Auswahl der wissenschaftlichen Literatur zum Thema „South African Zionist Federation“

The period 1954 to 1958 saw an unprecedented level of mobilisation and active political campaigning by women of all races in South Africa. These campaigns were split along lines of race and class, as evidenced in the demonstrations against the extension of pass laws to African women by the Federation of South African Women [FSAW] and the campaign against the Senate Bill by liberal white women of the Black Sash. What they had in common is that both groups of women organised their action into separate structures exclusive to women, with independent identities from the male-dominated structures of the Congress Alliance and of white party politics. This separate organisation from men was not carried out with an explicit feminist agenda or a developed awareness of women's oppression, however. Nevertheless, their existence constituted a challenge to the dominant patriarchal discourse that constructed women's role as domestic and exclusive to the private sphere. Newspaper representations of the two organisations by both their political allies and their political opponents, provide evidence of this dominant discourse on "women's place" and insight on the public perception of political activity by women at the time. Within the texts of FSAW and the Black Sash one finds tensions between accepted notions of women's primary role as wives and mothers, and an emerging self-conception of women as politically active in the public realm. To an extent, the self-representation of these texts mirrors the patriarchal representations of women found in the newspaper reports. However, there are also definite departures from the traditional formulations of womanhood that can be conceived of as "contestations" to the dominant discourse. The patriarchal discourse was, therefore, a discursive constraint, both external and internalised, on women's ability to become active and effective in South Africa politics in the 1950s. Paradoxically, through the practical process of women's mobilisation in FSAW and the Black Sash, new space was opened on the political terrain that allowed for the alteration of the dominent discourse on women's place in society, as well as for the emergence of contestatory feminist discourses in South Africa.

The study is about a Zulu male vocal tradition called isicathamiya performed by 'migrants' in all night competitions called ingomabusuku. This is a performance style popularized by the award winning group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Isicathamiya, both in its symbolic structure and in the social and culturalpractice of its proponents has much in common with the ritual practices of Zionists. And Zionists are worshippers who integrate traditional beliefs and Christianity. This study will reveal that isicathamiya performance and Zionists are linked in three major areas:in the sqcial bases and practice of its proponents, in the structural properties of their performances and tn the meanings attached to these practices. Firstly, Zionists, who are also called a Separatist or African Independent church, and isicathamiya performers have minimal education and are employed in low income jobs in the cities. Most groups are formed with 'homeboy networks'. Furthermore, performers, unlike their brothers in the city, cling tenaciously to usiko [custom and tradition]. Although they are Christians, they still worship Umvelinqangi [The One Who Came First], by giving oblations and other forms of offerings. Amadlozi [the ancestors] are still believed to be their mediators with God. Also commonplace in this category is the practice of ukuchatha, [cleansing the stomach with some prepared medicine]; and ukuphalaza [taking out bile by spewing, which is also done as a way of warding off evil spirits]. These are rural practices that have meaning in their present domiciles. The second area of similarity consists in the structure of the nocturnal gatherings that form the core of the ritual and performance practices among isicathamiya singers and Zionists. Thus, a core of the ritual of Zionists is umlindelo [night vigil] which takes place every weekend from about 8 at night until the following day. Likewise, isicathamiya performers have competitions every Saturday evening from 8 at night until about 11 am the following day. Although Zionists night vigils are liturgical and isicathamiya competitions secular, the structures of both isicathamiya choreography and Zionists body movements appear the same. These movements are both rooted in a variety of traditional styles called ingoma. Thirdly, the meanings attached to these symbolic correspondences must be looked for in the selective appropriation of practices and beliefs taken to be traditional. Using present day commentaries in song and movement, ingoma and other rural styles performed in competitions and Zionists night vigils reflect a reconstruction of the past. Isicathamiya performers and Zionists see themselves as custodians of Zulu tradition, keeping Zulu ethnicity alive in the urban environment. This is why in this study we are going to see rural styles like ingoma, isifekezeli [war drills], ukusina [solo dancing] that were performed on the fields, now performed, sort of feigned and 'held in' as they are p~rformed in dance halls with wooden stages.

<p>The study outlines five areas of intervention in the development of women&rsquo<br>s studies and politics on the continent. Firstly, it examines the problematic construction and the inclusion of women in the narratives of the liberation struggle in South Africa. Secondly, the study identifies the sphere of intellectual debates as one of the crucial sites in the production of historical knowledge about the legacies of liberation struggles on the continent. Thirdly, it traces the intellectual trajectory of Charlotte Maxeke as an embodiment of the intellectual contributions of women in the struggle for liberation in South Africa. In this regard, the study traces Charlotte Maxeke as she deliberated and engaged on matters pertaining to the welfare of the Africans alongside the prominent intellectuals of the twentieth century. Fourthly, the study inaugurates a theoretical departure from the documentary trends that define contemporary studies on women and liberation movements on the continent. Fifthly, the study examines the incorporation of Maxeke&rsquo<br>s legacy of active intellectual engagement as an integral part of gender politics in the activities of the Women&rsquo<br>s Section of the African National Congress. In the areas identified, the study engages with the significance of the intellectual inputs of Charlotte Maxeke in South African history.</p>

M.A.<br>The study purports to trace and analyse how African women used local structures in the 1950's and 1960's to seek redress against the policies of racial segregation. This study intends showing how African women have piloted local organisations during the period under review, how they resisted all attempts by the local municipal council to have women removed from the location and how women rejected the authority of the local boards. Protest movements and organisations, and the type of political activity women engaged in before the 1950's, have been largely ignored by the few writers who have considered the matter at all. This has resulted in the assumption that there were no women's activities prior to 1950. C. Kros wrote: "...(that) there is a general assumption that until the 1950's women were passive and took a back seat in all spheres except forone or two outbursts of activity, like for instance the resistance against the passes in the Free State in 1913." 3 The study purports to dispel the myth that African women were inactive prior to 1950: This study shows that the emergence of the squatter settlement in the late 1940's was spearheaded by African women who had nowhere to settle, except by pitching up shacks. By early 1940 urban workers found it increasingly difficult to obtain suitably priced residential accommodation as no new houses were built. The study will analyse how Sofasonke Mpanza, a member of the Orlando Advisory Board and the leader of the Sofasonke Mpanza Party, was able to win adherents to his party, the majority of whom were women and why African women in Orlando defied the Municipal Council's regulations and pitched up "shelters" which came to be known as the "Shanty Town".

This study encompasses an anthropological investigation of healing practices in the Zion Christian Church with reference to the Marabastad congregation in Pretoria (Tshwane), South Africa. The Zion Christian Church functions as an extremely successful healing ministry, and can thus be characterised as a spirit-type African Initiated Church, a type known to attract members through healing activities. The concepts of ill-health, health, healing and curing are crucial to understanding the church’s role, as all activities at the Zion Christian Church revolve around the attainment of absolute health. The embedded nature of healing in the church is explored through an analysis of the spatial and material aspects of the church’s healing practices, including codes of conduct, roles of participants, religious services, and intangible and tangible instruments of healing. The study is further contextualised against the broader history of the emergence and growth of African Initiated Churches from the late 19th century onwards<br>Anthropology & Archaeology<br>M.A. (Anthropology)

This report is concerned with unpacking the influential yet misunderstood “workerist” phenomenon that dominated the major independent (mostly black) trade unions born in the wake of the 1973 Durban strikes. “Workerism” is widely recognized as being concentrated in the Federation of South African Trade Unions (Fosatu). Workerism remains a source of much controversy in labour and left circles; this is due to the massive influence it commanded within the with black working class in its brief heyday, and the formidable challenge it presents to the legitimacy of nationalist movements and narratives attempting (then and now) to stake claims on the leadership of the liberation struggle. This controversy has yet to be resolved: both popular and scholarly attempts to theorise its politics are marked by demonstrable inconsistencies and inaccuracies, often reproducing existing polemical narratives that conceal more than they reveal. This paper contributes to that debate by deepening our understanding of the core politics of the important workerist phenomenon – through an examination of primary documents and interviews with key workerist leaders. I argue that workerism was a distinctive, mass-based and coherent multiracial current, hegemonic in the black trade unions but spilling into the broader anti-apartheid movement in the 1970s and 1980s. It stressed class struggle, non-racialism, anti-capitalism, worker selfactivity and union democracy, and was fundamentally concerned with the national liberation of the oppressed black majority. However, it distanced itself from the established traditions of mainstream Marxism and Congress nationalism – coming to a quasi-syndicalist1 position on many crucial questions, although this ran alongside a far more cautious “stream”, akin to social democracy. It fashioned a radical approach to national liberation that combined anticapitalism with anti-nationalism on a programme that placed trade unions (not parties) centrestage – a notable characteristic that made it the object of much suspicion and hostility. In the longer term, workerists developed a two-pronged strategy. This centred on, first, “building up a huge, strong movement in the factories” – strategically positioned at key loci of power in the economy (key sectors, plants and regions), with a view to “pushing back the frontiers of control”; second, it incorporated an extensive programme of popular education to ignite the growth of a “counter-hegemonic” working class politics, consciousness, identity and culture, thereby “ring-fencing workers from the broader nationalist history of our country” and continent. Right at the epicentre of this radical project was the creation of a conscious, accountable and active (in workplaces and communities) layer of worker leaders or “organic intellectuals”. I contend that a simple conflation of workerism with a form of Marxism, although prevalent in the literature, is misleading and inaccurate. Rather, workerism cannot be understood unless in relation to the far more eclectic and varied international New Left – through which it drew influence (direct and indirect) from a variety of sources, including revolutionary libertarian currents like anarchism, syndicalism and council communism, as well as others such as social democracy, and dissident forms of Marxism. But the unhappy co-existence of these contradictory tendencies (quasi-syndicalism and social democracy) interacted with a New Left-inspired, at times anti-theoretical, pragmatism to leave workerism weakened - hampered by inconsistencies and contradictions, expressed in ambivalent actions that were at once libertarian and more statist, revolutionary and reformist, spontaneous and premeditated, “boycottist” and “engagist”. This left a vacuum in the liberation struggle, paving a way for the resurgence of nationalism under ANC leadership. 1 Here I refer to the historical tradition of anarcho- and revolutionary syndicalism, not the so-called “Leninist critique”.