Poachers, proletarians and gentry in the early twentieth century Transvaal

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented March 1984The political economy of hunting is one of the neglected fields of South African social history. Hunting wild animals as an occupation within settler and indigenous societies was for at least two hundred years, between 1670 and 1870, essential for survival, subsistence and often for the creation of income and capital. By the end of the 1890s, however, European rule and merchant capitalism had, by their efforts to subjugate nature brought about the almost complete destruction of wild-life on the sub-continent. As a result, by the beginning of the 20th century, hunting had become a closely regulated pastime for a very small group of well-to-do Angliphone and Afrikaner settlers and a forbidden means of acquiring a subsistence for an equally small group of Africans and Afrikaner poachers. For the poachers wild life represented an ultimately ineffective way of staving off what had become an inevitable process of proletarianisation. To the new men of wealth, property and power in the post South African war era - company promoters and directors, stock brokers, share jobbers, senior mining engineers and managers, lawyers, medical men and journalists - hunting was one important means of creating a new corporate identity. Hunting, crucially because it was associated with British landed upper classes was seen to provide an ethos for creating and transforming a gentry. Although this ethos drew on older notions of ' sportsmanship' these had been transformed and given an African context by several generations of Victorian hunter-authors whose writings had presented Africa and its wild- life as a vast natural resource waiting to be subjugated. It was from this literature that the new men of a reconstructing and industrialising Transvaal obtained many of their images, images which were employed to turn themselves into a ruling class. Hunting or 'sport' was to provide them - so they believed - with an exclusive and a newly established common life style which would barr outsiders as much as it barred poor blacks and poor whites. For the new ruling class hunting could create, metaphorically, as well as literally, a monopoly of consumption, the ultimate objective of a ruling group seeking to enforce its power. By the end of the 19th century the acquisition of these African hunting-fields enabled members of settler classes, as they began to take root, to relate to their metropolitan equivalents on increasingly equal terms. Thus when Randolph Churchill, whose influence was power, it was hoped could be used to influence the City and the Colonial Office to be well disposed to mining adventures, visited the Transvaal in 1890, he was taken hunting on the Lewis and Marks farms of the Vereeniging Estates

Kinshasa's Theatre of Power

The DRC’s capital is set to become Africa’s largest city, but struggles to assert its authority over a profoundly fractured state as it expands in chaotic fashion. Dilapidated infrastructure and a disintegrating formal economy have not extinguished Kinshasa’s extraordinary cultural vitality, or its role as a centre of political opposition

Landlord and tenant in a colonial economy: The Transvaal, 1880-1910

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented December 1977. Not to be quoted without the Author's permission.A secret society with the professed aim of the 'promotion of all the interests of the Afrikaner nation'. (3) the Afrikaner Broederbond (hereafter the A.B. or Bond) has long been the bogeyman of South African politics. Its operations are attacked as detailed and lurid conspiracies, and defended as the innocent, confidential actions of public-spirited men. In the process, though much authoritative data on the Bond exists, its nature, functions and role have been thoroughly mystified. At the outset it must be stated that the A.B. has exerted a profound influence at all levels of South African politics. This paper attempts the beginnings of a demystification of the Bond's operations and an assessment'of its role up till 1946. Given its secret nature, this is necessarily sketchy and schematic. Yet such an assessment requires more than ideological forms with those of the new capitalism

Africa's Leaky Giant

Recent analysis of Congo’s plight has foregrounded notions of local agency and impenetrable complexity, excluding structural analysis. In a landmark rebuttal, Joe Trapido argues that it is just as implausible to deny the agency of powerful outsiders as that of powerful Africans. Dynamics of a primitive accumulation that never results in sustained development, its gains still leaking overseas

The Paradox of Popularity: Why Popularity Does Not Signal Participation

Although strong ties are typically formed in shared settings, we know little about the characteristics of settings that attract and retain people. Meanwhile, the Internet has broadened the search for settings. As people turn to the web to find local, offline social settings to join, simple, searchable features– notably location, interest, size and age–guide their choices. Whether such features are helpful for establishing meaningful social relations has not been empirically tested. Using unique data on participation in online to offline communities, we explore the characteristics that attract members and the features that aid in their retention. We find that, although prospective members seek large and established groups when searching for organizations, such groups are less likely to foster community through repeated participation

Type Z

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College

Les Combattants, Ideologies of exile, return and nationalism in the DRC

Focused on London, this article looks at the ideology and practice of Congolese nationalism in exile, and at the ideas of home, belonging and return connected with this. Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) migrants came to Western Europe escaping violence and economic and political collapse but, for a long time, the imaginative concentration of the diaspora was not on politics, but on a consumer-based version of the good life. This article traces how this changed in the 2000s with the diaspora becoming a focus for violent and racialized forms of nationalism. Tracing this evolution historically, we look at how the practices and ideologies of ‘return’ and ‘home’ have come to express this transformation of exile nationalism

Clients’ outcomes from providers’ networks: the role of relational exclusivity and complementary capabilities

Organizations have leeway in how much they employ their network relations to the benefit of their clients. When do they do so more rather than less? Relying on research on trust and knowledge absorption, the authors suggest that providers’ network relations generate better outcomes for their clients when these relations are concentrated in a limited, exclusive set of partners. The authors argue that providers’ relational exclusivity benefits clients because it facilitates the awareness and use of partners’ complementary client service capabilities. An analysis of a regional network of patient referrals among 110 hospitals supported this argument. The study highlights the role of interorganizational partnership networks in activating client service capabilities and stimulates further inquiry into providers’ network features that benefit the users of their services

Things.info - how to create a WEB platform representing all man-made objects and their relationships

The research question is how to create the appropriate (highly usable, rapidly scalable, modifiable by all internet users) web and mobile platform for Things.info - visualised interactive database of world’s man-made physical objects and their relationships? Thesis covers theoretical background, poses underlying assumptions and critical success factors to accomplish the task in question. Two critical success factors – early adopters and high usability - are studied experimentally. Possible early adopters are identified through qualitative interviews. User experience testing is carried out based on lean UX theory and using interactive prototype. Overall, lean startup and agile software development methods are recommended to develop the platform in question.http://tartu.ester.ee/record=b2656162~S1*es