Apartheid on Trial: South West Africa and the International Court of Justice, 1960–66

The deputation of Basuto chiefs to England in 1907 provides an example of close co-operation between traditional African chiefs, educated black activists, and white humanitarians in pursuing to the heart of empire the claims of Africans seeking remedy for injustices suffered under colonial rule. The deputation arrived at a time when the Colonial Office felt severely constrained in its ability to fulfil its responsibility of trusteeship towards its African subjects in colonies which were ‘on the eve of responsible government’. This article highlights the support provided in England by Frank Colenso, the son of Bishop Colenso of Natal, in partnership with his sisters in Natal, and argues that, though failing in its immediate aim, this black-led initiative led to a strengthening of relationships between black South African activists and white British-based humanitarians. It also provided an impetus for the development in England of a loosely knit informal organisational framework able to provide material, moral, and political support for South African political activists who were to visit England in deputations from the newly formed South African Native National Congress (forerunner of the ANC) to pursue their grievances against the South African government in the second and third decades of the twentieth century.     

New spaces of citizenship? Rethinking gendered participation and empowerment in South Africa

This paper draws on empirical research in South Africa to explore questions about the exclusionary nature of citizenship, the problems and possibilities of participatory citizenship and its potential reconceptualisation through the lens of gender. The paper examines some of the major debates and policies in South Africa around issues of citizenship, participation and gender and explores why the discursive accommodation of gender equity by the South African government is not fully realised in its attempts to construct substantive and participatory citizenship. It explores some of the emergent spaces of radical citizenship that marginalized groups and black women, in particular, are shaping in response. Findings suggest that whilst there are possibilities for creating alternative, more radical citizenship spaces, these can also be problematic and exclusionary. The paper draws on recent feminist writing to examine the possibilities for rethinking citizenship as an ethical, non-instrumental social status, distinct from both political participation and economic independence. This reframing of citizenship moves beyond notions of ‘impasse’ or ‘hollowness’, challenges the public/private distinction that still frames many debates about citizenship and considers the emancipatory potential of gendered subjectivity. The paper argues that citizenship is shaped by differing social, political and cultural contexts and this brings into sharp focus the problematic assumption of the universal applicability of western concepts and theories.     

The Evolution and Destruction of Oorlam Communities in the Rustenburg District of South Africa: The Cases of Welgeval and Bethlehem, 1850s–1980

Abstract

This is a study of two Oorlam communities in the Rustenburg district. The one, Welgeval, was predominantly rural, the other Bethlehem, otherwise known as the Oorlam Locasie, in Rustenburg town itself, was mostly urban in character. They were situated no more than 60 kilometres apart. They were both off-springs of Boer, later Afrikaner society, and, to a lesser extent, of attachment to missionaries. They both survived for approximately the same duration, and both were victims, in slightly different ways, of apartheid. There was some known contact between the two communities. The emergence of their respective histories has rested in part on land restitution claims, which like many across South Africa, have brought to light previously forgotten or uncovered remembrances. There are, therefore, significant points of similarity and comparison between them. This article further complements the existing literature of previous scholars on the Oorlam by uncovering the experiences of two more sites of Oorlam occupation. Finally a study of the two communities raises interesting issues regarding their identity and the ways in which they have remembered and reconstructed their pasts.     

The Calibanisation of the South in the German public ‘Euro crisis’ discourse

This article highlights the renaissance of the essentialist topos of the ‘lazy and irrational’ ‘Südländer’ (Southerner, Southern countries, South) in the German political and media discourses during the ‘Euro crisis’. It argues that it served to legitimate the political and economic measures taken in Southern European countries that pushed them into still more peripheral positions within the European Union (EU) and deepened the cleavage between North and South. Culture, or better culturalism and racism as its political ideological version, thus were used as a trap, as an intellectual battleground for justifying extremely complex economic and political decisions in a simplistic fashion throughout a crucial period of European history. The article furthermore demonstrates how a postcolonial reading may productively decode the processes of Othering taking place within Europe itself, especially between the so-called core and peripheral countries.     

The Scots in South Africa: Ethnicity,Identity, Gender and Race, 1772–1914

In a Crystal Land: Canadian Explorers in Antarctica by Dean Beeby. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994. Pp. xii + 262, illus., maps. £19.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–8020–0362–1.

Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth‐Century Montreal by Louise Dechêne, translated by Liana Vardi. Montreal and Kingston: McGill‐Queen's University Press, 1993. Pp. xxi + 428, map, tables. £52.25 (hardback); £21.00 (paperback). ISBN 0–7735–0658–6; 0–7735–0951–8.

While the Women Only Wept: Loyalist Refugee Women by Janice Potter‐MacKinnon. Montreal and Kingston: McGill‐Queen's University Press, 1993. Pp. xvi + 200. £29.70 (hardback). ISBN 0–7735–0962–3.

The Caribbean in the Wider World, 1492–1992: A Regional Geography by Bonham C. Richardson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. vi + 235, maps, tables. £30.00 (hardback); £11.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–521–35186–3; 0–521–35977–5.

Black Poor and White Philanthropists: London's Blacks and the Foundation of the Sierra Leone Settlement 1786–1791 by Stephen J. Braidwood. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1994. Pp. x + 324, maps. £16.50 (paperback). ISBN 0–85323–377–2.

The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia. Volume I: From Early Times to c.1800 edited by Nicholas Tarling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xv + 655, maps, illus. £55.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–521–35505–2.

India's Colonial Encounter: Essays in Memory of Eric Stokes edited by Mushirul Hasan and Narayani Gupta. New Delhi: Manohar, 1993. Pp. vi + 412. Rs.400. ISBN 81–7304–007–9.

Welteroberung und Christentum: Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der Neuzeit by Horst Gründer. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1994. Pp. 751, maps and illustrations. DM 128. ISBN 3–579–00136–1.

Subverting Scotland's Past: Scottish Whig Historians and the Creation of an Anglo‐British Identity, 1689‐c.1830 by Colin Kidd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xiii + 322. £35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–521–43484‐X.

Academe and Empire: Some Oversees Connections of Aberdeen University 1860–1970 by John D. Hargreaves. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1994. Pp. x + 142. £8.95. ISBN 1–85752–220–6.

Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904) by Julia A. Clancy‐Smith. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1994. Pp. xxiii + 370. $45.00. ISBN 0–520–08242–7.

Servants and Gentlewomen to the Golden Land: The Emigration of Single Women from Britain to Southern Africa, 1820–1939 by Cecillie Swaisland. Oxford: Berg Publishers/University of Natal Press, 1993. Pp. xii + 186, illustrations. £25.00 (hardback); £10.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–85496–745–1; 0–85496–870–9.

God's Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster by Donald Harman Akenson. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Pp. xiv + 404, maps. $32.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–8014–2755‐X.

Regiments: Regiments and Corps of the British Empire and Commonwealth 1758–1993. A Critical Bibliography of their Published Histories. Compiled and published by Roger Perkins, Newton Abbot, 1994. Pp. 806. £92.50 (hardback). ISBN 0–9506429–3–2. Available from Roger Perkins, PO Box 29, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 1XU.

The Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860–1940 by David Omissi. London: Macmillan, 1994. Pp. xx + 313. £45.00. ISBN 0–333–55049–8.

Public Health in British India: Anglo‐Indian Preventive Medicine 1859–1914 by Mark Harrison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xviii + 324. £19.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–521–46688–1.

Hong Kong in Chinese History: Community and Social Unrest in the British Colony, 1842–1913 by Jung‐Fang Tsai. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Pp. xvix + 375, maps. $52.00. ISBN 0–231–07932‐X.

European Imperialism, 1860–1914 by Andrew Porter. Basingstoke, London: Macmillan, 1994. Pp. xiii + 119, maps. £5.99 (paperback). ISBN 0–333–48104–6.

Sons of the Empire: The Frontier and the Boy Scout Movement, 1890–1918 by Robert H. MacDonald. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. Pp. viii + 259. £22.75. ISBN 0–8020–2843–8.

The Dust Rose Like Smoke: The Subjugation of the Zulu and the Sioux by James O. Gump. Lincoln, Nebraska and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Pp. xii + 178, maps. £23.95 (hardback). ISBN 0–8032–2152–5.

A History of Ethiopia by Harold G. Marcus. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of Calfornia Press, 1994. Pp. xv + 261, maps. $35.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–520–08121–8.

Slow Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 1897–1936, by Paul E. Lovejoy and Jan S. Hogendorn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xvii + 391. £45.00 (hardback); £16.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–521–37469–3; 0–521–44702‐X.

The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation edited by E. R. Forbes and D. A. Muise. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. Pp. xii + 628. $60.00 (hardback); $29.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–8020–5886–8; 0–8020–6817–0.

Australian History in New South Wales 1888 to 1938 by Brian H. Fletcher. Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1993. Pp. vii + 228. $24.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–86840–269–9.

Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend by Alistair Thomson. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994. Pp. vi + 282; photographs. £18.95 (hardback). ISBN 0–19553491–3.

Broken Promises: Popular Protest, Indian Nationalism and the Congress Party in Bihar, 1935–1946 by Vinita Damodaran. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xiv + 398, 5 maps, 3 figures, 18 tables, 3 appendices. £18.95. ISBN 0–19–562979–5.

Rajani Palme Dutt: A Study in British Stalinism by John Callaghan. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1993. Pp. xi + 213. £19.99. ISBN 0–85315–7790.

Immigration, Ethnicity and Racism in Britain, 1815–1945 by Panikos Panayi. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. Pp. vi + 170. £29.99 (hardback); £7.99 (paperback). ISBN 0–7190–3697–6; 0–7190–3698–4.

Macmillan by John Turner. London: Longman, 1994. Pp. vii + 302. £24.99 (hardback); £10.99 (paperback). ISBN 0–582–21880–2; 0–582–55386–5.

The Cold War on the Periphery: The United States, India, and Pakistan by Robert J. McMahon. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Pp. xii + 431, maps. £25.00. ISBN 0–231–08226–6.

The Twilight of British Ascendancy in the Middle East: A Case Study of Iraq, 1941–1950 by Daniel Silverfarb. London: Macmillan, 1994. Pp. xii + 306, 2 maps. £34.00 (hardback). ISBN 0–333–62525–0.

The Wars of French Decolonization by Anthony Clayton. London: Longman, 1994. Pp. x + 234, maps. £32.00 (hardback); £11.99 (paperback) ISBN 0–582–09802–5; 0–582–09801–7.

Colonialism's Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government by Nicholas Thomas. Oxford: Polity Press, 1994. Pp. viii + 238. £45.00 (hardback); £12.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–7456–0871‐X; 0–7456–1215–6.     

The Antinomies of Black Identity Formation in West Africa, 1820–1848

Abstract

During the mid-nineteenth century, a group of United States-born property-holding free blacks struggled to establish themselves and fashion a new polity on the coast of West Africa. In doing so, these Liberians embraced a pair of simultaneously complementary and opposing aspirations: first, the insertion, entrenchment and expansion of a successful black commercial bourgeoisie into the global Atlantic economy of the nineteenth century, an aspiration tied to and dependent upon the accumulation of capital and the creation of a state which would operate in the interest of this group and no other. Secondly, they aspired to the creation and institutionalisation of a separate and distinct black nationality - a black identity - that covered the entire spectrum of people of African descent, that held out the prospect of solidarity for all black people in republican equality and citizenship, and that subsumed all other classes and categories of black people under the tent of the imagined black nation. In this way they contributed to the uneven, reciprocal and trans-Atlantic work of black identity formation during the middle of the nineteenth century.     

“The Balkans’ Other within”: Imaginings of the West in the Republic of Macedonia

Using the case study of the Republic of Macedonia, I explore how people who live in a realm conventionally cast as insufficient of “the European Self” imagine “the West”. Such imaginings are important because they are intertwined with negotiations of nationhood and citizenship. I argue that in local constructions of the global social order, Macedonia emerges in an interstitial position between “the Balkans” and “the West” as “the Balkans’ Other Within”. Social actors craft this position out of Western hegemonic constructions of the Balkans as a socio‐political anomaly and portray “the Other within” (Macedonia) as the engulfed land of promise. The case study of Macedonia allows us to refine the concepts of “Balkanism” by underlining local perspectives on the promise that “the West” carries for the Balkans and “Orientalism” by emphasizing the possibilities that the construction of the Orient charts for the future advancement or demise of the Self.     

Campaigning Against Apartheid: The Rise,Fall and Legacies of the South Africa United Front 1960–1962

ABSTRACT

The international struggle against apartheid that emerged during the second half of the twentieth century made the system of legalised racial oppression in South Africa one of the world’s great moral causes. Looking back at the anti-apartheid struggle, a defining characteristic was the scope of the worldwide efforts to condemn, co-ordinate, and isolate the country. In March 1961, the international campaign against apartheid achieved its first major success when Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd chose to withdraw South Africa from the Commonwealth following vocal protests at the Heads of State Summit held in London. As a consequence, it appeared albeit briefly, that external pressure would effectively serve as a catalyst for achieving far-reaching and immediate political change in South Africa. The global campaign, centred on South Africa remaining in the Commonwealth, was the first of its kind launched by South Africa’s national liberation movements, and signalled the beginning of thirty years of continued protest and lobbying. The contributions from one organisation that had a role in launching and co-ordinating this particular transnational campaign, the South Africa United Front (SAUF), an alliance of liberation groups, have been largely forgotten. Leading members of the SAUF claimed the organisation had a key part in South Africa’s subsequent exit from the Commonwealth, and the purpose of this article is to explore the validity of such assertions, as well as the role and impact it had in generating a groundswell of opposition to apartheid in the early 1960s. Although the SAUF’s demands for South Africa to leave the Commonwealth were ultimately fulfilled, the documentary evidence suggests that its campaigning activities and impact were not a decisive factor; however the long-term significance of the SAUF, and the position it had in the rise of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) has not been fully recognised. As such, the events around the campaign for South Africa’s withdrawal from the Commonwealth act as a microcosm of developments that would define the international struggle against apartheid.