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A unique overview of the whole 350-year history of South Africa’s racial order, from the mid-seventeenth century to the apartheid era. Maylam periodizes this racial order, drawing out its main phases and highlighting the significant turning points. He also analyzes the dynamics of South African white racism, exploring the key forces and factors that brought about and perpetuated oppressive, discriminatory policies, practices, structures, laws and attitudes. There is also a strong historiographical dimension to the study. It shows how various writers have, from different perspectives, attempted to explain the South African racial order and draws out the political and ideological agendas that lay beneath these diverse interpretations. Essential reading for all those interested in the past, present and future of South Africa, this book also has implications for the wider study of race, racism and social and political ethnic relations.
Cecil Rhodes is the most written about and memorialised figure in southern African history, the subject of well over 25 biographies and numerous articles. Rhodes has featured in novels, plays and films.
The twentieth century has been called an 'age of catastrophe', characterized by devastating wars and a general poverty of leadership at government level. This book, written in a more optimistic vein, offers biographical essays on six twentieth century heads of government - three from Latin America, and one each from Africa, Asia and Europe - who were exceptions to the norm. During their terms of office each displayed admirable qualities: moral authority, integrity, an egalitarian spirit, and a firm commitment to democracy, human rights, social justice and international peace. They shunned personality cults, grandiosity and conspicuous consumption. Their governance was shaped by high ideals, ...
In November 1965, Ian Smith's white minority government in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) made a unilateral declaration of independence, breaking with Great Britain. With a European population of a few hundred thousand dominating an African majority of several million, Rhodesia's racial structure echoed the apartheid of neighboring South Africa. Smith's declaration sparked an escalating guerrilla war that claimed thousands of lives. Across the Atlantic, President Lyndon B. Johnson nervously watched events in Rhodesia, fearing that racial conflict abroad could inflame racial discord at home. Although Washington officially voiced concerns over human rights violations, an attitude of toleranc...
In recent years integrationist theory has mounted a radical challenge to the traditional notion of 'languages' as possible objects of inquiry. This volume develops the integrationist critique of orthodox linguistics.
Although the results of colonial expansion have been described in other general studies of the region, this is the first book to take a close look at the case of the Swazi in Swaziland. Jonathan Crush shows that while the Swazi experienced many of the classic problems of underdevelopment, there were also a number of significant differences. For example, traditional relationships between chiefs and commoners showed much greater resilience than elsewhere. This considerably affected the pace and nature of Swaziland's incorporation into South Africa's notorious migrant labour system. As well, because of the country's proximity to a number of alternative labour markets, the Swazi had a greater ch...
Poverty is South Africa's greatest challenge. But what is 'poverty'? How can it be measured? And how can it be reduced if not eliminated? In South Africa, human science knowledge about the cost of living grew out of colonialism, industrialization, apartheid and civil resistance campaigns, which makes this knowledge far from neutral or apolitical. South Africans have used the Poverty Datum Line (PDL), Gini coefficients and other poverty thresholds to petition the state, to chip away at the pillars of white supremacy, and, more recently, to criticize the postapartheid government's failures to deliver on some of its promises. Rather than promoting one particular policy solution, this book argues that poverty knowledge teaches us about the dynamics of historical change, the power of racism in white settler societies, and the role of grassroots protest movements in shaping state policies and scientific categories. Readers will gain new perspectives on today's debates about social welfare, redistribution and human rights, and will ultimately find reasons to rethink conventional approaches to advocacy.
This edited interdisciplinary collection draws together recent original work on the connections between radicalism and localism in a variety of international locations over the last two hundred years. The areas covered include the United Kingdom, North America, South Africa, the Caribbean, Germany, Italy and Spain. The book questions whether certain political issues have more impact at a local level and whether common radical responses can be discerned across space and time. The contributors’ essays also consider to what extent the local offers a space in which new political possibilities can be explored, and especially the extent to which radical participation from groups who are under-re...