THE OWL OF MINERVA AND THE IRONIC FATE OF THE PROGRESSIVE PRAXIS OF RADICAL HISTORIOGRAPHY IN POST‐APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

Despite its title and stated objectives this edited volume does not provide a broad and inclusive survey of post‐apartheid South African historiographical developments. Its main topic is the unexpected demise in the post‐apartheid context of the radical or revisionist approach that had invigorated and transformed the humanities and social studies during the 1970s and 1980s. In the context of the anti‐apartheid struggle the radical historians had developed a plausible model of praxis for progressive scholarship, yet in the new post‐apartheid democratic South Africa radical historical scholarship itself encountered a crisis of survival. This should not be confused with a general “crisis” of historical scholarship in South Africa, as some of the uneven contributions to this volume contend, as that remains an active and diversely productive field due also to substantial contributions by historians not based in South Africa. If the dramatic and ironic fate of radical historical scholarship in the context of the transition to a post‐apartheid democracy is the volume's primary topic, then it unfortunately fails to provide serious and sustained critical reflection on the origins and possible explanations for that crisis. A marked feature of the accounts of “history making” provided in this volume is the (former) radical historians' lack of self‐reflexivity and the scant interest shown in the underlying history of their own intellectual trajectories.     

WELFARE GAINS FROM REMOVING LAND-USE DISTORTIONS: AN ANALYSIS OF URBAN CHANGE IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA*

ABSTRACT. This paper analyzes the effect of eliminating apartheid land-use restrictions in South Africa using a simplified version of the standard urban model. When freedom of residential location is granted, black township residents compete for land near the center of the core cities, pushing white residents to less accessible locations. Black consumption rises and white consumption falls in response, but the increase in total land rent is sufficient to compensate for white losses. The resulting aggregate welfare gain is a natural consequence of eliminating the distortion imposed by the apartheid system. These conclusions are robust to a number of modifications of the basic model.     

Atoms,apartheid, and the agency: South Africa's relations with the IAEA, 1957–1995

A founder member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), South Africa embarked on an ambitious nuclear weapons programme contrary to the IAEA Statute. Against the background of the Cold War, South Africa's threat perception included, amongst others, threats posed by the Soviet Union, which was a nuclear-armed state and a supporter of the banned South African liberation movements. Moreover, the South African government's apartheid policies resulted in the country's increased international isolation, which also affected its relations with the IAEA. A major global campaign to isolate the apartheid government in South Africa spilt over to the IAEA, resulting in several punitive actions against South Africa. Tracing the South African case through several phases, this article illustrates the intimate links between state identity, state ideology, nationalism, status, and threat perception. The South African case illustrates the need for sustained scholarship on all the dimensions of the Cold War.     

TRANSPORT AND POPULAR STRUGGLES IN SOUTH AFRICA*

The separation of place of residence from place of work under capitalism has been aggravated in South Africa by various apartheid policies which forced African people to the fringes of urban areas. Provision of transport was crucial to the establishment of segregated townships, and four decades of protests against fare increases and conditions demonstrate the importance of this service to African working people. These protests achieved only limited success, but commuters were able to challenge the state and transport companies. Although a national transport policy forum set up in 1992 ushered in a new era of inclusion, it has already become another site of contestation.     

后消费时代城市文化资本空间生产状况解析

近年来,以文化资源为消费目标的空间克隆生产逐渐成为我国城市营销发展的重要手段。本文从新马克思主义视角切入,以消费社会大众心理研究为基石,以"文化资本"为理论依据,探索文化进入市场循环生产的模式,并结合当代中国文化消费空间生产性状况,揭示其"异质的同质化"与文化认同偏差的弊病:一方面推崇所谓异质多样的空间以迎合大众消费心理;另一方面市场经济体制下文化与资本的结合,使文化不可避免地沦为市场的奴隶,最终导致文化断层。文章最后在简要对比国内外文化资本空间生产状况的基础上,套用资本循环理论探讨其症结之所在。     

Governing Post Apartheid Spatiality: Implementing City Improvement Districts in Cape Town

Abstract: To achieve a world‐class city capable of attracting business in a competitive global market, the municipal government of Cape Town, South Africa, like many cities of the global North, has adopted a model of urban revitalization popularized by New York City: business or city improvement districts (BIDs or CIDs). By examining CIDs in city center Cape Town, the paper casts light on the socio‐spatial relationship facilitating the neoliberal post‐apartheid regime and its governance. Analyzing discursive and spatial practices of Cape Town Partnership, the managing body of downtown CIDs, from 2000 to 2006, the paper reveals its difficulties in stabilizing the socio‐spatial relations of a transnationalizing urban revitalization strategy and rejects the view of CIDS as simply a global roll‐out of neoliberal urban policies. It highlights how CIDs are challenged from both within and outside of their managing structures by contentious local issues, and in particular by vast social inequalities and citizens' historical struggle for inclusive citizenship and the right to the city. Whether and how CIDs' inherent limitations can be overcome to address socio‐spatial inequalities is an open question.     

Rewriting apartheid South Africa: race and space in Miriam Tlali and Lauretta Ngcobo’s novels*

This article employs oppositional black geography as a lens to examine spatiality in the novels of two black South African women writing during apartheid, Miriam Tlali and Lauretta Ngcobo. In analyzing Tlali’s Muriel at Metropolitan and Ngcobo’s And They Didn’t Die, it argues that the authors used a critical spatial analysis of the nation to critique apartheid and its oppressive policies. It holds that by insisting on authoring their own worlds in a country that sought to deny them creative agency, Tlali and Ngcobo carved out intellectual space that enabled them to critique dominant ideologies of Afrikaner nationalism and white supremacy, while imagining and writing alternatives to a nation to which their relationships were primarily ones of disavowal and subjugation. Both Tlali and Ngcobo render visible the fissures within the seemingly naturalized apartheid sites they construct in their fiction, revealing the inherent contradictions and injustices of apartheid spatiality. Through their fiction, they were thus engaged in situated knowledge production and a reconfiguration of apartheid space into a more socially just place. In narrating subaltern discourses in their novels from the standpoint of those most oppressed by apartheid law and ideology and by creatively engaging the spatiality of apartheid, Tlali and Ngcobo offer new modes for reading the nation, valuable for elucidating the ways in which the national space genders black women, and how black women, in turn shape and reshape that space.     

Legacy Underplayed or Ignored? Tsietsi Mashinini: The Forgotten Warrior of South Africa's Liberation Struggle

Tsietsi Mashinini symbolises youth resistance to racism and imperialism after he heroically led the June 16 1976 Soweto student uprisings that defied South Africa's apartheid government. Subsequently, the United Nations condemned apartheid as a crime against humanity, but Tsietsi became a political exile at the tender age of 19. In exile, he formed the South African Youth Revolutionary Council (SAYRCO) together with his comrades from the Soweto Students Representative Council (SSRC) that was banned by Pretoria in 1977 along with numerous other organisations. Ironically, Tsietsi's individual and collective legacy is underplayed or ignored in contemporary South Africa. His illustrious role has only grudgingly been recognised long after South Africa achieved liberal democracy in 1994. Yet Tsietsi's heroism and legacy inspired the students that he led when confronting the apartheid system. Like Tsietsi, thousands left the country to join the anti-apartheid liberation struggle. Thus, his activities remain etched deeply in their minds whenever they reflect on his legacy annually during the 1976 uprising's anniversary, now called Youth Day. Others put increasing pressure on apartheid at home until it relinquished power through negotiations. This article examines Tsietsi Mashinini's legacy and his contribution to South Africa's freedom struggle based on a review of the literature, historical records and media reports, theoretical reflection guided by Rational Choice Theory and Game Theory, and an analysis of the awards given to freedom struggle stalwarts and other South African luminaries. It concludes with observations on Tsietsi Mashinini's legacy, with the author's contention that his legacy—underplayed or ignored—will forever haunt post-1994 South Africa's democracy.     

FROM VIOLENCE TO RECONSTRUCTION: THE MAKING, DISINTEGRATION AND REMAKING OF AN APARTHEID CITY

This article analyzes the relationship between violence and the racial city. It examines Durban's construction and disintegration in the context of unsuccessful apartheid reform, and traces corresponding distinct but overlapping stages of violence. Internecine violence of the latter 1980s constituted a racially displaced confrontation over political control and resources of the society transformed into internecine conflict within black residential areas, especially the urban peripheries. The violence was rooted in spatial and material differentiation reinforced by township and shantytown power structures, which clandestine state intervention accentuated. The article concludes by analyzing the new spatial and racial city forms, suggesting alternative urban reconstruction paths to redress the deeper causes of violence.     

Die geskilpunte in die investituurstryd

Abstract

Representations of urban Africans in ‘black films’ have kept pace with changing apartheid policies and legislation governing the migration of Africans to South African urban centres. ‘Black films’ have gone from depicting Africans in urban centres as an undifferentiated mass to more nuanced and complex representations that reflect a changing society. However, what has remained constant in all the films discussed in this paper is the thematic preoccupation with African crime and criminality, as well as the compulsion to moralise that crime doesn't pay.     

Trafficking in Liquor,Trafficking in Heritage: Beer Branding as Heritage in Post‐apartheid South Africa

A burgeoning literature on post‐apartheid heritage configuration has largely overlooked the use of branding in the creation of heritage discourses in South Africa and the significance of liquor for national identity. This article brings these two concerns together through an examination of two heritage‐scapes—the SAB World of Beer and the SAB Newlands Brewery Heritage Centre—constructed by South African Breweries (SAB) in 1995. It suggests that the commercial construction of heritage as branding provided a vehicle for a powerful corporate capitalist narrative in the post‐apartheid rhetorical contestation over a desired path for the future. It also suggests that dissonance within and between these corporate visitors’ centres mirrored a wider uncertainty over the meaning of national identity in early post‐apartheid South Africa.     

THE INDUSTRIAL RESTRUCTURING OF SOUTH WALES: THE CAREER OF A STATE MANAGED REGION

This paper examines the causes of the current economic crisis in the industrial region of South Wales. The authors maintain that past as well as current government policies have played a major role in bringing about the crisis by contributing to the vulnerability of communities in South Wales. The authors review the history of the policies which have contributed to the current steel and coal crises. They then provide a brief discussion of current legislative policies designed to combat the crises. Finally, they critique alternative strategies: continued monetarism; a return To Keynesian/‘corporatist’ policies; and the radical restructuring demanded by an ‘Alternative Economic Strategy’ (AES).     

Infrastructure Financing and Operation in the Contemporary City

The provision of large economic infrastructure in Australian cities is widely seen to be in crisis. This paper examines the reasons why crisis has arisen in the urban infrastructure sector and what might be done to redress this. The analysis and the argument are based on a resuscitation of the ideas and ideals of infrastructure provision and how these have been eroded. The paper shows how these ideas/ideals once underpinned the formulation of state role, governance and regulation systems, financial arrangements, and even community need and expectation. Critical to this was an acceptance of the ideals of universality, access, bundling and free positive externalities, and the belief that these should be assembled necessarily as part of any urban infrastructure roll-out. This package became instinctive in post-war economic and urban management. Yet this instinct has been lost as governments shift from models of infrastructure provision to infrastructure procurement where a major role for the private sector is now common. While such an involvement has its benefits, there are concerns for the urban condition when privatisation of infrastructure construction, delivery and operation becomes dominant. Citing Graham and Marvin (2001 ), the paper argues that, where once infrastructure was the key device for integrating the elements of the city and its people, the way it is now being delivered produces a splintered urbanism. There is an urgent need, then, to re-think what infrastructure means in today's urban context and thereafter to re-assess the criteria for deciding what infrastructure is to be provided, in what form it should be provided, who should provide it, who should pay, and who should operate it.     

South Africa: a legacy of family disruption

This article draws together unusual characteristics of the legacy of apartheid in South Africa: the state-orchestrated destruction of family life, high rates of unemployment and a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS. The disruption of family life has resulted in a situation in which many women have to fulfil the role of both breadwinner and care giver in a context of high unemployment and very limited economic opportunities. The question that follows is: given this crisis of care, to what extent can or will social protection and employment-related social policies provide the support women and children need?     

‘To Save a Soul’: Catholic Mission Schools,Apartheid, and the 1953 Bantu Education Act

The Bantu Education Act of 1953 was enacted by the government of South Africa to bring about the election promise of apartheid (separateness) among the races. For the Roman Catholic Church in South Africa, the Education Act was a direct attack on its apostolic work in the country as the church was responsible for educating 15 per cent of the black student population by 1953. Regardless of the Catholic contribution to South Africa’s educational system, the church was viewed as a threat — die Roomse gevaar — to its architects of apartheid. Catholic precepts regarding the unity of the human race under “the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man” and the belief in the equality of all people as children of God challenged the apartheid ideology of racial separateness and differentiation. Eliminating Catholic control of Bantu education would neutralise the Roman threat. Passage of the Education Act left church leaders with two choices: fight or surrender. They chose to fight, launching the “Catholic Bishops’ Campaign for Mission Schools and Seminaries” in 1955. Although overlooked by most scholars, the campaign was an important part of a larger resistance movement that challenged the legitimacy of the apartheid regime in the 1950s.     

快速城市化背景下佛山传统祠堂文化景观变化以及地方认同的建构

祠堂曾经是佛山标志性的文化景观,但随着城市化的快速发展,祠堂文化景观也发生了改变。在对佛山市区现存祠堂景观全面普查的基础上,选择位于城乡边缘带和城中村的典型社区进行深度访谈。研究表明,佛山传统祠堂文化景观在空间和功能上都发生明显变化。尽管其呈现出现代化、多元化的倾向,但通过集体记忆和怀旧空间的地方形塑,仍然强化了以祠堂为中心的地方认同感。而且,在快速城市化、全球化过程中,地方与认同的关系既受到外生文化渗透的影响,又有内生文化认同作用的增强。祠堂文化景观的改变,一定程度上反映了当前地方社会关系的急剧变化,与之相应,地方认同也正在重新构建。     

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.     

European Union Competition Policy and the European Territorial Cohesion Agenda: An Impossible Reconciliation? State Aid Rules and Public Service Liberalization through the European Spatial Planning Lens

The territorial and spatial planning impacts of European Union (EU) economic and competition policies have remained under-researched in the field of European spatial planning, in contrast to other EU policy fields. This briefing explores how two elements of the EU competition policy, the regulation of “state aid” and the liberalization of “services of general interest (SGI)”, have significant implications for the pursuit of the objective of territorial cohesion through spatial planning and territorial development policies at different scales. The paper first reviews the development of the concept of territorial cohesion in the EU discourse and policy agenda since the mid-1990s, as well as the contribution of public services (Services of General Interest, or SGI in EU jargon) to it. It, then, reviews how the EU state aid rules and liberalization policies affect the state's ability to intervene (i) in support of sub-national territories which are lagging behind or suffering decline, and (ii) in the provision of public services across the national territory, specifically in peripheral regions or areas where the provision is not catered for by the market. The conclusion of the paper outlines the additional challenges to the pursuit of territorial cohesion in the EU posed by the post-2008 economic crisis and suggests avenues for future research.     

Online methods in geography educational research

South Africa's higher education system has undergone significant change since the end of apartheid. A central theme in the debates on higher education transformation has been the tension between the global imperatives of development and the need for universities to respond to the legacy of apartheid. This paper explores this tension by considering recent changes in geographical teaching and research. The paper argues that many of the tensions evident in higher education between the global and the local, which are as yet unresolved, find expression within South African geographical scholarship.     

企业主义视角下大城市保障房建设的策略选择及其社会空间后果

城市企业主义是理解地方政府行为与城市空间变迁的重要政治经济视角,在中国推进经济全球化和住房市场化的背景下,企业化的地方政府,特别是大城市政府,在保障房的建设实践中往往采取偏向性的策略选择。本文着重讨论企业主义视角下大城市政府保障房建设的策略选择及其社会空间后果。研究发现,大城市政府主要通过实施保障房政策的异化和保障房住区的边远化策略,来履行其住房保障职责。然而,这种选择性策略带来的直接的社会空间后果是低收入群体的边缘化,具体表现为外来务工人员等在保障政策上的边缘化,以及保障房居民在社会空间上的边缘化。文章进一步指出,保障房应回归其保障本位,以满足低收入群体的真实需求。