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Scholars who have been writing on the problems of classifying the oral song genres of Africa have tended to be inflexible. The oral song has been approached using functionalist and other anthropological theories. While these theories have shed some light on the nature of African oral song, this has been at the expense of exploring the actual song texts in their own right. This paper samples and explores some selected songs from the iSiXhosa cultural traditions by means of textual analysis. The paper intends to show that song genres cross-pollinate each other and that the recurrent themes in the songs contextualize and underpin the social and philosophical lives of the Xhosa people. Since the Xhosa people are differentiated in terms of age, class and gender, it follows that the themes of the songs reflect and mediate this reality. Songs can suggest new themes or can be interpreted in new ways which, when accepted in the Xhosa community, can then become dominant and recurrent ways of interpreting reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Megamiddens” appear along the West Coast of South Africa c. 3000–2000 BP. Kalahari San ethnography was used initially to explain them as processing localities given the massive volumes of marine shell and low densities of other remains. However, recent research in Lamberts Bay using a resource intensification model seems to explain more of the observed archaeological variability. In this paper, the evidence of Elands Bay megamiddens is studied in this same light and similar conclusions are arrived to. Rising population levels between 3500 and 2500 BP are followed by a reformulation of the foraging ecology of both marine and terrestrial prey, with isotopic values from human skeletons and archaeological data showing high marine food consumption during the megamidden period when compared to other stages. Signs of black mussel overexploitation are apparent by 3000 BP, although shellfish harvesting is most intense c. 2600–2200 BP. Further sampling of Elands Bay megamiddens is needed to better understand shellfish foraging between 3000 and 2500 BP. Foragers hunted less large mobile game by 2600 BP and instead small territorial bovids were procured more heavily at this time with tortoise collection being intensified between 3000 and 2600 BP. Cave usage may have been very different to that before and after the megamidden millennium given the lack of visits to these sites in Elands Bay at this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that, while the demise of apartheid has led to many situations in which South Africans now come into closer contact with one another, this increased 'contact' does not amount to greater racial integration. Contact occurs within a context of unequal power relations in which 'whiteness' continues to be privileged over 'blackness'. The result is that white people tend to benefit more from contact with the racial 'other' than black people, who often experience this contact as reinforcing their expectations of continued white dominance and privilege. While contact may undermine blatantly racist practices and overt racial conflict, racialized patterns of reasoning continue to exist, often unnoticed and unchallenged. These include the assumption that race is an incontrovertible fact of experience, the privileging of whiteness, the assumption that there exist different (biological) races which evince different forms of social behaviour and that these are essential properties of people rather than being historically or socially contingent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the so-called `cultural defence' in South African criminal law. The expression `cultural defence' refers to the phenomenon where indigenous customs are taken into account in the processes of a criminal trial and may have an effect on the outcome. In South Africa they may play such a role in two respects: first during the process of inquiry to ascertain if the requirements for a particular crime have been met; and secondly when a suitable punishment for a convicted accused must be determined. By making use of case law, illuminated by some comparisons with the role of Aboriginal customs in criminal trials in Australia, it is shown that culture played a definite role in South African cases prior to 1994, albeit not strictly in the sense of a true cultural defence. The paper then examines whether the South African Constitution and, in particular, its human rights provisions, brought about a new approach to be taken in matters where custom has been an element in the motivation for an act which would normally be a crime. Making particular reference to the examples of the twala custom (a form of abduction, with or without the consent of the girl or her parents, as a preliminary to a customary marriage) and belief in tokoloshe spirits, it is shown that South African courts have sometimes, although often reluctantly, given attention to these customs, although sometimes showing little understanding of them. The major question which emerges today is whether the constitutional provisions demand a formalisation of the cultural defence or whether the existing principles used in the evaluation and punishment of crimes could continue to be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the overlapping modalities and practical purposes of anthropological ethnographic knowledge and political–military intelligence gathering – the commonalities as well as the boundaries between them – through an analysis of the career of the anthropologist Jack Sargent Harris (1912–2008), a secret operative for the United States’ Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War in Nigeria and South Africa. Calling upon archival and oral historical sources, the article relates Harris’s training in Boasian cultural anthropology and as a professional ethnographer of African societies and cultures to the ways he recruited informants, conducted surveillance, related to foreign Allied officials, utilized documentary evidence, and worked to establish authority and credibility in his wartime intelligence reporting. The article argues that political purpose is a central artefact of anthropological ethnography as it is in other ethnographic modalities even if the justifications for these endeavours remain distinct. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The social pension was introduced in South Africa in 1928, but eligibility was extended to African South Africans in 1944 and to African Namibians only in 1973. Botswana introduced its own social pension scheme in 1996, and Lesotho followed as recently as 2004. Initially conceived as a welfarist programme to provide social assistance to 'poor whites', South Africa's social pension was later exploited for a complex combination of political objectives, including the control of African urbanisation and maintenance of rural labour reserves (Bantustans) in South Africa, and 'winning hearts and minds' during South Africa's occupation of Namibia. Since the accession to power of the ANC and SWAPO governments in the early 1990s, equity concerns and antipoverty objectives have dominated. Racially discriminatory payment levels were declared unconstitutional and have been eradicated in both countries. While concerns have been raised about the fiscal sustainability of the social pension, its future as a social welfare programme in southern Africa and elsewhere depends mainly on political commitment from governments and taxpayers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]