Bare life in the bantustans (of the Eastern Cape): re-membering the centennial South African nation-state
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Date
2009
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University of Fort Hare
Abstract
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.
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Keywords
Democracy -- South Africa, South Africa -- History, Homelands (South Africa), Apartheid -- South Africa, Right of property -- South Africa