{"title":"White Mineworkers on Zambia’s Copperbelt, 1926–1974: In a Class of their Own","authors":"J. Shaba","doi":"10.1080/02582473.2022.2111599","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2022.2111599","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45116,"journal":{"name":"South African Historical Journal","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42804561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Counterinsurgency’s Undead Prose: A Reply to Janet Cherry’s Review of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in South Africa","authors":"Daniel L. Douek","doi":"10.1080/02582473.2023.2208770","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2023.2208770","url":null,"abstract":"Janet Cherry ’ s review of my book is confused, in some places demonstrating a gross misreading and in other places devolving to quibbles over details in ways that do not challenge – and sometimes even con fi rm – my primary thesis. Cherry insists that ‘ to argue that the current problems of South Africa are somehow linked to the counterinsurgency strategy of the past is a “ long stretch ” , to put it mildly, and verges on conspiracy theory ’ . 1 But she vastly over-states her case and makes a crude caricature of my book ’ s actual argument. I do not, as she claims, blame apartheid counterinsurgency for all the ills plaguing South Africa today, including unemployment, corruption, and state capture. Rather, my book shows that during the pivotal 10 to 15 years following South Africa ’ s 1994 transition to democracy, counterinsurgency legacies played a crucial and thus far undertheorised role in undermining state institutions and democratic norms, thereby contributing to the weakness in South Africa ’ s democracy today. As Cherry must know, I am hardly the fi rst to argue that elements of the apartheid regime ’ s covert war continued to destabilise South Africa after April 1994. Previous literature has already explored this phenomenon, giving credence to President Nelson Mandela ’ s claims that in attempting to overcome apartheid ’ s overwhelming legacies of poverty, inequality, and crime, his government faced old-guard security force elements aiming to desta-bilise the new democracy. 2","PeriodicalId":45116,"journal":{"name":"South African Historical Journal","volume":"74 1","pages":"558 - 561"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48243930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Genetic Afterlives: Black Jewish Indigeneity in South Africa","authors":"Shirli Gilbert","doi":"10.1080/02582473.2022.2121850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2022.2121850","url":null,"abstract":"defected to the better resourced ANC, and the PAC’s woes were exacerbated it was expelled from various countries where it had bases. Even so, when Mothopeng was released from ‘Sun City’ (to which he had been transferred from the Island a few years earlier) on the grounds of ill-health in 1988, there were signs of the PAC’s resuscitation. Its president, however, was beyond help. Although he continued to make speeches at home and abroad and to mentor the youth, from whom he earned the title ‘Lion of Azania’, he was suffering from terminal cancer. He opposed negotiations with the apartheid government, calling instead for an intensification of the struggle. Hlongwane alludes to the conflict within the PAC about participation in the negotiations, suggesting that things might have turned out differently had Mothopeng not passed away, consumed by cancer, just as the now unbanned PAC was preparing for its first congress inside the country. The PAC’s successes should not be forgotten. It is important to recognise the forms in which the organisation endured into the 1980s through parts of the labour movement, the Azanian National Youth Unity, of which Hlongwane was a member, and the African Women’s Organisation under the leadership of Urbania Bebe Mothopeng. Her achievements deserve more exploration. Hlongwane has paid eloquent tribute to Mothopeng’s 50 years of service, suffering, sacrifice, and ‘consistent soldiering’ (200), while persuasively arguing for a better understanding of the ‘Lion of Azania’ and the PAC’s role ‘in the ideas of struggle and national liberation’ (206).","PeriodicalId":45116,"journal":{"name":"South African Historical Journal","volume":"74 1","pages":"571 - 573"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47233664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"US Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War In Africa: A Bridge Between Global Conflict and the New World Order, 1988–1994","authors":"C. Saunders","doi":"10.1080/02582473.2022.2121851","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2022.2121851","url":null,"abstract":"because it seemed that Sedibe ‘had bought into the regime’. For Ebrahim, Sedibe’s actions were ‘betrayal, on a profound and destructive level’ (217). Perhaps it is Ebrahim’s experience with betrayal that makes him reluctant to comment on problems afflicting the ANC today. In the conclusion to Beyond Fear, he recalls how on Robben Island ANC leaders discussed being ‘servants of the people [that] were steadfastly against corruption, factionalism and ill-discipline’ (284). Though Ebrahim concedes ‘these values have become eroded’, his memoir gives no sense of how this erosion occurred (285). His views on the ANC’s degeneration would be valuable, especially because of his closeness to Jacob Zuma. But as Kasrils recalls, Ebrahim ‘didn’t like to raise his voice publicly [...] but rather within the movement and to comrades. It was that kind of loyalty’. This loyalty permeates the book and, with it, the impressive emotional and physical fortitude Ebrahim possessed that enabled him to endure banning, exile, imprisonment, and torture. But this loyalty also limits the book’s utility for scholars. While it affords valuable insight into the lived experiences of a South African freedom fighter, Beyond Fear does not take us far beyond the existing frontiers of South Africa’s political history. It might have.","PeriodicalId":45116,"journal":{"name":"South African Historical Journal","volume":"74 1","pages":"564 - 567"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45003034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"This Year in History: The 1922 Rand Revolt","authors":"D. Money, Danelle van Zyl-Hermann","doi":"10.1080/02582473.2023.2193867","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2023.2193867","url":null,"abstract":"In the opening decades of the twentieth century, the most serious challenge to South Africa’s newly established settler state came not, as might be expected, from Africans displaced by the 1913 Native Land Act or corralled into compounds as cheap labour for the brutal mining industry. It came, instead, from white workers: a racially privileged but structurally vulnerable class of men – and women – living and labouring on ‘the margins of a capitalist society where charity was in short supply and social contempt abundant’. The perpetual threat of displacement with cheap black labour animated white industrial conflict throughout the first two decades of the century, with major strikes in 1907, 1913, and 1914. All centred on the mining industry, the axis of the South African economy. In each case, the state forces intervened in favour of mining interests. At least 20 strikers were killed in 1913 when troops opened fire on crowds outside the Rand Club, and in 1914 a largescale military mobilisation halted strikes. 1922, however, was of a different magnitude. Amid rampant inflation and falling gold prices, the Chamber of Mines moved to replace 2000 semi-skilled white workers with cheaper black workers. The broader white mining workforce, fearing it would soon face the same fate, reacted with outrage. In January, a major strike broke out on the gold and coal mines, escalating by early March to a general strike across the Transvaal. This took a revolutionary direction as armed strikers seized control over parts of the Rand and formed commandos to directly confront the state. This challenge took two main forms: republican strikers, animated by the memory of the Boer conflict with Britain, sought the formation of an independent republic; anti-capitalist strikers, drawing on revolutionary currents influential in the white labour movement, sought the formation of a communist state. Many strikers had military experience, and intense violence engulfed the Rand. White working-class women, too, formed commandos that attacked police and","PeriodicalId":45116,"journal":{"name":"South African Historical Journal","volume":"74 1","pages":"526 - 528"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49589510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Reluctant Rebel: John Msikinya and Secession at Aliwal North","authors":"J. Crump","doi":"10.1080/02582473.2023.2205602","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2023.2205602","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article traces the course of the secession of John Msikinya from the Primitive Methodist Church in 1908. Msikinya was feted by the church as one of its first African ministers and toured the UK in 1899 to raise funds for the development of the church in Aliwal North. Denied further advancement, in particular leadership of his congregation unsupervised by English ministers, Msikinya’s relationship with European ministers and lay church leaders deteriorated. He was expelled, taking with him a significant part of his congregation. Msikinya established his own church, the Native Presbyterian Church of South Africa, and was still active in Aliwal North in the 1920s. The secession had a dispiriting effect on the Primitive Methodists’ missionary work in South Africa. Msikinya’s experience is familiar from the careers of other African ministers in the period 1880–1910. Msikinya’s case is distinguished by the tenacity with which he sought to remain a Primitive Methodist and his efforts to use the church’s procedures to bolster his case. Against a background of growing constraints on the Europeanised African elite to which Msikinya belonged, his secession demonstrated the inability of the missionary church to devolve leadership to the local community.","PeriodicalId":45116,"journal":{"name":"South African Historical Journal","volume":"74 1","pages":"422 - 449"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43213066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Colonial Intrusion and the Dispute over Leadership of the Nzama People in Kranskop, KwaZulu-Natal, 1880s to 1928","authors":"Siyabonga Nxumalo","doi":"10.1080/02582473.2023.2179657","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2023.2179657","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Nzama were an independent chiefdom, but because of the colonial divide-and-rule strategy, they ultimately were made subservient to the rival Ngubane chief, who then connived with the local white magistrate to install his son Tshutshutshu as his successor. This brewed tensions between the Nzama leaders and Chief Tshutshutshu. Their differences ended up in court, but the white authorities sided with Tshutshutshu. The friction between the Nzama and the Ngubane has continued for decades but is generally reduced to the term izimpi zemibango (faction fights), a catch-all term that fails to address the underlying causes of the conflict and its long historical roots. This article deals with the interventions by the Natal colonial state in the areas to the south of the uThukela River, where Kranskop and Greytown are located, before the outbreak of the Anglo-Zulu War in 1879 to highlight what changed after the war. Within this it explores the different ways in which the Ngubane and Nzama people were treated, which intensified tensions and held within it the seed for the outbreak of the izimpi zemibango between the 1880s and 1928.","PeriodicalId":45116,"journal":{"name":"South African Historical Journal","volume":"74 1","pages":"450 - 472"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46515616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Red Road to Freedom: A History of the South African Communist Party, 1921–2021","authors":"Thina Nzo, Irina Filitova, A. Drew, T. Lodge","doi":"10.1080/02582473.2022.2142842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2022.2142842","url":null,"abstract":"Uncovering the 10 decades of the history of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), now known as the South African Communist Party (SACP), Tom Lodge seamlessly reveals a fraternal journey in the formation of one of the most significant movements in the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid class struggles in South Africa. The archival research material used to knit this book together has given it a very robust intellectual supremacy in terms of its ability to provide a genealogical account of the CPSA through its DNA that is embedded in the class struggles of mine workers and industrial workers (trade unions). From the early formations of socialist groups and their linkages with other international socialist movements, leading up to the formation of the CPSA and forging alliances with national liberation movements, Lodge has managed to add to the existing literature about communism in South Africa, including how it came into existence in South Africa, what role it played in shaping the liberation struggle in exile, and the extent to which it continues to occupy an influential position in the tripartite alliance post liberation. His book provides us with richly detailed descriptions that begin from the revival of gold mines, which lured many African migrants and white immigrants from Continental and Eastern Europe, England, Australia, the Unites States and Asia. He is able to show how the arrival of European immigrants, particularly those who had been part of the Italian Socialist Groups, German Socialist Democrats, Friends of Russian Freedom and Jewish Bund who were exposed to Marxist teachings, brought revolutionary strategies into labour movements from the early 1920s. Lodge demonstrates how, during this period, these groups played a key role in organising mine workers’ strikes and using insurrectionary strategies in labour struggles. In addition, the issue of racial labour reservation also became the nexus through which communists had to carefully think about how to distinguish themselves from exclusive white Socialist and Labour parties that paid little attention to representing and incorporating African mine workers into the union and labour movements. Here, we begin to see the emergence of a prominent figure amongst communists, Sidney Bunting, who was a member of the International Socialist League. Through the formation of Industrial Workers of Africa, the connections with the Transvaal Native Congress and communists who were members of the International Socialist League began to take shape. However, as we can see in the book, the presence of the Communist Party members and activists was mainly concentrated in Johannesburg and Cape Town, with a growing presence in Port Elizabeth and support of Indians in Durban who were affiliated to the Indian","PeriodicalId":45116,"journal":{"name":"South African Historical Journal","volume":"74 1","pages":"543 - 557"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43225039","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}