The End of Queer (as we knew it): Globalization and the making of a gay-friendly South Africa

In J. K. Gibson-Graham's The End of Capitalism (as we knew it), the authors (Julie Graham and Katherine Gibson) provocatively deploy queer theory to further their project of telling non-capitalist stories of globalization. In short, they reject the narrative that globalization is always and only penetrative in the hope that global capital will ‘lose its erection’ and ‘other openings’ in the body of capitalism can be considered. I adopt their strategy of looking at stories of globalization. But, while they are concerned with the homophobia of economic theorizing, I consider the gay-friendly discourse of post-apartheid South Africa. Recent expressions of official tolerance by various nation-states around the globe have been dismissed as the mere appropriation of difference by hegemonic forces. Against such interpretations, I look at the ways in which the inclusion of ‘sexual orientation’ in post-apartheid South Africa's constitutional Equality Clause can instead be read as a queer globalization. Based on this reading, I problematize the presumption that queer globalizations take place beyond the realm of the hegemonic and point to the need for queer theorists to think through the political ramifications of homosexuality's repositioning as saviour rather than scapegoat of certain nation-states.     

南非中国新移民面临的困境及其原因探析

本文在实证调查基础上,梳理了南非中国新移民面临的经济和社会问题,并在此基础上探讨了形成这种困境的内外部原因。从表面看来,中国新移民面临的问题直接来自于民族聚集区经济模式下的困境,民族聚集区经济强化了南非中国新移民的自我认同和族群边界,助长了他们普遍具有的＂过客＂心态,也使得他们逐渐面临众多经济、社会问题。然而,实质上,中国新移民的困境也与南非的社会政策大环境息息相关。南非《劳工法》对劳工的过度保护以及社会治安问题、警察腐败等社会大环境,成为中国新移民面临困境的外部原因。     

南非种族政策取向的重大调整--评沃斯特政府的统治及其政策调整

南非的沃斯特政府在当时的国内外历史背景之下,为应付来自外部和内部的压力、维护白人统治和推进现代化进程,在坚持种族主义统治的前提下,以较为切合实际和讲求灵活性的方式,对南非种族政策的取向作出重大调整,对内着手逐渐放松“次种族隔离”的某些方面;对外则奉行“向外看政策”,其意义不仅旨在暂时缓和种族矛盾和改变南非的孤立地位,而且更重要的是为南非现代化进程中的中心环节———南非民主改革开了先河,作了有意义的尝试,积累了经验和教训,可以说是南非民主改革的组成部分之一。     

Christianity and Political Engagement in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

This paper focuses specifically on the impact of the Christian churches on the social, cultural and political contexts of South Africa. It considers the political role of the mainline Christian churches and their ecumenical bodies during the apartheid era. In post-apartheid South Africa, the social and political context has changed and the Christian churches relate to this new context in varied ways. The rapid growth and proliferation of Christian churches under forces of globalization to some extent undermines social cohesion and development. The traditional practice of the public gathering, or imbizo, is particularly threatened. This article therefore seeks to address the question of whether Christian institutions in a rapidly globalizing Africa are an asset or liability for promoting identity and belonging, social cohesion, and the development of social capital.     

论南非早期华人与印度移民之异同

南非的华人和印度人之间既有相同点,又有不同点。一方面,他们生活在一块相对陌生的土地上,遇到了相同的困难,主要表现在种族歧视、经济困境、社会地位和政治权利等方面。作为“亚洲威胁者”,他们被非洲人视为到南非获取当地低工资的入侵者,而被白人当作贫穷的未开化的苦力。在面临生存危机时,他们总是团结起来与当地政府的种族歧视政策作斗争。另一方面,两个社群之间存在诸多差异。作为大英帝国的子民,印度人移民南非比中国人容易,因此比华人多得多;印度人在南非诸种族集团中处于一个比华人更明确的位置;印度人的宗教传统在社会生活中占有重要的地位。更为重要的是,印度早期移民中的不少知识分子极大地促进了印度人社区的整合,同时有利于印度人为获得自身权利而斗争。     

Confronting the settler legacy: Indigenisation and transformation in South Africa and Zimbabwe

This article examines attempts to negotiate a perceived residual dominance of settler populations in South Africa and Zimbabwe by means of developmental and cultural policies deemed necessary to restore sovereignty to Africans. Indigenisation has become a preferred strategy for reconstructing post-colonial states in Africa: indigenisation of the economy as part of a Third Chimurenga in Zimbabwe and Black Economic Empowerment in the socio-cultural context of Ubuntu in South Africa. These are issues arising from the regional legacy of contested and uneven transitions to majority rule. Identifying how governments frame the ‘settler problem’, and politicise space in doing so, is crucial for understanding post-colonial politics. Indigenisation in Zimbabwe allows the government to maintain a network of patronage and official rhetoric is highly divisive and exclusivist although couched in terms of reclaiming African values and sovereignty. Revival of Ubuntu as a cultural value system in South Africa facilitates a more positive approach to indigenisation, although Black Economic Empowerment displays elitist tendencies and cultural transformation remains controversial and elusive. The perceived need to anchor policy in socially acceptable (i.e., ostensibly indigenous/traditional) contexts has become a prominent feature of post-colonial politics and is indicative of an indigenous turn in Southern African politics.     

试析南非种族主义政权的区域“扰乱政策”

20世纪70年代,南非种族主义政权根据国际国内形势的变化制定了总战略。总战略在南部非洲区域层面体现在要将相关国家纳入南非控制的体系,而对拒绝接受控制的国家,南非则采取扰乱政策,对它们进行多种形式、不间断、低烈度的扰乱。南非的扰乱政策给这些国家造成了巨大的损失,也阻碍了整个南部非洲区域的发展。但是,随着种族主义政权的垮台,南非的这一政策最终归于失败。     

Community-based development, non-governmental organizations and social capital in post-apartheid South Africa

Community-based development strategies are gaining in credibility and acceptance in development circles internationally and notably in post-apartheid South Africa. In parallel, the concept of social capital and the role of supportive nongovernmental organizations are receiving attention as key catalytic elements in encouraging and assisting community-based initiatives. In this paper, a well-documented initiative, the Hertzog Agricultural Co-operative in Eastern Cape province, is re-examined after the passage of several years to assess the impact of social capital and the involvement of a particular non-governmental organization in ensuring the sustainability and economic survival of the project. While both elements have proved critical to the project's life-cycle, particularly in recent years, concerns over possible dependency and project sustainability exist.     

The micromammalian fauna from Border Cave,Kwazulu, South Africa

The micromammalian fauna from Border Cave is analysed in terms of community composition and structure. Changes in these aspects are interpreted as indicative of changes in vegetation and climate in the vicinity of the cave during the period of deposition. It would appear that vegetation comprised relatively extensive forest or thick bush and dense grass during wetter phases and fairly open savanna woodland, even open grassland, during drier periods. Variation through time in mean mandibular size in two species of Crocidura (musk shrew) was different both in the two species and from what was expected. It now seems likely that the size change constitutes a response to complex phenomena and not simply to changes in temperature. Comparison with the Boomplaas A sequence indicates that the same general pattern of change is reflected at both sites but that there was a greater amplitude of change at Boomplaas A and that ¹⁸O stage 4 was dry at this site but wet at Border Cave. Evidence for periodic changes in the distribution of various species, and in some cases the mutually exclusive occurrence of ecologically equivalent species, has implications for the zoogeography of the species involved. In particular, the occurrence of Pelomys fallax (creek rat) in the lower half of the sequence is of interest in view of its present distribution 600 + km north of Border Cave.     

Film production incentives,employment transformation and domestic expenditure in South Africa: visualizing subsidy effectiveness

In 2004 the South African Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) introduced a Film and Television Production Rebate Programme. In order to qualify for the rebate, certain criteria have to be met including success in job creation and skills development within the industry, alongside a particular focus on the percentage of ‘historically disadvantaged individuals’ employed. This study sets out the issues associated with evaluating success in meeting these various criteria and is, to the best of our knowledge, the first study to apply multi-criteria visualization techniques to inform the evaluation of public subsidy effectiveness. The ‘PROMETHEE’ method is applied and apart from presenting project performance in a visually intuitive manner, the approach helps to clarify patterns of relative success, show where policy objectives are competing, and to identify project exemplars for more efficiently guiding future public support in the sector.     

The origin of deep subsurface microbial communities in the Witwatersrand Basin, South Africa as deduced from apatite fission track analyses

The first fission track analyses of detrital apatite grains from the subsurface of the Kaapvaal Craton were utilized to delineate the thermal history for the northern margin of the Witwatersrand Basin, South Africa, where evidence for subsurface thermophilic and hyperthermophilic microorganisms have been discovered. Fission track apatite ages for core samples ranged from 21 to 422 Ma. The trend of decreasing age with increasing depth parallels a trend previously reported for fission track data from surface samples collected from the higher altitude centre and lower altitude margins of the Kaapvaal Craton, South Africa. These new fission track ages are older than the surface samples of equivalent elevation, indicating that the uplift history and/or the geothermal gradient of the centre of the Kaapvaal Craton is distinct from that of its margins. Modelling of one sample collected from a depth of 3.7 km records cooling from 120°C at 75 Ma at a rate of approximately 1.4°C m.y.^?1 and reaching present day temperatures at 30 Ma. This modelling result when compared to other apatite fission track dates indicate that this cooling trend followed a 90‐Ma thermotectonic event. The fission track data also indicate that heated fluid migration, which is observed today in this region of the Witwatersrand Basin, was also active in the past in order to explain the greater palaeogeothermal gradient (18 versus 8°C km^?1). The fission track results suggest that at approximately 70 Ma only hyperthermophilic microorganisms could have existed at palaeodepths >3.2 km depth in the Witwatersrand Basin, and that the current meso/thermophilic microbial communities living at or beneath the present depth of 1.7 km in the Witwatersrand Basin must have migrated to their current location since 70 Ma. Any hyperthermophilic microorganisms found at the present depths 1.2–3.7 km could be descendents of subsurface hyperthermophiles that colonized the crust since the early Mesozoic to Palaeozoic eras.     

Engraved ochre from a Middle Stone Age context at Klein Kliphuis in the Western Cape of South Africa

This paper reports on a piece of engraved ochre recovered from a Middle Stone Age context at the rock shelter site of Klein Kliphuis (Western Cape, South Africa). The ochre was associated with a mixed assemblage of Howiesons Poort and post-Howiesons Poort MSA artefacts, suggesting that it is substantially younger than similar finds at Blombos Cave. The implications of the find for arguments concerning the nature of Late Pleistocene behavioural evolution are discussed.     

Probable human hair found in a fossil hyaena coprolite from Gladysvale cave,South Africa

Until now, the oldest known human hair was from a 9000-year-old South American mummy. Here we report fossil hairs of probable human origin that exceed that age by about 200,000 years. The hairs have been discovered in a brown hyaena (Parahyaena brunnea) coprolite from Gladysvale cave in South Africa. The coprolite is part of a hyaena latrine preserved in calcified cave sediment dated between 195,000 and 257,000 years ago. This find supports the hypothesis that hyaenas accumulated some of the early hominin remains found in cave sites, and provides a new source of information on Pleistocene mammals in the Sterkfontein Valley.     

Google Earth, GIS and stone-walled structures in southern Gauteng, South Africa

In South Africa, air photos were used in the 1960s and 1970s to plot distribution maps of pre-colonial stone-walled structures in order to study the peopling of this landscape. Different architectural styles of stone-walled structures were attributed to different cultures, who shared a mixed agricultural and pastoralist economic base and a cattle centered world-view. New technologies such as Google Earth satellite imagery as well as Geographic Information System software justify revisiting these structures as they facilitate more complex analyses of larger databases. The spatial analysis of remotely sensed settlement data from the Suikerbosrand Nature Reserve near Johannesburg shows significant changes in settlement patterns from dispersed homesteads to nucleated towns during the last two or three centuries before colonial times. These changes echo similar patterns reported in the neighboring North West Province, where they have been interpreted as a sequence of evolution in social, political and economic complexity. In the Suikerbosrand reserve climate change, conflict and other factors may have helped bring about the observed changes in settlement patterns.     

Spatial processes and politics of renewable energy transition: Land,zones and frictions in South Africa

This paper seeks to make a contribution to on-going debates about how to conceptualise the spatial processes of renewable energy transition. It makes a case for understanding renewable energy transitions as simultaneously spatial and political processes, constitutive of new territories and configuring development pathways. Drawing on a case study of South Africa's Renewable Energy Independent Power Procurement Programme (REI4P), the paper explores the ways in which energy transitions are intrinsically bound up with both the materiality and the historical and contemporary politics of land. It then examines the relationship between energy transitions and territory to conceptualise the ways in which transitions take on an experimental shape in the form of 'zones'. The paper argues that these zones are new territories deploying forms of spatial and political-administrative exceptionality, which allow political and economic actors to exercise authority and commercial power. Two types of zone emerging from South Africa's energy transition exemplify these processes: legally-defined zones for the development of solar and wind energy and zones of socioeconomic development required by REI4P. The paper explores the spatial and political consequences of these strategies and suggests that these may not necessarily translate into conflict and confrontation, but instead produce uneasy co-existences of different political, social and spatial projects and interests, with potential to create new polities.     

Engagement and reconstruction in critical research: negotiating urban practice,policy and theory in South Africa

In this paper we examine critical engagement in research in order to rethink and reconfigure binaries such as theorizer and practitioner and theory and practice across South and North. We argue that while we welcome the ‘moral geographies’ literature (and its ideas about ‘caring at a distance’) as a catalyst for forging more beneficial connections between South and North, we suggest this is not enough. Drawing on South African experiences of critical academic engagement in issues of urban geography, we examine moments for innovative knowledge construction that bridge theory and practice. These experiences are used to substantiate a normative argument for ‘inclusive geographies’ through critical engagement in order to break down boundaries between, for instance, theorizers and practitioners, intellectuals and activists, and South and North.     

Later Stone Age ostrich eggshell bead manufacture in the Northern Cape,South Africa

Two different prehistoric manufacturing pathways are identified in the manufacture of ostrich eggshell beads in the South African Later Stone Age. In Pathway 1, blanks are drilled prior to being trimmed to rough discs. This is the dominant production strategy and is consistent with most ethnographic accounts. That in which the trimming occurs first, Pathway 2, was rarely practiced. The data from five bead factory sites in Namaqualand show that most breakage occurs during the drilling stage and that the production process has not changed through the last 4000 years. The use of grooved stones for smoothing beads is contentious and the identity of drilling tools remains unknown. Contrary to the suggestions of others, beads seem to have been readily produced at both short and long term occupation camps and scarcity of ostrich egg is unlikely to have been a determining factor. The lack of production debris reflecting large beads suggests these beads were brought into Namaqualand from elsewhere.     

Marine shell dates and surface lithic assemblages on the west coast of South Africa

Archaeological surface finds are difficult to date. There are several useful methods, but each requires special circumstances and has one drawback or another. On the west coast of South Africa marine shell are abundant on surface sites but they are rarely dated because they are perceived to be in disturbed context and in questionable association with artefacts. This paper attempts to rectify this misconception and shows that, although far from perfect, a large suite of surface dates can shed as much light as excavated data. On the Vredenburg Peninsula they help refute the hypothesis that two economically and culturally distinct populations shared this pre-colonial landscape since 2000 BP.     

New ages for the post-Howiesons Poort,late and final Middle Stone Age at Sibudu,South Africa

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) measurements are reported for single grains of quartz from deposits within Sibudu rock shelter. Such measurements enable rejection of unrepresentative grains and application of the finite mixture and central age models to obtain the most reliable age estimates. Three types of single-grain equivalent dose (D_e) distributions were observed: one sample represented a single dose population, three samples indicated mixing between Iron Age (IA) and Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits, and 10 samples (in addition to the three mixed samples) showed scattered distributions. The latter type resulted from differences in the beta dose received by individual grains. For these samples, the beta doses were modelled and adjusted accordingly. Ages for the 14 samples collected from MSA deposits post-dating the Howiesons Poort (HP) resulted in three age clusters, which are stratigraphically consistent with the three informally named cultural phases at Sibudu: namely, the post-HP, late MSA and final MSA. Weighted mean ages of 58.5 ± 1.4 ka, 47.7 ± 1.4 ka and 38.6 ± 1.9 ka were calculated for these phases, respectively. The three phases were separated by two occupational hiatuses with durations of 10.8 ± 1.3 ka and 9.1 ± 3.6 ka. We hypothesise that the punctuated presence of humans at Sibudu was determined by large-scale fluctuations in climate during oxygen isotope stage (OIS) 3, which resulted in alternating wet and dry periods. Phases of occupation correspond to wet periods when fresh water was available in the Tongati River, whereas intervals of site abandonment correspond to dry periods when people were forced to migrate in search of a reliable source of fresh water. Where people migrated to, remains unresolved.