UP Journals (Univ. of Pretoria)
Not a member yet
4792 research outputs found
Sort by
Comrades and child soldiers in South Africa, 1984-1994
No full textThroughout the 1990s and early 2000s the horror of child soldiers captured the attention of NGOs and university-based scholars. Literature about African child soldiers proliferated. It became clear that children between 10 and 18 years old were systematically recruited or forced into armies in numerous civil conflicts. Children and early adolescents were victims and perpetrators of appalling atrocities directed at civilians. There were many other examples in Africa, but Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Uganda were usually singled out as the largest scale and most egregious cases. South Africa was rarely, if ever, included in these discussions. Yet an argument can be made to view the South African comrade movement from the mid-1980s until 1994, though distinctive in many ways, through the lens of the African child soldier literature. While the child soldier pattern is perhaps most applicable to the extremely violent transition phase from 1990 until 1994, it is worth reviewing the comrade movement from its origins in about 1984. This paper attempts to bring literature on child soldiers in Africa into the conversation with South African research (from the disciplines of history, anthropology and social psychology on the comrade movement. I begin with an overview of some of the key features of the child soldier phenomenon. I follow this by examining the South African comrade movement in relation to these features. I ask whether the comrades were distinctive and whether it is useful to view them as part of the broader trend of child soldiering in Africa in the 1980s and 1990s
Reviews
No full textKundai Manamere, Malaria on the Move: Rural Communities and Public Health in Zimbabwe, 1890-2015 (Reviewed by Audrey Kudzai Maringa)
Ian Phimister, Bulls, Bears, Boers and Brits: Finance and the Coming of War in Southern Africa, 1894-1899 (Reviewed by Geraldine Sibanda)
Gawie Botma, Reconsidering the History of South African Journalism: The Ghost of the Slave Press (Reviewed by Mandla J. Radebe
Black Historians, Historiography, and History Education in the Era of #RhodesMustFall
No full textBlack historians have played a role in South African historiography and their role has been woefully neglected. This paper attempts to reappraise the work and effort of black scholars whose works have contributed to South African historiography in the context of history education in the high school curriculum. Much of their work has not filtered into the CAPS curriculum and the history education curriculum. Through the works of Black historians, we can gain a decolonial reading and understanding from the local context and understand that there is a historical scholarly tradition which goes back to the 1920s. This paper links Black historians’ work to historiography, history education and the #RhodesMustFall movement. The #FeesMustFall movement and the generation involved called for a decolonised curriculum, and this paper, attempts to contribute to that discourse. Through looking at the works of scholars such as Molema, Fuze, Jabavu, Magubane, Mohlamme and Keto, the paper seeks to link these authors’ work to the high school history curriculum. These Black writers and historians were chosen because many of them were pioneers in writing about South African history and society, and their work is important as part of South African history and historiography. The literature review focuses on works surrounding curriculum transformation, and a decolonised curriculum centred on the #RhodesMustFall movement. This paper uses a narrative review framework as part of its methodology and data analysis. The works of these scholars were chosen because they are book-based, and because they were mostly printed for publication, which makes them accessible to some extent. This paper engages with the work and contributions of Black historians and makes several findings: (1) Representation matters in scholarship; (2) Part of decolonising history is changing the racialised discourse of historiography; (3) Black historians have made contributions to studies on colonialism, ethnicity, education, world wars and African-centred paradigms of history, and (4) The work of Black historians must be recentred in the high school history curriculum for the benefit of future generations
By the Way, Who is Cranford Pratt? Questioning Active and Symbolic Monumentalisation of the University of Dar es Salaam
No full textConsidering the ongoing debates regarding the relevance of white supremacy in African public spaces and institutions, the presence of the name ‘Cranford Pratt’ on the monumental Utawala building at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), inaugurated in 2011, is striking. Few are familiar with Pratt’s legacy. This monument, however, holds significance in addressing contemporary critiques of the commemoration of whiteness in African academic institutions, a debate intensified by the University of Cape Town’s ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement. The perpetuation of whiteness within academic spaces often carries an implicit assertion of supremacy when left unchallenged. In institutions that have made strides toward decolonising curricula, history education, and promoting gender inclusivity, the continued veneration of colonial figures represents a form of epistemicide. This paper employs observation and a review of existing literature to advocate for an ‘idiosyncratic demonumentalisation’ process that critically engages both the intrinsic and extrinsic values of monumental heritage, challenging the unquestioned preservation of colonial legacies in history education. On one hand, the paper emphasises the role of monuments in shaping historical narratives and the importance of critically examining their messages in the context of ongoing debates about decolonisation and the role of history education. On the other hand, the paper focuses on the broader impact of colonial legacies on history education and the need to decolonise curricula, teaching practices, and the university space at large
Leveraging historical infrastructure to teach economic geography in South Africa
No full textThis study investigates the enduring spatio-economic legacies of colonial infrastructure, specifically ports, railways, power grids and leveraging history approaches employed in shaping the economic geography of modern South Africa. It posits that the country’s contemporary economic geography is indelibly shaped by an intentionally engineered spatial logic, designed to facilitate resource extraction and imperial trade rather than foster integrated national development. The implication of this inherited landscape remains a significant gap in secondary and tertiary education, resulting in a pedagogical shortfall that limits the development of spatial literacy and historical consciousness among students and learners. Grounded in Dependency Theory, this research employs a systematic literature review methodology, synthesising evidence from archival records, colonial maps, policy documents and curriculum frameworks. The findings systematically demonstrate that colonial infrastructure was a pivotal instrument of spatial governance. It established a durable core-periphery hierarchy, strategically concentrating economic advantage in coastal urban enclaves like Durban and Cape Town to serve settler-colonial and imperial interests, while systematically dispossessing and excluding Black communities in the interior, thereby institutionalizing racialised spatial inequality. Hence, addressing this historical amnesia in the classroom is a scholarly and civic imperative. Thus, a transformative pedagogical framework is recommended, urging educators to integrate critical cartography, historical Geography Information System (GIS), and place-based inquiry in the teaching of economic geography. This approach aims to foster a critical spatial literacy by equipping students to deconstruct the political origins of their built environment, essential for dismantling and reimagining the persistent structures of spatial injustice in post-apartheid South Africa
The 39th South African Society for History Teaching (SASHT) Conference 10-11 October 2025
No full textBootstrapping Siswati lexical resources from isiZulu
No full textIsiZulu and Siswati are closely related languages that share significant morphosyntactic characteristics. Systematic differences between these languages have been identified at the phonological and morphosyntactic levels. Due to the resource-scarce status of these languages, this similarity has led to bootstrapping of computational language resources at the morphological and syntactic levels. In this work, we investigate the feasibility of adapting lexical items in a computational lexicon from isiZulu to Siswati. We use Grammatical Framework resource grammars for both languages to analyse and transform lexical items, which are then evaluated against a parallel term list. An iterative process yields a success rate of 70.5 %, indicating that this approach is largely viable as a means of significantly reducing the manual effort needed to develop lexicons for computational resources for Siswati
Reflections on coloured identity in the Teacher’s League of South Africa during the early 1940s:: The introduction of the concept of non-European
No full textDuring the early years of World War Two (WWII), the Union of South Africa went through several political, economic and social changes that had profound effects on the creation of what a few years later would be the apartheid system. Racial tensions became stronger as the local political context was in crisis. At the same time, the impact of racial discrimination in WWII introduced further reflections on racial theories, concepts and definitions among South Africans.
This paper focuses specifically on debates and disputes about racial definitions among coloured teachers in the Cape. Taking into consideration the historical specificities of that racial definition and racial group in the Union of South Africa, the impact of the international context and the local context, racial adscriptions among coloured teachers changed from exclusivism to non-racialism. Younger teachers went from being proudly coloured to looking for new concepts to redefine a common identity and explicitly choosing the notion of non-Europeans for that. To understand how and why this took place, interviews with former members of the Teacher’s League of South Africa (TLSA), the leading organisation among the coloured educational community, were conducted by the author and placed in dialogue with qualitative research in the Educational Journal and other publications from that teacher’s organisation.
