Knotted memories of a betrayed sacrifice: Rethinking trauma and hope in South Africa

2022 ◽  
pp. 175069802110665
Author(s):  
Kim Wale
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Shared Memory ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
African Society ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
South African Society ◽  
National Congress

Different groups within South African society express disillusionment with the present through a discourse of betrayal in relation to the liberation movement-cum-governing-party of the African National Congress. This article focuses on a particular articulation of this discourse within two memory communities in the Western Cape (Bonteheuwel and Crossroads) who were embroiled in violence and political struggle during apartheid and continue to suffer conditions of structural violence in the post-apartheid era. It analyses the shared memory narrative of a ‘betrayed sacrifice’ to demonstrate a proposed theoretical concept of ‘knotted memories’ which describes the way in which past and present memories of suffering knot together to produce a lived affective condition of despair. It further considers what these everyday experiences of ‘knotted memories’ mean for re-thinking the nature of trauma and hope in relation to post-apartheid despair.

The Freedom Charter and Ethnicity— towards a Communitarian South African Society

1989 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-115
Author(s):  
A. J. G. M. Sanders
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Joint Venture ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
International Level ◽  
African Society ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
The South ◽  
South African Society ◽  
National Congress ◽  
People’S Organisation

At national as well as international level the South African Freedom Charter has become a symbol of the long-standing struggle against apartheid. In this essay the emphasis will be on the charter's provisions relating to ethnicity. The question of ethnicity is a crucial one, for on its solution depends the outcome of the economic and other social problems which trouble South African society.The 1955 Freedom Charter, which was the outcome of a joint venture of the African National Congress (A.N.C.), the South African Indian Congress, the South African Coloured People's Organisation and the predominantly European South African Congress of Democrats, suggests a unitary, participatory welfare state, which will acccord equal rights to all “national groups and races”.For the A.N.C., the senior partner in the “Congress Alliance”, the reference in the charter to “national groups and races” soon became a major headache. Could it be said that the charter lent support to the creation of “four nations”? A number of people within the A.N.C. feared that much. Prominent among them were the “Africanists” who in April 1959 broke away from the A.N.C, and formed the Pan-Africanist Congress (P.A.C.) “Charterists” and “Africanists” are still at loggerheads, but the A.N.C.'s “Revolutionary Programme” of 1969 and its “Constitutional Guidelines for a Democratic

scholarly journals A Giant Steering the Ship: The Leadership Style of Oliver Tambo and the Lessons that can be Drawn

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren C. Marx
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Leadership Style ◽  
Leadership Skills ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Leadership Traits ◽  
African Society ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
South African Society ◽  
National Congress

Oliver Tambo dedicated most of his life to the liberation of South Africa from apartheid dominion, whereby he garnered international respect from his peers and contemporaries. He rose to prominence within the African National Congress (ANC) during a harrowing time in South Africa’s history by consistently demonstrating leadership and guidance. Tambo’s innate leadership skills originated through his unique mix of personality qualities that he steadfastly believed in his entire life. This tenacity and conviction allowed him to govern the leadership of the ANC—despite being in exile—in an efficient and systematic manner. The objective of this paper is to examine the different leadership traits Tambo possessed, which allowed him to steer his political party’s ship through the most turbulent of seas. Secondly, this paper examines the current political climate in South Africa with the aim of addressing leadership models required to mould and sculpt South African society into the Tambos of today. These two objectives will largely be pursued through oral testimonies of those who worked and interacted with Tambo closely over the years, as well as anecdotal stories which demonstrate the level of leadership Tambo always provided.

The social and political construction of identities in the new South Africa: an analysis of the Western Cape Province

2002 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scarlett Cornelissen ◽  
Steffen Horstmeier
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
African Society ◽  
Western Cape Province ◽  
South African Society ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Parallel Flows ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

In apartheid South African society, racial and ethnic identities were institutionally imposed. The end of apartheid has brought about the need for new identities to be created among South Africans, and for South Africans to forge a new relationship with their society and country. With this objective in mind, the national government is engaged in a process of nation-building. But in post-apartheid South African society, sub-national identities are also strongly coming to the fore. This is an empirical study of established and emerging identities in the Western Cape province, and the processes whereby these are constructed. The investigation shows two parallel flows of identity construction in the Western Cape: on the one hand, political leaders in the province attempt to foster an autonomous provincial identity; on the other, residents of the province show little evidence of strong political identities linked to the Western Cape. Instead, social identities are being constructed around residents’ local neighbourhoods and long-existing ethnic, class and racial identities. Rather than the social cohesion sought by the post-apartheid South African government, these identities point to persistent social polarisation.

Black Ethnicities, Communities and Political Expression in Late Victorian Cape Town

1995 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian Bickford-Smith
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Political Expression ◽  
South Africans ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Different Cultures

In 1994 the National Party of Mr de Klerk defeated the African National Congress in only one of nine South African provinces, the Western Cape. The reason for this success lay in the support that the NP received from a large majority of Coloured South Africans in this region. Many were worried about the possibility of losing homes and jobs to ‘Africans’, and believed that the ANC was a specifically African party. These worries and beliefs were encouraged by Nationalist Party politicians. But the success of the latter's campaign was premised on the existence of more enduring self-identities, while simultaneously lending them new content.This article attempts to explain the emergence of different black ethnicities, and particularly the emergence of Coloured ethnicity, in the British Cape Colony, and its capital, Cape Town. Because of a low non-racial franchise and (theoretical) equality of all before the law, the Victorian Cape provided the possibility of formal black political expression – the establishment of parties, electioneering and political mobilization.The different black ethnicities that emerged were not the inevitable result of different ‘cultures’ or distant historical experiences. But nor were they simply created by élite Ethnic mobilizers in response to white racialization and discrimination, as was sometimes suggested in revisionist South African historiography of the Apartheid era. This historiography was understandably eager to challenge belief in the immutability of race and ethnicity that underpinned ‘separate development’ – a policy which itself served to reshape, perpetuate and reinforce perceptions of ethnic difference.Labels, like ‘Coloured’ or ‘Native’ may have been imposed by whites and used by black élites to challenge state policies or to demand resources. But the labels had to continue to make sense to those they wished to mobilize. The content of ethnicities could not be purely ‘imagined’ by élites.

scholarly journals Labour Studies and Labour History in South Africa: Perspectives from the Apartheid Era and After

2013 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bill Freund
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
World War I ◽  
South African ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
African Society ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
World War ◽  
White Worker ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
South African Society

AbstractThis article attempts to introduce readers to the impressive and influential historical and contemporary literature on South African labour. A literature with some earlier antecedents effectively applied classic sociological and historical themes to the specific conditions of South African political and economic development. Research on the phase of politicized and militant white worker action ties up with research into the international pre-World War I labour movement. The strength of this literature reflected the insurgent labour movement linked to political struggle against apartheid before 1990. After this review, the second half of the paper tries to consider and contextualize the challenging post-apartheid labour situation together with its political aspects. With the successful conclusion of the anti-apartheid struggle, students of the labour movement, as well as of South African society, have become more aware of the distance between establishing a liberal democracy and actually changing society itself in a direction leading towards less inequality and an improved life for those at the bottom of society, or even the broad mass of the population. As recent literature reveals, the development of post-apartheid South Africa has been a differential and problematic experience for labour.

Regional Patterns in South Africa's Postapartheid Election in 1994

1996 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
A J Christopher
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Regional Patterns ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Kwazulu Natal ◽  
Secure Control ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Provincial Councils

The first universal-franchise elections in South Africa, for the National Assembly and nine provincial councils, were conducted under a system of proportional representation in April 1994. The African National Congress won a substantial victory but failed to secure control of two key provinces: the Western Cape and KwaZulu—Natal. Ethnic voting patterns among the spatially concentrated Coloured and Zulu populations were at variance with the otherwise national-liberationary nature of the election. The South African experience of the significance of ethnic voting parallels that discerned in other emergent democracies, contributing to the widening field of electoral geography.

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