Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism

Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania, Lusa H. Malkki. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 352 pp.

Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania

Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa. By Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. 464p. $55.00. Jeremy Seekings and Nicoli Nattrass present an immense amount of quantitative and qualitative information regarding inequality in South Africa during the apartheid and post-apartheid periods. Their descriptive findings involve assertions that both support and challenge existing knowledge. For example, they conclude that during the apartheid era, there was significant redistribution of income by the state to poorer sections of the population; that apartheid “converted the state-imposed advantages of race into the market-rewarded advantages of class” (p. 379); the “deracialization” of class began not with the assumption of power by the African National Congress in 1994 but rather in the early 1970s; the end of apartheid has not led to a reduction but to an increase of inequality; the “distributive regime” that produces inequality did not really change after majority rule was achieved in 1994; there are now as many rich black South Africans as there are white South Africans; and that the most significant contributor to inequality is the high level of unemployment.

Class, Race, and Inequality in South Africa

The Lie of the Land: Challenging received wisdom on the African environment

Infrastructure development projects are set to continue into the next century as developing country governments seek to manage population growth, urbanization and industrialization. The contributions in this volume raise many questions about 'development' and 'progress' in the late twentieth century. What is revealed are the enormous problems and disastrous affects which continue to accompany displacement operations in many countries, which raise the ever more urgent question of whether the benefits of infrastructure development justify or outweigh the pain of the radical disruption of peoples lives, exacerbated by the fact that, with some notable exceptions, there has been a lack of official recognition on the part of governments and international agencies that development-induced displacement is a problem at all. This important volume addresses the issues and shows just how serious the situation is.

Understanding Impoverishment: The Consequences of Development-Induced Displacement

Set in one of the most highly degarianized zones in South Africa, this paper focuses on garden production in three regions of the Eastern Cape Province. Rather than concentrating on commercial agriculture, we aim to develop a better understanding of vestige garden production, particularly as practised by women. As we indicate, although the use of maize fields has declined, the farming of homestead gardens is still popular and has actually expanded in certain regions. The expansion of these gardens largely depends on whether women can access adequate water storage and irrigation solutions, as well as fencing, both of which save time and lessen dependence on labour. Household gardens are particularly prevalent in areas of the Eastern Cape which have not been affected by villagization or forced removal and where household clusters and communal land systems are relatively intact. The paper argues that gardens are particularly important for defining the cultural position of women as owners and producer...

Vestige garden production and deagrarianization in three villages in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

(2003). Crooks, Commuters and Chiefs: Home and Belonging in a Border Zone in Pafuri, Gaza Province, Mozambique. Journal of Contemporary African Studies: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 93-120.

Crooks, Commuters and Chiefs: Home and Belonging in a Border Zone in Pafuri, Gaza Province, Mozambique

This article deals with the practice of work on farms in the Sundays River Valley, a farming district located near the city of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Situated on a historical frontier zone where land has been claimed by multiple generations of both farmers and farm workers, I analyse the incidence of paternalism and payment in kind on one particular farm in the district, with particular reference to ostrich work. I point out that paternalism has meaning beyond that of subservience and enslavement, and that working relationships among masters and servants have produced a very rural and conservative ‘Red’ identity among workers, based on historical claims to land and a working knowledge of farming techniques. The article argues that this type of ‘frontier paternalism’ produces ways in which workers can resist working practices on farms, particularly through sustaining ties with kin and maintaining memories of past tenure on farms in the district. Overall, the article argu...

Borders of mutuality, frontiers of resistance: paternalism and working identities of farm labourers in the Sundays River Valley, South Africa

This paper investigates the effect the proclamation of conserved areas in southern Africa may have on the ability of inhabitants in these areas to retain control of ancestral territory and to access long-standing livelihood options in the future. In particular, it examines how two national parks (in South Africa and Mozambique) effect a change in ownership and land use, and the resulting impact of such a change on local socio-cultural patterns of identity, or ‘place’. This is achieved by examining the dilemma confronting social and ecological scientists in planning these parks – where interventionist policies often deny customary tenure of land and thus prevent a thorough understanding of any historical claims to land prior to actual proclamation of the area. Accordingly, this paper argues for greater cooperation between social and ecological researchers in order to prevent the politicisation of national reserves and the intense opposition that has accompanied most instances of population displacement in ...

Place, belonging and population displacement: new ecological reserves in Mozambique and South Africa

This paper aims to unpack the dynamics of displacement and the relationship of physical movement to elements of space (i.e. land) and place (or identity), in the Sundays River Valley, near the town of Kirkwood, in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. It primarily uses the motif of frontiers to cast light on displacement as an ongoing phenomenon and explore the different eras of occupation of land in the Sundays River Valley, from the early nineteenth century until 1970. It relates different layers of belonging and identity to the unfolding of capitalism and apartheid in South Africa. The article argues that ties to land are multiple, contested and based upon dispossession and physical movement rather than upon stability. While such a high degree of contestation of oral evidence in the Sundays River Valley might not give current claimants a detailed legal basis for restitution, it is an academically valuable idea to explore the origins of the inhabitants in the Sundays River Valley – because it can ind...

Teresa Connor

Papers

Vestige garden production and deagrarianization in three villages in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

Crooks, Commuters and Chiefs: Home and Belonging in a Border Zone in Pafuri, Gaza Province, Mozambique

Borders of mutuality, frontiers of resistance: paternalism and working identities of farm labourers in the Sundays River Valley, South Africa

Place, belonging and population displacement: new ecological reserves in Mozambique and South Africa

The frontier revisited: displacement, land and identity among farm labourers in the Sundays River Valley