Bare Life in the Bantustans (of the Eastern Cape): Re-membering the. Centennial South African Nation-State

by Ashley Westaway, 2008

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 Struggle for the Eastern Cape 1800-1854

Black, white, and shades of grey

reviewed by John Boje, IOL

The Struggle for the Eastern Cape 1800-1854

by Martin Legassick

The STRUGGLE for the Eastern Cape is a graphic account of the subjuga-tion of the Xhosa people during the first half of the 19th century. The pro-settler history of my schooldays was written in black and white. 

Legassick’s synthesis of more recent scholarship excellently reveals all the shades of grey – intersections and ambiguities, intricacies and interstices. 

Women in South African History by Nomboniso Gasa

They remove boulders and cross rivers 
A review by Sokari Ekine, The New Internationalist 


Women in South African history traces the lives of South African women from the pre-colonial, pre-union period (mid-18th century) to the post-apartheid beginnings and present day South Africa. It is written in four thematic parts: Women in the pre-colonial and pre-union periods; Women in early to mid-20th century South Africa; War: armed and mass struggle as gendered experiences; The 1990s and beyond: new identities, new victories, new struggles.

Frontiers: The Epic of South Africa's Creation and the Tragedy of the Xhosa People

by Noël Mostert 

From Publishers Weekly

 

This book masterfully reinterprets the founding era of South Africa, especially the 19th century, to emphasize not the Afrikaners but the conflict between British colonials and the indigenous Xhosa people. Drawing on virtually forgotten government records and vivifying little-known people, Mostert ( Supership ) has done for South Africa what Robert Hughes did for Australia in The Fatal Shore . Mostert places South Africa in the framework, both geographical and moral, of world colonial expansion; Britain's Cape Colony, site of an experiment in political liberalism, illustrates the era's tension "between high-minded conscience and self-interest."

Govan Mbeki: The Peasants’ Revolt

South Africa: The Peasant's Revolt

Penguin Library, 1964 & by International Defence and Aid Fund, 1984.

Preface by Ruth First

Chapter 8. Chiefs in the Saddle

Chapter 9. Resistance and Rebellion

A Proper Degree of Terror: John Graham and the Cape's Eastern Frontier

by Ben Maclennan

A non-academic but respected account of the 'proper degree of terror' employed by John Graham in his expulsion of the Xhosa people from the Zuurveld. Essential reading to understand some of the colonial history of Grahamstown.