The struggle for the city : alcohol, the ematsheni and popular culture in Durban, 1902-1936

Bibliography: pages 337-373.This thesis concerns itself with the genesis and development of the Durban system but also provides a point of entry into the social history of Durban. There are a number of threads which hold this study together. The most central of these comprises an examination of those struggles between ordinary African people and the white rulers of the town over access to, and the production of drink generally, and utshwala in particular. The lengths to which the state in South Africa has gone in order to control the supply of alcohol, particularly utshwala, to African popular classes and the intensity of the resistance to this control has, with one notable exception, been largely ignored by historians. This neglect is understandable. Not only is the study of the making of South Africa's working classes in its infancy but regional social histories have only recently begun to make their appearance in written form. Moreover, research has tended to focus on the Transvaal, especially the Witwatersrand, and the main concern of such studies has been to concentrate on the regional with a view to arriving at more general conclusions about the state and the nature of class formation and consciousness. In their sensitivity to local-level and regional concerns, these studies are invaluable and certainly they represent an important step away from, as Tim Keegan has noted, the growing sterility of the debates on race and class, on segregationist ideology and practice, and on the nature and role of the state

The dispersal of the regiments: Radical African opposition in Durban, 1930

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented March 1986During the afternoon of 17 June 1929, 6 000 African workers abandoned their barracks, backyard dwellings, rented rooms and kias, and made their way through the streets of Durban towards the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU) Hall in Prince Edward Street. The more noticeable amongst the ranks of stickwielding workers included the barefoot dock workers, domestic servants in redtrimmed calico uniforms and ricksha-pullers displaying colourful tunics. The less noticeable comprised the majority - the labouring poor of the port town. The immediate reason for this mass mobilisation was the 'siege', by 600 white 'vigilantes', of the ICU Hall. Having beaten one African to death with pickhandles, the vigilantes comprising the 'well-educated', 'the elderly' and a 'large hooligan element1 attempted to storm the Hall. They mistakenly believed that two white 'traitors' - Communist Town Councillor S.M. Pettersen and A.F. Batty, an ICU organiser - were ensconced inside. When the "relief column" of workers finally reached the Hall they were greeted by 2 000 whites and 360 policemen. The violent clashes which followed left 120 injured and 8 dead. The riots of June 1929 in Durban occupy a brief moment within a wider process of sustained urban militancy. This popular opposition was an expression of both a particularly repressive and exploitative system of urban control and impoverishment in Natal's countryside during a period of economic depression spanning the years 1928 to 1933

So Who Was Elias Kuzwayo? Nationalism, Collaboration and the Picaresque in Natal.

P. La Hausse — Nationalisme, collaboration et « picaresque » au Natal : à propos de la vie d'Elias Kuzwayo. Bien que le point de départ de cet article ait trait à la carrière relativement obscure d'Elias Kuzwayo — criminel de petite envergure et escroc —, son objet principal est relatif aux questions plus larges que son existence soulève. On tente de montrer que la notion de « picaresque », lorsqu'elle est soutenue par des données historiques suffisantes, peut non seulement aider à éclairer les points nodaux de la présentation publique que Kuzwayo donne de lui-même, mais sert également à définir des personnages analogues ainsi que les crises historiques auxquelles ils ont été confrontés. On suggère également que l'ambiguïté morale que Kuzwayo élabore de façon picaresque, non seulement nous informe sur l'émergence de certains styles de leadership africain après 1940 mais attire également l'attention sur les sources culturelles de l'autorité politique populiste et sur certaines formes de collaboration entretenues vpar des membres de l'élite colonisée africaine avec l'état de l'Apartheid. À cet égard, la notion de « picaresque » fournit un mode d'accès au domaine largement inexploré du nationalisme ethnique et conservateur zoulou dans les années 1940 et 1950.La Hausse Paul. So Who Was Elias Kuzwayo? Nationalism, Collaboration and the Picaresque in Natal.. In: Cahiers d'études africaines, vol. 32, n°127, 1992. pp. 469-507

'Mayihlome!': Towards an understanding of Amalaita gangs in Durban, c.1900-1930

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented April, 1987In January 1915 eleven African youths armed with sticks were responsible for an apparently unprovoked assault on two African men. Half their number ware subsequently arrested and charged with breach of the peace. In the hot, dusty courtroom two intriguing facts came to light. Firstly, the victims of the assault were members of another more formally constituted body – the much resented African section of the Durban Borough Police. And secondly, the gang members failed to recognize them as policemen since one of them had been playing a mouth-organ. Perhaps the keen imagination of one of the youthful accused was responsible for providing the court with the vision of a policeman playing a mouth-organ, the possession of which sealed off what one official called the 'name universe' of the 'turbulent umfaan' from the ragged respectability of older African workers in the town. Either way, the ranks of youthful accused received sentences which, between 1900 and 1930, were shared by thousands of other young male workers - several months hard labour and at least ten lashes