Collaborators and the riven truth behind Zuma’s Nkandla

Jacob Dlamini, Business Day

IN 1879, the British destroyed the Zulu kingdom, putting paid to one of the last major precolonial polities in southern Africa. To hear white supremacists and apologists for the British Empire tell it, the defeat of King Cetshwayo’s army marked the triumph of European enlightenment over African barbarism; to hear Zulu and African nationalists tell it, the destruction of the Zulu kingdom signalled not the end of Zulu political sovereignty but the beginning of a pan-African struggle against white rule.

Slavery and Capitalism

Sven Beckert, The Chronicle of Higher Education

Few topics have animated today’s chattering classes more than capitalism. In the wake of the global economic crisis, the discussion has spanned political boundaries, with conservative newspapers in Britain and Germany running stories on the "future of capitalism" (as if that were in doubt) and Korean Marxists analyzing its allegedly self-destructive tendencies. Pope Francis has made capitalism a central theme of his papacy, while the French economist Thomas Piketty attained rock-star status with a 700-page book full of tables and statistics and the succinct but decisively unsexy title Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press).

Makhanda & the 1819 War

Makhanda & the 1819 War - Written by Raymond Suttner in prison in 1979 by TigersEye99

The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu

Abolition from Below: The 1808 Revolt in the Cape Colony

ABOLITION FROM BELOW: THE 1808 REVOLT IN THE CAPE COLONY by TigersEye99

The Durban strikes of 1973: Political identities and themanagement of protest

The Durban strikes of 1973: Political identities and the management of protest by TigersEye99

Podcast: Enocent Msindo on his recent book 'Ethnicity in Zimbabwe'

Enocent Msindo

Africa Past & Present

Enocent Msindo (History, Rhodes U.) on his recent book Ethnicity in Zimbabwe: Transformations in Kalanga and Ndebele Societies, 1860-1990. He explores chiefly politics, class, language, and local sources to show the creation of ethnic identity in southwestern Zimbabwe was not solely the result of colonial rule or African elites. Ordinary Africans created and shaped an ethnic consciousness based on precolonial histories and 20th-century innovations, while much-neglected Kalanga identities resisted both colonial and Ndebele hegemony.

Phyllis Naidoo: 5 January 1928 - 13 February 2013

Phyllis Naidoo

SA History Online

Phyllis Naidoo was born in Estcourt, Natal (now kwaZulu-Natal) on the 5th of January 1928. She was the daughter of Simon David, a teacher and principal. His occupation prevented him from being politically active but he was a ‘Methodist agnostic.’ As a result there were many interesting debates in the house and Phyllis developed a questioning attitude. From her early years her experiences did not allow her to simply take things for granted. When she was ten years old, her father took her to an Institute of Race Relations Conference in Pietermaritzburg at which she was to serve tea. At the meeting someone asked her to go and call the boy. She went outside and when she asked for the boy a very dignified, traditional Zulu woman confronted her. “The boy you want is my husband.” The woman’s regal presence made Phyllis realise that she had given tremendous offence and she was mortified. She was so upset that she sobbed hysterically for a long while afterwards. This incident awakened her, more than any event or speech at the meeting, to the evils of racism.

Squatter movements in the Vaal Triangle

A talk by Dr Noor Nieftagodien (University of Witwatersrand) at the African Studies Centre on 8th March 2012.

Click here to listen to this lecture.

Workers' Power Thrives On Unity

Steven Friedman

Steven Friedman, RU Perspectives

The Durban strikes of 1973 empowered workers and helped destroy apartheid.

This month 40 years ago, South Africa learned an important truth which shaped our future - that people without power can challenge those who have it, but only if they act together.

The lesson was taught by the Durban strikes of 1973; they began a process which shifted power to working people and played an important role in defeating apartheid.

Interview: Peter Linebaugh on the The Magna Carta Manifesto

Saleem Badat on 'The Forgotten People'

Forced Removals in Greater Cape Town, 1948-1970

by Martin Legassick, 2006

During and after the Second World War the African population of the Cape Peninsula grew enormously in number. Until at least the mid-1950s most black Africans lived not in official ‘locations’ such as Langa but in privately-owned and rented high density flats and houses along the docks-Observatory axis, scattered through the predominantly white and Coloured residential areas of Cape Town as plot owners or tenants -- and, mainly, under conditions of extreme squalor, in unregulated ‘pondokkie’ settlements in the peri-urban areas around the fringes of Cape Town. In the 1950s, however, Cape Town “became a test case for influx control and racial segregation”. Government policy, implemented by local authorities, forcibly removed the African population to official ‘locations’ or endorsed them out of the area altogether.

Cato Manor, June 1959: Men, Women, Crowds, Politics and History

by Iain Edwards

The militant crowd challenging existing social order is no novelty in Durban. Crowds have often been responsible for forceful interventions in city politics.

Hlonipha Mokoena: 'Zuluness on trial'

Haiti's forgotten Revolution and C.L.R. James

by Ben Fogel, The Amandla Blog

The great Trindadian intellectual C.L.R. James's The Black Jacobins is a decidedly partisan text, it has no pretensions of grandiose academic objectivity or liberal 'fairness'. It is a great Marxist text, not great in the sense of providing a new insight into the inner workings of capital or alienation in late capitalism, but great in the manner in which that demonstrates the fundamental unity between theory and praxis at the heart of the Marxist tradition. In contrast to some of the other great historical works located within in the Marxist tradition, it does not contain the grand historical range and vision of Hobsbawm or display the detailed social imagination, empathy and lyrcism of E.P. Thompson.

Birds in the Cornfield: Squatter Movements in Johannesburg, 1944-1947

by Alf Stadler, 1979

During the second half of the forties, between 63,000 and 92,500 Africans settled in squatter camps in and around Johannesburg.' The camps were mostly situated beyond the city's south-western borders, in the area which later became Soweto, but there were also camps at Alexandra, ten miles to the north, and at least one within a few miles of the city's centre and one at Albertan, six miles south-east of Johannesburg. The largest of these densely concentrated settlements accounted for anything up to 20,000 inhabitants who occupied dwellings of hessian-sacking, wood, corrugated iron and cardboard. The settlements which will be discussed here were organized into movements led by individual leaders and committees. One such leader, James Mpanza, organized his movement as the Sofasonke party, which revealed religious and military overtones, while another, Schreiner Baduza, organized squatting as a deliberate strategy in the political struggles of the poor. In most cases, such leaders mobilized a following and settled on vacant land. They levied charges on the inhabitants, established services and an administration, including 'police' and 'courts', and assumed control over trading activities in the camps. The closely settled camps and the considerable authority of the leaders served to increase the autonomy of the squatter communities. 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; 'Narratives for Europe'

C.L.R. James, A History of Pan-African Revolt (1939,1969)

Reviewed by Mathew Quest, Insurgent Notes

A small and dangerous volume, this republication of C.L.R. James’s A History of Pan-African Revolt is a concise survey of Black freedom struggles in the United States, the Caribbean, and on the African continent from 1739–1969. A product of two periods in his life and work, his first British years (1932–38) where he emerged as the author of The Black Jacobins, the classic history of the Haitian Revolution; and his second American sojourn (1969–79) where he was a mentor to Black Power activists who had been members of SNCC, the Black Panther Party, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers; this book documents famous and obscure race and class struggles in two parts written from the vantage of 1939 and 1969 respectively.

The Small Matter of a Horse: The Life of 'Nongoloza' Mathebula, 1867-1948

by Charles van Onselen (Ravan Press, Johannesburg, 1984)

Introduction

Modern South Africa's industrial achievements are often pointed to with considerable pride — sometimes by outsiders, but more frequently by the powerful or privileged within the country. Viewed from the heights of the cabinet room, the company boardroom, the stock exchange or the bank, there is no doubt some justification for this pride. A country which in 1981 had a gross national product of approximately R70,000 million, a private consumption expenditure bill of almost R 38,000 million and a wage bill of close on R35,000 million is indeed, as a recent edition of the Official Yearbook of the Republic of South Africa put it, 'the economic workshop of the African Continent'¹ Yet common sense as much as class analysis would lead one to believe that the view from the lower terrain of the township house, the mine compound or the farm hut would be more critical.