South African London

South African London
Author: Andrea Thorpe
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2021-11-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1526148544

This book presents a long-ranging and in-depth study of South African writing set in London during the apartheid years and beyond. Since London served as an important site of South African exile and emigration, particularly during the second half of the twentieth-century, the city shaped the history of South African letters in meaningful and material ways. Being in London allowed South African writers to engage with their own expectations of Englishness, and to rethink their South African identities. The book presents a range of diverse and fascinating responses by South African writers that provide nuanced perspectives on exile, global racisms and modernity. Writers studied include Peter Abrahams, Dan Jacobson, Noni Jabavu, Todd Matshikiza, Arthur Nortje, Lauretta Ngcobo, J.M.Coetzee, Justin Cartwright, and Ishtiyaq Shukri. South African London offers an original and multi-faceted take on both London writing and South African twentieth-century literature.

Understanding South Africa

Understanding South Africa
Author: Martin Plaut
Publisher: Hurst & Company
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2019
Genre: South Africa
ISBN: 1787382044

When Nelson Mandela emerged from decades in jail to preach reconciliation, South Africans truly appeared a people reborn as the Rainbow Nation. Yet, a quarter of a century later, the country sank into bitter recriminations and rampant corruption under Jacob Zuma. Why did this happen, and how was hope betrayed? President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is seeking to heal these wounds, is due to lead the African National Congress into an election by May 2019. The ANC is hoping to claw back support lost to the opposition in the Zuma era. This book will shed light on voters' choices and analyze the election outcome as the results emerge. With chapters on all the major issues at stake--from education to land redistribution-- Understanding South Africa offers insights into Africa's largest and most diversified economy, closely tied to its neighbors' fortunes.

The South African Intelligence Services

The South African Intelligence Services
Author: Kevin A. O'Brien
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2010-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1136892826

This book is the first full history of South African intelligence and provides a detailed examination of the various stages in the evolution of South Africa’s intelligence organizations and structures. Covering the apartheid period of 1948-90, the transition from apartheid to democracy of 1990-94, and the post-apartheid period of new intelligence dispensation from 1994-2005, this book examines not only the apartheid government’s intelligence dispensation and operations, but also those of the African National Congress, and its partner, the South African Communist Party (ANC/SACP) – as well as those of other liberation movements and the ‘independent homelands’ under the apartheid system. Examining the civilian, military and police intelligence structures and operations in all periods, as well as the extraordinarily complicated apartheid government’s security bureaucracy (or 'securocracy') and its structures and units, the book discusses how South Africa’s Cold War ‘position’ influenced its relationships with various other world powers, especially where intelligence co-operation came to bear. It outlines South Africa’s regional relationships and concerns – the foremost being its activities in South-West Africa (Namibia) and its relationship with Rhodesia through 1980. Finally, it examines the various legislative and other governance bases for the existence and operations of South Africa’s intelligence structures – in all periods – and the influences that such activities as the Rivonia Trial (at one end of the history) or the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (at the other end) had on the evolution of these intelligence questions throughout South Africa’s modern history. This book will be of great interest to all students of South African politics, intelligence studies and international politics in general.

The Oral-Style South African Short Story in English

The Oral-Style South African Short Story in English
Author: Craig MacKenzie
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 900449037X

This study deals with a particular kind of short story in South African English literature - a kind of story variously called the fireside tale, tall tale, skaz narrative or (the term used here) the 'oral-style' story. Most famously exemplified in the Oom Schalk Lourens narratives of Herman Charles Bosman, the oral-style story has its roots in the hunting tale and camp-fire yarn of the nineteenth century and has dozens of exponents in South African literature, most of them long forgotten. Here this neglect has been addressed. A.W. Drayson's Tales at the Outspan (1862) provides a point of departure, and is followed by discussions of works by William Charles Scully, Percy FitzPatrick, Ernest Glanville, Perceval Gibbon, Francis Carey Slater, Pauline Smith, and Aegidius Jean Blignaut, all of whom used the oral-style story genre. In the work of Herman Charles Bosman, however, the South African oral-style story comes into its own. In his Oom Schalk Lourens figure is invested all of the complexity and 'double-voicedness' that was latent - and largely dormant - in the earlier works. Bosman demonstrates his sophistication particularly in his metafictional use of the oral-style story. The study concludes with a discussion of the use of oral forms in the work of more recent black writers - among them Bessie Head, Mtutuzeli Matshoba, and Njabulo Ndebele.

A History of South African Literature

A History of South African Literature
Author: Christopher Heywood
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2004-11-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781139455329

This book is a critical study of South African literature, from colonial and pre-colonial times onwards. Christopher Heywood discusses selected poems, plays and prose works in five literary traditions: Khoisan, Nguni-Sotho, Afrikaans, English, and Indian. The discussion includes over 100 authors and selected works, including poets from Mqhayi, Marais and Campbell to Butler, Serote and Krog, theatre writers from Boniface and Black to Fugard and Mda, and fiction writers from Schreiner and Plaatje to Bessie Head and the Nobel prizewinners Gordimer and Coetzee. The literature is explored in the setting of crises leading to the formation of modern South Africa, notably the rise and fall of the Emperor Shaka's Zulu kingdom, the Colenso crisis, industrialisation, the colonial and post-colonial wars of 1899, 1914, and 1939, and the dissolution of apartheid society. In Heywood's study, South African literature emerges as among the great literatures of the modern world.

Women in South African History

Women in South African History
Author: Nomboniso Gasa
Publisher: HSRC Press
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2007
Genre: CD-ROMs
ISBN: 9780796921741

Accompanying CD-ROM contains the complete text of the printed volume.

A Short History of South Africa

A Short History of South Africa
Author: Gail Nattrass
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2017-11-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1785903683

South Africa is popularly perceived as the most influential nation in Africa – a gateway to an entire continent for finance, trade and politics, and a crucial mediator in its neighbours' affairs. On the other hand, post-Apartheid dreams of progress and reform have, in part, collapsed into a morass of corruption, unemployment and criminal violence. A Short History of South Africa is a brief, general account of the history of this most complicated and fascinating country – from the first evidence of hominid existence to the wars of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries that led to the establishment of modern South Africa, the horrors of Apartheid and the optimism following its collapse, as well as the prospects and challenges for the future. This readable and thorough account, illustrated with maps and photographs, is the culmination of a lifetime of researching and teaching the broad spectrum of South African history. Nattrass's passion for her subject shines through, whether she is elucidating the reader on early humans in the cradle of humankind, or describing the tumultuous twentieth-century processes that shaped the democracy that is South Africa today.

The South African War reappraised

The South African War reappraised
Author: Donal Lowry
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2017-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1526121522

The neo-classical troopers' memorial of New Zealand, together with others around the former British Empire, illustrates the manner in which the South African War became a major imperial. This book explores how South Africa is negotiating its past in and through various modes of performance in contemporary theatre, public events and memorial spaces. Opinion on the war was as divided among white Afrikaners, Africans, 'Coloureds' and English-speaking white South Africans as these communities were from each other. The book analyses the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as a live event and as an archive asking throughout how the TRC has affected the definition of identity and memory in contemporary South Africa, including disavowed memories. It surveys a century of controversy surrounding the origins of the war and in particular the argument that gold shaped British policy towards the Transvaal in the drift towards war. The remarkable South African career of Flora Shaw, the first woman to gain a professional position on The Times, is portrayed in the book. The book also examines the expensive operation mounted by The Times in order to cover the war. While acknowledging the need not to overstress the role of personality, the book echoes J. A. S. Grenville in describing the combination of Milner and Chamberlain as a 'fateful partnership'. Current renegotiations of popular repertoires, particularly songs and dances related to the struggle, revivals of classic European and South African protest plays, new history plays and specific racial and ethnic histories and identities, are analysed.

The South African Economy, 1910–90

The South African Economy, 1910–90
Author: H.S. Jones
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2016-07-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1349220310

The theme of the book is how efficient economic organisation with clearly defined property rights in the framework of a market economy has made possible the development of the South African economy. The book is divided into three periods: 1910-33, 1933-61 and 1961-90. Each of them begins with a brief survey of the growth of population and GDP which is then followed by a more detailed sectoral analysis. The book represents an important general survey of the South African economy in the twentieth century and as such will be required reading for all interested in the making of the modern South African economy.