Journal of Southern African Studies最新文献

{"title":"‘Satanbic Stop Stealing Our Money’: Zambia Mine Workers’ Struggles against Finance","authors":"James Musonda","doi":"10.1080/03057070.2023.2178158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2023.2178158","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how Zambian mine workers used the courts and a protest campaign to resist predatory lending by Stanbic Bank. Given that debt repayment was done directly from their salaries, these workers were not necessarily advocating debt refusal or default. Neither did they expect the courts to rule in their favour. Rather, they sought to resist the bank’s arbitrary changes to the terms of the loan by naming and shaming the bank, highlighting the precariousness of their employment and taking advantage of the ruling party’s desperation for miners’ votes in order to advance their claims on the state. The article shows how debt resistance and citizenship claims upon the state can be combined by indebted workers in their struggles against finance capital. It draws on 36 months of ethnographic research conducted among miners and their families in Mufulira and Kitwe on the Zambian Copperbelt between 2016 and 2021.","PeriodicalId":47703,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern African Studies","volume":"49 1","pages":"155 - 168"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48207859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Borderlessness and the 20th-Century Rise of the Ndau People’s Subaltern Economy in the Zimbabwe–Mozambique Borderland","authors":"J. Hlongwana, E. V. van Eeden","doi":"10.1080/03057070.2023.2174716","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2023.2174716","url":null,"abstract":"The Ndau society in the Zimbabwe–Mozambique borderland has seemingly been neglected by colonial and post-independence governments. Exclusion from the mainstream economies of the region by the Zimbabwean and Mozambican governments has forced the Ndau to rely largely upon themselves to survive in the remote, poverty-stricken borderland. This survival practice means that many borderland residents embrace an economy of illegality in which trade in drugs, used clothes, game meat and fuel has become a coping mechanism against hardships in the borderland. Among other reactions, the Ndau people take advantage of the remoteness of the borderland to criss-cross the border to seek opportunities and resources to sustain themselves. Relentless cross-border transgressions have thus contributed to a virtual state of ‘borderlessness’ in the region, and this is manipulated by the Ndau to participate in a variety of informal cross-border survival pursuits. The discussion that follows provides a critical review of the lives and economic practices of the marginalised Ndau communities within an illegal borderland economy. It is the authors’ contention that the borderland illegal economy has sustained the Ndau community’s existence.","PeriodicalId":47703,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern African Studies","volume":"49 1","pages":"121 - 136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48048864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The personal–local as national history","authors":"K. Maphunye","doi":"10.1080/03057070.2023.2184113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2023.2184113","url":null,"abstract":"In Violence and Solace, Mxolisi Mchunu presents a highly moving, convincing account of violence and solace in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. Many readers will probably find the fact that the author was also affected personally during the pre-1994 violence in this south-eastern province of South Africa as the book’s biggest draw. The book presents a consistent historical account and identifies the landmarks of one of the most violent predemocracy episodes in KwaShange, an area that local media once dubbed ‘the killing fields’ of South Africa, one of the many rural villages that were adversely affected by the violence. Its storyline is a fascinating yet chilling account of South Africa’s pre-1994 civil war, which engulfed the country on the eve of its transition to democracy. The book’s method and approach consist of a rich array of case studies and interviewees’ narratives in 10 chapters. It presents the Natal’s civil war in late-apartheid South Africa, explaining the macro-politics of that time from a micro-political perspective. A comprehensive analysis of the causes, manifestations and devastating consequences of that civil war, it relies on extensive primary and secondary sources and a diverse literature review, including the publications of prominent African scholars and historians. This is one of the few doctoral studies in South Africa that has resulted successfully in a book. That it is written by an African student who witnessed first-hand much of what the book covers should appeal to readers. The author’s meticulous accounts of the origins, causes and nature of the political violence in KwaZulu-Natal also enhance the book. The book has an inviting cover (colour photograph) and includes a map and topographical sketch of the ‘Seven Days War’, outlined in the introductory chapter of the book (p. 71) and in Chapter 5, which present invaluable data of the carnage and deaths of that violent era. A further strength is the unique and passionate way in which the author narrates the story of his native KwaShange, which forms a case study for the book. There are, however, some limitations: those with a nervous disposition (or who are likely to find the photographs referred to above distasteful or disturbing) might find the book offensive or upsetting. This is not to criticise the author’s decision to present such photographs, as they strengthen the central argument of the book, which might not have been the case were these photographs omitted from its compelling account. These photographs serve as evidence of the carnage that the KwaShange villagers and other victims of the violence experienced. Yet the book might also be misconstrued to endorse the stereotype that South Africans, or the Zulu people, are violent, given that such violence remains a haunting spectre in the province and elsewhere in the country even today. The book’s autobiographical format in the tradition of historical scholarship outlines a consistent argument that will be ","PeriodicalId":47703,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern African Studies","volume":"49 1","pages":"179 - 180"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41825433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘van die oorspronklike lippe’ (‘from the original lips’): The 19th-Century Cape Colony, Holographic Archaeology and the Historicity of Gideon von Wielligh’s /xam–Afrikaans Collection","authors":"Luan Staphorst","doi":"10.1080/03057070.2022.2165772","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2022.2165772","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the historicity of Gideon von Wielligh’s collection of /xam folklore, history, and observational accounts published predominantly in Afrikaans during the early 20th century. Von Wielligh’s collection is often portrayed as suspect in relation to the ‘great’ /xam archive, namely that of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd – with accusations of plagiarism a common charge. Through a holographic archaeological reading, an approach conceptualised by drawing on linguistic archaeology and philology specifically, and the holographic paradigm and archaeology of knowledge in general, the article analyses the traces of /xam in Von Wielligh’s otherwise Afrikaans texts. The reading focuses on Von Wielligh’s texts on the one hand and Specimens of Bushman Folklore (1911) on the other. Since Specimens was the only selection from the Bleek and Lloyd archive to which von Wielligh had access when he published his collection between 1919 and 1921, it is, within holographic archaeological terms, the ‘urtext’ or ‘source of certainty’. In contrast, von Wielligh’s texts are regarded as the ‘source of suspicion’, with the /xam linguistic data within it ‘dated’ in relation to Specimens. The analysis leads to the following three conclusions: first, von Wielligh’s command of /xam linguistic data validates the authenticity of the collection; second, we can use von Wielligh’s recordings to change the idea of the extant /xam archive in a way that challenges the fixation on Bleek and Lloyd; third, the politics of intellectual history, such as the defaming of von Wielligh, is tied not simply to ideas but to the history of the book as a material object. This acknowledgement and changed perspective on the /xam and the available records could, in turn, lead to deeper and more generative research on the /xam specifically, Khoesan studies generally and South (and southern) African studies more broadly.","PeriodicalId":47703,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern African Studies","volume":"48 1","pages":"993 - 1011"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47396554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Religion and Political Parties in South Africa: A Framework and Systematic Review","authors":"David Jeffery-Schwikkard","doi":"10.1080/03057070.2022.2136820","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2022.2136820","url":null,"abstract":"The role of religion in political parties has been under-researched in South Africa. This study develops a novel theoretical framework for analysing political parties’ use of religion, which distinguishes between parties’ orientation towards religion (that is, religious or secular; inclusive or exclusive) across three domains: state law, the institutional rules of the party, and the informal norms that govern the actions of the party and behaviour of the party members. It uses systematic review methods to apply this framework to the scholarship on religion and political parties in South Africa. The framework and review challenge the narrative that the religious rhetoric used by the African National Congress (ANC) in the last decade has been a break with the party’s secular past. On the contrary, the ANC has historically used religious rhetoric while supporting secular legislation and party rules concurrently. The review draws attention to how the National Party (NP) exercised religion during apartheid; although it worked closely with the Dutch Reformed Church, the party pursued a religious nationalism that progressively usurped the authority to determine the boundaries of authentic religious practices. Despite the religiosity of the electorate, few parties in post-apartheid South Africa advocate religious legislation, and these parties perform poorly in elections. These findings illustrate the importance of a theoretical framework that distinguishes between political parties’ diverse uses of religion and secularism rather than their ‘essential’ orientation towards religion.","PeriodicalId":47703,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern African Studies","volume":"48 1","pages":"1077 - 1097"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48534229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"African Resistance to the 1887 Parliamentary Voters’ Registration Act","authors":"Beaurel Visser","doi":"10.1080/03057070.2023.2167392","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2023.2167392","url":null,"abstract":"Pressure in the Cape Colony parliament for disfranchising policies was primarily instigated by the Afrikaner Bond. The Bond’s initiatives were based on prejudice against Africans and amounted to an attempt at weakening the influence of English-speaking politicians with the belief that many of them were in parliament because Africans voted for them. An attempt was made through the Parliamentary Voters’ Registration Act of 1887, which implicitly imposed a racial qualification based on the premise that most Africans occupied land communally, and therefore communal tenure was excluded as a qualification for the franchise. This article illustrates the fact that, although Africans did not initially take up the opportunity to participate in the franchise en masse, political participation by the 1880 s was deeply valued by the growing number of Africans who actively participated in the franchise. This is demonstrated by the different attempts made by literate and better-off Africans to remain on the voter registration lists. Through the examination of articles and reports on the experiences and opinions of Africans that were published in the press, African resistance to the passage and implementation of the 1887 Parliamentary Voters’ Registration Act is illuminated through examples of their efforts to register as voters, to mobilise in defence of African interests and to participate in Cape Colony politics through the vote.","PeriodicalId":47703,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern African Studies","volume":"48 1","pages":"975 - 991"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42424971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Getting under the skin of Luanda","authors":"Paul Jenkins","doi":"10.1080/03057070.2022.2175535","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2022.2175535","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47703,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern African Studies","volume":"48 1","pages":"1132 - 1133"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41312085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cooking, the Crisis and Cuisines: Household Economies and Food Politics in Harare’s High-Density Suburbs, 1997–2020","authors":"Innocent Dande","doi":"10.1080/03057070.2023.2167391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2023.2167391","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines changing attitudes to afternoon and evening meals during the Zimbabwean crisis between 1997 and 2020. It uses household food economics in Harare’s high-density suburbs as an entry point into the historiography of the Zimbabwean crisis. By focusing on the management of household economics, the article analyses the affordability, typologies and naming of some meals or relishes that were eaten during the crisis period. It examines the vernacular concepts of tsaona meals that came to dominate afternoon and evening meals. It further analyses the ZANU(PF) government’s authoritarian vegetarianism – in which it took a pseudo-decolonial stance as it attempted to re-teach Zimbabwean palates and bowels to consume traditional small grains and vegetables in the context of food shortages and the crisis. Overall, the article provides a sensorial history of meals in Harare’s high-density suburbs during the Zimbabwean crisis.","PeriodicalId":47703,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern African Studies","volume":"48 1","pages":"1057 - 1076"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42513671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Migration and the politics of the everyday: the Malawian experience in Southern Rhodesia and Zimbabwe","authors":"Brooks Marmon","doi":"10.1080/03057070.2022.2175514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2022.2175514","url":null,"abstract":"African spirit world – and much more. With its irregular surfaces, At Ansha’s inevitably presents a few zones of shade. While the text offers evocative descriptions of mountains and forests, mentioning some of the plants that together with the Koran are the core ingredients of Ansha’s craft, no sustained discussion is provided of the healer’s relationship with the vegetal world. Here, non-humans are definitely cast in minor roles. A historically minded reader will wonder about the uneasy relationship between ethnography and biography, considering that Ansha’s life is presented in a patchy and non-linear manner (perhaps echoing her own spirit epistemology). And even though witchcraft is one of the major preoccupations of Ansha and her clients, it is not explicitly thematised and is at times reduced to an allegory of neoliberalism. Finally, for a book that makes so much of dialogue, Trentini spends little or no time discussing the idioms in which such interactions occurred, her level of proficiency in Emakhuwa and her translation strategies. These minor misgivings, though, do not detract in any way from the book’s manifold qualities. At Ansha’s is a thoughtful, engaging, empirically rich and delicately written ethnography. Any scholar of Mozambique, spirit possession and Islam will have much to learn from this carefully crafted gem.","PeriodicalId":47703,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern African Studies","volume":"48 1","pages":"1135 - 1137"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46429324","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Of borders and crossings: the lives of a healer in northern Mozambique","authors":"Paolo Israel","doi":"10.1080/03057070.2022.2175540","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2022.2175540","url":null,"abstract":"Daria Trentini’s book is a narrative exploration of the life and practice of a healer in the northern Mozambican city of Nampula. Ansha, the titular protagonist, was a Makonde migrant from the province of Cabo Delgado who moved to Nampula, converted to Islam and set up a ‘spirit mosque’ in which the Koran and herbal knowledge were used to cure afflictions. Spirit possession (majini) was central both to illness and healing. A being of many worlds, Ansha crossed, navigated and negotiated a number of borders: between ethnicities, regions and religions; between sickness and health, the city and the countryside, the spirit and the human domain. Indeed, the figure of the border – especially the notions of ‘border crossing’ and ‘border events’ – provide the book with its central conceptual anchoring. The book is organised in 22 short chapters, arranged in four parts. The first part charts Ansha’s biography, from her childhood in Mueda through her move to Nampula, the illness that made her discover her vocation as a healer, her conversion to Islam, and her tumultuous marital life, up till her untimely death. The second part explores the social structures that both enabled and constrained Ansha’s practice: ethnicity, religion and the state; healers’ associations and the formal health sector. The third part describes the illness and healing – often unsuccessful – of a number of Ansha’s patients, most of them vulnerable, who turned to her after western medicine had failed to resolve their troubles. The final part comprises two poetic snapshots in the guise of a conclusion. Each of the chapters is broken into sections which move back and forth, from field vignette to historical canvas to anthropological analysis. The writing is sparing, elegant and affecting. Fragmentariness is embraced as a mode of knowing and telling. While the style of the book falls within the paradigm that George Marcus has dubbed ‘the messy baroque’ – with its reflexive field tales, central theoretical riff and reliance on cultural history as provider of surplus meaning, it also ultimately exceeds the genre by openly embracing the idiosyncratic. The conceptual riff announced in the introduction – border crossing and events – is not obsessively rehearsed through the text. To use a musical metaphor, the theme is reprised only in distant keys and variations. In the free interplay between fragments, the life that Trentini has foregrounded in the title is left space to breathe and is never straightjacketed within one overarching theoretical framework. The reader gets to see and hear and feel with Ansha and her friends. This might be one of the book’s strongest virtues. Even within this radical openness and fragmentariness, several strong analytical threads emerge. At Ansha’s vividly illustrates the contemporary transformations of Islam in the city of Nampula, especially the frictions surrounding spirit possession in the context of the gradual demise of Sufism and the spread of Wahhabism and","PeriodicalId":47703,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Southern African Studies","volume":"48 1","pages":"1134 - 1135"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41350952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}