South African ties with the West. Campbell concludes, though, that South Africa’s democracy has been surprisingly adaptable, and that despite intractable problems, the black majority are no longer strangers in their own country.

Of Revelation and Revolution Volume 2

Of Revelation and Revolution Volume 2
Author: Jean Comaroff
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 434
Release: 1991-07-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780226114422

"Defining their enterprise as more in the direction of poetics than of prosaics, the Comaroffs free themselves to analyze a vivid series of images and events as objects of analysis. These they mine for clues to the 19th-century contents of the British imagination and of Tswana minds. They are themselves imagining the imagination of others, and they do the job with characteristic aplomb....The first volume creates an appetite for the second."—Sally Falk Moore, American Anthropologist