NOVEMBER 2008

Apply now for two Master's internships

THE Youth, Gender and Reproductive Health Programme at FHISER, in partnership with the Higher Education AIDS (HEAIDS) office at the University of Fort Hare, are offering two full time Master's internships.

The interns will work closely with the HEAIDS office for the first six months of their internship documenting the research on HIV/AIDS that has been conducted by the University of Fort Hare and developing a data bank.

The intern shall also be enrolled in the two year African Studies Master's Programme provided by FHISER within the African Gender Studies area of specialisation. The first module in the programme, offers an introduction to the development, context and major issues in the study of gender and reproductive health in HIV/AIDS in Africa. The second module explores issues around research methodology. The third module can be selected from a range of MA modules offered by the university.

The candidate is expected to write a mini dissertation to complete the course. On completion of the programme, the intern will be awarded a Master's degree in Social Science specialising in African Gender Studies.

For more information on course details and the programme, contact Dr Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, e.mail: nmkhwanazi@ufh.ac.za or fax: +27 (0)86 623 4428

SEPTEMBER 2008

Exploring the narratives of shipwreck survivors in the 16th and 17th centuries

RETIRED former head of the East London Museum, Gill Vernon, has had a lifelong love affair with the history of this region.

Now she is indulging her passion by researching what she calls a pre-colonial history of South Africa 's south-east coast by examining texts detailing shipwreck survivors' accounts of their journeys to Delagoa Bay (modern-day Maputo in Moçambique).

“A few people have used these narratives before, but have placed the wreck sites in the wrong places, so their subsequent observations have been incorrectly placed” Vernon said.

This is exactly what she plans to rectify together with filling in the gap between the more well-documented histories of the 1800s back to the historical research uncovered by early archeological finds.

It all started when she took part in a project to identify the Portuguese shipwrecks sites along South Africa 's eastern seaboard, undertaken by Graham Bell-Cross, then Deputy Director of the Museum.

Once retired, Vernon approached Professor Gary Minkley, who enthusiastically encouraged her to register for a PhD. Minkley heads up the Culture, Heritage and Social Transformation programme at FHISER.

Asked what texts were available to work from, bearing in mind these are shipwrecks between the years 1552-1755, she said there are texts in Portuguese which both George McCall Theal and Charles Ralph Boxer (both eminent historians) translated into English.

Gill has worked on the narratives of eight Portuguese shipwrecks and added two Dutch shipwrecks - Stavenisse (1686) and Bennebroek (1714) and the English East Indiaman, the Doddington (1755).

The main point of the research has been to analyse the narratives and record a part of the history of the indigenous people during this early period. Who they were, where they were living and what ‘footprint' did these early strangers leave with their African hosts?

While the focus has been on the history of the indigenous people, the record of the epic journeys of these shipwreck survivors has been fascinating and the local people must have been astonished to see these extremely large groups, varying between 200 to 500 people, appearing out of the sea.

All the ships carried large numbers of slaves, not only from Africa , but including Chinese, Indians, Indonesians and Japanese. According to Vernon , in their interactions, “religion was the big divider; colour and race didn't seem to come into it”.

Many of the survivors remained with the local people, becoming acculturated, marrying local women and having families. Most of these would have been the ex-slaves, but some Portuguese preferred the African life-style, even though their religion had told them that their souls would not be saved.

Most of the survivors did not endear themselves to the local people by their habit of shooting and looting first and then demanding trade goods. There are even accounts of cannibalism practiced by the survivors when food was short, which shocked the local inhabitants, she said.

By comparison, there was one group which moved inland and who had an enlightened leader. He treated the people with dignity and respect, politely asked the chiefs for assistance and was met with courtesy in return and was provided with guides for most of the journey, added Vernon.

SEPTEMBER 2008

FHISER students present papers at 2008 national Anthropology Conference

EIGHT students and the FHISER director, Professor Leslie Bank will be presenting papers on their current research at the Anthropology Southern Africa Conference at the University of the Western Cape from 31 August to 3 September.

The papers touched on a variety of issues ranging from land reform in Zimbabwe, heritage and meanings in the Eastern Cape to material life in new townships in the province and the argument that intellectuals are not engaging with critical issues facing the country but "hiding in ivory towers".

The following is an edited extract from a paper on the Zimbabwean land reform programme in southern Matabeleland.

‘Cattle raising is our lifeblood'

By Clifford Mabhena (PhD student, FHISER)*

* Please do not cite without permission.

MABHENA argues that the state land redistribution in southern Matabeleland has failed because the policy is based on crop farming and does not take into account the dominant mode of production people in Matabeleland use – that of livestock farming.

The area in question is arid and has a much lower rainfall than the more well-watered Mashonaland to the north. The Zimbabwean land reform programmes since independence has been biased toward village settlements and crop farming (Jocelyn 1991, 2003, Marongwe 2003, McGregor 2002). Geographical research conducted over the last hundred years has classified southern Matabeleland as a dry region falling in climatic agro regions IV and V, basically suitable for ranching (Chatora 2003, Moyo 1995). However, state hegemony and its development apparatus has misrepresented this evidence by exercising power and authority over resettlement models in this region.

The state has constructed an imaginary target population and target area by misrepresenting knowledge in order to consolidate its hegemony. Inappropriate development models such as the scheduled AI and A2 farm models has failed to take root among the people from this region, yet the 'one-size-fits-all' policy continues to dominate the land redistribution agenda.

Of course recent research has indicated that agrarian livelihoods are dwindling and are fast being replaced by off-farm livelihoods. In southern Matabeleland the effects of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) coupled with inappropriate resettlement models have driven most able bodied household members into activities such as gold panning and migration as alternatives to traditional agrarian practices (Moyo: 2000c).

Mabhena argues that the pursuit of these alternatives is a result of misinterpretation of the knowledge and needs of this target population and target area by the state apparatus. Jocelyn (1991) concluded in her comparative study of the Insiza district of southern Matabeleland and Manicaland, that the limited incidences of squatting on commercial farms in the 1980s into the 1990s was evidence that the target population had no immediate interest in village resettlement. Instead most livestock owners in communal areas reacted to the demand for land by poaching livestock grazing on abandoned, state and commercial farms, showing their preference of a resettlement model that addresses the need for grazing land. The Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) introduced in 2000 had the capacity to address grazing needs of communal areas as more land was made available through the expropriation of most former commercial farms. Mabhena contends what little capacity the FTLRP had on improving communal area livelihoods, has been jeopardized by the type of models implemented. He concludes the FTLRP has reduced agrarian livelihoods of residents of southern Matabeleland .

Laura Miti (MA candidate)
New Meanings for Old Buildings
lauramiti@yahoo.co.uk

Heritage will always be a contested notion in South Africa. This paper is a summary of a thesis chapter entitled The Politics of Heritage: The Place of Monuments Declared before 1994 in the New South Africa. The site of research was King William's Town in the Eastern Cape. Miti argues that heritage will always be a contested space and therefore changing names is a meaningless exercise.

Professor Leslie Bank (FHISER director)
‘City Dreams, Country Magic': Revisiting Monica Hunter Wilson's East London Research
lbank@ufh.ac.za

In the centenary year of the birth of Monica Hunter Wilson, one of South Africa's most distinguished anthropologists, this paper revisits the research she undertook in the city of East London in 1932, as part of her work for the preparation of her classic ethnography, Reaction to Conquest.

One of the extraordinary features of the field notes that Monica Hunter produced during her research in the East Bank township during the early months of 1932, is that her household interviews are littered with accounts of dreaming. She asked virtually every person she interviewed, and even the visitors to households, questions about what they had been dreaming about. This is a very unusual line of questioning in urban social research, but an intriguing one nonetheless.

In writing Reaction to Conquest, Hunter used her data on dreams mainly to highlight the extent to which urban residents had brought their ‘country magic' to the city. In this paper, I revisit and re-analyse Hunter's field notes and seek to broaden her reading of urban dreams, paying attention to the city and countryside as spaces of the imagination.

Manasa Sibanda (PhD student)
‘Outside our Tradition': Contesting Power and Knowledge in the formation of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area in Sengwe, Zimbabwe
manasasibanda@yahoo.com

The paper is concerned with the impacts of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA) on the livelihoods of the local people residing in the Sengwe wildlife corridor in Zimbabwe.

It begins with the assertion that the rhetoric around the commoditisation of wildlife resources (as one option for natural resource use) generated conflicts among various actors. The paper describes local knowledge systems regarding natural resources management prior to the introduction of the conservation area. It then outlines scientific or modern approaches to conservation exercised by the GLTFCA. In so doing, the paper illustrates the impacts of the GLTFCA on local people's livelihoods and the processes of interaction and co-operation among the different stakeholders. Furthermore, it demonstrates how conflicts arose at the interface between GLTFCA and local knowledge and practices as they apply to the management of natural resources.

The paper concludes that local knowledge systems were marginalised and local institutions were disempowered in the process of planning the conservation area. As a result, this generated opposition among local people, to fully participate in the GLTFCA initiative.

Mpilo Mlomzale (MA student)
Alternative Livelihood Strategies in rural Eastern Cape
mpilomzale@gmail.com

Based on research conducted in the Cata and Kwezana villages in the Keiskammahoek area of the Eastern Cape, this paper discusses how homestead gardening practices are influenced by people's aspirations in rural areas. The paper discusses how the decline in field crop production, usually seen as the result of historical labour migration, high taxation and the introduction of betterment planning, has led to an increasing number of families taking up homestead gardening.

These gardens are making a significant contribution to food security by providing fresh produce for family consumption. However, the tending of homestead gardens is not uniformly practiced in the area with some families not taking up the practice, in spite of the clear benefits that gardening brings to their neighbours.

The paper discusses the various reasons for this, suggesting that those who have enduring social and cultural ties to the community are more likely to invest in homestead gardening practices as a strategy to strengthen those ties.

Nkululeko Ndlovu (MA student)
Making the home: Material transformations and home making among low-income residents in the Eastern Cape
nkuendlovu@gmail.com

This paper explores the practices surrounding the processes of home-making among newly formalised low-income populations in two Eastern Cape settings, namely Fort Beaufort and East London.

The transition from informal to formal housing presents a plethora of changes and challenges for low-income urban dwellers. Formalising dwellings is one thing, but transforming the new environments into liveable built environments is an even bigger challenge, especially in a post-apartheid consumerist society.

The paper focuses on the material transformations and the practices of re-orienting material goods in the living room/sitting room/lounge of the new homes as both a means of (re)creating the home as well as identity creation. The living room is both a public and private space within the home and thus most households attempt to make it both practical for home activities as well as making it an ideal space for public socialisation activities.

Through different acts of material accumulation, display and the constant changes in the layout of the possessions, the living room continually undergoes changes to suit different occasions and functions. On the one hand, these acts of space transformation and personalisation are an expression of household individualism and on the other hand, they reflect a particular expression of urbanism and shed light on what the residents see as ‘acceptable' urban life.

Solomzi Bovana (MA student)
Heritage, Tourism and Development
bovanas@yahoo.co.uk

In South Africa, tourism is often promoted as a quick fix to all the ills associated with underdevelopment and unemployment. Cultural tourism and heritage tourism are strongly emerging sectors in the South African tourism industry.

Nowadays, it is common to encounter heritage initiatives that are expected to become major tourists attractions. These initiatives are expected to be catalysts for development, poverty alleviation and/or unemployment reduction.

This paper argues that, while these heritage sites, memorials, statutes and monuments are being declared and constructed, people's history becomes marginalised and new notions of heritage are invented. Indeed, poverty becomes the driving force of heritage endeavors. The notion of heritage is thus reduced to commercial consumption.

Ashley Westaway, PhD student
‘Intellectuals take cover in their ivory towers'
Ashley@brc21.co.za

Some intellectuals in South Africa played a deliberate role in the struggle against apartheid. The work that they produced in the pre-1994 spoke truth to power, with effect. It underpinned the education of a whole layer of labour and political leaders, it supported advocacy initiatives on a range of issues, and it countered apartheid propaganda and misinformation.

Since the 1994 transition there have been a number of institutionalised processes that have cried out for the involvement of intellectuals.

In the paper, I consider two processes driven by commissions, namely restitution, and truth and reconciliation. I look at how both have been implemented such that they have shored up elite power and advanced hegemonic discourses. Yet few intellectuals have been inclined to engage in either restitution or in the TRC process. Instead they have retreated into their ivory towers, and restricted their attention to exotic and highly specialised topics.

This response plays into the hands of the new elite, as so-called liberal South African universities no longer play a leftist political role; they now merely dance to the piper's tune.

The FHISER Postgraduate Programme, set up in 2005, is run under an innovative fellowship and internship system. This means that students are registered to pursue Masters and PhD degrees in three main programme themes of Culture Heritage and Social transformation; Land Livelihoods and Rural Development and Urban Renewal and Local Economic Development and the Youth, Gender and Reproductive Health Programme.

Under these postgraduate programmes, students work towards their degree by thesis, as well as receive practical research training through the internship programme. This entails that each student is required to carry out allocated research work in the Institute's commissioned research projects. The students thus receive valuable experiential research training. As many students are from previously disadvantaged sectors of the community, they are supported via significant research and training grants sourced by the Institute primarily from the NRF, SANPAD and MELLON Foundation.

Through the Internship component of the postgraduate Programme FHISER aims to contribute to the development of competent Eastern Cape presearchers.