Theses and Dissertations

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    The Loss of the Ancestral Inheritance.... Land Loss During the Monarchical Era in Israel, and its Relevance for South Africa
    (University of Fort Hare, 2001-05) Sonanzi, Zanele
    This dissertation seeks to investigate and analyse the issue of land loss. This study will focus on the monarchical era in particular as described in the Old Testament as well as its relevance for South Africa. At first the study highlights the significance of land and its ownership from an Old Testament perspective. Contrary to that ideal of land ownership, the aspect of land dispossession by those in power is a major concern in this work especially during the monarchical era. This is coupled with some detrimental effects it has on people's social lives both during the Monarchical era and the contemporary South African contexts. The term "land ownership" as used in both contexts is perceived as the basic human right to property while "land loss" on the other hand, is understood as the violation of that basic human right.
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    African National Congress Education in Exile in Tanzania, 1978-1992: Dilemmas and Ambiguities
    (University of Fort Hare, 2000-10) Pulumani , Loyiso
    The opening of an educational institution by the African National Congress (ANC) in 1978 was a crucial step in the history of the organization. The very fact that a school is not at first sight an obviously 'political' entity implied that the ANC was bidding to lead and mould South African society in a comprehensive way, and signified that it was finally re-establishing itself as a major player in contemporary South African politics. The lull of the late sixties and early seventies had seen other organizations emerging to the fore in the ongoing political discourse. That the ANC had its headquarters and leaders outside the country made it seem far away in the eyes of ordinary people.
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    Memory Into Narratives: An Analysis of Stories of Xhosa Widows In the Eastern Cape
    (University of Fort Hare, 2004-07) Guzana, N.V.
    The research has been prompted by the diversity of the Xhosa culture of mourning, which is the cause of the detriments of this rite of passage. My objective is to create ground for the evaluation of widow's experiences, their views about widowhood and the culture of mourning. It is intended as a call to the Xhosa society and intellectuals to listen to the voices of the silenced widows. It intends to serve as a witness that, as long as they are silenced, there is much that is not known about widows and widowhood. It also looks at two widows' experiences as a demonstration of a need to allow widows to narrate their personal experiences with the culture of mourning as a way of liberating them, and to let us, the others, to know who they really are. The research seeks to emphasize the importance of narrative as a tool for representing experience, to create ground for a realistic portrayal of widow characters in works of literature, and to motivate these silenced women to raise their voices against their distortion, therefore their misrepresentation. Hopefully, a debate on the culture of mourning, based on personal narratives by widows, could lead to a way of observing this culture that will be owned and upheld with pride and conviction by Xhosa women.
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    Bare life in the bantustans (of the Eastern Cape): re-membering the centennial South African nation-state
    (University of Fort Hare, 2009) Westaway, Ashley
    This thesis argues that 1994 did not mark a point of absolute discontinuity in the history of South Africa. More specifically, it asserts that 1994 did not signal the end of segregationism; instead of democracy leading to national integration, the Bantustans are still governed and managed differently from the rest of the country. Consequently, it is no surprise that they remain mired in pervasive, debilitating poverty fifteen years after 1994. In insisting that contemporary South Africa is old (rather than new), the thesis seeks to make a contribution to political struggles that aim to bring to an end the segregationist past-in-the-present. The thesis is arranged in seven chapters. The first chapter considers the crisis that has engulfed South Africa historiography since 1994. It traces the roots of the crisis back to some of the fundamentals of the discipline of history, such as empiricism, neutrality and historicism. It suggests that the way to end the crisis, to re-assert the relevance of history, is for historians to re-invoke the practice of producing histories of the present, in an interested, deliberate manner. Chapter 2 narrows down the focus of the thesis to (past and present) property. It suggests that instead of understanding the constitutional protection of property rights and installation of a restitution process as the product of a compromise between adversarial negotiators, these outcomes are more correctly understood as emanating from consensus. The third chapter outlines the implementation of the restitution programme from 1994 to 2008. The productive value of restitution over this period is found not in what it has delivered to the claimants (supposedly the beneficiaries of the programme), but rather in its discursive effects related to citizenship in the new South Africa. Chapter 4 considers the exclusion of dispossession that was implemented in the Bantustans from the restitution programme. It argues that this decision was not an oversight on the part of the post-1994 government. Instead it was consistent with all other key policy decisions taken in the recent period. The Bantustans have been treated differently from the rest of South Africa; they have been deliberately under-developed, fabricated as welfare zones, and subjected to arbitrary customary rule. Whereas Chapters 2 to 4 look at the production of historical truth on the side of domination, Chapter 6 and 7 consider production on the side of resistance. Specifically, they describe and analyse the attempts of an NGO to establish the truths of betterment as dispossession, and post-1994 prejudice against the victims of betterment dispossession. They serve as case studies of third party-led processes that seek to produce truth-effects from within a prevailing truth regime. The final chapter attempts to bring many of the threads that weave through the thesis together, by means of a critical consideration of human rights discourse. The chapter calls on intellectuals to establish truths in relation to the history of ongoing human wrongs in South Africa (as opposed to the rainbow narrative of human rights) Finally, the thesis includes a postscript, comprising technical summaries of each of the chapters.