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ABSTRACT This article views the renewed attacks on white-owned commercial farms in the South African Free State as a recrudescence of a broader ethnographic history of conflict over territory, boundaries, and borders among a complex interfacing of ethnic and political groupings; principally the Basotho, Afrikaner settlers, and colonial British. The argument discusses disjunct or opposing conceptions held by blacks and whites of rights to occupy, dispose of, and exercise authority over territory along the Caledon River border. The conflicts – internecine, inter-communal, military and diplomatic – that resulted reveal underlying narrations of land and life along the Caledon border that are as disjunct as the political cultures and racial preconceptions and instrumentalities that gave rise to them. The paper excavates patterns of cross-racial and cross-border cooperation as well as conflict, and argues that establishing a dialogue amongst these monologic cultural narrations, creating a sense of shared storytelling and hence experience across racial as well as political boundaries and borders, might suggest a way forward for a region still troubled by a cross-racial violence with roots deep in both popular history and cultural memory. Analytically, the paper draws comparatively on interdisciplinary cultural studies of the United States-Mexico border, and in focusing on the role of popular narration makes a further contribution to 'border studies' as a field that crosses disciplinary boundaries as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars worried that political liberalization in South Africa would open the door to widespread racial and ethnic conflict or that elections would be little more than a 'racial/ethnic census'. Today, after South Africa's third successful election, ideas about the extent to which South African voters cast their votes on the basis of ascribed racial or ethnic identities remain controversial. This paper offers a new way to assess competing hypotheses about the micro-foundations of South African vote choice: by studying the correlates of a strategic voting behavior, split-ticket voting. This is accomplished by analyzing data from a 1997 survey in which respondents participated in a 'mock election'. The results show that ascribed identities do certainly play a role in predicting strategic voting in South Africa but that they are far from being the only important predictors. This research shows that strategic voting in South Africa is driven at least as much by political sophistication and political ideology as by loyalty to any racial, ethnic, or regional identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new-found democracy in post-apartheid South Africa was bound to confront the legacies of apartheid, one of which was the segregated spaces designed to foster a separate existence of different officially defined racial and ethnic groups. As apartheid came to an end and a negotiated settlement ensued in 1992, attention was paid to the reorganisation of society and its spaces in line with the vision of a non-racial democratic South Africa. Attempts to reorganise the apartheid territorial divisions by means of new boundaries created some new problems. This paper analyses the provincial boundary dispute between Mpumalanga and Northern Province over Bushbuckridge which began in 1993 and remained unresolved at the end of 1998. It argues that the dispute is not only about the boundary in question but also about opportunities and constraints offered by the process of transformation. The Bushbuckridge boundary dispute became more pronounced after the 1994 national election, although the problem itself pre-dated the election. Its later complications can be primarily laid at the door of the African National Congress, as the leading player in the post-apartheid government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the Chinese presence on the African continent being perceived and portrayed as a new global phenomenon there has been a concomitant, albeit sporadic and nuanced, emergence of an aversion to things Chinese, gradually permeating popular consciousness. In a post-colonial world these anti-Sinitic or Sino-phobic sentiments are crudely reminiscent of the late nineteenth century colonial cries of the "yellow peril", which culminated in acts of exclusion and extreme prohibition that singled out and targeted the Chinese in the various colonies across the Atlantic and Pacific including South Africa. This article, however, proposes to trace the genesis of some of anti-Sinicism to a pre-industrial period by considering developments in colonial Southern Africa. It will show how in the early Dutch settler and British colonial periods at the Cape, when the number of Chinese present in the region was miniscule, negative feelings towards the Chinese as the "other" were already apparent and evident in the reactions to them prior to the arrival of the large numbers which came to America, Australasia and Africa from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses itself to the politics of race as a sub-field of the sociology of race relations. It offers a conceptual framework for use in the sub-field by formulating a new concept called 'racial politics' and reformulating the concept of nationalism to link it with racial politics as defined. This is done with a view to casting light on certain theoretical and historical issues in the study of South African race relations, including (1) the importance of identifying different patterns of interaction between race and politics; (2) the identification of the conflict in South Africa as not simply a racial conflict; (3) seeing the use of racial categories for political mobilization by subordinate racial groups in South Africa as the result of the imposition of racial distinctions rather than from characteristics inherent in race itself; (4) recognizing that race and nationalist politics are connected but not identical; and (5) realizing that nationalisms based on race can in fact be racially inclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the approaches to understanding conflict and development in South Africa's transitional society are inadequate. There are some interesting contradictions in the new constitutional dispensation which could provide a basis for increased ethnic conflict. Firstly, the concession to the Zulu king is already resulting in other traditional leaders claiming the same constitutional status; while they are not likely to be taken very seriously, not having the political muscle to back them up, they could raise some interesting constitutional debates and result in a dispersion of resources. Also unresolved is the ongoing conflict of interests--in Natal and the Eastern Cape as well as in other provinces--between traditional authorities at local level in rural areas, and other interest groups in society such as women and youth. Secondly, the extent to which ethnic mobilization continues in a province such as KwaZulu/Natal will depend to some extent on the ability of the provincial government to meet developmental needs and overcome the

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In the migrant rich peri-urban sites of Rongai, Kenya and Katlehong, South Africa, social engagements are being shaped by usufruct ethics. The resulting modes of mutual accommodation are shaped by spatial circumstance and instrumental, pragmatic concerns rather than claims for ownership, representation, or cultural hegemony. In Kenya, ‘being cosmo’ enables residents to brace themselves against ethnicised violence and exclusion while opening space for multi-ethnic newcomers to pursue varied economic and social ambitions often tied to exclusive, ethnicised membership elsewhere. In South Africa, outcomes include multiple ethics of difference simultaneously practiced: some violently exclusive, others remarkably inclusive, yet without enduring hegemonies. Here, residents manage their every-day interactions with Others through disconnection—by ‘minding their own business’—a principle manifested in both passive tolerance and active benefit-seeking. These findings from Africa’s rapidly transforming urban peripheries speak to a growing, global trend in which varied forms of membership are being locally negotiated in the thrown together spaces that characterise many cities of the South. Beyond understanding such local dynamics, they give cause to question the spatial scale at which we locate integration and the very ethics and desired ‘outcomes’ scholars often presume ought to underlie diverse societies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines how the politics of Apartheid manifested themselves in networks that connected South Africa and the Netherlands. It analyses the transfer of narratives, images, ideas and political practices within a transnational kinship network, as well as through networks of political activists in both countries and worldwide. The footage a Dutch documentary maker shot during the 1980s, especially his focus on his well-established, ‘white’ relatives from South Africa and their encounters with ‘black’ compatriots, is used to trace these transnational dynamics. His material reveals the various narratives and markers of whiteness by which his relatives presented their privileged position in Apartheid South Africa as ‘normal’, while interviews with the filmmaker and some of his relatives in South Africa and the Netherlands some 25 years later give insights in how their performances were reshaped and received as ‘abnormal’ within the Dutch political context at the time. The post-apartheid memory work involved, show how the political and moral dilemmas are still felt to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the last decades, the concept ofstamverwantschap, or the special relationship between the Dutch and Afrikaner nation, has become out of vogue. This article tries to revitalise the concept by looking at its persistency over time, even during the apartheid era. TheNederlands Zuid-Afrikaanse Werkgemeenschap(NZAW) played an especially important role in maintaining the old idea ofstamverwantschapas a principle to stand up for each other's nation, even until the present day. Although the organisation lacked influence at the governmental level, they succeeded in keeping the Dutch-Afrikaner relation alive by focusing on exchange programs for journalists, politicians, students and teachers, while propagating a ‘critical dialogue’ to reform apartheid. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The relationship between language and ethnic identity is important. The importance is magnified in societies where language differences are a characteristic of inter-ethnic competition. Where language is connected to a political order, a change in that order can alter its fortunes. Afrikaans in the new South Africa constitutes an interesting context for the study of ethno-linguistics and the relationship between language and politics. With apartheid gone, the language no longer enjoys political patronage. Yet it remains an emotionally relevant and core feature of Afrikaner identity. This article considers the debate about the language's future in the light of research conducted with the Freedom Front Plus—which projects itself as South Africa's Afrikaner party. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There are moments in history where the imagined threat of satanism and the devil have been engendered by, and exacerbated, widespread social anxiety. This article looks at particular moments in which the ‘satanic peril’ emerged in the white South African imagination as moments of moral panic during which social boundaries were sharpened, patrolled, disputed, and renegotiated through public debate. Between 1989 and 1993, white politicians warned against the unholy trinity of ‘drugs, satanism and communism’, while white newspapers reported rumours of midnight orgies and the ritual consumption of baby flesh by secret satanic covens. From the bizarre to the macabre, the message became one of societal decay and a vulnerable youth. Moral panics betray a host of anxieties in the society, or segment of a society, in which they erupt. This article argues that the moral panic between 1989 and 1993, and the emergence of the ‘satanic peril’, betrays contextually specific anxieties surrounding the loss of power and shifts in class and cultural solidarity as white South Africa's social and geographic borders were transformed. We seek to elucidate the cultural changes in white South Africa during this period by illuminating the social, temporal and geographic boundaries that were disputed and renegotiated through the heightened and shifting discourse on satanism. With context provided by the satanic panics of the late 1970s in South Africa, and the transnational satanism scare of the 1980s, this article concentrates on South Africa's most virulent satanic panic, which occurred between 1989 and 1993. As this article shows, while the decade of the 1980s was marked by successive states of emergency and the deterioration of the edifice of apartheid, it began and ended with widespread alarm that Satan was making a bid for the control of white South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On a cold winter's day in June 1986, David Lukhele (a cabinet minister in the former KaNgwane) was gunned down mercilessly in his home by members of Umkhonto we Sizwe's elite 'elimination' unit. He was assassinated for his fervent defence of the apartheid government's 1982 plan to cede KaNgwane (and Ingwavuma) to Swaziland, and for mobilising - against the ANC's broader African nationalism - an unrepentantly chauvinistic Swazi ethnic nationalism deferential to 'incorporation' under King Sobhuza and Swaziland. Yet, the very same David Lukhele had, in 1973, come under government surveillance for mobilising landless chiefs in the Transvaal against a South African Swazi identity subservient to Sobhuza and Swaziland. This dramatic reversal in the politics of David Lukhele indexes the volatility of South African Swazi ethno-politics over the course of the twentieth century. From its beginnings in Sophiatown in 1931 to its deathly denouement in 1986, South African Swazi nationalism cultivated ethnic identification as a particularly fertile conjunctural politics of land, custom, and chiefly authority, instantiated interestingly by the insistent yearning for a Bantustan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to media arguments that Chinese migration to Africa is part of a Chinese state project, the vast majority of new Chinese migrants in South Africa arrived (or made decisions to stay) independently, motivated by their desires to improve their lives. Newer Chinese migrants tend to follow paths cut by those who came earlier; some of these earlier migrants from the PRC came with Taiwanese businesses or state-owned enterprises. Today's Chinese migrants are quite diverse: they come from various parts of China, with different levels of education and experience, and from different class backgrounds. Migration processes and migration successes are linked to sending country, receiving country and global conditions; however, Chinese migrants themselves play an integral role in shaping perceptions, constructing new identities and changing spaces, giving substance to the idea of a "global south". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the religious persecution of BaKhurutshe Anglicans of Tonota, located in modern Botswana, under regent Tshekedi Khama of the BaNgwato in the British colonial Bechuanaland Protectorate of South Africa. Anglicanism was against the government's religious policy which supported the beliefs of the London Missionary Society, a Congregationalist Protestant denomination. Some of the subjects considered include the political organization of British colonial reserve areas by chiefs, political and social aspects of rival Christian churches in Africa during the early twentieth century, and the historiography of religion and politics in Southern Africa.

The article presents an overview of ethnographic research which was conducted in the marketing department of the Rainbow City Entertainment complex in post-Apartheid South Africa in an effort to investigate the ways that old racist ideas influenced new business settings and to investigate the impact that the racist ideas and attitudes had on marketing strategies that were used at the complex. A brief discussion of the history of apartheid in south Africa and of its social influence and influence on business enterprises in South Africa is presented. Previous ethnographic research on racism is discussed.

Northern Ireland and South Africa are societies in a process of transition. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and the multi-racial elections in 1994 signified new eras in each country. Although successful in addressing the problem of political violence, how effective have these settlements been at the level of improving inter-ethnic relations and promoting the kind of shared identity that can begin to transcend the twin problems of sectarianism and racism? This article conducts a comparative examination of two urban minority groups viz the Protestant community of Londonderry and the white population of Pretoria. It uses the concept of 'alienation' as a way of exploring concerns that have been voiced by these groups who feel themselves to be culturally under threat. Notwithstanding these settlements, the article highlights the continued importance of ethno-symbolism for different groups and draws our attention to the nature of inter-ethnic competition in the post-agreement period. In addition to pointing to the durability of ethnic identity, it focuses on an issue that has the capacity to ignite inter-ethnic and inter-racial dispute. Whilst the issue keeps the ethnic fracture visible in Northern Ireland, it frustrates attempts at nation-building in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates support for redistributive land policy in contemporary South Africa. From a large survey conducted in 2004, the author assesses whether contemporary policy preferences reflected egocentric instrumentalism - direct and immediate profit from redistributive policies - or symbolic justice - non-instrumental concern for contemporary and historical injustices against groups. Analysis of the data decidedly favours the symbolic justice hypothesis. Land redistribution is a symbolic issue for most black South Africans, grounded in values connected to land as a symbol and in concern for the historical injustices of apartheid and colonialism. Because land policy preferences are so strongly associated with concerns for historical injustices against groups, the land issue remains volatile and resistant to 'simple' economic solutions. Land is thus an example of historical injustices colliding with demands for contemporary fairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The San of the Drakensberg are assumed to be extinct. Yet, there are Zulu-speaking people in the Drakensberg who still identify as San. These people and their claims both challenge the preconceived notions of what it means to be San in southern Africa and show the situational nature of ethnicity. The claims revolve around mutual ties and family genealogies that do not necessarily constitute a salient or 'complete' identity, but a process intimately tied with the history of the region and all its complexity, violence and changes. I show how people claim different ethnicities at different times, past and present, in order to respond to changing social and political conditions. By highlighting the situational nature of ethnicity, I fracture singular notions of ethnicity as seen in the image of the San as essentially Kalahari hunter-gatherers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perspectives of African informants and researchers profoundly shaped the writings of government ethnologist Dr. Nicholas Jacobus van Warmelo who not only collected information from local African informants but also relied on African researchers who wrote manuscripts in the vernacular that would constitute part of his archive. This study explores the process of producing knowledge on the 'Transvaal Ndebele', and provides an analysis of Van Warmelo's texts and of his researchers' manuscripts. By looking at the role of local interlocutors, I make a case for African agency in shaping the 'colonial ' expert's conceptions of Ndebele identity. This article provides an account of the co-production of cultural knowledge. Van Warmelo was employed by the South African Native Affairs Department to identify and fix 'tribes ', a highly political enterprise, and in the process generated an archive. His work was as much appropriated by the apartheid state for social engineering as by Ndebele interlocutors involved in contemporary struggles over chieftainship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social identity theories have posited that people's social categorization renders ingroup favoritism and outgroup discrimination. However, studies conducted during political transitions (South Africa's democratic election and East-West German unification) have revealed mixed directions of the causal links between social categorization and intergroup attitudes. To further address this issue, we conducted two longitudinal studies during the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. Study 1 revealed mixed temporal causal links between Hong Kong participants' social categorization and their attitudes toward Chinese Mainlanders across four waves. In Study 2, we conducted a summer camp in which Hong Kong participants came into contact with new immigrants from Mainland China. In this condition, Hong Kong participants' prior attitudes toward Mainlanders predicted their subsequent social categorization. These findings were interpreted in terms of intergroup relations during political transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of weekend-long prejudice-reduction seminars on attitudes, knowledge, and behavioral expectations of South African student leaders was assessed quantitatively and qualitatively. Pre–post comparisons indicated increases in perceived stereotyping-caused suffering, ease of committing cross-cultural mistakes, and comfort with approaching racially diverse strangers. The seminars did not reduce essentialist thinking, nor the in-group favoritism found with measures of group identification and comfort approaching strangers. Similarly, they did not affect summary measures of stereotype understanding, perceived inter- or intragroup heterogeneity, preferred model of interethnic relations, nor attitudes toward affirmative action. Despite limited evidence of seminar impact, participants evaluated the seminars highly. Qualitative results suggest that opportunities to address racially based misperception of self and in-group were particularly valued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I argue that historically high levels of underground violence in South African gold mines can be only partially explained by general cultural factors such as masculinity or race; social factors such as corporal punishment in schools; political factors such as state support for whites; or spatial factors such as the dangers of working underground. All are relevant and important as background conditions, but for a complete explanation, attention must also be paid to production relations in the workplaces themselves. The article begins with a close analysis of the only complete set of extant archival transcripts on underground assaults, the evidence to the 1913 Native Affairs Department Commission of Inquiry into the Grievances of Workers at Crown Mines. I argue that much of the workplace violence at Crown Mines in 1913 was specific to a particular historical set of work conditions on that mine at that particular time, rather than providing typical evidence of the incidence of assault underground. What the 1913 Crown Mines evidence does point to is the importance of organisation at the point of production for understanding workplace assaults. More generally, I argue that deeply entrenched industry-wide violent work practices underground should be attributed to the maximum average wage system, introduced on the mines in 1913. It was not until the maximum average system was abandoned in the 1960s that the institutionalisation of assault as a form of labour control could be successfully abrogated on the gold mines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After reviewing the main approaches to conflict settlement, this article shows how the root-causes of South African conflict during the apartheid period were related to its conflict structures, and how South Africa from the mid-1980s to the present seems to provide a relatively successful case of conflict transformation. In the case of conflict transformation what is required is the elimination of the roots of conflicts at the level of political, perceptual and economic structures. It is argued that in South Africa conflict transformation has been especially successful in transforming the political and perception structures, but less successful in transforming the structures of economic conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the dynamics of social exclusion and inclusion in South Africa. Social and political changes in South Africa; Race and ethnic relations; Rearticulation and reformulation processes in the country.

Features the Indian Market, a famous tourist landmark in Durban, South Africa. Dispute on public health issues between Indians and whites; Encapsulation of Indian class and caste differences; Racial prejudice of Durban citizens on Indian immigrants; Description of the Indian Market in Victoria Street.

Global popular culture is an increasingly significant site for the negotiation of identities. At Fernwood High School (a pseudonym), an urban, multiracial school in Durban, South Africa, the global popular is the fulcrum for the production of race and racial politics among students. Students' affective investments in popular culture become racialized, contextualized within the forces of contemporary South Africa, and intertwined with local racial and class dynamics. Using ethnographic examples based on a year-long case study, I demonstrate how popular culture is the ground for racial conflict, moments and spaces of racial connection, and the shifting of racial alliances. An analysis of popular culture's role in youths' identities can point to new formations and meanings of race, racial identities and racial relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses how the regime of Bophuthatswana, an independent bantustan in South Africa, reshaped its nation-building discourse into a distinctive regionalist coalition based upon socio-economic and ethnic criteria in 1990s. Problem of creating a unified identity; Ethnic and regionalistic claims; Apartheid policy; Regime's integration into South Africa's North West Province.

The article presents information on ethnic attitudes and station explosion at Johannesburg. At 4: 33 P.M. on July 24, 1964, an explosion occurred in the main concourse of the Johannesburg railway station. A suitcase containing dynamite and petroleum had been placed in one of the waiting rooms of the Whites only concourse. The explosion took place shortly before the main rush of homegoing workers. At the time of the explosion there were several hundred people in the concourse. An elderly woman who was seated close to the suitcase lost her life. The explosion at the Johannesburg station to be likely to be viewed by the general public against the background of sabotage attacks, prevalent at the time, which were aimed ostensibly at securing political advances for nonwhites in South Africa. The Johannesburg station explosion was also preceded by the arrest of a large number of persons under the 90-day clause. Any view of the incident as the work of a crank devoid of political significance, was probably dispelled by a statement issued by the Minister of Justice shortly after the explosion had occurred.