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The visual arts were fully represented within the culture of liberation that flourished within South Africa’s liberation movements. However, relatively little has been written about visual arts representing the armed struggle. This paper aims to explore the visual arts created around the armed struggle; and begin to position this within a broader understanding of the culture dynamics that emerged as part of Southern Africa’s liberation movements, and the armed struggle in particular. Most scholars agree that music, poetry and dance were integral cultural expressions within the liberation movements; styles often developed within military camps, then were adopted throughout ‘liberated zones’. In contrast, military structures provided little or no space to practice the visual arts. Active military personal had little time or resources to create visual artworks, no storage and exhibition space, and little access to reproduction or distribution. Visual representation of fighters - both in photographs and realistic portraits - could create a security risk if taken by the enemy. Unlike music and writing, most visual art of the armed struggle was therefore produced within the mass movements, and in solidarity movements supporting the armed struggle. This paper discusses direct (in some cases personal) experiences of problems confronting visual artists of the armed struggle; and solutions artists found for these. It places the failure to recognize the visual art of the armed struggle within a broader failure to explore the integration of armed resistance with cultural practice and belief in the struggle for democratic societies in Southern Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a prelude to the reconsideration of the writing life and contribution of an African intellectual and nationalist who, studiously and courageously, subjected the concepts of race, culture and nationalism to critical evaluation. Molema's engagement with popular politics began after his return from years of studying medicine at Glasgow University. However, from 1912 to 1921, he engaged with the history of South Africa intellectually, only later producing essays and speeches for more popular audiences. His study of black South Africans, The Bantu Past and Present (1920) challenged racist interpretations of the past, while also taking subtle aim at racism in Scotland during and after World War I. The text is multi-layered, moving from first- to third-person narration, which suggests that the author's own identity was subtly entangled with this project. In the Preface, the young writer defines his writing identity, revealing that the book's purpose is historical, ethnographical and, implicitly, nationalist. This paper examines the Preface's crucial role in defining the author's writing identity as nationalist and intellectual. Molema used his standpoint knowledge as ‘a member of the race’ whose story he ‘unfold[ed] to the world’ to begin the task of carefully reclaiming black history from the margins of South African cultural life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the Broadcasting Amendment Act of 1960, the South African government began to regulate forms of entertainment intended for public and private consumption. Radio broadcasts were controlled and musical recordings were regulated under this and subsequent legislation, with over 100 albums being banned outright and many more individual songs classified as ‘undesirable’. This legislation was applicable in the ‘homelands’, and musical productions – especially for SABC Radio Bantu – were censored. However, enforcing censorship laws in terms of live performances in the ‘homelands’ proved more problematic. Whilst the evidence from Venda lends some support to the established, romantic notion that musicians – and their music – were deeply embedded in the struggle against apartheid, there is equal evidence to suggest that many musicians at the time had little interest in revolutionary activity. Whilst self-censorship was prevalent on many levels, the motivation for this was not clear-cut. Christian convictions that those in power had been put there by God, or the liberating conviction that musicians were ‘simply entertainers’ and not politicians, prompted musicians to abide by censorship laws. Even for those who were politically aware, challenging the system was generally perceived to be not worth the risk. In the former ‘homeland’ of Venda, important exceptions to this stem from one family – the Mukwevho of Tshitomboni – whose most famous son, Colbert, made himself a target of the state by adopting reggae as his genre of choice. By charting Colbert's transition as a musician from the late 1970s to the present day, this paper demonstrates that musicians in the former ‘homeland’ of Venda had more freedom to record and perform ‘undesirable’ songs than has previously been accepted. However it does not follow that they all did so. The story of the Mukwevho family shows how different artists reacted in diverse ways to the political situation in which they found themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This special issue of the South African Historical Journal reflects on the state of the field of pre-industrial history at the Cape of Good Hope. It is an opportunity to look back on the previous decade of research, identify accomplishments, and chart future directions. We note a significant historiographical shift from research that focused broadly on colonised peoples, particularly slaves and Khoesan, to emerging literatures that give equally careful attention to colonisers. This shift moves the field toward a more complete picture of colonial society; it accompanies a present period of political uncertainty. The growing body of scholarship on early colonial history is drawing more practitioners. The resulting exploration of new topics and the revision of existing interpretations are producing robust, methodologically diverse work, especially noteworthy for its interdisciplinarity. While this work increasingly situates the Cape in broader regional and global histories, even more intentional efforts are required in order to avoid parochialism. The transition from Dutch to British rule at the Cape also requires further scrutiny. These efforts have the ability to challenge existing periodisations and lead to a re-examination of the continuities before and after the mineral revolutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The leadership that rose to power in FRELIMO in the early 1970s derived great strength from their international status. It was in the international context that they found crucial resources to put into effect their modernist nationalist vision, and the political networks they developed within the context of the Cold War played a major role in securing FRELIMO the status of the legitimate national liberation movement in Mozambique during the liberation struggle. This article specifically focuses on the Italian solidarity network supporting FRELIMO in Mozambique: this network was rooted in personal contacts developed from the early 1960s, and it gained a major role in Europe after the ‘International Conference of Solidarity with the Peoples of the Portuguese Colonies’, held in Rome in 1970. This article examines the exceptional ability of FRELIMO leaders such as Marcelino dos Santos to ‘internationalise’ their nationalist project, the brilliant diplomacy of these leaders in exploiting the features of the Italian political system and society, and the unusual amalgam of political and civil society groups across the Cold War divide that came together in support of FRELIMO’s cause in Italy. It argues that these factors were part of the vicissitudes of the anti-colonial struggle in Mozambique and are key to understanding how FRELIMO was able to consolidate its power at the time of independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1843 William Sammons founded the peculiarly named Sam Sly's African Journal (1843-1851) in Cape Town. Claiming to be a 'register of facts, fiction, news, literature, commerce and amusement', the African Journal was a hybrid newspaper and literary and satirical periodical aimed at an Anglophone immigrant readership. Studies of the press have emphasised its role as a discursive agent in forming imagined communities of identity, but this has tended to focus on isolating nations or localities rather than noting the global context. However, recent scholarship on the British Empire has moved beyond nationally focused histories towards examining metropole and colony within the same mutually constitutive frame. This article draws on the conception of the circulation of newspapers as a significant means for negotiating geographies of identity in the empire, but seeks to broaden the focus beyond networks of competing official, humanitarian and settler discourses. This involves examining the materiality of the colonial press - its local and global circulation and readership, and the nature of its diverse content ranging from imaginative literature, to letters and editorials - to shed light on how the African Journal's readers negotiated their identity, cultural attachment and respectability as colonists of British descent poised on the empire's periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the loss of their American colonies and prior to the settlement of the land which became known as Australia, the British Government intended to found a penal settlement in South West Africa at the mouth of the Orange River. The main proposer of this scheme, Edward Thompson, died before the plan was put into action. This article asks the counterfactual question of what might have happened, had Thompson lived to give a very different story of the voyage to 'Das Voltas'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we discuss a census made of the Cape mission stations in 1849. First, we analyse how it came into being, in terms both of the political pressure which led to the decision of the Legislative Council of the Cape Colony to order its compilation, and of the process by which the actual work was done. Second, we present a number of the more salient of the results of the census, which allow for the first time a full compilation of the number of residents at (almost all) the mission stations within the Cape Colony, broken down by sex and to a degree by age. At the same time, we can provide a degree of information on the ways in which the mission inhabitants were integrated into the Cape's labour process, both formal and informal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the nation and citizenship are addressed in new South African history textbooks with reference to two key issues: changing approaches to textbook analysis, migration and xenophobia. Constructions of the nation take on special significance in this context. The article uses an approach that considers both representational issues as well as the uses of textbooks in classrooms. It examines discourses of the nation in nationally distributed texts and explores uses of these and other texts in specific classrooms in urban schools. It argues that the textbooks embrace 'nation-building pluralist' and 'critical skills' or 'model textbook' conceptions. Although new textbooks appear to foreground broader notions of South Africanism incorporating inclusionary, Africanist identities and embody understandings of history textbooks as source- based in order to promote critical thinking, teachers appear to make limited use of them, preferring to rely on their own notes. The article uses a combination of secondary and primary sources to arrive at these conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the hidden agenda of how to define the nature of the missionary enterprise in its relationship to British colonialism. Focus on a 19th century scandal involving James Read, superintendent of the London Missionary Society (LMS) in South Africa; Read's admission to impregnating a teenager; Moral outrage concerning the approach of the LMS to missions.

Discusses the January-February 1960 tour of Africa by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Socio-economic state of Africa; Itinerary; Reaction of Africa to visit; Reason for visit to Africa; Preparations for the tour.