The Heritage of Russian Involvement in South Africa: The Anglo-Boer War

1986 ◽  
pp. 8-22
Author(s):  
Kurt M. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Boer War

Humanitarianism, Human Rights and Biopolitics in the British Empire, 1890–1902

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Clark
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Personal Rights

The 1890s were a key time for debates about imperial humanitarianism and human rights in India and South Africa. This article first argues that claims of humanitarianism can be understood as biopolitics when they involved the management and disciplining of populations. This article examines the historiography that analyses British efforts to contain the Bombay plague in 1897 and the Boer War concentration camps as forms of discipline extending control over colonized subjects. Secondly, human rights language could be used to oppose biopolitical management. While scholars have criticized liberal human rights language for its universalism, this article argues that nineteenth-century liberals did not believe that rights were universal; they had to be earned. It was radical activists who drew on notions of universal rights to oppose imperial intervention and criticize the camps in India and South Africa. These activists included two groups: the Personal Rights Association and the Humanitarian League; and the individuals Josephine Butler, Sol Plaatje, Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, and Bal Gandadhar Tilak. However, these critics also debated amongst themselves how far human rights should extend.

scholarly journals The Jameson Raid: An American Imperial Plot?

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 641-648
Author(s):  
Robert I. Rotberg
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
The South ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Gold Mines

South Africa’s Jameson Raid ultimately betrayed African rights by transferring power to white Afrikaner nationalists after helping to precipitate the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902). The Raid also removed Cecil Rhodes from the premiership of the Cape Colony; strengthened Afrikaner control of the South African Republic (the Transvaal) and its world-supplying gold mines; and motivated the Afrikaner-controlled consolidation of segregation in the Union of South Africa, and thence apartheid. Perceptively, Charles van Onselen’s The Cowboy Capitalist links what happened on the goldfields of South Africa to earlier labor unrest in Idaho’s silver mines. Americans helped to originate the Raid and all of the events in its wake.

scholarly journals Viewing ‘the other’ over a hundred and a score more years: South Africa and Russia (1890–2010)

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
I Liebenberg
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Auto Ethnography

Whether novel is history or history is novel, is a tantalising point. “The novel is no longer a work, a thing to make las t, to connect the pas t with the future but (only) one current event among many, a ges ture with no tomorrow” Kundera (1988:19). One does not have to agree with Kundera to find that social sciences , as his toriography holds a s tory, a human narrative to be shared when focused on a case or cases. In this case, relations between peoples over more than a century are discussed. At the same time, what is known as broader casing in qualitative studies enters the picture. The relations between the governments and the peoples of South Africa and Russia ( including the Soviet Union), sometimes in conflict or peace and sometimes at variance are discussed. Past and present communalities and differences between two national entities within a changing international or global context deserve attention while moments of auto-ethnography compliment the study. References are made to the international political economy in the context of the relations between these countries.Keywords: Soviet Union; South Africa; Total Onslaught; United Party; Friends of the Soviet Union; ideological conflict (South Africa); Russians (and the Anglo-Boer War); racial capitalism; apartheid; communism/Trotskyism (in South Africa); broader casing (qualitative research)Subject fields: political science; sociology; (military) history; international political economy; social anthropology; international relations; conflict studies

Afrikaner Music and Identity Politics in Post-Apartheid South Africa

2017 ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
P. Eric Louw
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
South African Government ◽  
Boer War ◽  
African Government ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Sports Stadiums

A song about a Boer War general, released in 2006, stirred controversy in South Africa by triggering a gearshift amongst Afrikaners towards re-engaging in the political process. The song “De la Rey”, which became a popular South African hit, captured the alienation many Afrikaners felt at having become a politically marginalized and disempowered ethnic minority within a state where Black Nationalism had become the dominant discourse. The song triggered the De la Rey phenomenon in which Afrikaners became once more politically assertive, following a decade in which this community had been politically dormant. Afrikaners took to singing “De la Rey” as a sort of ‘national anthem' when they gathered in sports stadiums, BBQs, pubs and parties. Twelve months after “De la Rey” was released, the South African government expressed concern the song could become “a rallying point for treason”. The De la Rey phenomenon offers an excellent fulcrum to consider how music can provide a platform for political messages which have consequences for the political process.

Afrikaner Music and Identity Politics in Post-Apartheid South Africa

2020 ◽  
pp. 733-752
Author(s):  
P. Eric Louw
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
South African Government ◽  
Boer War ◽  
African Government ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Sports Stadiums

A song about a Boer War general, released in 2006, stirred controversy in South Africa by triggering a gearshift amongst Afrikaners towards re-engaging in the political process. The song “De la Rey”, which became a popular South African hit, captured the alienation many Afrikaners felt at having become a politically marginalized and disempowered ethnic minority within a state where Black Nationalism had become the dominant discourse. The song triggered the De la Rey phenomenon in which Afrikaners became once more politically assertive, following a decade in which this community had been politically dormant. Afrikaners took to singing “De la Rey” as a sort of ‘national anthem' when they gathered in sports stadiums, BBQs, pubs and parties. Twelve months after “De la Rey” was released, the South African government expressed concern the song could become “a rallying point for treason”. The De la Rey phenomenon offers an excellent fulcrum to consider how music can provide a platform for political messages which have consequences for the political process.

Van der Post, Laurens (1906-1996)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Ullyatt
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Black People ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
German Origin ◽  
The Village

Laurens van der Post was born on December 13, 1906 in the village of Phillipolis, in what was then the Orange River Colony. He was the thirteenth of the family’s fifteen children and the fifth son. His father, Christiaan, who came from Dutch stock, was a lawyer and politician who had fought against the British during the Second Anglo-Boer War. Van der Post’s mother, Lammie, was of German origin. Growing up on the farm, van der Post came into contact with the black people and the wilderness, two major influences on his life and his writing. Van der Post went to school in Grey College in Bloemfontein, where he was exposed to a line of political thinking embodying a racial philosophy entirely contrary to his own experiences of the indigenous peoples who were to play such a significant role in his adult life. In 1925, he became a junior reporter for the Natal Advertiser newspaper in Durban. In 1926, with William Plomer and Roy Campbell, he founded Voorslag, a journal lasting only three volumes. It was forced to close through lack of support for its radical opinions and its promotion of a more integrated South Africa.

scholarly journals Vryheid en verbond: ’n Ou-Testamentiese perspektief

2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
H.F. Du Plooy
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
New South ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
Boer War ◽  
The People

Freedom and covenant: A perspective from the Old Testament A century after the end of the Anglo-Boer War freedom remains an important issue and some people nowadays constantly ask whether they have lost their freedom in the New South Africa. This article offers an Old Testament perspective on freedom and first of all discusses the importance of blessings and curses within the framework of the covenant. This is followed by a discussion of two passages from the Old Testament – Deuteronomy 28 and Jeremiah 34 – viewing the loss of freedom as a result of disobedience to God’s commandments. The discussion highlights the fact that political freedom could not be regarded as a basic right of a people in the time of the Old Testament. Freedom in their own land was regarded as a gift of God to Israel. To retain this freedom the people had to obey God’s commandments; otherwise this freedom could be lost. Deuteronomy 28 indicates that obedience will result in blessings, while disobedience will result in punishment. Freedom in their own land is mentioned together with the blessings and the curses. Jeremiah 34 proceeds from the same premise, but relates the loss of freedom to the people’s failure to release their slaves.

The Politics of Narcotic Medicines in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 586-608 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thembisa Waetjen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
African State ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Patent Medicines ◽  
British Occupation ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Parallel Streams

Summary Controls over trade and consumption of narcotic medicines emerged as both a concern and emblem of progressive governance around the turn of the twentieth century. This article traces political struggles over drugs regulation in the case of colonial South Africa. It focuses on two parallel streams of law-making by the British occupation regime in the Transvaal, following the Anglo-Boer war. Controversies over the availability of traditional ‘Dutch medicines’ to Boer farmers and prohibitions of certain patent medicines to African consumers were elements of, and contradictions within, the process of building a modern pharmaceutical economy. An influx to the region of new curatives coincided with the growth of vernacular newspapers as well as temperance campaigns. Working to nurture white national cohesion and support a mining industry premised on unskilled black labour, the South African state created race-based drugs controls. These developments proved significant to regulatory statecraft later in the century.

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