Teaching “Narratives of Slavery” in Charleston,SC – Slavery Central

This essay describes a graduate course entitled “Narratives of Slavery” taught in Charleston, SC in spring 2014, in which I sought to recenter the dominant (national) discourse on slavery by stressing the local and insisting on our (the class’s) implication with the structures of things past, both the physical structures of the city of Charleston, and all of the legal, financial, historiographical, and ideological structures of the Atlantic World that continue to shape our contemporary reality. The course attempted to critically analyze the process and the consequence of narrativizing slavery – how we write slavery into (and out of) being; how we use narratives of slavery for the purpose of abolition and emancipation; what happens when we write particular narratives of slavery; what gets written out of the history of slavery when particular narratives become dominant; how contemporary narratives of slavery feed into and compare with historical accounts; how historical accounts feed into historical fiction, and how all these things play out in the postcolonial here and now of the American South in the age of Obama (and anti-Obama). In addition to offering a set of critical readings of texts, notably Zakes Mda’s neo-slave narrative Cion, the essay also presents some of the students’ thoughtful and moving responses to the texts and to Charleston’s evolving memorial landscape. The essay’s claim that we must read and discuss slavery and race in ways that do not reify or ossify either of those two terms was given even more urgency by the horrific mass shooting of 17 June 2015.     

“Be a Mighty Hard Message”: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and the Exploration of Whiteness in the Post-Apartheid Classroom

In post-apartheid classrooms students sometimes regard systemic racial oppression as distant history. They often note that they “did” apartheid at school. This paper considers how teaching Toni Morrison’s Beloved can prompt a profound self-examination in both black and white South African students. Beloved demands the active participation of the “born free” generation in a deliberate, serious engagement with the traumatic historical past. Furthermore, Morrison’s interrogation of white behavior, white constructions of black people, and the threat of racialized violence that whiteness contains within it, can productively challenge white racial identity. Teaching this novel has provided some insight into the continued articulation of white privilege and aversive racism among white South African students. Some are unnerved, express resistance, or refuse the novel’s inquiry into race. I discuss how I encourage my students to heed Morrison’s call to engage with historical memory so as to move towards a more viable future.     

Visible and invisible trauma: locating AIDS within a gendered framework in Darrell James Roodt’s Yesterday

Darrell James Roodt's Academy Award Nominated 2006 movie Yesterday explores how problematic gender dynamics in contemporary South Africa can influence the ways in which the issue of HIV/AIDS is perceived and dealt with socially. The film portrays the complex relationship between HIV/AIDS and identity as one that is both personal and public. Through the dramatization of a couple's experience of living with HIV/AIDS, Roodt's film considers a way in which the epidemic can be structured – through the framework of a gendered narrative. The film's portrayal of Yesterday's journey underlines how this narrative is filled with silences, a fear to disclose, and the blaming and punishment of the female as a scapegoat for HIV/AIDS.     

Writing Roots in Post-Apartheid South Africa

What are the benefits and drawbacks of the popular practice of writing Alex Haley-style Roots narratives—and making roots claims more broadly—in post-apartheid South Africa? This article explores this question through special attention to two South African neo-slave narratives. The first, Botlhale Tema’s The People of Welgeval (2005), is a contemporary version of Haley’s classic that reveals the benefits of genealogical narration particularly in repairing individual trauma and addressing the vexing problem of land redistribution. The second, Yvette Christiansë’s Unconfessed (2006), can be read as text that challenges both the literary model and the psychological and social projects I associate with Haley and Tema, as it foregrounds the gaps or cracks present in such acts of recuperation and focuses on a kind of pain than cannot be assuaged or made up for. I argue that, taken together, these novels concerned both with historical slavery in South Africa and its legacy in the democratic present help us to move beyond a longstanding “roots”/ “routes” dichotomy to understand what roles each term plays for individuals grappling with racial oppression and where, how, and why the terms fold into each other.     

Youth and generation in South African history*

In recent years, “the youth” have captured (or perhaps recaptured) public attention in South Africa. This paper reflects on South Africa’s experience of generational conflict and places it in the broader context of South African history. After attempting to define “youth,” this paper makes two key points. First, far from being a recent development, generational tension has been a continuous feature of Southern African history since at least the late nineteenth century. Second, organized political mobilization is not the way this tension usually manifests itself. Mass youth politics is a specific phenomenon, which needs to be explained historically rather than assumed. The paper focuses on three historical examples to illustrate this: early migrant labor in South Africa, the formation of urban youth gangs, and the sustained youth uprising from 1976 until the early 1990s. It concludes with a tentative attempt to draw some parallels between that phase of rebellion and recent student upheavals.     

Identity creation and the culture of contrition: Recasting ‘normality’ in the Berlin Republic

This paper considers transformations in the concept of national identity post‐unification. In particular, it is interested in examining the changed status of the NS past in contemporary formulations of national identity. Whilst during the Historikerstreit conservative thinkers predicated the plea for conventional patriotism upon a ‘normalisation’ or ‘reladvisation’ of the NS past, left‐liberal discourse based the case for a post‐national Verfassungspatriotismus upon the critical engagement with the NS period. The collapse of the Cold War political framework has profoundly altered the polarised discourse over the German past and during the 1990s the critical consciousness of National Socialism became a central tenet of contemporary formulations of national identity. The paper attempts to place the contemporary discourse on national identity within a broader historical context and to consider reasons for recent transformations in perceptions of the German national past.     

Norm dynamics and international organisations: South Africa in the African Union and International Criminal Court

Over the past two decades, South Africa has sought to perform several roles on the world stage, such as the economic dynamo of Southern Africa, a diplomatic heavyweight representing the African continent, and a norm leader on the world stage as a so-called ‘middle-power’. Although South Africa's evolution and rise as an important player in global affairs has generated a welcome body of critical scholarly literature, comparatively little analysis has been allocated to understanding how norm dynamics and the country's ever-evolving international identities have enabled it to construct and reconstruct its ‘interests’. Social constructivism is best suited for such an analysis because it can operationalise norms, commitments, identities, and interests, and it provides the epistemological tools to map the increasingly multilateral connections between global, regional, and domestic forums. By employing a rationalist approach to constructivism, this paper remedies the aforementioned gap in the literature by illustrating how South Africa constructs and reconstructs its identities and interests in relation to membership in international organisations (IOs). To that end, the paper examines the evolution of South Africa's participation in the African Union (especially ‘peacekeeping’ contributions) and the International Criminal Court. The paper concludes by assessing the theoretical implications and practical ramifications of the norm dynamics involved in South Africa's commitment to these two IOs.     

Short term interests,long term perspectives: Balancing South Africa's peace and security approach in the EU–SA Strategic Partnership

ABSTRACT

South Africa’s peace and security outlook in the EU–South Africa Strategic Partnership has been guided by the content and substance of the founding document, which incorporates an interdependent approach to development. For South Africa, engagement in the EU–South Africa Strategic Partnership is framed by its historical background, its identity and the content of its foreign policy. South Africa's foreign policy in particular adopts an integrated approach to securing the state within its surrounding regional and continental geography. This article reviews South Africa's approach to peace and security, in the context of the strategic partnership. The article argues that, overall, South Africa's definition of peace and security is compatible with that of the EU; however, Pretoria's vision of how it provides peace and security has naturally changed in line with the varying international circumstances in which it has found itself. While this has proved difficult at times to reconcile, peace and security collaboration in the strategic partnership has managed to remain intact.     

The politics of being a human being in Soweto: Identity as a social capital ‘Everything not forbidden is compulsory’ (T.H. White)

In this paper, the concept of social capital is redefined in the context of identity politics within contemporary South Africa. A case is made against the fetishism of identity dogmas that thrive upon closed historicity. Any narrative of subjective formation that is beckoned upon closed historicity is a predisposition towards identity ‘commoditisation’. As the term suggests, commoditisation implies that human subjectivity is ‘wholly’ dependent and measured ‘only’ through the compass of social capital. Commoditisation of identity means that human subjectivity is no longer transcendental but an object of possession – I am what I have or where I come from. This fixation on subjective acquisition and ‘possesivisms’ as an ethno-subjective repertoire for our overall subjective formation is identity fundamentalism. Although the notion of social capital in South Africa's context is a residue of South Africa's history of racialist capitalism, its present pervasiveness has generated a peculiar pattern of identity fundamentalism in which competition over economic resources has become construed as a threat to subjectivity. A reflexive understanding of this problem induces awareness for a healthy humanism.     

Anti-Apartheid Solidarity Networks and the Production of Come Back,Africa

In 1957, American filmmaker Lionel Rogosin arrived in Cape Town, South Africa, determined to make a film about apartheid. “Anti-apartheid Solidarity Networks and the Production of Come Back, Africa” discusses the film’s historical and cultural significance, and— a topic which deserves more attention— the film’s production. The article examines the interconnected and international nature of early anti-apartheid activism. International movements against apartheid may have been relatively small between 1957 and up until March of 1960, but Come Back Africa’s production shows that anti-apartheid activists and artists were becoming increasingly connected in a transnational web spanning the Atlantic with hubs in South Africa, Europe, and the United States. In the case of Come Back, Africa, relationships forged between Rogosin, black South African artists-activists (such as Lewis Nkosi, William “Bloke” Modisane, and Miriam Makeba) and white liberal anti-apartheid activists (including Father Trevor Huddleston, Reverend Michael Scott, and Mary Benson) proved mutually beneficial.     

South African foreign policy and China: converging visions,competing interests,contested identities

South Africa's burgeoning relationship with China exposes the increasing complexities of its post-apartheid international relations. On one hand bilateral relations have deepened since 1998, due to the increasing complementarities with South Africa's foreign policy priorities that emphasise developmental pragmatism and a Southward orientation within the broader African context. On the other hand this relationship emphasises the deeper schisms within South African society itself, where divergent and multi-layered perspectives on South Africa's post-apartheid identity and relationship with China, the country's largest trading partner, remains unresolved. This article maps out the nature of China–South Africa relations through a thematic approach. This allows for nuanced consideration of South Africa's contemporary foreign policy, one that remains compressed between a combination of external and domestic factors.     

Revisiting Colonial Dismemberment in South Africa: On Cultural Text and the Mandela Nuclear Family

Abstract

For many years, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela—in a number of his public statements and writings—frankly expressed his regrets regarding the strain that his anti-apartheid activism put on his immediate and nuclear family. From his marriage to Evelyn Mase, and later to his second marriage to Nomzamo “Winnie” Madikizela, one central thread that permeates both is the impact of colonial-apartheid dismemberment on the Mandela nuclear family. Thus, the focus of this article is on the critical analysis of a cultural text that was authored by the late former statesman to reflect on various aspects of his life. Relying on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, the objective of the article is to understand how such a cultural text registers the idea of colonial-apartheid dismemberment as lived by the Mandela nuclear family under colonial-apartheid oppression. Besides the 27 years spent at Robben Island prison, much of Mandela's life was characterised by his neglect of family responsibilities, as a result of the lived realities of his activism against colonial-apartheid South Africa. Thus, using the case of Mandela's nuclear family structure, the article critically analyses the role of cultural texts such as autobiographies in registering colonial-apartheid dismemberment in South Africa.     

“What is it that We Call the Nation”: Cecilia Lillian Tshabalala’s definition,diagnosis, and prognosis of the nation in a segregated South Africa

Abstract

This paper examines the ideology of Cecilia Lillian Tshabalala who spent 18 years in the United States from 1912 to 1930. Within two years of returning to South Africa, she founded the self-help group, the Daughters of Africa in 1932. Tshabalala used the Daughters and the widely read newspapers—Bantu World and Ilanga laseNatal—to define, construct, and diagnose the African nation she found materially and socially wanting upon her return. Tshabalala’s experience abroad and her exposure to African-American women’s clubs and her participation at the annual Chautauqua conferences in upstate New York provided the platform for her to conduct her own social service gospel in segregated South Africa. This essay, which argues that religion served as Tshabalala’s antidote to all the social ills plaguing the African nation, traces the evolution of her ideology by discussing how she was in conversation with African-American and South African male movements, and also women on the African continent.     

Documents

South Africa's contemporary foreign policy cannot be understood outside an explanation of its post-apartheid political transition. Its actors, the ideas they express, the interests they represent and the institutions they craft are all crucially influenced and impacted upon by the democratic transition and how it has evolved. This democratic transition is defined by two foundational characteristics. First, as one of the last of the ‘anti-colonial’ transitions led by an African nationalist leadership, it is driven with a focus on achieving racial equality in both the domestic and global context. Second, the transition has occurred when a particular configuration of power prevailed in the global order that not only established the parameters which governed its evolution, but also determined which interests prevailed within it. The former's imprint on the foreign policy agenda is manifested in South Africa's prioritisation of Africa, its almost messianic zeal to modernise the continent through a focus on political stability and economic growth, and its desire to reform the global order so as to create an enabling environment for African development. It is also reflected in South Africa's insistence not to be seen to be dictated to by the West, especially in the fashioning of its economic policies and its approach to addressing the Zimbabwean question. The latter manifests itself not only in how corporate interests take centre stage in South Africa's foreign policy interactions, but also in how transnational alliances like India–Brazil–South Africa (IBSA) are being fashioned to challenge big powers and their interests in global forums and in the international system. These thematic concerns are the subject of investigation in this paper.     

Building bridges? South African foreign policy and trilateral development cooperation

As questions concerning international development climb the international agenda, so countries find themselves drawn into a burgeoning number of negotiations on issues ranging from the future shape and direction of the post-2015 development agenda to ‘aid effectiveness’ and international development cooperation. Moving from the position of a ‘beneficiary’ state in the traditional donor–recipient aid hierarchy, South Africa is looking to define its own niche within the wider development diplomacy context as a development partner. This paper provides an assessment of South Africa's evolving approach towards international development cooperation, with a particular focus on trilateral development cooperation, and what this means for Pretoria's foreign policy in bridging the divide between developed and developing country positions within the international development regime.     

“Zones of indistinction” and visions of post-reconciliation South Africa in District 9

In this article, I explore the ways in which District 9 reflects South Africa’s current socio-political transition through the problematical representation of the film’s eponymous slum and its impoverished inhabitants as well as its protagonist, Wikus van der Merwe. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s influential ideas of biopolitics, I demonstrate the ways in which the film provides a compelling critique of the effects of neoliberal capitalism on post-apartheid transition and South Africa’s complex geopolitical landscape. In this regard, I analyze how the slum figures as a “zone of indistinction” where political and economic forces combine to produce the paradoxical conditions in which impoverished South Africans are included in a democratic social contract, but are simultaneously excluded from the socioeconomic benefits that it promises.     

On Music,Censorship, and Globalization

Malik Bendjelloul’s music documentary, Searching for Sugar Man (2012), uses the narrative of its central figure, American rock “n” roll musician Sixto Rodriguez, to allegorize South Africa’s emergence from censorship and isolationism to a post-apartheid and increasingly transnational dispensation. I look at the cultural politics of apartheid-era censorship in attempt to account for Rodriguez’s cult appeal in South Africa, despite his artistic shortcomings and his obscurity in the USA. I then focus on the film’s final concert sequence, featuring Rodriguez’s first South African performance, which Bendjelloul subtly positions as a moment of celebration over the new possibilities enabled by the demise of apartheid and the rise of an increasingly integrated global culture.