The re-emergence of debates on the decolonisation of knowledge has revived interest in the National Question, which began over a century ago and remains unresolved. Tensions that were suppressed and ...hidden in the past are now being openly debated. Despite this, the goal of one united nation living prosperously under a constitutional democracy remains elusive. This edited volume examines the way in which various strands of left thought have addressed the National Question, especially during the apartheid years, and goes on to discuss its relevance for South Africa today and in the future. Instead of imposing a particular understanding of the National Question, the editors identified a number of political traditions and allowed contributors the freedom to define the question as they believed appropriate – in other words, to explain what they thought was the Unresolved National Question. This has resulted in a rich tapestry of interweaving perceptions. The volume is structured in two parts. The first examines four foundational traditions: Marxism-Leninism (the Colonialism of a Special Type thesis); the Congress tradition; the Trotskyist tradition; and Africanism. The second part explores the various shifts in the debate from the 1960s onwards, and includes chapters on Afrikaner nationalism, ethnic issues, black consciousness, feminism, workerism and constitutionalism. The editors hope that by revisiting the debates not popularly known among the scholarly mainstream, this volume will become a catalyst for an enriched debate on our identity and our future.
An explanation for the African National Congress' abandonment of armed conflict as a strategy for achieving political liberation in South African is offered. It is contended that the Umkhonto We ...Sizwe movement never produced a strategy for realizing authority in a democratic South Africa. An overview of political dialogue within the Umkhonto We Sizwe between the early 1960s to 1975 is provided, illustrating that the movement had developed a strategy for rural guerrilla warfare. The extent to which political mobilizations in Southern African nations & Vietnam during the 1970s affected the Umkhonto We Sizwe's & the African National Congress' respective political liberation strategies is considered. Attention is then directed toward the evolution of the aforementioned groups' strategies for armed confrontation; it is asserted that these tactics failed to fragment white South Africans & actually solidified white support behind the conservative South African state. Rather than interpreting the African National Congress' negotiation of democracy as an alternative to armed conflict, it is concluded that political negotiation was the only strategy available to the group's leaders. 59 References. J. W. Parker
The re-emergence of debates on the decolonisation of knowledge has revived interest in the National Question, which began over a century ago and remains unresolved. Tensions that were suppressed and ...hidden in the past are now being openly debated. Despite this, the goal of one united nation living prosperously under a constitutional democracy remains elusive. This edited volume examines the way in which various strands of left thought have addressed the National Question, especially during the apartheid years, and goes on to discuss its relevance for South Africa today and in the future. Instead of imposing a particular understanding of the National Question, the editors identified a number of political traditions and allowed contributors the freedom to define the question as they believed appropriate - in other words, to explain what they thought was the Unresolved National Question. This has resulted in a rich tapestry of interweaving perceptions. The volume is structured in two parts. The first examines four foundational traditions: Marxism-Leninism (the Colonialism of a Special Type thesis); the Congress tradition; the Trotskyist tradition; and Africanism. The second part explores the various shifts in the debate from the 1960s onwards, and includes chapters on Afrikaner nationalism, ethnic issues, black consciousness, feminism, workerism and constitutionalism. The editors hope that by revisiting the debates not popularly known among the scholarly mainstream, this volume will become a catalyst for an enriched debate on our identity and our future.
In my opinion it would be useless to attempt to get a conviction against these Bushmen for the crimes they have committed or been accessory to. The Evidence necessary if it ever existed has now ...disappeared…To place them in service even far from here in the Colony would be of little avail as even if they stayed quietly for a time when the wild fit came over them they would make for the Orange River Islands again. The only suitable place for them is Robben Island… It is probable that feeling they could not get over the sea they would settle down contentedly and I think would earn their keep and wages. They would also be available for Bushman lore researches…– J.H. Scott, 1881The author of these words, John Scott, was appointed special magistrate on the northern border of the Cape Colony in 1880 and served there until 1887. In presiding over the Baster settlement established in Gordonia, amongst his duties was dealing with the Bushman inhabitants of the area. Through an examination of his relations with Bushmen it is possible to see the transformation of Scott's Cape liberal ideology into one approximating turn-of-the-century racism. Imprisoning them for breaches of colonial law, essentially because the Bushmen refused to become a part of the cheap black labour force required by the colony, Scott also became involved in organising them as objects of ethnographic research and objects of exhibit and display.In his book The Birth of the Museum, Tony Bennett takes issue with Douglas Crimp for describing the museum as another Foucaultian ‘institution of confinement’. While the museum and the prison are both articulations of power and knowledge relations, the museum, he insists, is an institution not of confinement but of exhibition. In contrast to the withdrawal of objects and bodies from the public gaze, ‘the institutions comprising the “exhibitionary complex”… were involved in the transfer of objects and bodies from the enclosed and private domains in which they had previously been displayed… into progressively more open and public arenas where, through the representations to which they were subjected, they formed vehicles for inscribing and broadcasting the messages of power’.
In this chapter we return to the issue of dispossession of Baster land. In 1921 a petition signed by 259 Baster men from Gordonia was submitted to parliament. They asked parliament ‘to restore our ...previous rights in the settlement of Gordonia’ given by the imperial government ‘in perpetual Erfpacht’. A demand for restitution of land, the petition would be reinterpreted by successive South African governments in line with policies of segregation. It catalysed, in fact, the racial division of Gordonia.In the Gordonia settlement, Basters had been granted farms along the north bank of the Orange River as well as in the interior of the country. Subsequently, they had lost most of this land (see chapters 2 and 3). Basters told a Lands Department official in 1921 they were ‘finding it practically impossible to find places where they can pursue their calling, which is agricultural farming, and even when they do succeed in securing places where they can live, their form of tenure is very insecure… causing them a great deal of inconvenience and financial loss’. Moreover their tenancies were threatened, wrote the Rand Daily Mail, because ‘Europeans… more and more require their land for their own use’. The petitioners blamed the loss of the land on government. Under the original regime, they claimed, land alienation was prohibited to persons not registered as citizens (who were mainly Basters). So far as they knew, these rights had been ratified when Gordonia was annexed to British Bechuanaland. (This was partly incorrect: their original titles had been recognised but were now subject to a free market in land.) But after annexation farms were sold by public auction, including to people previously ineligible. Because their forefathers had been even less educated than they were now, they had not paid attention to this violation of the conditions. They had trusted that the government would defend them. But having now seen the original documents, the petitioners were amazed that the sale of the farms had been allowed. Even those who had sold their property, they claimed, wondered why they had never been warned by officials when these transactions were registered.
