Bøger udgivet af Wits University Press

This fifth volume in the New South African Review series takes as its starting point the shock wave emanating from the events at Marikana on 16 August 2012 and how it has reverberated throughout politics and society. Some of the chapters in the volume refer directly to Marikana. In others, the influence of that fateful day is pervasive if not direct.

Dorothea Bleek (1873-1948) devoted her life to completing the 'bushman researches' that her father and aunt had begun in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. This research was partly a labour of familial loyalty to Wilhelm, the acclaimed linguist and language scholar of nineteenth-century Germany and later of the Cape Colony, and to Lucy Lloyd, a self-taught linguist and scholar of bushman languages and folklore; but it was also an expression of Dorothea's commitment to a particular kind of scholarship and an intellectual milieu that saw her spending her entire adult life in the study of the people she called'bushmen'.How has history treated Dorothea Bleek? Has she been recognised as a scholar in her own right, or as someone who merely followed in the footsteps of her famous father and aunt? Was she an adventurer, a woman who travelled across southern Africa driven by intellectual curiosity to learn all she could about the bushmen? Or was she conservative, a researcher who belittled the people she studied and dismissed them as lazy and improvident?These are some of the questions with which Jill Weintroub starts her thoughtful biography of Dorothea Bleek. The book examines Dorothea Bleek's life story and family legacy, her rock art research and her fieldwork in southern Africa, and, in light of these, evaluates her scholarship and contribution to the history of ideas in South Africa. The compelling and surprising narrative reveals an intellectual inheritance intertwined with the story of a woman's life, and argues that Dorothea's life work - her study of the bushmen - was also a sometimes surprising emotional quest.

In the third volume of the Visual Century Collection, the national struggle for democracy is juxtaposed with the challenging art of the time period.Visual Century: South African Art is a four-volume publication that reappraises South African visual art of the 20th century from a postapartheid perspective. It is the only publication that provides an overview of a century of South African art, with in-depth discussion by leading art historians and reproduction of a large number of artworks, providing readers with fresh perspectives on complexities that still resonate today. Bracketed by porous transitional moments in the early 1970s and 1990s, this third volume covers a period characterized by a deepening of the struggle for democracy, a time when historical preoccupations with race were increasingly complemented with growing discourses on class and gender. The chapters address the multiplicity of ways in which artists responded directly and indirectly to the challenges of this period, mostly as individuals but also through organizations. Resistance and complicity, and the spaces between, found expression in the use of everyday themes, biblical sources, ethnically derived themes, subtle and extreme forms of humor, as well as through representations of conflict are all explored. This is a period when challenging art was produced in community arts centers, universities and in public places, a time when the cultural boycott simultaneously united and polarized artists, and exiles mediated the ambivalences of 'home.'

In the opening installment of the Visual Century Collection, the division of South African culture is shown through the polarization of art forms within South Africa.Visual Century: South African Art is a four-volume publication that reappraises South African visual art of the 20th century from a postapartheid perspective. It is the only publication that provides an overview of a century of South African art, with in-depth discussion by leading art historians and reproduction of a large number of artworks, providing readers with fresh perspectives on complexities that still resonate today. The first volume in this series begins after the South African War when efforts were made to unify the white 'races' and the period encompasses two world wars, the incremental dispossession of the rights of black South Africans, and the rise of organized black South African resistance to white rule. This volume provides critical perspectives on the ideological and institutional frameworks for white and black artists of the period, and the art they produced. Discussions of public art and architecture, traditionalist African art, and Western-style painting and sculpture are complemented with consideration of the roles played by museums, training, art societies and exhibitions, art historical writing, and patronage.

The xenophobic attacks that started in Alexandra, Johannesburg in May 2008 before quickly spreading around the country caused an outcry across the world and raised many fundamental questions: Of what profound social malaise is xenophobia - and the violence that it inspires - a symptom? Have our economic and political choices created new forms of exclusion that fuel anger and distrust? What consequences does the emergence of xenophobia hold for the idea of an equal, non-racial society as symbolised by a democratic South Africa?On 28 May 2008 the Faculty of Humanities in the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg convened an urgent colloquium that focused on searching for short and long-term solutions. Nearly twenty individuals - mostly Wits academics from a variety of disciplines, but also two student leaders, a journalist and a bishop - addressed the unfolding violence in ways that were conversant with the moment, yet rooted in scholarship and ongoing research. Go Home or Die Here emanates directly from the colloquium. It hopes to make sense of the nuances and trajectories of building a democratic society out of a deeply divided and conflictual past, in the conditions of global recession, heightening inequalities and future uncertainty. The authors hoped to pose questions that would lead both to research and to more informed, reflective forms of public action. With extensive photographs by award-winning photographer Alon Skuy, who covered the violence for The Times newspaper, the volume is passionate and engaged, and aims to stimulate reflection, debate and activism among concerned members of a broad public.

Much has been written about South Africa's "lost generation" --the generation of politicized youth who dedicated their lives to the liberation of a nation, and who have "lost" everything in the process. Young Warriors is about this generation, but it is also a critique of the very concept of a "lost generation." It is the story of activists who have become leaders, provincial premiers and national ministers in our democratic society. While focusing on the lives of the men and women who lived in Diepkloof, a black "township" in South Africa, it is also the narrative of many black South Africans who "grew up" in the organizations of the ANC-led liberation movement.

This book seeks to imagine the possibility of a more loving masculinity in a society where structural violence, failures of government and economic inequality underpin much of the violent behaviour that men display. Enriched with personal reflections on his own experiences as a partner, father, psychologist and researcher in the field of men and masculinities, Why Men Hurt Women and Other Reflections on Love, Violence and Masculinity is Kopano Ratele's meditation on love and violence, and the way these forces shape the emotional lives of boys and men. At the core of these critical and deeply insightful texts is the question of why men hurt women they love. Ratele contends that many men in our society suffer from a painful, unrecognised, yet consequential love hunger that sets in during boyhood. This need for love may lie at the root of some of the male violence that damages the lives of women, children and men themselves.

More than 125 years ago, a remarkable group of people came together in Cape Town to write down the language and beliefs of the |xam people, a Bushman group that once lived over much of South Africa. The immensely valuable work of Wilhelm Bleek, Lucy Lloyd and their |xam teachers not only preserved a language now no longer spoken, but also provided fascinating insights into |xam cosmology. First published in 2004, Customs and Beliefs of the |xam reproduces Dorothea Bleek's selection of |xam narratives from the well-known Bleek and Lloyd Collection that was originally published in the journal Bantu Studies during the 1930s. Collated and edited by Jeremy Hollman, the extracts include detailed notes on each of the narratives, as well as Bleek's 'sketch' of |xam grammar. This substantially revised second edition integrates new scholarship on the Bleek and Lloyd archive, and restores previously omitted material. The introduction to each narrative has been expanded to contextualise it within the archive as a whole and, where relevant, reference it to the Notebook of which it is a part. This includes meticulous cross-referencing with the Bleek and Lloyd Collection catalogue code and the Notebook number and line reference. Each of the texts has also been critically reassessed, with additional editorial notes and commentaries, in particular with respect to the |xam words themselves and the ways in which they have been translated. A synopsis of each narrative is provided in an appendix, with cross references to the Bleek and Lloyd notebooks. Customs and Beliefs of the |xam, second edition, is an in-depth, detailed and authoritative resource that will be invaluable to scholars, heritage workers and activists alike.

As jobs disappear and wages flat-line, paid work is an increasingly fragile and unattainable basis for dignified life. This predicament, deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic, is sparking urgent debates about alternatives such as a universal basic income (UBI). Highly topical and distinctive in its approach, In the Balance: The Case for a Universal Basic Income in South Africa and Beyond is the most rounded and up-to-date examination yet of the need and prospects for a UBI in a global South setting such as South Africa. Hein Marais casts the debate about a UBI in the wider context of the dispossessing pressures of capitalism and the onrushing turmoil of global warming, pandemics and social upheaval. Marais surveys the meaning, history and appeal of a UBI before even-handedly weighing the case for and against such an intervention. The book explores the vexing questions a UBI raises about the relationship of paid work to social rights, about prevailing notions of entitlement and dependency, and the role of the state in contemporary capitalism. Along with cost estimates for different versions of a basic income in South Africa, it discusses financing options and lays out the social, economic and political implications. This incisive new book advances both our theoretical and practical understanding of the prospects for a UBI.

Originally published: Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press, 1945

An historical drama by Elliot Zondi. The plot is based on the events surrounding the assassination of Shaka, the mighty Zulu king, by his two half-brothers, Dingane and Mhlangana, aided and abetted by his paternal aunt, Mkabayi, in 1828. The play explores the classic theme of the tragic hero's fatal flaws: hubris and overconfidence.

In our time of rampant inequality, imperial-capitalist plunder, violence and ecocide, when radical concepts from the past seem inadequate, how do researchers and students of ethnographic work decide what concepts to work with or renew?Gillian Hart is a key thinker in radical political economy, geography, development studies, agrarian studies and Gramscian critique of postcolonial capitalism. In Ethnographies of Power each contributor engages her work and applies it to their own field of study. A major contribution of this collection is the merging of theory with praxis, resulting in invaluable research tools for postgraduate students. These include applying 'gendered labour' practices among workers in South Africa, reading 'racial capitalism' through agrarian debates, using 'relational comparison' in an ethnography of schooling across Durban, reworking 'multiple socio-spatial trajectories' in Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve, critiquing the notion of South Africa's 'second economy', revisiting 'development' processes and 'Development' discourses in US military contracting, reconsidering Gramsci's 'conjunctures' geographically, finding divergent 'articulations' in Cape Town land occupations, and exploring 'nationalism' as central to revaluing recyclables at a Soweto landfill. Together, the chapters show how important the ongoing reworking of radical concepts is to ethnographic critiques of power. Ethnographies of Power offers an invaluable toolkit for activists and scholars engaged in sharpening their critical concepts for social and environmental change towards a collective future.

The essays in this collection were crafted in celebration of the centenaries, in 2019, of Peter Abrahams, Noni Jabavu, Sibusiso Cyril Lincoln Nyembezi and Es'kia Mphahlele, all of whom were born in 1919. All four centenarians lived rich and diverse lives across several continents. In the years following the Second World War they produced more than half a century of foundational creative writing and literary criticism, and made stellar contributions to institutions and repertoires of African and black arts and letters in South Africa and internationally. As a result, their oeuvres present multifaceted engagements and generative insights into a wide range of issues, including precolonial existence, colonialism, empire, race, culture, identity, class, the language question, tradition, modernity, exile, Pan-Africanism, and decolonisation. The range of the centenarians' imaginations, critical analyses and social interventions spanned disciplinary divides. This volume, in the same spirit, draws on approaches that are equally transdisciplinary. Two aims thread through the contributors' reflections on the complexities of black existence and of intellectual and cultural life in the twentieth century. The first is the exploration of some of the centenarians' key texts and cultural projects that shaped their legacies. In doing so, the volume contributors trace a number of divergent intellectual and aesthetic lineages in their works and organisational activities. The second aim is a consideration of the ways in which these foundational writers' legacies continue to resonate today, confirming their status as crucial contributors to modern African and diasporic black arts and letters.

Hoping for a better life, many migrants have made the journey to South Africa and set up as informal spaza shop traders in small towns and township areas, supplying the local residents with essentials. These traders work hard, open their shops early, close late and support their relatives and kinspeople in starting new businesses. But thriving in environments afflicted by unemployment and crime is almost impossible when armed robberies are a daily reality, protection from law enforcement is not a given, and access to justice is effectively out of reach. Engaging first-hand with small traders and the Somali communities in Khayelitsha, Kraaifontein and Philippi, Vanya Gastrow investigates the predicament of these modern-day pariahs - social and political outcasts who belong neither to the elite nor the common people, and who are frequently the focus of xenophobic anger. Tracing national-level regulatory developments in post-apartheid democratic South Africa Gastrow shines a light on how retailers have been politicised and how they have faced growing informal and formal regulatory efforts to curtail their business activities. She demonstrates how democratic and constitutional frameworks can erode in contexts of heightened nationalism, populism and economic inequality. By investigating Somali informal shopkeepers' experiences of crime, justice and regulation in the country, the fragility of law, pluralism and democracy in South Africa is uncomfortably exposed.

This rich and absorbing biography of Can Themba, iconic Drum-era journalist and writer, is the definitive history of a larger-than-life man who died too young. Siphiwo Mahala's intensive and often fresh research features unprecedented archival access and interviews with Themba's surviving colleagues and family. Mahala's biography takes a critical historical approach to Themba's life and writing, giving a picture of the whole man, from his early beginnings in Marabastad to his sombre end in exile in Swaziland. The better-known elements of his life - his political views, passion for teaching and mentoring, family life and his drinking - are woven together with an examination of his literary influences and the impact of his own writing (especially his famous short story 'The Suit') on modern African writers in turn. Mahala, a master storyteller, deftly follows the threads of Themba's dynamic life, showcasing his intellectual acumen, scholarly aptitude and wit, along with his flaws, contradictions and heartbreaks, against a backdrop of the sparkle and pathos of Sophiatown of the 1950s. Can Themba's successes and failures as well as his triumphs and tribulations reverberate on the pages of this long-awaited biography. The result is an authoritative and entertaining account of an often misunderstood figure in South Africa's literary canon.

Ranging from economics, psychology, a spurious rebuttal of evolution to a substantial revisionist history and the perils of the 'machine age', this book is a sombre reflection of intellectual history and the academy's role in promulgating political and social divisions in South Africa.

Current research shows that certain childhood mental disorders are diagnosed more frequently today than in previous generations. Many of today's children and teenagers are more unhappy, anxious and distressed than young people used to be. In this highly informative book, child psychologist Jenny Perkel explores in depth why this might be so, highlighting what modern-day South African children and adolescents are experiencing and the environment in which they are being raised.Children in Mind presents a broad range of up-to-date findings from psychological, neurobiological, genetic, psychiatric, sociological and epidemiological research related to the diagnosis and treatment of children's mental health problems. Theoretically informed but not theoretically dense, the book cites both local and international studies to increase awareness and understanding of children's mental health.Perkel discusses a broad spectrum of issues faced by today's children and adolescents: the Covid-19 pandemic, the influence of electronic media, diverse family structures, stress and trauma, and difficult socio-economic circumstances. While offering no easy answers or formulaic solutions to the problems of troubled children, she shows how to think about children's mental well-being in today's South Africa.Children in Mind is an invaluable resource for all those who work with troubled children and adolescents: psychologists, social workers, counsellors, educators and parents. The author's informed and compassionate approach will help equip professionals and parents to help young people navigate complex issues and make adjustments in their behaviour in order to live more balanced and happier lives.

Offers a searing analysis of government and expert scientists' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Friedman argues that South Africa is two societies in one - a 'First World' which resembles Western Europe and North America, and a 'Third World' which looks much like the rest of Africa or South Asia.

Presents a bristling example of protest theatre making during the height of apartheid. Created in ensemble fashion in 1986 by director Phyllis Klotz in collaboration with performers Thobeka Maqhutyana, Nomvula Qosha and Poppy Tsira, this play stands as a contemporary South African classic.

Bill Freund was an eminent South African historian who published in the areas of labour, capital and economic history. In this deeply introspective autobiography, we follow Bill's intellectual journey from a modest Jewish home in Chicago in the 1950s to the Universities of Chicago, Yale, Ahmadu Bello, Dar es Salaam Harvard, and KwaZulu-Natal.

Archives of Times Past: Conversations about South Africa's Deep History explores particular sources of evidence on southern Africa's time before the colonial era. It gathers recent ideas about archives and archiving from scholars in southern Africa and elsewhere, focusing on the question: 'How do we know, or think we know, what happened in the times before European colonialism?' Historians who specialise in researching early history have learnt to use a wide range of materials from the past as source materials. What are these materials? Where can we find them? Who made them? When? Why? What are the problems with using them? The essays by well-known historians, archaeologists and researchers engage these questions from a range of perspectives and in illuminating ways. Written from personal experience, they capture how these experts encountered their archives of knowledge beyond the textbook. The book aims to make us think critically about where ideas about the time before the colonial era originate. It encourages us to think about why people in South Africa often refer to this 'deep history' when arguing about public affairs in the present.The essays are written at a time when public discussion about the history of southern Africa before the colonial era is taking place more openly than at any other time in the last hundred years. They will appeal to students, academics, educationists, teachers, archivists, and heritage, museum practitioners and the general public.

Bones and Bodies is a highly accessible account of the establishment of the scientific discipline of biological anthropology. Alan G Morris takes us back over the past century of anthropological discovery in South Africa and uncovers the stories of individual scientists and researchers who played a significant role in shaping perceptions of how peoples of southern Africa, both ancient and modern, came to be viewed and categorised both in the public imagination and the scientific literature.Morris reveals how much of the earlier anthropological studies were tainted with the tarred brush of race science. He evaluates the works of famous anthropologists and archaeologists such as Raymond Dart, Thomas Dreyer, Matthew Drennan and Robert Broom, and demonstrates through a wide array of sources how they described their fossil discoveries through the prism of racist interpretation. Morris also shows how modern anthropology tried to rid itself of the stigma of these early racist accounts. In the 1960s and 1970s, Ronald Singer and Phillip Tobias introduced modern methods into the discipline that disputed much of what the public believed about race and human evolution. In an age in which the authority of experts and empirical science is increasingly being questioned, this book shows the battle facing modern anthropology to acknowledge its racial past but also how its study of human variation remains an important field of enquiry at institutions of higher learning.

Focuses on how decades of neoliberal capitalism have eroded the global democratic project and how, in the process, authoritarian politics are gaining ground. Scholars and activists from the political left focus on four country cases - India, Brazil, South Africa and the US - in which the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the pre-existing crisis.

Brings together life stories from LGBT migrants, refugees and asylum seekers living in Johannesburg and their battle to reconcile faith with their sexual identity.

San material culture has been a subject of study for many researchers and archaeologists but rarely has the documented material been seen through the eyes of the people themselves. San Elders Speakis the first attempt to document indigenous knowledge through the voices of four San elders from the Kalahari.

Edward Said described a public intellectual as someone who uses accessible language to address a designated public on matters of social and political significance. The essays in this volume apply this interpretive prism and activist principle to a South African context to tell the stories of well-known figures and some that have been forgotten.

Presents the history and inner workings of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) against the canvas of the major political developments in South Africa during the 1970s and 1980s up to the first democratic elections in 1994.