Bones of contention : contestations over human remains in the Eastern Cape
- Authors: Mkhize, Nomalanga
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Dead -- Political aspects -- South Africa Human body -- Symbolic aspects Human remains (Archaeology) -- Repatriation Human remains (Archaeology) -- Repatriation -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape Xhosa (African people) -- Social life and customs Eastern Cape (South Africa) -- Social life and customs Eastern Cape (South Africa) -- History
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2597 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007665
- Description: This thesis examines three contestations involving human remains which have arisen in the Eastern Cape over the past fifteen years. It shows that the value or meaning attached to human remains is constructed through the socio-historical dynamics out of which these contestations arise. The meaning and value of human remains is neither inherent nor neutral. In Ndancama's case, the need for housing in Fingo Village led hundreds of poor residents to settle on the township's Old Cemetery in 1972. Basic material needs trumped concerns for those buried in the cemetery. When the post-apartheid municipality sought to provide sewerage and housing infrastructure for Ndancama in 2003, its development plans were constrained by new heritage legislation which protects historic cemeteries. Residents insisted that their infrastructural needs were of primary importance. In 1993, the unearthing of human remains at the Old Military Cemetery in King William's Town created a thirteen year long saga which was only resolved with the reburial of the remains in 2006. The presence of the remains proved problematic for a number of reasons. Local authorities failed to rebury the remains speedily. The burden to store them fell on the Kaffrarian Museum which came under fire because this was considered unethical in the postapartheid era. The identity of the remains became a bone of contention in 2006 when the new Amathole District Municipality concluded that the remains were those of victims who died in the 1856-57 Great Cattle Killing. The remains and their reburial became symbols of past injustice and present restoration of African heritage. The 1996 quest by 'Nicholas Gcaleka', a 'self-styled' chief and traditional healer, to search for King Hintsa's skull in the United Kingdom provoked unprecedented public engagement with the incomplete narrative on the fate of Hintsa's body. The power to represent history, and the methods through which historical truth is discovered were at the heart of the contestation. Elites such as the Xhosa Royal and the white scientific establishment were considered neither credible nor authoritative on this historical matter. Public support for Gcaleka revealed that many South Africans sought just recompense for colonial injustices.
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- Date Issued: 2007
Causes of persistent rural poverty in Thika district of Kenya, c.1953-2000
- Authors: Kinyanjui, Felistus Kinuna
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Poverty -- Kenya -- History Rural poor -- Kenya -- History Agriculture -- Kenya -- History Kenya -- History Kenya -- Politics and government
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2547 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002399
- Description: This study investigates the causes of poverty among the residents of Thika District in Kenya over the period 1953-2000. Using the articulation of modes of production perspective, the study traces the dynamics of poverty to the geography, history and politics of Thika District. The thrust of the argument is that livelihoods in the district changed during the period under investigation, but not necessarily for the better. Landlessness, collapse of the coffee industry, intergenerational poverty, and the ravages of diseases (particularly of HIV/AIDS) are analysed. This leads to the conclusion that causes of poverty in Thika District during the period under examination were complex as one form of deprivation led to another. The study established that poverty in Thika District during the period under review was a product of a process of exclusion from the centre of political power and appropriation. While race was the basis for allocation of public resources in colonial Kenya, ethnicity has dominated the independence period. Consequently, one would have expected the residents of Thika District, the home of Kenya’s first president, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, to have benefited inordinately from public resources during his rule. Kenyatta’s administration, however, mainly benefited the Kikuyu elite. The study therefore demonstrates that during the period under examination, the Kikuyu, like any other Kenyan community, were a heterogeneous group whose differences were accentuated by class relations. Subaltern groups in Thika District therefore benefited minimally from state patronage, just like similar groups elsewhere in rural Kenya. By the late 1970s, the level of deprivation in rural Kenya had been contained as a result of favourable prices for the country’s agricultural exports. But in the subsequent period, poverty increased under the pressures of world economic recession and slowdowns in trade. The situation was worse for Kikuyu peasants as the Second Republic of President Daniel Moi deliberately attempted undermine the Kikuyu economically. For the majority of Thika residents, this translated into further marginalisation as the Moi regime lumped them together with the Kikuyu elite who had benefitted inordinately from public resources during the Kenyatta era. This study demonstrates that no single factor can explain the prevalence of poverty in Thika District during the period under consideration. However, the poor in the district devised survival mechanisms that could be replicated elsewhere. Indeed, the dynamics of poverty in Thika District represent a microcosm not just for the broader Kenyan situation but also of rural livelihoods elsewhere in the world. The study recommends land reform and horticulture as possible ways of reducing poverty among rural communities. Further, for a successful global war on poverty there is an urgent need to have the West go beyond rhetoric and deliver on its promises to make poverty history.
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- Date Issued: 2007
Grandmothers, mothers and daughters : transformations and coping strategies in Xhosa households in Grahamstown
- Authors: Schwartz, Linda Mary
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Women, Xhosa -- South Africa -- Grahamstown Poor women -- South Africa -- Grahamstown Women -- South Africa -- Social conditions Women -- South Africa -- Economic conditions Women -- South Africa -- Grahamstown -- Case studies
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2585 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006190
- Description: The aim of this oral history study is to explore the ways in which constructions of gender have brought women to the point where they now bear most of the burden of responsibility in their relationships with men and for the wellbeing of children. This study speaks into the gap of the undocumented history of women's lived experience as told by women themselves. It is a generational study which charts the transformations and coping strategies of women in Xhosa households since the 1940s. The study found that the familial burdens related to women's sexuality and fertility, raising of children and financial responsibilities in a time of HIV / AIDS have increased. Teenage pregnancies, the discipline of children, HIV / AIDS and the ever present aspects of poverty are major issues these women face. The stress of day to day demands on their lives precluded them the opportunity to reflect on the underlying causes and historical roots of their circumstances. Little understanding of the gendered order of their lives was expressed by the respondents. The use of feminist methodology authenticated the women's stories as they produced knowledge of their lived experience. The interview questions raised awareness of the gender bias underlying much of their struggles at home. , KMBT_363 , Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in
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- Date Issued: 2007
Masculinity, citizenship and political objection to compulsory military service in the South African Defence Force, 1978-1990
- Authors: Conway, Daniel John
- Date: 2013-08-15
- Subjects: Conscientious objectors -- South Africa End Conscription Campaign (South Africa) National service -- South Africa Draft -- South Africa South Africa -- Military policy Masculinity -- South Africa South Africa. South African Defense Force Gays in the military -- South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: vital:2601 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008383
- Description: This thesis conceptualises compulsory military service and objection to it as public performative acts that generate gendered and political identity. Conscription was the primary performance of citizenship and masculinity for white men in apartheid South Africa. Conscription was also a key governance strategy both in terms of upholding the authority of the state and in engendering discipline in the white population. Objection to military service was therefore a destabilising and transgressive public act. Competing conceptualisations of masculinity and citizenship are inherent in pro and anti-conscription discourses. The refusal to undertake military service places men outside the accepted means of graduating to ' real' manhood and patriotic citizenship. Although objection can be an iconic and transgressive act, objectors have an essentially ambivalent subjectivity in the public realm. Objectors are 'strangers' in a socially constructed and gendered binary of 'insiders' and 'outsiders' . This ambivalent status creates opportunities but also constraints for the performance of objection. The thesis analyses the effectiveness of objectors' performances and argues that there is a distinction between a radical challenge to hegemonic conceptions of militarised masculinity and citizenship and assimilatory challenges. The tension between radicalism and assimilation comes to the fore in response to the state's attacks on objectors. The militarised apartheid state is defined as not only masculine but heteronormative terms and it is the deployment of sexuality that is its most effective means of stigmatising and restricting the performance of objection. The thesis uses interview material, archival data and case studies and concludes that objectors (and their supporters) weaved multiple narratives into their performances but that as the 1980s progressed, the performance of objection to conscription became assimilatory and this demonstrates the heteronormativity of the state, military service and the public realm. , KMBT_363 , Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in
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Segregated housing and contested identities: the case of the King William's Town coloured community, 1895 - 1946
- Authors: Victor, Stephanie Emilia
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: Colored people (South Africa) -- Race identity Colored people (South Africa) -- Political activity South Africa -- Race relations Colored people (South Africa) -- Housing Housing -- South Africa -- King William's Town Colored people (South Africa) -- Relocation Colored people (South Africa) -- South Africa -- King William's Town
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: vital:2568 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002421
- Description: This thesis is a case study of the dynamics of coloured housing in King William's Town between 1895 and 1946. The impact of spatial segregation on pre-apartheid coloured settlements in the Eastern Cape has largely been ignored up to the present. This needs to be rectified as the lack of in-depth enquiry can lead to misinterpretations that may influence contemporary politics and identity formation. Through research based on primary sources, it has become apparent that segregation in King William's Town was safeguarded and rationalized through the discourses of sanitation and civilization, and the practices of relocation and removal. The existing slum cond itions were used as a convenient excuse to implement municipal control. Segregation compounded the problem of poverty, inequitable access to housing and the provision of basic services. As a result, local coloured housing was increasingly characterised by a shortage of decent accommodation and basic services, decreasing home ownership and increasing municipal tenancy. In addition, through the implementation of the 1923 Natives (Urban Areas) Act and the 1934 Slums Act, high sanitation standards were set, but the Council itself provided inferior services. Ironically, conditions in the relocated municipal settlements were also not on par with the provisions stipulated in the Slums Act that were used to effect removal in the first place. The implementation of racially exclusive housing was, therefore, not driven by a single role player. It was pioneered by the local authorities, legalised by national government and supported by the coloured elite, when needed, in an attempt to access decent housing. This occurred mainly through the political manoeuvring of the coloured elite, and specifically the African Political (later People's) Organisation (APO), the Afrikaanse Nasionale Bond (AN B) and the locally constituted Coloured Welfare Association (CWA) in King William 's Town. These organisations attempted to procure access to housing within the narrow boundaries of a prescribed identity. Segregated housing therefore fostered and sustained coloured identity. It consolidated feelings of separateness and division and provided impetus for the construction of race and even racial tension. Coloured identity attempted to serve as a rallying point to overcome differences in religion, family and social networks and place of residence in order to procure access to housing. It was not, however, able to overcome the occasional division between settlements, caused by well-developed placeidentities, which still inform the contemporary housing milieu. The coloured elite initially did not question the legitimacy of coloured identity. Only in 1939, under threats of increased residential segregation, combined with the resulting opposition in coloured protest politics, was the legitimacy of coloured identity publicly contested . By 1943, with the creation of the Coloured Advisory Council (CAC), local coloured unity proved to be insufficient. A division within the ranks of the local coloured elite was evident. As a result, the expression of coloured identity still remains contested in contemporary King William's Town.
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- Date Issued: 2007