Shifting white SADF veteran identities from apartheid to contemporary South Africa
- Authors: Weich, Francois
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: South Africa -- History -- 1961-1994 , Angola -- History -- South African Incursions, 1978-1990 -- Veterans , South Africa -- History, Military -- 1961- , Veterans -- South Africa -- Personal narratives , South Africa -- Armed forces , South Africa -- Politics and government -- 1961-1978 , South Africa -- Politics and government -- 1978-1989 , South Africa. South African Defence Force
- Language: English
- Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/76106 , vital:30504
- Description: The ideologies and structures of the apartheid state have received extensive academic attention, but the legacies of the militarisation of white South African men – a group that exists at a unique intersection of apartheid privilege and exploitation – have not been sufficiently addressed. Even as beneficiaries of apartheid, white men were militarised through structures of coercion and the mobilisation of identity constructions that resulted in the widespread submission to conscription and support for apartheid militarism. This thesis explores the relationship between those militarised identities and the historical processes of apartheid through a consideration of a broad range of white SADF veteran narratives from the Missing Voices Oral History Project archive. This consideration of the role of identity mobilisation in apartheid can shed light on the effect of historical processes of militarisation on white men in South Africa, as well as address the persistence of values and behaviours that may present barriers to the social transformation of South Africa towards a true constitutional democracy. The thesis explores identity in SADF veteran narratives through the application of social constructionism in order to determine the effect of coercive structures and identity mobilisation on individuals, and to gauge the persistence militarised identities after the social and political structures underpinning them had become defunct. The identity content of the narratives is contextualised in relation to structures of coercion employed by the apartheid state and the SADF alongside a consideration of the effect of political transition on veterans. The legacy of the historical environment and the impact of political transition on SADF veterans’ constructed identities is investigated in relation to these veterans’ own visions of their roles in post-apartheid South Africa. Therefore, this thesis endeavours to contribute to the expansion of the field of historical and identity study by considering the construction and renegotiation of military identities that maintained, benefited from, and were exploited by the apartheid state.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Beyond War, Violence, and Suffering: Everyday Life in the Honde Valley Borderland Communities during Zimbabwe’s Liberation War and the RENAMO Insurgency, c.1960-2016
- Authors: Nyachega, Nicholas
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7023 , vital:21210
- Description: This thesis examines the history of the Honde Valley area, in Mutasa District, along the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border. It uses two historic developments: the Zimbabwe liberation war and RENAMO insurgency to explore daily life and mundane experiences of the borderland communities, mainly from the late 1970s to 2016. Because earlier historians of these two historic developments have been much interested in studying the aspects of violence and suffering, this study extends the focus of analysis to the mundane experiences. I argue that in borderland areas, there are other wartime aspects of life worth investigating other than violence and suffering. In doing so, the thesis deploys the notions of conviviality and the everyday to understand the daily experiences of the Honde Valley communities during the disruptions caused to everyday life by these wars. Admittedly, twentieth century wars in Zimbabwe and Mozambique transformed the area that had previously remained at the fringes of colonial power from 1890-1950, into a new and bitterly contested ‘sharp end’ of the war. Nonetheless, peoples’ experiences during these wars cannot be understood merely in relation to violence and suffering. Furthermore, I argue that although some families were forcibly moved into liberation war “Protected Villages ”, they innovatively designed new mechanisms and alternative lifestyles in response to the state’s routinised control. The thesis concludes that beyond the confines of war-induced violence and suffering, Honde Valley communities used their borderland location to evade the pressures of war and continued with life.
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- Date Issued: 2017
A critical analysis of the relationship between the South African Defence Force and the South African media from 1975-83
- Authors: Kirsten, Frederik Fouche
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: South Africa -- South African Defence Force , Mass media -- Political aspects -- South Africa , Freedom of information -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2626 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020841
- Description: The main focus of this thesis is to show the nature of the relationship between the South African Defence Force and the local media from 1975-83. The thesis will analyse issues specifically relating to the nature of the relationship and show how and why they are relevant to understanding the authoritarianism of the apartheid state. The nature of the relationship will be conceptualised by way of the analogy of a marriage. The thesis will show that for the SADF the relationship was “a marriage of convenience” whereas for the media it was a “marriage of necessity”. This relationship operated within the context of a highly militarised society that has been termed a “Garrison State”. The apartheid government introduced legislation governing reporting of defence matters and the media (namely the South African Defence Act 1957 including amendments made up until 1980) that imposed legal constraints within which defence correspondents had to operate. Moreover, the MID’s secret monitoring of the local media reveals the extent to which the military distrusted the media. A sampling of the coverage of defence matters in a selection of newspapers will reveal how their editorial staffs and reporters operated in a situation where the flow of information was controlled by the military. This will also show that certain defence correspondents cultivated close relations with SADF personnel to ensure that they were kept informed. The thesis will also show how the SADF reacted to the international media exposure of Operation Savannah and Operation Reindeer and how the SADF sought to limit the damage to its reputation by clamping down on the local media. The creation of two media commissions both headed by Justice MT Steyn, set out to investigate the manner in which local media reported on security issues in an environment in which the media and the public were confronted by the “Total Strategy” discourse of the apartheid government. The working relationship between the SADF and the media encapsulated in the thesis can be described as highly complex and the use of the “marriage” analogy assists in understanding this relationship.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Exploration, monetization, disillusion: a history of upstream oil development in the onshore Algoa basin
- Authors: James, Jonathan Scott
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3870 , vital:20551
- Description: The onshore Algoa basin has, since the mid-1960s, been an area of interest for oil and gas exploration. Despite the general lack of knowledge and publicly available information on the topic, a large amount of geological and geophysical data has been collected on the region owing to the oil and gas exploration. The intended aim of this thesis is to compile and construct a historical narrative of the oil and gas exploration that took place within the onshore Algoa basin, and to then contextualize that localized narrative within the greater macro-narrative of the global oil and gas industry. This thesis is primarily concerned with the time period beginning in the early 1960s up to mid-2014, however reference is also made to events pre-1960. For the purposes of compartmentalizing the various areas of research covered, the thesis has been divided into three broad areas of interest: the geology of the onshore Algoa basin, the global oil market and its impact on exploration therein, and the attempts to monetize the leases that came to be purchased post-exploration. The narrative on the geology of the onshore Algoa basin is aimed at providing a summarized account of the most important details pertaining to the search for petroleum systems in simplified, yet accurate, language. The aspects of the geology which command the most attention are those which are necessary in functioning petroleum systems such as suitable permeabilities, porosities, reservoir rocks, trapping mechanisms and cap rocks. The global oil and gas market is also used to contextualize the search for oil and gas within the onshore Algoa basin and is explained against the backdrop of the global oil trade and the sanctions imposed on the apartheid state. Furthermore, the analysis of the attempts to monetize leases within the onshore Algoa basin will provide a financial reference point to the shortcomings of the exploration and monetization efforts. The purpose of this thesis is to construct a historical narrative of the onshore Algoa basin which not only gives an accurate portrayal of the exploration efforts that have taken place thus far, but to also provide a enough detail of those exploration efforts to indicate the future of the onshore Algoa basin as an exploration play.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Ways of seeing over time: the construction and imagination of ‘historic separation’ in Israeli and Palestinian cultures
- Authors: Butler, Nina Melissa
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/474 , vital:19962
- Description: There exists an international consensus that Palestinian and Israeli societies are ceaselessly and essentially acrimonious. This thesis argues that the conceptualisation of ‘historic separation’ in Palestine/Israel is supported and nourished by national narratives that follow classic historicism and a linear trajectory of essentialised culture progressing over time. Given these patterns in historiography and cultural expressions, conceptualisations of the future are argued to be dominated by the ‘overdetermined’ and ‘sacralised’ pasts that arrest the ability to conceive of alternative horizons. These national narratives are analysed borrowing from the theorisation of Edward Said on hegemonic culture, and Ranjit Guha’s Subaltern critique of historicism. Zionism is argued to function as a cultural hegemony that operates in a mercurial, selfsustaining and vibrant manner that has the effect of what this thesis terms ‘centrifugal magnetism’ on discourse in the region. Palestinian national narratives are held to be in tangential relation to Zionism (a classic colonial master-narrative), thus entering into a ‘terrible embrace’ of destructive colonial/postcolonial repetition that tends towards violent conflict and the discrimination of minorities. This thesis then proposes a ‘way out’ of this historiographical pattern that is argued to tangibly inform the cultural fabric of the region. By drawing on the later works of Mahmoud Darwish, Mustaffa Hallaj and Said, it is proposed that there are traces of a notion of self and community that can be described as postnational. This demands a reconstruction of narratives of the past in the region in a pluralistic fashion that is based upon shared exilic identity in flux over what Darwish termed an ‘open historical space’. Crucially, this alternative postnational narrative opens up conceptualisations of the future and is founded upon a renewed disposition to temporality. This thesis thus concludes by proposing that an understanding of temporality as ‘ecstatic’ and essential to being (Martin Heidegger) should be included as a crucial consideration for the end to conflict and the attainment of just and equitable futures.
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- Date Issued: 2016
Causes of persistent rural poverty in Thika district of Kenya, c.1953-2000
- Authors: Kinyanjui, Felistus Kinuna
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Poverty -- Kenya -- History Rural poor -- Kenya -- History Agriculture -- Kenya -- History Kenya -- History Kenya -- Politics and government
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2547 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002399
- Description: This study investigates the causes of poverty among the residents of Thika District in Kenya over the period 1953-2000. Using the articulation of modes of production perspective, the study traces the dynamics of poverty to the geography, history and politics of Thika District. The thrust of the argument is that livelihoods in the district changed during the period under investigation, but not necessarily for the better. Landlessness, collapse of the coffee industry, intergenerational poverty, and the ravages of diseases (particularly of HIV/AIDS) are analysed. This leads to the conclusion that causes of poverty in Thika District during the period under examination were complex as one form of deprivation led to another. The study established that poverty in Thika District during the period under review was a product of a process of exclusion from the centre of political power and appropriation. While race was the basis for allocation of public resources in colonial Kenya, ethnicity has dominated the independence period. Consequently, one would have expected the residents of Thika District, the home of Kenya’s first president, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, to have benefited inordinately from public resources during his rule. Kenyatta’s administration, however, mainly benefited the Kikuyu elite. The study therefore demonstrates that during the period under examination, the Kikuyu, like any other Kenyan community, were a heterogeneous group whose differences were accentuated by class relations. Subaltern groups in Thika District therefore benefited minimally from state patronage, just like similar groups elsewhere in rural Kenya. By the late 1970s, the level of deprivation in rural Kenya had been contained as a result of favourable prices for the country’s agricultural exports. But in the subsequent period, poverty increased under the pressures of world economic recession and slowdowns in trade. The situation was worse for Kikuyu peasants as the Second Republic of President Daniel Moi deliberately attempted undermine the Kikuyu economically. For the majority of Thika residents, this translated into further marginalisation as the Moi regime lumped them together with the Kikuyu elite who had benefitted inordinately from public resources during the Kenyatta era. This study demonstrates that no single factor can explain the prevalence of poverty in Thika District during the period under consideration. However, the poor in the district devised survival mechanisms that could be replicated elsewhere. Indeed, the dynamics of poverty in Thika District represent a microcosm not just for the broader Kenyan situation but also of rural livelihoods elsewhere in the world. The study recommends land reform and horticulture as possible ways of reducing poverty among rural communities. Further, for a successful global war on poverty there is an urgent need to have the West go beyond rhetoric and deliver on its promises to make poverty history.
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- Date Issued: 2007
Segregated housing and contested identities: the case of the King William's Town coloured community, 1895 - 1946
- Authors: Victor, Stephanie Emilia
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Colored people (South Africa) -- Race identity Colored people (South Africa) -- Political activity South Africa -- Race relations Colored people (South Africa) -- Housing Housing -- South Africa -- King William's Town Colored people (South Africa) -- Relocation Colored people (South Africa) -- South Africa -- King William's Town
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2568 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002421
- Description: This thesis is a case study of the dynamics of coloured housing in King William's Town between 1895 and 1946. The impact of spatial segregation on pre-apartheid coloured settlements in the Eastern Cape has largely been ignored up to the present. This needs to be rectified as the lack of in-depth enquiry can lead to misinterpretations that may influence contemporary politics and identity formation. Through research based on primary sources, it has become apparent that segregation in King William's Town was safeguarded and rationalized through the discourses of sanitation and civilization, and the practices of relocation and removal. The existing slum cond itions were used as a convenient excuse to implement municipal control. Segregation compounded the problem of poverty, inequitable access to housing and the provision of basic services. As a result, local coloured housing was increasingly characterised by a shortage of decent accommodation and basic services, decreasing home ownership and increasing municipal tenancy. In addition, through the implementation of the 1923 Natives (Urban Areas) Act and the 1934 Slums Act, high sanitation standards were set, but the Council itself provided inferior services. Ironically, conditions in the relocated municipal settlements were also not on par with the provisions stipulated in the Slums Act that were used to effect removal in the first place. The implementation of racially exclusive housing was, therefore, not driven by a single role player. It was pioneered by the local authorities, legalised by national government and supported by the coloured elite, when needed, in an attempt to access decent housing. This occurred mainly through the political manoeuvring of the coloured elite, and specifically the African Political (later People's) Organisation (APO), the Afrikaanse Nasionale Bond (AN B) and the locally constituted Coloured Welfare Association (CWA) in King William 's Town. These organisations attempted to procure access to housing within the narrow boundaries of a prescribed identity. Segregated housing therefore fostered and sustained coloured identity. It consolidated feelings of separateness and division and provided impetus for the construction of race and even racial tension. Coloured identity attempted to serve as a rallying point to overcome differences in religion, family and social networks and place of residence in order to procure access to housing. It was not, however, able to overcome the occasional division between settlements, caused by well-developed placeidentities, which still inform the contemporary housing milieu. The coloured elite initially did not question the legitimacy of coloured identity. Only in 1939, under threats of increased residential segregation, combined with the resulting opposition in coloured protest politics, was the legitimacy of coloured identity publicly contested . By 1943, with the creation of the Coloured Advisory Council (CAC), local coloured unity proved to be insufficient. A division within the ranks of the local coloured elite was evident. As a result, the expression of coloured identity still remains contested in contemporary King William's Town.
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- Date Issued: 2007
An analysis of the censorship of popular music within the context of cultural struggle in South Africa during the 1980s
- Authors: Drewett, Michael
- Date: 2004
- Subjects: Censorship -- South Africa Popular music -- Censorship -- South Africa Popular music -- Censorship -- South Africa -- History Popular music -- Social aspects -- South Africa Popular music -- Political aspects -- South Africa Popular music -- South Africa -- History and criticism Protest songs -- South Africa -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:3350 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007098
- Description: The censorship of popular music in South Africa during the 1980s severely affected South African musicians. The apartheid government was directly involved in centralized state censorship by means of the Directorate of Publications, while the South African Broadcasting Corporation exercised government censorship at the level of airplay. Others who assisted state censorship included religious and cultural interest groups. State censorship in turn put pressure on record companies, musicians and others to practice self-censorship. Many musicians who overtly sang about taboo topics or who used controversial language subsequently experienced censorship in different forms, including police harassment. Musicians were also subject to anti-apartheid forms of censorship,such as the United Nations endorsed cultural boycott. Not all instances of censorship were overtly political, but they were always framed by, and took place within, a repressive legal-political system. This thesis found that despite the state's attempt to maintain its hegemony, musicians sought ways of overcoming censorship practices. It is argued that the ensuing struggle cannot be conceived of in simple binary terms. The works of Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, in particular, are applied to the South African context in exploring the localized nuances of the cultural struggle over music censorship. It is argued that fragmented resistance to censorship arose out of the very censorship structures that attempted to silence musicians. Textual analysis brought to light that resistance took various forms including songs with provocative lyrics and titles, and more subtle means of bypassing censorship, including the use of symbolism, camouflaged lyrics, satire and crossover performance. Musicians were faced with the challenge of bypassing censors yet nevertheless conveying their message to an audience. The most successful cases negotiated censorial practices while getting an apparent message across to a wide audience. Broader forms of resistance were also explored, including opposition through live performance, counter-hegemonic information on record covers, resistance from exile, alignment with political organizations and legal challenges to state censorship. In addition, some record companies developed strategies of resistance to censorship. The many innovative practices outlined in this thesis demonstrate that even in the context of constraint, resistance is possible. Despite censorship, South African musicians were able to express themselves through approaching their music in an innovative way.
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- Date Issued: 2004
A history of the South African police in Port Elizabeth, 1913-1956
- Authors: Watson, Kelvin Innes
- Date: 2000
- Subjects: Police -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape South African Police -- South Africa -- Port Elizabeth -- History Police -- South Africa -- Port Elizabeth -- History
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2570 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002423
- Description: This thesis investigates the policing activities of the South African Police (SAP) in Port Elizabeth from the formation of the SAP in 1913 to the creation of two separate police districts in the city in 1956. It begins with the recruitment and training of police personnel, outlining the difficulty in obtaining sufficient white recruits for most of the period while at the same time stressing the ease with which the Force was able to obtain black recruits. The preponderance of Afrikaner policemen serving in Port Elizabeth from the 1920s onwards is made clear, as is the para-military nature of the SAP, which was maintained and reinforced as a result of training methods and the process of socialisation. As state servants, police personnel were expected to serve loyally and obediently a state becoming increasingly repressive towards its black citizens. Generally inadequate conditions of service remained the norm throughout the period yet the SAP’s commitment to the state never wavered, bar one isolated, short-lived incidence. The administration and functioning of policing in Port Elizabeth is explored by focussing on specific organisational features pertinent to the city and the changes wrought by the police hierarchy to deal with the city’s demographic and spatial expansion. The SAP tended to employ three different forms of policing in the city as a result of its apartheid-driven agenda which compelled it to differentiate between the various population groups in terms of maintaining law and order. The privileged white community experienced routine, civil policing whereas the black community was policed largely in a socially and politically oppressive manner; this was in line with government policy. On the whole, however, the more brutal and sinister nature of policing was yet to come to the fore although this thesis does point towards the increasingly repressive nature of policing in South Africa during the apartheid era.
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- Date Issued: 2000
A social history of white working class women in industrializing Port Elizabeth, 1917-1936
- Authors: Gibbs, Patricia Anne
- Date: 1998
- Subjects: Women -- South Africa -- Port Elizabeth -- History , Women -- Employment -- South Africa -- Port Elizabeth -- History , Port Elizabeth (South Africa) -- History
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2543 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002395 , Women -- South Africa -- Port Elizabeth -- History , Women -- Employment -- South Africa -- Port Elizabeth -- History , Port Elizabeth (South Africa) -- History
- Description: The study period saw a significant increase in the urbanisation of whites and blacks in Port Elizabeth induced by droughts and coercive legislation, but also by burgeoning industrialisation. Industry had been given great stimulus by World War 1 and maintained by protectionist legislation in the 1920s which the local state and industrialists came to endorse. The ethos of the town was overwhelmingly British in terms of the population, the composition of the local council, business interests and the prevailing culture. Whites formed the largest component of the population in Port Elizabeth during the inter-war years. The majority of white women lived in the North End, the industrial hub and a major working class area of the city. Although the provision of housing was initially neglected, economic and subeconomic housing in the 1930s helped to create both racial separation and a sense of community between sectors of the working class. Yet, white working class women did not form a homogenous group, but rather consisted of different ethnic groups, occupations and classes. The Afrikaans speaking sector, formed a significant component of the industrial labour force especially in the leather, food and beverage and clothing industries. In a centre where white labour was favoured and marketed as an advantage to outside investors, they rapidly displaced coloured women. The female workforce was basically young, underpaid (especially in comparison to wages on the Rand) and temporary. While white women were still in evidence in other occupations such as domestic work and in the informal sector, their numbers here steadily diminished as both racial segregation and municipal regulation, were implemented. Against a background of chaotic social conditions, large slum areas and the spread of infectious diseases, the local council did much to improve health services particularly for women and children. Poor relief instituted in 1919 was, however, less forthcoming and female - headed households were often left to rely on the services of local welfare organisations. The extended family, however, was the norm affording support against atomization. Although pressurised by social ills throughout the period, the family was increasingly buttressed by state assistance. Prevailing morality was likewise actively constructed in terms of legislative repression and racial division. This often lead to social aberrations such as infanticide which was only reduced by the increase of state assistance and, in the longer term, social mobility of the whites.
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- Date Issued: 1998