{"title":"Experiment at KwaPoyinandi: African Engagement with the Local Health Commission of the Edendale and District Public Health Area, 1942–c.1957","authors":"M. Epprecht","doi":"10.1080/02582473.2022.2131893","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT KwaPoyinandi was the Zulu term for the Local Health Commission (LHC), a unique but now little-remembered form of local authority that governed the freehold community of Edendale and contiguous farms, townships, and informal settlements from 1942 to 1974. Its early mandate was to rehabilitate the once prosperous community within the social medicine paradigm (primary health care attentive to the social determinants of health) and with the promise of transition to self-governance. Through to the late 1950s, ‘monumental work’ toward that mandate was achieved, including a multiracial advisory board with an African majority and an African chair. KwaPoyinandi also bucked the national apartheid trend for longer than most, if not all, major urban centres in South Africa, with a racially diverse population well into the 1970s. The experiment was hamstrung and ultimately shut down due to its incompatibility with apartheid. I argue that Africans’ active engagement with KwaPoyinandi in diverse and complex ways was an important factor in its early relative success and that this history provides insights pertinent to current debates around the revitalisation of peri-urban communities around South Africa.","PeriodicalId":45116,"journal":{"name":"South African Historical Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"South African Historical Journal","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2022.2131893","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT KwaPoyinandi was the Zulu term for the Local Health Commission (LHC), a unique but now little-remembered form of local authority that governed the freehold community of Edendale and contiguous farms, townships, and informal settlements from 1942 to 1974. Its early mandate was to rehabilitate the once prosperous community within the social medicine paradigm (primary health care attentive to the social determinants of health) and with the promise of transition to self-governance. Through to the late 1950s, ‘monumental work’ toward that mandate was achieved, including a multiracial advisory board with an African majority and an African chair. KwaPoyinandi also bucked the national apartheid trend for longer than most, if not all, major urban centres in South Africa, with a racially diverse population well into the 1970s. The experiment was hamstrung and ultimately shut down due to its incompatibility with apartheid. I argue that Africans’ active engagement with KwaPoyinandi in diverse and complex ways was an important factor in its early relative success and that this history provides insights pertinent to current debates around the revitalisation of peri-urban communities around South Africa.
期刊介绍:
Over the past 40 years, the South African Historical Journal has become renowned and internationally regarded as a premier history journal published in South Africa, promoting significant historical scholarship on the country as well as the southern African region. The journal, which is linked to the Southern African Historical Society, has provided a high-quality medium for original thinking about South African history and has thus shaped - and continues to contribute towards defining - the historiography of the region.