Power And Resistance In An African Society

Imagine a history of the United States written from the perspective of the African-American community. Imagine that the story of this community is told not only from the viewpoint of its leaders--the middle-class elites--but also from the viewpoint of sharecroppers, industrial workers and others living on the margins of American culture. And finally, imagine that this is not only about political and economic relations but also about "race," class, gender, and religious relations, about the lived experiences of one community that both reflect and represent fundamental issues of power and resistance in an entire society. This is what Les Switzer has tried to do with his book Power and Resistance in an African Society. Scholars who have read it suggest that this is the first attempt to write a history of South Africa from the perspective of one subordinate community in South Africa. The reult is a transformed history "from below." The names, dates, events, and issues of conventional textbook history lose their meaning in the process of reconstructing a history that seeks to free the African from the domain of South Africa's ruling culture. The book also offers a unique contribution to African studies in sub-Saharan Africa, because it explores the material and symbolic manifestations of power and resistance in a pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial setting. The Ciskei region in the eastern Cape was selected as the case study. This was the historic zone of conflict between European and Bantu-speaking African in southern Africa--the Cape-Xhosa wars in this region lasting a century. The contemporary African nationalist movement in South Africa first emerged in a variety of organizational forms in the Ciskei during the 1870s and 1880s. The strategy of petitionary protest probably persisted longer here than anywhere else in South Africa in the post-colonial period, but popular resistance found a variety of windows outside organized African politics. The Ciskei, for example, was a focal point of rural resistance in the 1920s and early 1930s and again between the early 1940s and early 1960s. The gap between rural and urban dissidents in South Africa, moreover, was first bridged in the Ciskei and its environs during the 1952 Defiance Campaign. Finally, the Ciskei's segregated African reserve, where economic conditions were judged to be most serious, emerged as a primary site of struggle on South Africa's periphery during the 1970s and 1980s. The focus of this study is on the Xhosa-speaking peoples who lived in the Ciskei region in the first century after conquest. To highlight the linkages between regional and national issues, the Xhosa in the Ciskei are examined in the context of unfolding events in the Cape Colony and in the unified settler state of South Africa after 1910. A distinct plurality of voices would be formed in the complex interplay between color, consciousness, and class, as this community sought space for itself within the domain of South Africa's ruling culture.

Examines the variety of mostly unorganized and informal ways in which Africans exercise agency and resist state power in the 21st century, through citizen action and popular culture, and how the relationship between ruler and ruled is being reframed.

The book explores forms of popular student resistance to apartheid education in South Africa, particularly at the University of Fort Hare (UFH), by tracing student activism at UFH from 1970 to 2000; highlighting the factors that influenced the development of a culture of student resistance; investigating the root causes that made Fort Hare exceptional in its stand against apartheid; and chronicling the educational and social implications that resulted from students’ unparalleled and fearless actions against the apartheid system. Student resistance at Fort Hare can be traced as far back as the 1940s; however, this book will primarily focus on the critical 1970–2000 period, which was marked by increased student activism in South Africa. The 1980s and 1990s were peak years for student activism in the country. There is no doubt that student struggles during this period and thereafter helped dismantle apartheid and usher in a new South African government.

Study of sociological aspects of arbitrary power, with particular reference to political leadership of tribal peoples in Africa - covers cultural factors of social structures, political systems in traditional societies, psychological aspects of leadership, etc., and includes case studies. Bibliography pp. 345 to 374 and references.

In rural South African clinics, Black nurses were charged with administering life-saving health care measures despite a lack of equipment and personnel, often while navigating the intersections of traditional African healing practices and changing gender relations. A Bold Profession is an homage to their dedication to the well-being of their communities.

In this sophisticated study of power and resistance, Jean Comaroff analyzes the changing predicament of the Barolong boo Ratshidi, a people on the margins of the South African state. Like others on the fringes of the modern world system, the Tshidi struggle to construct a viable order of signs and practices through which they act upon the forces that engulf them. Their dissenting Churches of Zion have provided an effective medium for reconstructing a sense of history and identity, one that protests the terms of colonial and post-colonial society and culture.

A magisterial history of South Africa, from the earliest known human inhabitation of the region to the present. Lynn Berat updates this classic text with a new chapter chronicling the first presidential term of Mbeki and ending with the celebrations of the centenary of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress in January 2012. “A history that is both accurate and authentic, written in a delightful literary style.”—Archbishop Desmond Tutu “Should become the standard general text for South African history. . . . Recommended for college classes and anyone interested in obtaining a historical framework in which to place events occurring in South Africa today.”—Roger B. Beck, History: Reviews of New Books