Naming the Moment

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 237-273
Author(s):  
Gerhard van den Heever
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
New South ◽  
University Education ◽  
African History ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
Student Protest ◽  
Cultural Alienation ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Role Of Religion

This essay introduces and frames a collection of essays speaking into a particularly burning and troubling period in South African history. The slow economic decline over a period of roughly ten years have now accelerated into a two year-long running student protest over high costs of university education. The protesters themselves, and commentary on the protest movement, link the protests to the failure of the promises of the 1994 compromise that saw the inauguration of the new South Africa. At the same time, the protests also pick up on another exclusion, i.e., the vestiges of colonial knowledge regimes and cultural alienation. In the essays here, issues are address that speak into this situation from various perspectives, namely, the agency of African in defining their own history, the authority and sovereignty to interpret the context, and the role of religion in education to construct social identity.

Learning Zulu

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Sanders
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
South African ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
African History ◽  
African Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Correct Form ◽  
Linguistic Purism

When this book's author began studying Zulu, he was often questioned why he was learning it. This book places the author's endeavors within a wider context to uncover how, in the past 150 years of South African history, Zulu became a battleground for issues of property, possession, and deprivation. The book combines elements of analysis and memoir to explore a complex cultural history. Perceiving that colonial learners of Zulu saw themselves as repairing harm done to Africans by Europeans, the book reveals deeper motives at work in the development of Zulu-language learning—from the emergence of the pidgin Fanagalo among missionaries and traders in the nineteenth century to widespread efforts, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, to teach a correct form of Zulu. The book looks at the white appropriation of Zulu language, music, and dance in South African culture, and at the association of Zulu with a martial masculinity. In exploring how Zulu has come to represent what is most properly and powerfully African, the book examines differences in English- and Zulu-language press coverage of an important trial, as well as the role of linguistic purism in xenophobic violence in South Africa. Through one person's efforts to learn the Zulu language, the book explores how a language's history and politics influence all individuals in a multilingual society.

scholarly journals History, memory and reconciliation: Njabulo Ndebele’s The cry of Winnie Mandela and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela’s A human being died that night

Literator ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
R. Goodman
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Human Being ◽  
African History ◽  
African Society ◽  
South African Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Ethical Complexity ◽  
Narrative Techniques

This article deals with two texts written during the process of transition in South Africa, using them to explore the cultural and ethical complexity of that process. Both Njabulo Ndebele’s “The cry of Winnie Mandela” and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela’s “A human being died that night” deal with controversial public figures, Winnie Mandela and Eugene de Kock respectively, whose role in South African history has made them part of the national iconography. Ndebele and Gobodo-Madikizela employ narrative techniques that expose and exploit faultlines in the popular representations of these figures. The two texts offer radical ways of understanding the communal and individual suffering caused by apartheid, challenging readers to respond to the past in ways that will promote healing rather than perpetuate a spirit of revenge. The part played by official histories is implicitly questioned and the role of individual stories is shown to be crucial. Forgiveness and reconciliation are seen as dependent on an awareness of the complex circumstances and the humanity of those who are labelled as offenders. This requirement applies especially to the case of “A human being died that night”, a text that insists that the overt acknowledgement of the humanity of people like Eugene de Kock is an important way of healing South African society.

THE NORTHEASTERN FACTOR IN SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY: REEVALUATING THE VOLUME OF THE SLAVE TRADE OUT OF DELAGOA BAY AND ITS IMPACT ON ITS HINTERLAND IN THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
LINELL CHEWINS ◽  
PETER DELIUS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South African ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
African History ◽  
Trading System ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Trading Systems ◽  
Mascarene Islands

AbstractThis article, largely on the basis of in-depth research in archives in Lisbon, provides an account of the trading systems linking Delagoa Bay to its southern hinterland. Within this framework we argue that the role of the slave trade has been previously underestimated. There is evidence that the booming demand for slaves in Brazil and on the Mascarene Islands hit this region with force. The scale of that trade is difficult to establish because it was, by and large, illicit and so not systematically recorded. There are indications of a significant trade prior to 1823 and a substantial one after that date. There is also evidence that northern Nguni groups, including the Zulu kingdom, were deeply involved in this trading system. The main sources of captives, however, were militarily weak societies, like the Tembe, which lived closer to the Bay.

scholarly journals Discovering and exploring ubuntu-language in the dialogue between the Dutch Reformed Church and the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieze Meiring
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Faith Communities ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
African History ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Dutch Reformed Church

Discussions with members of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) and the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA) in Ohrigstad illustrate the possibilities of ubuntu-language in overcoming racism and prejudice. After proposing a number of meanings and values related to ubuntu, this research explores the role of ubuntu-language � and at times the lack thereof � in the concrete relationship between these two faith communities as an expression of recent South African history. Ubuntu-language seems to offer unique outcomes in this relationship in strengthening identity, unleashing vitality, celebrating diversity, awakening solidarity, revealing humanity, bolstering individualism and enhancing Christianity.

scholarly journals Towards a conceptualization of the study of Africa’s indigenous manuscript heritage and tradition

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-163
Author(s):  
Mary Minicka
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
African History ◽  
Textual Information ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
Widespread Availability ◽  
Islamic Society

This paper share experiences of th South African Conservation Technical Team of the Timbuktu Rare Manuscripts Project in the conservation and preservation of manuscripts in Timbuktu. A manuscript is always more than just its textual information – it is a living historical entity and its study a complex web of interrelated factors: the origins, production (that is, materials, formats, script, typography, and illustration), content, use and role of books in culture, educated and society in general. The widespread availability of paper made it easier to produce these manuscripts as some of the important vehicles for transmitting of knowledge in Islamic society. Islamic written culture, particularly during the time of the European middle ages was by all accounts incomparably more brilliant than anything known in contemporary Europe. The time for studying the African manuscript tradition has never been more appropriate given the recent renewed calls for the need to reappraise African history and achievements. It must be acknowledged, however, that the study of African manuscript heritage will not be without difficulty.

scholarly journals Looking backward to the ‘new South Africa’ - J.M. Coetzee’s exploration of the protocols of travel writing

Literator ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Marais
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
New South ◽  
African History ◽  
Western Language ◽  
Colonial Encounter

This paper discusses J M Coetzee's deconstruction of the discourse of travel writing in "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee". It contends that the novella foregrounds this colonialist g en re ’s ethnographic inscription of the contact between coloniser and colonised in order to expose its role in the implication of Africa in the European plot of history. The paper also argues that the novella reveals the manner in which this mediation of the colonial encounter by western language and narrative systems prospectively determined the course of South African history. In the process, it relates this work’s understanding of history to the contemporary South African reader’s times.

scholarly journals Practice of Ritual Sacrifice and the Role of Religion in Development

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cas Wepener
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
South African ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
South African Context ◽  
The South ◽  
Ritual Sacrifice ◽  
African Context ◽  
Role Of Religion

The practice of ritual sacrifice within the South African context is explored in the light of the emerging global discussion regarding religion and development. Firstly, some aspects of the theory of René Girard on sacrifice is discussed, as well as African theories pertaining to sacrifice and modern ways in which sacrifice/offering enters language. The following section presents three case studies pertaining to sacrifice from South Africa: one from fiction, one from fieldwork done in an African Independent church and a description of a recent sacrifice conducted on a beach in Cape Town. In a succeeding section, the data presented in the empirical part is interpreted in the light of the preceding theories. In the concluding section a thesis is advanced regarding the possible meaning and significance of sacrifice for an African understanding of development.

Constitutional Engineering and Economic Recolonization in South Africa

1984 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 30-34
Author(s):  
Heribert Adam
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
New South ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
White Voters ◽  
South African Constitution ◽  
White Control ◽  
Political Decision Making

On November 2, 1983, white voters in South Africa decided by a two-thirds majority in a nation-wide referendum to approve a new South African constitution. The new political dispensation still excludes the 70 percent African population from participation in central political decision making but includes symbolically the 10 percent so-called coloureds and 3 percent Indians in separate Parliaments. White control has been streamlined into a more technocratic, expanded executive state with greater powers for the ruling Nationalist Party and the office of the state president. The “coloureds” and Indians now play the minor role of educating whites in non-racialism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document