Re-interpreting the history of 'the rural' visual in the Eastern Cape, 1948-1976
- Authors: Steele, Candice Alexandra
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Medical photography -- South Africa -- Exhibitions Photography in ethnology -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/11064 , vital:37027
- Description: The thesis engages with the photographic collection of Dr Pauline Ingle, an amateur photographer who lived and worked in the former Transkei as a medical doctor from 1948-1976. As a visual history project situated within critical visual studies, the thesis is concerned to attend to the disciplinary optics that have conditioned seeing and constituted genres; but also the ways in which these genres have constituted subjects and corralled them into positions commensurate with the spatialised demarcations of the rural and the urban, and the attendant associations of tradition and modernity. The thesis begins by exploring the biography of Pauline Ingle and tracks the movement of the photographs from a private collection into the public realm and its constitution as an archive. The thesis then moves into a discussion of the key determinants of the ethnographic genre and its entwinement with the discipline of anthropology, as a foundation against which to investigate the limits of reading her images within this genre and the disruptions that are discernible through an aesthetics of proximity and forms of image-making that do not control the visual field. Through a theorisation that proposes the image as an act, various readings are brought to bear on the images through the lens of the social and political. Mobilising the concepts of social acts and acts of citizenship, allows for a reading that breaks with the disciplinary conditioning that has fixed subject positions into ‘the native subject’ and the ‘liberal subject’ and calls into question the construction of the human. By proposing the subject as migrant, is to signal that the question of the human/subject is more complex and convoluted than previously thought.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Steele, Candice Alexandra
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: Medical photography -- South Africa -- Exhibitions Photography in ethnology -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/11064 , vital:37027
- Description: The thesis engages with the photographic collection of Dr Pauline Ingle, an amateur photographer who lived and worked in the former Transkei as a medical doctor from 1948-1976. As a visual history project situated within critical visual studies, the thesis is concerned to attend to the disciplinary optics that have conditioned seeing and constituted genres; but also the ways in which these genres have constituted subjects and corralled them into positions commensurate with the spatialised demarcations of the rural and the urban, and the attendant associations of tradition and modernity. The thesis begins by exploring the biography of Pauline Ingle and tracks the movement of the photographs from a private collection into the public realm and its constitution as an archive. The thesis then moves into a discussion of the key determinants of the ethnographic genre and its entwinement with the discipline of anthropology, as a foundation against which to investigate the limits of reading her images within this genre and the disruptions that are discernible through an aesthetics of proximity and forms of image-making that do not control the visual field. Through a theorisation that proposes the image as an act, various readings are brought to bear on the images through the lens of the social and political. Mobilising the concepts of social acts and acts of citizenship, allows for a reading that breaks with the disciplinary conditioning that has fixed subject positions into ‘the native subject’ and the ‘liberal subject’ and calls into question the construction of the human. By proposing the subject as migrant, is to signal that the question of the human/subject is more complex and convoluted than previously thought.
- Full Text:
Financial literacy training in the small, medium and microenterprises sector : effect on business growth in the Eastern Cape, South Africa
- Authors: Akpan, Iniobong Wilson
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: Economics Small business Business enterprises -- Finance
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , DCom
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/13608 , vital:39684
- Description: The centrality of financial literacy to business performance is increasingly becoming established in the literature, with several studies attributing business failures, especially in the small, medium and microenterprises (SMME) sector, to the failure of entrepreneurs to acquire needed levels of formal financial training. This emphasis represents a paradigm shift: small business failures were conventionally blamed on lack of access to capital, infrastructural deficits, lack of markets for SMME goods and services, regulatory constraints, and crime. In South Africa, and elsewhere in the developing world, this new orthodoxy has spurned new policy interventions aimed at improving the financial literacy levels in the SMME sector. Such is the drive to entrench formal literacy provisioning in the SMME sector that some microcredit providers now bundle financial management training into their SMME loan packages. However, there is a dearth of empirical studies that demonstrate, in any conclusive way, the effect of financial literacy training on small business growth and sustainability. The question, therefore, about whether formal financial literacy training actually leads to significant improvements in turnover levels and growth appears to be answered more as advocacy rather than on the basis of empirical evidence. It is against the backdrop of these arguments that the thesis adopted a quasi experimental design to study the business performance of a sample of SMME entrepreneurs who had received financial literacy training (the “treatment group”) at least two years before the study’s commencement and those who had had no financial literacy training at all (the “control group”). The objective was to determine whether any differences in business growth could be attributed to exposure to formal financial management training or the lack thereof. A survey was conducted with 40 respondents from each of the two groups (n = 80). The survey was triangulated with in-depth interviews of a randomly selected sample 10 of SMME operators from each of the two groups. The interviews sought to uncover the entrepreneurs’ narratives regarding the sources and salience of financial literacy in the sector. The study was conducted among SMME operators in Port Elizabeth, East London and Mthatha – the Eastern Cape’s major centres of commerce and industry. Data estimation was conducted using the Difference In Difference (DID) estimation model to determine whether financial literacy training has had any effect on the turnover of training recipients’ businesses (the treatment group) over that of non-training recipients (the control group). Also, the DID coefficient was used as a growth rate indicator to determine whether growth has occurred in training recipients’ businesses over non-training recipients businesses as a result of having received financial literacy training. The Propensity Score Matching (PSM) was used to estimate the average treatment effect (ATE) and the average treatment effect on the treated (ATET). Quantile DID correlations with covariates were also run to reveal the relationship between turnover (a growth variable) and the covariates as possible influencers of firm performance. The key findings of the study were that based on the specific financial variables tested, some basic financial management knowledge existed among members of the two groups of SMME operators, but there was very minimal application of the knowledge in the day-to-day running of the business. Operators utilise both formal financial literacy training and informal knowledge sources in the operation of their businesses. The study also found that in comparison, the difference in turnover between the treatment and control group at follow-up period was significant at a P value of 0.000. This gave rise to an overall DID P value of 0.000 in the estimation. However, the significance was in favour of control group businesses as the business of respondents in the “control group” (with no financial literacy training) performed better than that of respondents in the “treatment group” (who had received financial literacy training). Finally, the study found that financial literacy training had no effect on the growth of businesses in the short term as the growth rate of turnover of the treatment group was lower than that of the control group and the difference between the two rates was significant at a P value of 0.025. Also, compared to itself, the change in turnover levels of the treatment group was not significant in the pre- and post-training periods as revealed by the PSM ATET estimation result. Minimal changes in turnover of the treatment group was not significant at a P value of 0.124. The study concludes from these findings that while financial literacy remains a salient factor in business, scholarship about the real significance of financial literacy training on small business performance in the short term stands on a relatively shaky empirical foundation, especially when viewed against the background that many SMME entrepreneurs also rely on informal knowledge sources to make everyday business decisions. The study thus highlights the imperative of ensuring that knowledge-related interventions in the SMME sector draws on both formal and informal sources of knowledge.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Akpan, Iniobong Wilson
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: Economics Small business Business enterprises -- Finance
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , DCom
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/13608 , vital:39684
- Description: The centrality of financial literacy to business performance is increasingly becoming established in the literature, with several studies attributing business failures, especially in the small, medium and microenterprises (SMME) sector, to the failure of entrepreneurs to acquire needed levels of formal financial training. This emphasis represents a paradigm shift: small business failures were conventionally blamed on lack of access to capital, infrastructural deficits, lack of markets for SMME goods and services, regulatory constraints, and crime. In South Africa, and elsewhere in the developing world, this new orthodoxy has spurned new policy interventions aimed at improving the financial literacy levels in the SMME sector. Such is the drive to entrench formal literacy provisioning in the SMME sector that some microcredit providers now bundle financial management training into their SMME loan packages. However, there is a dearth of empirical studies that demonstrate, in any conclusive way, the effect of financial literacy training on small business growth and sustainability. The question, therefore, about whether formal financial literacy training actually leads to significant improvements in turnover levels and growth appears to be answered more as advocacy rather than on the basis of empirical evidence. It is against the backdrop of these arguments that the thesis adopted a quasi experimental design to study the business performance of a sample of SMME entrepreneurs who had received financial literacy training (the “treatment group”) at least two years before the study’s commencement and those who had had no financial literacy training at all (the “control group”). The objective was to determine whether any differences in business growth could be attributed to exposure to formal financial management training or the lack thereof. A survey was conducted with 40 respondents from each of the two groups (n = 80). The survey was triangulated with in-depth interviews of a randomly selected sample 10 of SMME operators from each of the two groups. The interviews sought to uncover the entrepreneurs’ narratives regarding the sources and salience of financial literacy in the sector. The study was conducted among SMME operators in Port Elizabeth, East London and Mthatha – the Eastern Cape’s major centres of commerce and industry. Data estimation was conducted using the Difference In Difference (DID) estimation model to determine whether financial literacy training has had any effect on the turnover of training recipients’ businesses (the treatment group) over that of non-training recipients (the control group). Also, the DID coefficient was used as a growth rate indicator to determine whether growth has occurred in training recipients’ businesses over non-training recipients businesses as a result of having received financial literacy training. The Propensity Score Matching (PSM) was used to estimate the average treatment effect (ATE) and the average treatment effect on the treated (ATET). Quantile DID correlations with covariates were also run to reveal the relationship between turnover (a growth variable) and the covariates as possible influencers of firm performance. The key findings of the study were that based on the specific financial variables tested, some basic financial management knowledge existed among members of the two groups of SMME operators, but there was very minimal application of the knowledge in the day-to-day running of the business. Operators utilise both formal financial literacy training and informal knowledge sources in the operation of their businesses. The study also found that in comparison, the difference in turnover between the treatment and control group at follow-up period was significant at a P value of 0.000. This gave rise to an overall DID P value of 0.000 in the estimation. However, the significance was in favour of control group businesses as the business of respondents in the “control group” (with no financial literacy training) performed better than that of respondents in the “treatment group” (who had received financial literacy training). Finally, the study found that financial literacy training had no effect on the growth of businesses in the short term as the growth rate of turnover of the treatment group was lower than that of the control group and the difference between the two rates was significant at a P value of 0.025. Also, compared to itself, the change in turnover levels of the treatment group was not significant in the pre- and post-training periods as revealed by the PSM ATET estimation result. Minimal changes in turnover of the treatment group was not significant at a P value of 0.124. The study concludes from these findings that while financial literacy remains a salient factor in business, scholarship about the real significance of financial literacy training on small business performance in the short term stands on a relatively shaky empirical foundation, especially when viewed against the background that many SMME entrepreneurs also rely on informal knowledge sources to make everyday business decisions. The study thus highlights the imperative of ensuring that knowledge-related interventions in the SMME sector draws on both formal and informal sources of knowledge.
- Full Text:
Intangible heritage: the production of post-apartheid memorial complexes
- Authors: Dondolo,Luvuyo
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Historic sites -- South Africa Cultural property -- South Africa Memorials -- South Africa Post-apartheid era -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , Degree
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/3044 , vital:28242
- Description: This study explores a number of issues relating to the nature and scope of intangible heritage and critically examines some of its salient components in South Africa. It affirms that intangible heritage is socially constructed. Aspects of intangible heritage that seem inherited in the present are social constructs and products of social progression. They present the historical development of the practicing communities. Furthermore, this study affirms that all heritage is intangible. This is expounded in the study by exploring the history of the concept of intangible heritage over the decades which provide its evolution both at international and national levels, and within heritage institutions. Heritage cannot be understood and defined in terms of traditions, indigenousness, pre-colonialism, North and South dichotomies or Western and non-Western dichotomies. This definition would racialise and regionalise heritage, and politics of indigeneity would surface. The separation of tangible, intangible and natural heritage is an artificial demarcation that is for heritage management discourse.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Dondolo,Luvuyo
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Historic sites -- South Africa Cultural property -- South Africa Memorials -- South Africa Post-apartheid era -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , Degree
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/3044 , vital:28242
- Description: This study explores a number of issues relating to the nature and scope of intangible heritage and critically examines some of its salient components in South Africa. It affirms that intangible heritage is socially constructed. Aspects of intangible heritage that seem inherited in the present are social constructs and products of social progression. They present the historical development of the practicing communities. Furthermore, this study affirms that all heritage is intangible. This is expounded in the study by exploring the history of the concept of intangible heritage over the decades which provide its evolution both at international and national levels, and within heritage institutions. Heritage cannot be understood and defined in terms of traditions, indigenousness, pre-colonialism, North and South dichotomies or Western and non-Western dichotomies. This definition would racialise and regionalise heritage, and politics of indigeneity would surface. The separation of tangible, intangible and natural heritage is an artificial demarcation that is for heritage management discourse.
- Full Text:
An archaelogy of South Africanness: the conditions and fantasies of a post-apartheid festival
- Authors: Truscott, Ross
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: Nationalism -- South Africa -- History -- 20th century , Whites -- Race identity -- South Africa , Afrikaner loyalists , Psychoanalysis , Discourse analysis , Multiculturalism -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , D Soc Sc (Psych)
- Identifier: vital:11610 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/539 , Nationalism -- South Africa -- History -- 20th century , Whites -- Race identity -- South Africa , Afrikaner loyalists , Psychoanalysis , Discourse analysis , Multiculturalism -- South Africa
- Description: It has become commonplace in academic studies, particularly those with a critical bent, to view nations as being historical constructs, as being without essence, though not without effects of exclusion and inclusion, of the constitution of the „authentic‟ national subject and the „other of the nation.‟ The critical impetus at work here is to show how a nation is constructed in order to bring into view the knowledge and power relations this construction entails, to show whose interests the construction serves, and whose it does not. This study examines the discursive production, the performative enactment and the spatial emplacement of post-apartheid „South Africanness‟ through a case study of Oppikoppi music festival. Oppikoppi is an annual event that emerged in 1994, on the threshold of the „new South Africa.‟ The festival is attended predominantly by young white Afrikaans-speaking South Africans and is held on a farm in the northernmost province of Limpopo, South Africa, an area notoriously conservative in its racial politics. Yet, curiously, Oppikoppi has been repeatedly referred to, and refers to itself with an almost obsessive regularity and repetitiveness, as a „truly South African‟ event. Indeed, the festival has been promoted, since 1998, as „The Home of South African Music,‟ and in 2009 the site of the festival was unofficially declared a „national monument.‟ Through the employment of concepts drawn from the writings of French philosopher and historian, Michel Foucault – particularly his earlier archaeological works – and from Sigmund Freud – particularly his metapsychological works – this study has posed two broad sets of questions. Firstly, from a Foucauldian perspective, what have been the conditions for the production of „South Africanness‟ at this festival? What have been the requirements, the discursive „rules of the game‟ for whiteness and Afrikanerness to become „South African‟? To what extent does this constitution of the festival as a „South African‟ event preserve older lines of division, difference and oppression? To what extent does this bring about meaningful social change? Secondly, from a psychoanalytic perspective, what are the fantasies constellated in the discourse of the festival as a „South African‟ event? Who, in these fantasies, is constituted as the „other of the post-apartheid nation‟? How has fantasy provided a kind of „hallucinatory gratification,‟ a phantasmatic compensation for, and a means of conserving, the losses of privilege in the new nation? And how has fantasy oriented the festival towards post-apartheid sociality, soliciting identifications with the post-apartheid nation? The overarching argument proposed is that anti-apartheid post-apartheid nation building has cultivated a melancholic loss of apartheid for whites in general and Afrikaners in particular, a loss that cannot be grieved – indeed, a loss that should not be grieved – and, as such, a grief that takes on an unconscious afterlife. Apartheid and the life it enabled – not only racialised privilege, but also a structure of identification and idealisation, of being and having – becomes a loss that is buried in, and by, the injunctions issued to post-apartheid memory and conduct. Without the discursive resources with which to symbolise this loss, disguised repetitions of the past, a neurotic refinding of the lost objects of apartheid, and melancholia are the likely outcomes, each of which engender a set of exclusions and enjoyments that run along old and new lines.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Truscott, Ross
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: Nationalism -- South Africa -- History -- 20th century , Whites -- Race identity -- South Africa , Afrikaner loyalists , Psychoanalysis , Discourse analysis , Multiculturalism -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , D Soc Sc (Psych)
- Identifier: vital:11610 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/539 , Nationalism -- South Africa -- History -- 20th century , Whites -- Race identity -- South Africa , Afrikaner loyalists , Psychoanalysis , Discourse analysis , Multiculturalism -- South Africa
- Description: It has become commonplace in academic studies, particularly those with a critical bent, to view nations as being historical constructs, as being without essence, though not without effects of exclusion and inclusion, of the constitution of the „authentic‟ national subject and the „other of the nation.‟ The critical impetus at work here is to show how a nation is constructed in order to bring into view the knowledge and power relations this construction entails, to show whose interests the construction serves, and whose it does not. This study examines the discursive production, the performative enactment and the spatial emplacement of post-apartheid „South Africanness‟ through a case study of Oppikoppi music festival. Oppikoppi is an annual event that emerged in 1994, on the threshold of the „new South Africa.‟ The festival is attended predominantly by young white Afrikaans-speaking South Africans and is held on a farm in the northernmost province of Limpopo, South Africa, an area notoriously conservative in its racial politics. Yet, curiously, Oppikoppi has been repeatedly referred to, and refers to itself with an almost obsessive regularity and repetitiveness, as a „truly South African‟ event. Indeed, the festival has been promoted, since 1998, as „The Home of South African Music,‟ and in 2009 the site of the festival was unofficially declared a „national monument.‟ Through the employment of concepts drawn from the writings of French philosopher and historian, Michel Foucault – particularly his earlier archaeological works – and from Sigmund Freud – particularly his metapsychological works – this study has posed two broad sets of questions. Firstly, from a Foucauldian perspective, what have been the conditions for the production of „South Africanness‟ at this festival? What have been the requirements, the discursive „rules of the game‟ for whiteness and Afrikanerness to become „South African‟? To what extent does this constitution of the festival as a „South African‟ event preserve older lines of division, difference and oppression? To what extent does this bring about meaningful social change? Secondly, from a psychoanalytic perspective, what are the fantasies constellated in the discourse of the festival as a „South African‟ event? Who, in these fantasies, is constituted as the „other of the post-apartheid nation‟? How has fantasy provided a kind of „hallucinatory gratification,‟ a phantasmatic compensation for, and a means of conserving, the losses of privilege in the new nation? And how has fantasy oriented the festival towards post-apartheid sociality, soliciting identifications with the post-apartheid nation? The overarching argument proposed is that anti-apartheid post-apartheid nation building has cultivated a melancholic loss of apartheid for whites in general and Afrikaners in particular, a loss that cannot be grieved – indeed, a loss that should not be grieved – and, as such, a grief that takes on an unconscious afterlife. Apartheid and the life it enabled – not only racialised privilege, but also a structure of identification and idealisation, of being and having – becomes a loss that is buried in, and by, the injunctions issued to post-apartheid memory and conduct. Without the discursive resources with which to symbolise this loss, disguised repetitions of the past, a neurotic refinding of the lost objects of apartheid, and melancholia are the likely outcomes, each of which engender a set of exclusions and enjoyments that run along old and new lines.
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Re-tracing representations and identities in twentieth century South African and African photography: Joseph Denfield, regimes of seeing and alternative visual histories
- Authors: Mnyaka, Phindezwa Elizabeth
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: Historical museums -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Natural history , Photography -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD (History)
- Identifier: vital:11536 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/540 , Historical museums -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Natural history , Photography -- South Africa
- Description: The thesis examines the photographic collection of Joseph Denfield, an archivist and historian who experimented with photography over a twenty-year period. The study is located within the field of critical visual studies that focuses on historical photography in its depiction of identities and groups in the context of social change. The thesis pays attention to the manner and extent to which Denfield participated in regional visual economies at various moments during his photographic career in order to establish his contribution towards a visual history in Africa and more broadly Southern Africa. It follows Denfield’s career trajectory chronologically. It begins with a study of his photographic work in Nigeria which was oriented around so-called ‘pagan tribes’ and which was framed within the discourse of ethnography. It then pays attention to his growth as an artist in photography that resulted from years of exhibiting in salons. I read these photographs and texts in relation to his earlier work in Nigeria given the extent to which he drew on anthropological discourses. It is through his involvement with photographic art circles that Denfield developed as a historian as a result of his research into the history of photography and regional visual histories. This took the form of both unearthing historical photographs as well as photographing historical sites to construct the past in particular ways through the visual. At each stage he translated these histories into public forms of representation and power thus he figures among a small group of ‘colonial’ photographers that shaped the visual economy of Southern Africa. Through a detailed study of his work, the thesis thus aims to re-think through new dimensions of visual culture.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Mnyaka, Phindezwa Elizabeth
- Date: 2012
- Subjects: Historical museums -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Natural history , Photography -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD (History)
- Identifier: vital:11536 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/540 , Historical museums -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Natural history , Photography -- South Africa
- Description: The thesis examines the photographic collection of Joseph Denfield, an archivist and historian who experimented with photography over a twenty-year period. The study is located within the field of critical visual studies that focuses on historical photography in its depiction of identities and groups in the context of social change. The thesis pays attention to the manner and extent to which Denfield participated in regional visual economies at various moments during his photographic career in order to establish his contribution towards a visual history in Africa and more broadly Southern Africa. It follows Denfield’s career trajectory chronologically. It begins with a study of his photographic work in Nigeria which was oriented around so-called ‘pagan tribes’ and which was framed within the discourse of ethnography. It then pays attention to his growth as an artist in photography that resulted from years of exhibiting in salons. I read these photographs and texts in relation to his earlier work in Nigeria given the extent to which he drew on anthropological discourses. It is through his involvement with photographic art circles that Denfield developed as a historian as a result of his research into the history of photography and regional visual histories. This took the form of both unearthing historical photographs as well as photographing historical sites to construct the past in particular ways through the visual. At each stage he translated these histories into public forms of representation and power thus he figures among a small group of ‘colonial’ photographers that shaped the visual economy of Southern Africa. Through a detailed study of his work, the thesis thus aims to re-think through new dimensions of visual culture.
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A new light on the pre-colonial history of South-East Africa, where the 'Other' is the European and the 'Silence' has a voice, based on evidence from shipwreck survivor narratives 1552-1782
- Authors: Vernon, Gillian Noël
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: Shipwrecks -- South Africa -- History Shipwrecks -- Mozambique -- Personal narratives
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD (History)
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/7930 , vital:30924
- Description: The aim of this dissertation is to extract information from shipwreck survivor narratives, which will add to the known body of knowledge of the pre-colonial history of Southern Africa during the years 1552 to 1782. The discourse analysis focuses on the voice of the African peoples where the Europeans are the 'Strangers', the 'Other', reversing the view that the people of non-European cultures were termed as the 'Other'. Indigenous inhabitants of south-east Africa, south of Kosi Bay, first encountered Europeans in 1552 when a Portuguese ship was wrecked at present-day Port Edward. Subsequently, eight more Portuguese ships were wrecked between Plettenberg Bay and Kosi Bay between the years 1554 to 1647. Two Dutch ships landed on the shore, one south of the Bay of Natal in 1686, and the other being wrecked near the mouth of the Keiskamma River in 1713. There were also two English ships, with one striking the rocks on Bird Island in Algoa Bay in 1755 and the other, the more famous Grosvenor of 1782, coming aground at Lambazi Bay, north of the Mzimvubu River. The survivor groups were large, varying in size from 72 to 500, and most included a large complements of slaves. The survivors of the Portuguese ships made their way to present-day Mozambique where the Portuguese had trading outposts. The survivors of the Dutch ships, as well as those of the Grosvenor tried, with limited success, to make their way to Cape Town. The survivors from two of the Portuguese wrecks and the English group on Bird Island, constructed small ships and managed to sail away.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Vernon, Gillian Noël
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: Shipwrecks -- South Africa -- History Shipwrecks -- Mozambique -- Personal narratives
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD (History)
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/7930 , vital:30924
- Description: The aim of this dissertation is to extract information from shipwreck survivor narratives, which will add to the known body of knowledge of the pre-colonial history of Southern Africa during the years 1552 to 1782. The discourse analysis focuses on the voice of the African peoples where the Europeans are the 'Strangers', the 'Other', reversing the view that the people of non-European cultures were termed as the 'Other'. Indigenous inhabitants of south-east Africa, south of Kosi Bay, first encountered Europeans in 1552 when a Portuguese ship was wrecked at present-day Port Edward. Subsequently, eight more Portuguese ships were wrecked between Plettenberg Bay and Kosi Bay between the years 1554 to 1647. Two Dutch ships landed on the shore, one south of the Bay of Natal in 1686, and the other being wrecked near the mouth of the Keiskamma River in 1713. There were also two English ships, with one striking the rocks on Bird Island in Algoa Bay in 1755 and the other, the more famous Grosvenor of 1782, coming aground at Lambazi Bay, north of the Mzimvubu River. The survivor groups were large, varying in size from 72 to 500, and most included a large complements of slaves. The survivors of the Portuguese ships made their way to present-day Mozambique where the Portuguese had trading outposts. The survivors of the Dutch ships, as well as those of the Grosvenor tried, with limited success, to make their way to Cape Town. The survivors from two of the Portuguese wrecks and the English group on Bird Island, constructed small ships and managed to sail away.
- Full Text:
Bare life in the Bantustans (of the Eastern Cape): re-membering the centinnial South African nation-state
- Authors: Westaway, Ashley
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: Democracy -- South Africa , Homelands (South Africa) , Apartheid -- South Africa , Right of property -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD (History)
- Identifier: vital:11535 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/149 , Democracy -- South Africa , Homelands (South Africa) , Apartheid -- South Africa , Right of property -- South Africa
- Description: This thesis argues that 1994 did not mark a point of absolute discontinuity in the history of South Africa. More specifically, it asserts that 1994 did not signal the end of segregationism; instead of democracy leading to national integration, the Bantustans are still governed and managed differently from the rest of the country. Consequently, it is no surprise that they remain mired in pervasive, debilitating poverty fifteen years after 1994. In insisting that contemporary South Africa is old (rather than new), the thesis seeks to make a contribution to political struggles that aim to bring to an end the segregationist past-in-the-present. The thesis is arranged in seven chapters. The first chapter considers the crisis that has engulfed South Africa historiography since 1994. It traces the roots of the crisis back to some of the fundamentals of the discipline of history, such as empiricism, neutrality and historicism. It suggests that the way to end the crisis, to re-assert the relevance of history, is for historians to re-invoke the practice of producing histories of the present, in an interested, deliberate manner. Chapter 2 narrows down the focus of the thesis to (past and present) property. It suggests that instead of understanding the constitutional protection of property rights and installation of a restitution process as the product of a compromise between adversarial negotiators, these outcomes are more correctly understood as emanating from consensus. The third chapter outlines the implementation of the restitution programme from 1994 to 2008. The productive value of restitution over this period is found not in what it has delivered to the claimants (supposedly the beneficiaries of the programme), but rather in its discursive effects related to citizenship in the new South Africa. Chapter 4 considers the exclusion of dispossession that was implemented in the Bantustans from the restitution programme. It argues that this decision was not an oversight on the part of the post-1994 government. Instead it was consistent with all other key policy decisions taken in the recent period. The Bantustans have been treated differently from the rest of South Africa; they have been deliberately under-developed, fabricated as welfare zones, and subjected to arbitrary customary rule. Whereas Chapters 2 to 4 look at the production of historical truth on the side of domination, Chapter 6 and 7 consider production on the side of resistance. Specifically, they describe and analyse the attempts of an NGO to establish the truths of betterment as dispossession, and post-1994 prejudice against the victims of betterment dispossession. They serve as case studies of third party-led processes that seek to produce truth-effects from within a prevailing truth regime. The final chapter attempts to bring many of the threads that weave through the thesis together, by means of a critical consideration of human rights discourse. The chapter calls on intellectuals to establish truths in relation to the history of ongoing human wrongs in South Africa (as opposed to the rainbow narrative of human rights) Finally, the thesis includes a postscript, comprising technical summaries of each of the chapters.
- Full Text:
- Authors: Westaway, Ashley
- Date: 2009
- Subjects: Democracy -- South Africa , Homelands (South Africa) , Apartheid -- South Africa , Right of property -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD (History)
- Identifier: vital:11535 , http://hdl.handle.net/10353/149 , Democracy -- South Africa , Homelands (South Africa) , Apartheid -- South Africa , Right of property -- South Africa
- Description: This thesis argues that 1994 did not mark a point of absolute discontinuity in the history of South Africa. More specifically, it asserts that 1994 did not signal the end of segregationism; instead of democracy leading to national integration, the Bantustans are still governed and managed differently from the rest of the country. Consequently, it is no surprise that they remain mired in pervasive, debilitating poverty fifteen years after 1994. In insisting that contemporary South Africa is old (rather than new), the thesis seeks to make a contribution to political struggles that aim to bring to an end the segregationist past-in-the-present. The thesis is arranged in seven chapters. The first chapter considers the crisis that has engulfed South Africa historiography since 1994. It traces the roots of the crisis back to some of the fundamentals of the discipline of history, such as empiricism, neutrality and historicism. It suggests that the way to end the crisis, to re-assert the relevance of history, is for historians to re-invoke the practice of producing histories of the present, in an interested, deliberate manner. Chapter 2 narrows down the focus of the thesis to (past and present) property. It suggests that instead of understanding the constitutional protection of property rights and installation of a restitution process as the product of a compromise between adversarial negotiators, these outcomes are more correctly understood as emanating from consensus. The third chapter outlines the implementation of the restitution programme from 1994 to 2008. The productive value of restitution over this period is found not in what it has delivered to the claimants (supposedly the beneficiaries of the programme), but rather in its discursive effects related to citizenship in the new South Africa. Chapter 4 considers the exclusion of dispossession that was implemented in the Bantustans from the restitution programme. It argues that this decision was not an oversight on the part of the post-1994 government. Instead it was consistent with all other key policy decisions taken in the recent period. The Bantustans have been treated differently from the rest of South Africa; they have been deliberately under-developed, fabricated as welfare zones, and subjected to arbitrary customary rule. Whereas Chapters 2 to 4 look at the production of historical truth on the side of domination, Chapter 6 and 7 consider production on the side of resistance. Specifically, they describe and analyse the attempts of an NGO to establish the truths of betterment as dispossession, and post-1994 prejudice against the victims of betterment dispossession. They serve as case studies of third party-led processes that seek to produce truth-effects from within a prevailing truth regime. The final chapter attempts to bring many of the threads that weave through the thesis together, by means of a critical consideration of human rights discourse. The chapter calls on intellectuals to establish truths in relation to the history of ongoing human wrongs in South Africa (as opposed to the rainbow narrative of human rights) Finally, the thesis includes a postscript, comprising technical summaries of each of the chapters.
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