Camps in a Time of War

Author(s):  
Aidan Forth

Guerrilla warfare during the South African (or Anglo-Boer) War presented a new context for the development of British camps. On the one hand, camps were a measure of military counterinsurgency that concentrated and detained scattered civilian populations suspected of aiding enemy insurgents. On the other hand, camps were measures of social control and sympathetic concern that organized shelter and humanitarian relief for refugees who had been displaced by scorched earth warfare and were congregating in overcrowded towns. Boer and African refugees presented a specter of social destitution and sanitary disarray familiar from Indian plague and famine operations. Like plague and famine camps, wartime concentration camps removed “uncivilized” and unhygienic populations from the center of towns and systematized ad hoc charitable arrangements by confining relief within demarcated boundaries. Although Boers were ostensibly Europeans respected for their vigor and courage, racialized discourses in the later phases of an asymmetric conflict denigrated them as uncivilized and even subhuman: such representations ultimately facilitated encampment.

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 250-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATRIN SIEG

The performance installationExhibit AandBby South African theatre artist Brett Bailey has been touring Europe since 2010. Its twelvetableaux vivantsprovide a selective survey of European racial histories interspersed with displays of contemporary African refugees. It has increasingly provoked opposition by antiracist activists who compare the show to a ‘human zoo’ that objectifies black performers, facilitates emotional release for white European audiences, and benefits only the white director. In London, protests led to the cancellation of the show. This article examines these charges and sets them in the context of Afro-German theatre and activism. It advances an alternative reading ofExhibit Bas a two-pronged intervention in European discourses of security on the one side, and in the restructuring of European museums on the other.


Author(s):  
Juan P. Martínez ◽  
Inmaculada Méndez ◽  
Esther Secanilla ◽  
Ana Benavente ◽  
Julia García Sevilla

Starting from previous studies in professional caregivers of people with dementia and other diseases in institutionalized centers of different regions, the aim of this study was to compare burnout levels that workers present depending on the center, to create a caregiver profile with high professional accomplishment and to describe the quality of life that residents perceive Murcia and Barcelona. The instruments used were the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), the Professional Caregiver Survey developed ad hoc and the Brief Questionnaire of Quality of Life (CUBRECAVI in Spanish) on residents. The results show, on the one hand, that levels of professional accomplishment may be paradoxically higher in the case of catastrophe and, on the other hand, the 98.2% of users are satisfied with the residence in which is located and 81.8% with the manner in which occupy the time. The conclusions that are extrapolated from the study shed light on the current situation of workers and residents and the influence that an earthquake can have on them.


2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Beukes

When the idea of heritage conservation arises, one specific facet of the ensuing reflection is bound to emerge at some stage: the (inevitable) tension between property rights, on the one hand, and the right to culture (of which heritage conservation is an aspect), on the other. This tension intensifies when the cultural material to be conserved concerns a traditionally sensitive issue—that of the burial places of the ancestors of people designated in the South African context as previously disadvantaged.


Author(s):  
Fareed Moosa

Sections 45 and 63 of the Tax Administration Act 28 of 2011 (TAA) confer drastic information gathering powers on officials of the South African Revenue Service (SARS). On the one hand, section 45 permits warrantless routine (non-targeted) and non-routine (targeted) inspections by a SARS official in respect of records, books of accounts and documents found at premises where a taxpayer is reasonably believed to be conducting a trade or enterprise. The purpose of such inspection is to determine whether there has been compliance with specific obligations by the taxpayer. Section 63, on the other hand, permits, on the grounds of urgency and expediency in exceptional circumstances only, warrantless non-routine (targeted) searches by a senior SARS official of a taxpayer and of third parties associated with a taxpayer, as well as searches of a taxpayer's premises and those of third parties. In addition, section 63 permits the seizure of relevant material found at premises searched. All searches and seizures must occur for the purposes of the efficient and effective administration of tax Acts generally. A comparative analysis of sections 45 and 63 of the TAA reveals the existence of key differences in the substance and practical operation of their provisions. This article distils these differences through an in-depth discussion of the nature and extent of the powers of inspection and search conferred by these provisions, as well as by conceptualising the terms “inspection” and “search” for the purposes of sections 45 and 63 respectively.    


Author(s):  
P. Mozias

South African rand depreciated in 2013–2014 under the influence of a number of factors. Internationally, its weakness was associated with the capital outflow from all emerging markets as a result of QE’s tapering in the US. Domestically, rand plummeted because of the deterioration of the macroeconomic stance of South Africa itself: economic growth stalled and current account deficit widened again. Consumer spending was restrained with the high household indebtedness, investment climate worsened with the wave of bloody strikes, and net export was still prone to J-curve effect despite the degree of the devaluation happened. But, in its turn, those problems are a mere reflection of the deep institutional misbalances inherent to the very model of the national economy. Saving rate is too low in South Africa. This leads not only to an insufficient investment, but also to trade deficits and overdependence on speculative capital inflows. Extremely high unemployment means that the country’s economic potential is substantially underutilized. Joblessness is generated, first and foremost, by the dualistic structure of the national entrepreneurship. Basic wages are being formed by way of a bargaining between big public and semi state companies, on the one hand, and trade unions associated with the ruling party, on the other. Such a system is biased towards protection of vested interests of those who earn money in capital-intensive industries. At the same time, these rates of wages are prohibitively high for a small business; so far private companies tend to avoid job creation. A new impulse to economic development is likely to emerge only through the government’s efforts to mitigate disproportions and to pursue an active industrial policy. National Development Plan adopted in 2012 is a practical step in that direction. But the growth of public investment is constrained by a necessity of fiscal austerity; as a result, the budget deficit remained too large in recent years. South African Reserve Bank will have to choose between a stimulation of economic growth with low interest rates, on the one hand, and a support of rand by tightening of monetary policy, on the other. This dilemma will greatly influence prices of securities and yields at South African financial markets.


2005 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Brookes ◽  
Timothy Hinks ◽  
Geoffrey Wood ◽  
Pauline Dibben ◽  
Ian Roper

This is a study of horizontal and vertical solidarity within a national labour movement, based on a nationwide survey of members of affiliated unions of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. On the one hand, the survey reveals relatively high levels of vertical and horizontal solidarity, despite the persistence of some cleavages on gender and racial lines. On the other hand, the maintenance and deepening of existing horizontal and vertical linkages in a rapidly changing socio-economic context, represents one of many challenges facing organized labour in an industrializing economy. COSATU’s strength is contingent not only on an effective organizational capacity, and a supportive network linking key actors and interest groupings, but also on the ability to meet the concerns of existing constituencies and those assigned to highly marginalized categories of labour.


Literator ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miki Flockemann

The publication of Diaspora and Identity in South African Fiction (2016) by J.U. Jacobs is a timely intervention, in that it is the first comprehensive study of South African fiction to sustain the argument that South African writing is always already diasporic. Although Jacobs’ diasporic framework undoubtedly serves as an important addition to the recent trends identified by literary scholars, his focus on 12 well-established writers (including Coetzee, Wicomb, Mda, Gordimer and Ndebele), highlights some of the gaps that need to be filled in a study of this kind. For instance, what about the younger generation of writers, including those from elsewhere in Africa who are writing about living in South Africa? How do they deal with what has been termed the new diaspora, with debates around Afropolitanism and the experiences of internal, inter-continental and trans-continental migrancy in an increasingly globalising world? Despite these shortcomings, Jacobs’ premise about the inevitably diasporic identifications that are narrativised in the 20 novels analysed here can provide a useful foundation for further scholarship on how the diasporic condition informs and is mediated in other texts. These, as I will show, range from works by a new generation of emerging writers on the one hand to the performing arts on the other hand.


1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES WALSTON

The history of fascism in Italy has been extensively covered while fascist Italy's role in colonies before the war, and occupied areas during it, have only been touched upon. There has been little or no coming to terms with fascist crimes comparable to the French concern with Vichy or even the Japanese recognition of its wartime and pre-war responsibilities. This article uses Italy's internment policy in Africa before the war and in the Balkans and Italy during the war to illustrate the repression of historical memory. On the one hand, foreign Jews were interned to protect them from deportation by German, Croatian or Vichy French forces. The reasons were political and humanitarian. On the other, Balkan civilians were interned in conditions that led to the death of thousands. Similar and worse policies had been carried out in Africa before the war. There is some excellent specialist work on Africa which is not part of general knowledge; the Balkans have not even been covered by specialists. This article puts forward some explanations for the repression of the recent past.


Obiter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren Subramanien

There is no assumption of marriage in South African law in consequence of cohabitation regardless of the duration of the relationship. Our law does not give automatic rights to partners in a cohabitation relationship. If one of the parties dies without leaving a will for instance, the domestic partner is not legally entitled to inherit or to claim maintenance from the deceased’s estate. An aggrieved party would have to go to court to show that the parties were partners in a “universal partnership” and that the one party owes something to the other. The question that often arises is whether any mechanisms exist for the division of assets accumulated in a cohabitation situation on separation of the parties. If parties have cohabited and they can prove that a tacit universal partnership exists between them, all property of such apartnership is deemed to be jointly owned by the parties and debts are the joint liability of the parties. The issue as to whether a tacit universal partnership extends beyond commercial undertakings and whether the contribution by each party must be confined to profit-making has been the subject of much debate by our courts but has finally been decided by the court in the cases of Ponelat v Schrepfer (2012 (1) SA 206 (SCA)) and Butters v Mncora (181/2011) [2012] ZASCA 29 (28 March 2012)).


Afrika Focus ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 73-94
Author(s):  
Annelies Verdoolaege

Suggesting reconciliation at the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) took place under unique circumstances and in a very particular historical context. This article will explore how such a specific kind of reality gave rise to a specific kind of discourse, a so-called ‘reconciliation discourse’. On the one hand, this discourse offered the apartheid victims a lot of opportunities regarding linguistic expression. On the other hand, though, this discourse was also regimented and limited to a certain extent. By means of fragments from the TRC victim testimonies, this article will deal with one aspect of this linguistic manipulation, namely the introduction of the concept of reconciliation. In the first part of the article, I will explain which linguistic methods were used during the TRC hearings in order to emphasize the notion of reconciliation in the narratives of the testifying victims. In doing so, a lot of attention will be paid to the concrete interaction between the testifiers and the TRC commissioners. In a second part, I will try to investigate why the construction of this specific reconciliation discourse was necessary in the South African context. We will see that, amongst others, also political considerations played a role in the control exercised over the discourse of the TRC victims. In this way, we will understand that the reconciliation discourse of the Commission was a reflection of a very ambiguous social attitude: this discourse had to reveal as much as possible about the apartheid past – and this in a manner as spontaneous, as transparent and as open as possible -, but it also had to be adapted to certain socio-political needs. This will tell us that also a quasi-judicial institution such as the TRC involves an inevitable interplay between language on the one hand and ideology and society on the other.


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