1,721,009 research outputs found
Memory and documentation in exhibition-making: a case study of the Protea village exhibition, a history of paradise 1829 - 2002
Get PDFMagister Artium - MAThis mini-thesis seeks to interrogate the interplay between memory and documentation in the process of exhibition-making by a looking at the preparation for and mounting of the exhibition, Museum. This will be achieved by looking at the institutional methodologies employed by the Museum in dealing with ex-residents of District Six, their memories and artefacts in the heritage practice of a Museum as a forum. This practice was put into effect as the District Six Museum engaged ex-residents of other locations of removal
From family business to public museum: the transformation of the sacks futeran buildings into the homecoming centre of the district six Museum
Get PDFMagister Artium - MAThrough a grant from the Atlantic Philanthropies Foundation the District Six Museum Foundation Trust purchased the Sacks Futeran buildings in 2002 with a view to creating new spaces of engagement that worked with exhibitions, issues of social justice and District Six returnees. The Futeran family, as a gesture of philanthropic donation, sold the building below market value thus enabling the museum to take ownership. This related directly to civic public giving that
the work of the District Six Museum entails and was consistent with an understanding of community museums. Acquiring, transforming and museumising the set of five interconnected Sacks Futeran buildings to create the District Six Homecoming Centre has influenced and extended the notion of civic public giving in the museum work of the District Six Museum in relation to District Six returnees and the public. The examination of a history in and through buildings and more specifically the transformation in use, design, purpose and naming in this complex of buildings associated with a family business, E. Sacks Futeran & Co., is
the purpose of this research. The oral histories of Martin and Gordon Futeran reveal the origins of their family wholesale clothing and fabric business established in 1906 by their great grandfather Elias Sacks and by extension the Jewish histories of District Six. The apartheid denial of ‘home’ within the Cape Town city bowl, resulting in forced removals of the inhabitants of District Six and the formation of the District Six Museum as a transactive community museum model on the heritage landscape of post-apartheid South Africa is examined. With reference to architectural materiality, the set of buildings as transitional
space is ‘mapped’ as it has become the Homecoming Centre of the District Six Museum.Rennie Scurr Adendorff Architects blended older histories of the site with architectural aesthetic and technical expertise, and the Museum’s visions, philosophies and concepts were an integral part of the redevelopment. Over a number of years the Sacks Futeran buildings were restored and internally reconfigured and have been developed to dovetail with existing methodologies supporting the broader land restitution process. Through its spaces, a museum
community is being nurtured by means of activism, notions of citizenship transforming District Six, the city and community museum practice in the process. The Fugard Theatre is an integral part of the Homecoming Centre and these buildings are experienced as a multi-functional cultural landmark within the District Six Cultural Heritage Precinct. By harnessing memory and materiality this study is relevant as a means of constituting historical urban fabric and a sensitivity of reconstructing a sense of place
The individual, auto/biography and history in South Africa
No full textPhilosophiae Doctor - PhDThis thesis is a contribution to the field of public history, which the author and others at the University of the Western Cape's History Department have over the last decade pioneered in defining and mapping out in South Africa. Rassool's theories about the relationship between history and biography were developed in relation to the life of the Unity Movement leader, I.B. Tabata
David Cecil Oxford Matiwane and auto/biographic memory: political activism, social pragmatism and individual achievement in twentieth century South Africa
Get PDFPhilosophiae Doctor - PhDThe main theoretical and empirical interest of this study is the critical examination of the life of David Cecil Oxford (D.C.O.) Matiwane. In it, I critically examine the politics of representing Matiwane’s life and the methods employed in such a discourse. I do this by focusing on the question of representation of political, social and economic struggles launched by D.C.O. Matiwane against segregation and apartheid in South Africa in the twentieth century. This study then questions the notion of creating a biographical supernarrative of his achievements. It confronts the binary approach in the representation of his life and argues that Matiwane’s life is an embodiment of various, even contradictory, philosophies. This study puts forward an argument that Matiwane's representation should be contextualised in relation to the struggles of his contemporaries, and that his narrative should not be seen as a product of a single political route. It unpacks various communal, individual, economic and political strategies employed by organisations and persons against apartheid and colonialism. It looks at how these strategies were implemented to overcome apartheid, and analyses how Matiwane's contribution is documented, especially in relation to contributions made by others. This research project also analyses how different layers and patterns in Matiwane's narrative
have been created in an attempt to present his auto/biography as a cohesive discourse in spite of fragmented archival and oral memory. It argues that his memory has been appropriated to pursue different political and personal ends. This study further asks the following question: to what extent and why have different political systems given Matiwane’s voice a platform or silenced his point of view? Are there trends in his representation compared to narratives of his contemporaries? What are the underlying reasons behind such trends, if any? Are there continuities or discontinuities in his representation? What were the ambiguities embedded in their struggles? This study evaluates factors that led to him being declared a persona non grata. It closely examines why and how Matiwane has been represented as a source of controversy, as a lone political activist and as a pragmatist
Connectedness and disconnectedness in Thembeyakhe Harry Gwala's biography, 1920-1995: Rethinking Political Militancy, Mass Mobilisation and Grassroots Struggles in South Africa
Get PDFPhilosophiae Doctor - PhD (History)This dissertation is premised on the notions of connectedness and disconnectedness as a
contribution to the field of South African biography. I argue that Harry Gwala’s life was
characterised by connectedness and disconnectedness and was shaped by his determination to
remain connected while the state utilised its coercive power to disconnect him. While South
African history has been largely written within the framework of repression and resistance, a
study of Gwala’s life enables historians to examine twentieth century history from a different
perspective which focuses on themes of connectedness and disconnectedness. Gwala’s rural
background, his training as a teacher and his later involvement in trade unionism enabled him
to develop and maintain connectedness with grassroots sentiments. In an attempt to
disconnect Gwala from these pursuits, he was occasionally tortured and served with banning
orders which restricted his movement and political activities. He was imprisoned on Robben
Island between 1964 to 1972 and 1977 to 1987. While disconnected by banning orders and
constant harassment by state security agents, Gwala continued to retain his connectedness
through underground activities and later through his involvement in re-establishing branches
of the African National Congress after his release from prison in 1988. This dissertation
argues that Gwala was a product of a complex society and varied social milieux which were
all characterised by high levels of class deprivation and exploitation. As he meandered
through various social milieux he developed a working class political approach which
impelled him towards mass mobilisation and opposition to the state’s oppressive notion of
race and class. Gwala became a medium to connect various classes and political groupings
during the liberation struggle in South Africa. This biography also makes a contribution to
the emerging body of literature on the histories of resistance politics at local and national
levels in South Africa
Southern African human remains as property: Physical anthropology and the production of racial capital in Austria
Get PDFPhilosophiae Doctor - PhDFrom 1907 to 1909, the Austrian anthropologist, Dr Rudolf Pöch (1870-1921), conducted an
expedition in southern Africa that was financed by the Imperial Academy of Sciences in
Vienna. Pöch enjoyed administrative and logistical support from Austria-Hungary as well as
the respective colonial governments and local authorities in the southern African region.
During this expedition, he appropriated the bodily remains of more than one hundred people
and shipped them to Vienna. When Pöch started teaching anthropology and ethnography in
1910, the remains became an essential part of the first ‘anthropological teaching and research
collection’ at the University of Vienna
(Re)collections in the archive: making and remaking the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) archival collection
Get PDFPhilosophiae Doctor - PhDThe work of the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF) conducted between 1956 and 1991 gave rise to a collection of records that traverse 35 years of support work. As a solidarity organisation IDAF provided support to liberation movements in South Africa through their legal and welfare assistance programmes. Equally significant, IDAF also sought to highlight the oppressive machinery of the apartheid government through the deployment of their research, information and publications programmes as a way of creating awareness and ‘keeping the conscience of the world alive.’ When the administrative records of IDAF were
relocated to South Africa, with the Mayibuye Centre for History and Culture as chosen location, they were turned into an archival collection which also became a memorial to IDAF’s resistance work located in the foremost anti-apartheid university and politically in a new project that intended to create a museum about apartheid. Later the collection was incorporated into the Robben Island Museum (RIM) through an agreement between the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the Museum. The dissertation examines the cultural history and the political life of the IDAF archival collection and the processes through which it was made and continues to be remade
Historic buildings, conservation and shifts in social value at Old Umtali: Contestations of heritage in Zimbabwe
No full textMagister Artium - MAThe mini-thesis will examine the conservation of colonial historic buildings at Old Umtali (today Mutare) in Zimbabwe and the changes that have affected the buildings in terms of use and maintenance of their architectural character. There has been a shift in heritage management priorities in Zimbabwe and all heritage linked to colonialism has been supplanted by archaeological and liberation war heritage. The result is that the category of colonial heritage which includes historic buildings, forts and memorials have been neglected and vandalised. Various international frameworks in the conservation of buildings will be referred to in this research in examining related questions of urban heritage management. The dichotomy that exists between conservation and adaptive reuse of historic buildings as these issues have unfolded at Old Umtali, a former colonial town with historic buildings constructed in 1891 will be at the centre of this interrogation. Notwithstanding the changes in heritage management priorities in Zimbabwe, the irony is that heritage practitioners are still obliged to conserve historic buildings by legislation. This work then attempts to place back the question of conserving historic buildings on the conservation agenda for a post-colonial Zimbabwe. I argue that historic buildings should be conserved and used for different contemporary purposes and at the same time becoming the subject of interpretative work. Questions can then be asked about the experience of colonialism and the various movements of the Pioneer Column in Zimbabwe using the case study of Old Umtali. In this thesis conservation of historic buildings is not just a technical question but is also seen as an intellectual, epistemological and political question
The individual, auto/biography and history in South Africa
Get PDFPhilosophiae Doctor - PhDThis thesis is a contribution to the field of public history, which the author and others at the University of the Western Cape's History Department have over the last decade pioneered in defining and mapping out in South Africa. Rassool's theories about the relationship between history and biography were developed in relation to the life of the Unity Movement leader, I.B. Tabata.South Afric
Producing and consuming the Wembley Whopper and the Super Fisheries Gatsby: Bread winners and losers in Athlone, Cape Town, 1950-1980.
Get PDFMagister Artium - MAWembley Roadhouse and Super Fisheries have cemented themselves as food
institutions on the Cape Flats. Family-owned take-aways establishments that
appeared on the black periphery and catered for the black consumer were
popularised amid the political and economic upheavals of forced removals in the
1970s. The shifting labour market, changing work schedules, and hardening
political climate was reflected in the popularisation and consumption of breadbased
take-aways on the Cape Flats. This research sets out to show how the
production and consumption of the Wembley Whopper and the Super Fisheries
Gatsby constituted cultural signifiers of agency that were historically embedded
within a set of discursive practices and a business ethic that distinguished halal
take-aways from franchised and state subsidised food. Ideas of tradition and
health became categories through which racial discourse was operationalised by
both cultural and scientific agents of the colonial and apartheid state.
Nevertheless, the Whopper and the Gatsby represented fast food culinary
adaptations that appealed to a mobile generation of activists that challenged social
restrictions and ideas about race and diet
- …
