Lord Milner and the S.A. State

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented June 1979The years between 1886 and 1910 were amongst the most dramatic in the history of southern Africa. Mineral discoveries at Kimberley in 1868, followed by the more important discovery of vast seams of deep-level gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886, inaugurated an industrial revolution whose socio-economic and political repercussions constitute the major themes of Southern Africa's twentieth-century history. Whereas at the beginning of the period, the region was still composed of a cluster of British colonies, Afrikaner republics, African protectorates and kingdoms, by 1910 the entire area as far north as Katanga was under British rule, and the societies of the sub-continent were being increasingly meshed into a single political economy. It was a political economy, moreover, in which the vision expressed by Sir Alfred Milner in 1897 of ‘a self-governing white community... supported by a well-treated and justly governed black labour force from Cape Town to the Zambezi’ was being given effect —even if there is room for doubt about the precise definition of 'well-treated and justly governed'. A major colonial war (familiar to most as the Boer War) — perhaps the costliest in lives and money during the ‘scramble’ for Africa — against the Afrikaner republics, as well as numerous ‘little wars’ against African people, had led to the creation of a new colonial state south of the Limpopo. Moreover, with the unification of South Africa in 1910, boundaries were drawn and a stale system brought into being whose characteristics were to provide the foundation for the capitalist development of South Africa and imperial ambitions in the region for the next half-century and more

The nursing profession and the making of apartheid

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: Structure and Experience in the Making of Apartheid, 6-10 February, 1990

The tradition of non-racism in South Africa

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: Democracy, Popular Precedents, Practice and Culture, 13-15 July, 199

Patriotism, patriarchy and purity: Natal and the politics of Zulu ethnic consciousness

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 4 August 1986On 5 August 1985, the violence which had already led to a State of Emergency in much of South Africa exploded in Natal, leaving more than seventy people dead and thousands injured and homeless in the course of a week and raising the spectre in some areas of a repetition of the anti-Indian riots of 1949. In 1985 at least half the dead were shot by the police, and it would be foolish to see the disturbance in simple racial terms. Political differences between the newly formed United Democratic Front and the Zulu cultural movement, Inkatha, and sheer economic deprivation which led to the looting of African as well as Indian traders, warn against any simple equation of the violence with racially motivated anti-Indian sentiment per se

Black and White in self-governing Natal: An assessment of the 1906-8 disturbances.

The Natal disturbances of 1906-8 have to be seen against the social, economic and political framework of the colony, and a distinction has to be drawn between the past history of zulu-land and that of Natal itself. In both areas however land and labour policies and considerable African poverty were the underlying cause of unrest and the 1905 Poll Tax has to be linked to this. The breakdown in communication between black and white was manifested in a spate of hostile rumours amongst both grave about the intentions of the other. Natal handling of opposition to the Poll Tax and the Moderation of Martial Law after a relatively minor incident acted as a precipitant of further violence. During the disturbances, responses varied from chiefdom to Chiefdom and even within chiefdoms. Frequently this was related to the workings of traditional polities. As significant as why certain people rebelled is why others did not. In this the past history of the group was highly rehevant. Despite a widespread belief that Dinusulu was behind the rebellion and the unrest in Zululand in 1907, thin is 'not proven', although his name was used by the rebels as an essential centralising device. Allegations that the 'Ethiopian' Churches were responsible for the outbreak and that Christian Africans had played a prominent part in the rebellion were exaggerated, although Christian-inspired millenial beliefs contributed is the ferment in Natal. In the long term, although the rebellion was a striking demonstration of the Best of armed resistance, it contributed to the growing sense of the need for political unity saodest both black and White in South Africa

Biomedical colonialism or local autonomy?: local healers in the fight against tuberculosis

Analiza el papel de los agentes médicos autóctonos y sus conocimientos en las campañas antituberculosas contemporáneas en el África subsahariana. Sitúa la medicina contemporánea, llevada a cabo en África en la herencia cultural de la medicina colonial, para comprender el marco histórico en el que se desarrollaron, a partir de los años setenta del siglo XX, las estrategias de la Organización Mundial de la Salud de promoción y desarrollo de las medicinas 'tradicionales'. En los proyectos sanitarios analizados, se evalúan las prácticas médicas locales y se entrenan a los agentes autóctonos para integrarlos en actividades estrictamente biomédicas: identificación de síntomas, remisión a hospitales o supervisión de tratamientos farmacológicos.The article explores the role played by indigenous medical agents, and their knowledge, within contemporary tuberculosis campaigns in sub-Saharan Africa. To understand the historical framework within which the World Health Organization devised its strategies to promote and develop traditional medicine as of the 1970s, the article contextualizes contemporary medicine as a cultural legacy of colonial medicine. Under the public healthcare projects analyzed in the article, local medical practices were assessed and indigenous agents trained so they could take part in strictly biomedical activities, like symptom identification, referrals to hospitals, or supervision of drug treatments.Trabajo realizado para la obtención del Diploma de Estudios Avanzados (DEA) en el programa de doctorado Salud: Antropología e Historia, bajo la dirección de la profesora Rosa María Medina Doménech