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Isaac Schapera 1905–2003

Adam Kuper

in Proceedings of the British Academy Volume 130, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows, IV

Isaac Schapera (1905–2003), a Fellow of the British Academy, spent the second half of his long life in London but remained very much a South African. His parents immigrated to South Africa at the ... More

Isaac Schapera (1905–2003), a Fellow of the British Academy, spent the second half of his long life in London but remained very much a South African. His parents immigrated to South Africa at the turn of the century from what is now Belarus, and settled in Garies, a small town in the semi-desert district of Little Namaqualand, in the Northern Cape. As an undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, Schapera was introduced to ‘British social anthropology’ by A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, one of the founding fathers of the discipline, the other being Bronislaw Malinowski. He then became one of the first members of Malinowski’s post-graduate seminar at the London School of Economics. Towards the end of his career, Schapera preferred to describe himself as an ethnographer rather than as an anthropologist. His research in the 1930s and 1940s was distinguished by a concern with ‘social change’, a focus endorsed in South Africa by Malinowski in London.Less

Mapping the Sacred

David Chidester

in Wild Religion: Tracking the Sacred in South Africa

This chapter discusses the religious meanings of Cape Town by dwelling on four contradictions that operate within its urban space. Firstly, the colonial construction of Cape Town excludes indigenous ... More

This chapter discusses the religious meanings of Cape Town by dwelling on four contradictions that operate within its urban space. Firstly, the colonial construction of Cape Town excludes indigenous peoples from citizenship and incorporates them as exploitable labor. Secondly, building a rural homestead requires urban employment. Thirdly, relations between center and periphery in the city involve not only structural contradictions but also ongoing struggles over position and power within the urban landscape. Finally, these colonial and indigenous, as well as central and peripheral religious meanings is seen within an urban political economy driven by its own inherent contradiction of scarcity and surplus.Less

The place of gentrification in Cape Town

Annika Teppo and Marianne Millstein

in Global gentrifications: Uneven development and displacement

This chapter discusses the notion of gentrification in the South African context, using examples from Cape Town. It argues that the public justifications of, discussions and disputes about, and the ... More

This chapter discusses the notion of gentrification in the South African context, using examples from Cape Town. It argues that the public justifications of, discussions and disputes about, and the material and social conditions related to, gentrification processes, differ in South Africa from those in the Global North. It shows why those defending gentrification appeal to a moral postcolonial racial discourse.Less

People, the Cape Floristic Region, and sustainability

Nicky Allsopp, Pippin M.L. Anderson, Patricia M. Holmes, Annalie Melin, and Patrick J. O’Farrell

in Fynbos: Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation of a Megadiverse Region

This chapter examines the impact the City of Cape Town, a growing city in the megadiverse Cape Floristic Region, has on biodiversity and ecosystem services within and beyond its boundaries. A brief ... More

This chapter examines the impact the City of Cape Town, a growing city in the megadiverse Cape Floristic Region, has on biodiversity and ecosystem services within and beyond its boundaries. A brief history of the impacts of people on nature in this region is provided which argues that these are not divorced from social, economic, and political factors. These in turn influence people’s perceptions of nature. Impacts are examined through the lenses of housing a growing city and provisioning the city. Many regulatory and cultural ecosystem services are best managed within the boundaries of the city. Provisioning ecosystem services such as food and water are largely provided by the environment around the city. Urbanization and agriculture have tended to reduce the multiple services that a landscape can deliver, while threatening one-of-a-kind biodiversity. Water, a limited resource, is further constrained by invasive species and activities which pollute or disrupt the water cycle. Measures to ensure sustainability of delivery of ecosystem goods and services from natural resources, while ensuring that biodiversity is secured, are assessed. These include initiatives at local and national government, business, NGO, and individual levels. For measures towards sustainability to be effective, evidence suggests that people’s values need to be considered. Ethical, social, and economic criteria need to be considered alongside environmental ones in determining pathways to sustainability, and trade-offs may be necessary in developing options that best meet multiple objectives.Less

Children in the Streets: Urban Governance in Cape Town City Center

Tony Roshan Samara

in Cape Town after Apartheid: Crime and Governance in the Divided City

This chapter analyzes neoliberal governance in the urban core, where street children have emerged as central subjects. It explains categories and vocabularies of neoliberal governance on how the ... More

This chapter analyzes neoliberal governance in the urban core, where street children have emerged as central subjects. It explains categories and vocabularies of neoliberal governance on how the black threat is rearticulated into a democratic era. The examination of street children in Cape Town raises questions about the extent to which democracy has any real meaning for the marginalized young black people residing in a world class city. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the racially coded moral panic in Cape Town between 2000 and 2003 that mobilized a “public” consensus around a project of downtown revitalization and economic recovery based on eradicating the threat posed by “out of control” street children.Less

Charles Darwin in Cape Town November, 2000

Roger S. Levine

in A Living Man from Africa: Jan Tzatzoe, Xhosa Chief and Missionary, and the Making of Nineteenth-Century South Africa

This chapter focuses on Cape Town's auspicious guest so deserving of commemoration: Charles Darwin. Darwin sailed into Cape Town while on one of the most famous voyages in history. During the first ... More

This chapter focuses on Cape Town's auspicious guest so deserving of commemoration: Charles Darwin. Darwin sailed into Cape Town while on one of the most famous voyages in history. During the first two weeks of June 1836 Darwin took away a generally positive impression of the little town and the great mass of stratified sandstone, known then and now as Table Mountain, at its head. He could compare the Cape Colony favorably to other fragments of the civilized world that his ship had visited in the southern hemisphere. Little embryo Englands are hatching in all parts, he concluded. Cape Colony was imbricated in the international intellectual and political currents of its day.Less

The First Taste of Africa

Mushirul Hasan

in Exploring the West: Three Travel Narratives

The author arrives at False Bay, describes his landlord and family, and is received by the Commandant of the British troops. He notes his landlord's improper conduct, proceeds to Cape Town in Africa, ... More

The author arrives at False Bay, describes his landlord and family, and is received by the Commandant of the British troops. He notes his landlord's improper conduct, proceeds to Cape Town in Africa, describes the town and the character of the Dutch inhabitants as well as their conduct towards slaves. He also describes the climate; notes the fruits, vegetables, animals, and other productions; meets with several Mohammedans; and sells his slave and some other property in order to support his expenses. The Danish ship is brought from False Bay to Table Bay, its captain prosecuted for plundering the vessel in the river Ganges, and his ship thereby prevented from departing. The other passengers prosecute the captain, and recover half the passage for England.Less

An Honourable Compromise

Vineet Thakur

in India's First Diplomat: V.S. Srinivasa Sastri and the Making of Liberal Internationalism

Still considerably ill, Sastri returns to public limelight with the Kamala Lectures which set out to explain his creed of liberalism. A few months later, he is asked by the Viceroy to join an Indian ... More

Still considerably ill, Sastri returns to public limelight with the Kamala Lectures which set out to explain his creed of liberalism. A few months later, he is asked by the Viceroy to join an Indian delegation going to Cape Town to explore a solution to the ‘Indian problem’ in South Africa, where the new government under J.B.M. Hertzog had proposed a legislation on segregation for Indians. Spread over three weeks, the discussions between the Indian and South African delegations lead to the Cape Town Agreement of 1927. Sastri plays an instrumental role in finalizing this agreement. In a clever and assertive framing, Sastri inverts the meaning of the ‘civilized’ by placing the onus of proving its civilizational status on a state, rather than an individual. The chapter situates the Cape Town Agreement at a significant moment of shift in the understanding of the British Commonwealth, where Indians are being forced to give up their claims on imperial citizenship through allusions to dominion sovereignty. Deprived of the best argument for racial equality i.e. imperial citizenship, Sastri’s formulation in Cape Town scripts a new way in which the rights of Indians overseas could be articulated.Less

The grassroots

Garth Myers

in Urban Environments in Africa: A Critical Analysis of Environmental Politics

In this chapter, the goal is to work through the multi-vocality at the grassroots of Africa’s urban environments, in places like Pikine in Dakar, Kibera in Nairobi, or the Cape Flats in Cape Town. ... More

In this chapter, the goal is to work through the multi-vocality at the grassroots of Africa’s urban environments, in places like Pikine in Dakar, Kibera in Nairobi, or the Cape Flats in Cape Town. The grassroots are crucial for addressing urban environmental issues, and the voices of people at the grassroots and the margins are often justifiably pushed to the center in political ecological analysis. The experts show that there are myriad complex environmental problems in Africa’s cities. Previous chapters argue for seeing the beginnings of these problems in the past; for understanding the cityscape both physically and spiritually as a part of the political-environmental dynamics; and for seeing the problems from ecocritical perspectives. This chapter turns to what is being done at the grassroots across many cities. One segment surveys some of this terrain, beginning with the intellectual terrain of urban political ecology, followed by a set of urban contexts on the continent, before moving to an in-depth focus on Cape Town. The contemporary context of what Edgar Pieterse calls ‘rogue urbanism’ calls for ‘radical incrementalism’ built around the grassroots, but this is seldom successful on the continent.Less

Dental Modification in Modern-Day Cape Town, South Africa: A Link to the Past

L. J. Friedling

Scott E. Burnett and Joel D. Irish (eds)

in A World View of Bioculturally Modified Teeth

This chapter discusses the continued practice of extracting incisors in Cape Town, South Africa. A systematic survey of eight adjoining areas in Cape Town, South Africa, was done to investigate the ... More

This chapter discusses the continued practice of extracting incisors in Cape Town, South Africa. A systematic survey of eight adjoining areas in Cape Town, South Africa, was done to investigate the prevalence, motivation, and possible historical time depth of this practice. Approximately 3500 people were surveyed during this study conducted by means of a questionnaire. Of these 2167 individuals fell within the selection criteria with 41 percent having modified their teeth. More males than females had ablated incisors. Social class had an impact on dental modification practices as the incidence increased within lower-income areas. There were four stated reasons (peer pressure, fashion, gangsterism, and medical/other) for dental modification of which peer pressure (in males) and fashion (in females) were the most popular. Three quarters of the entire study sample had family members with similar dental modifications.Less

Settings and Samples in African Cults of Affliction

John M. Janzen

in Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa

This chapter presents an impressionistic picture of cults of affliction in Kinshasa, Zaire; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Mbabane-Manzini, Swaziland; and Cape Town, South Africa. Nkita is associated with ... More

This chapter presents an impressionistic picture of cults of affliction in Kinshasa, Zaire; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Mbabane-Manzini, Swaziland; and Cape Town, South Africa. Nkita is associated with bisimbi nature spirits, and often involved in the regeneration and maintenance of lineage government. Lemba represented a ritualized concern for several dimensions of society. Furthermore, some of the changes that cults of affliction undergo with urbanization are discussed. In Dar es Salaam, the therapeutic ngoma are a small part of all ngoma, but a very central and formative part. A case study that shows some of the characteristic stresses of life for blacks in the Western Cape is reported. Affliction cults in Central and Southern Africa have expressed the classic theme of identifying and utilizing marginality, adversity, risk, or suffering for the ever-necessary task of renewing society in the face of profound economic and social change.Less

Urban Geopolitics, Neoliberalism, and the Governance of Security

Tony Roshan Samara

in Cape Town after Apartheid: Crime and Governance in the Divided City

This introductory chapter provides a background to the social forces and sets of relationships that outlines the contemporary urban governance in Cape Town. It talks about brutal gang wars linked to ... More

This introductory chapter provides a background to the social forces and sets of relationships that outlines the contemporary urban governance in Cape Town. It talks about brutal gang wars linked to drug trade and homeless people harassed by police or private security guards, which describe an approach to crime and urban renewal in Cape Town as a global phenomenon wherein cities become key sites of economic growth, conflict, and political governance. The chapter also illustrates how Cape Town is governed through a complex network in which local and global forces clash and combine to reproduce the fractured urban spaces inherited from apartheid.Less

The Cape

I.S. Glass

in Nicolas-Louis De La Caille, Astronomer and Geodesist: South African Astronomical Observatory

La Caille's voyaged to the Cape via Rio de Janeiro with the hydrogapher D'Après de Mannevillette. On arrival he met Governor Tulbagh who befriended him. He lodged with Jan Lourens Bestbier, a German ... More

La Caille's voyaged to the Cape via Rio de Janeiro with the hydrogapher D'Après de Mannevillette. On arrival he met Governor Tulbagh who befriended him. He lodged with Jan Lourens Bestbier, a German immigrant who could speak French. Tulbagh offered the resources of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to build a small observatory next to Table Bay. This was equipped with several state-of-the-art instruments. He made a telescopic survey of the sky, listing about 10,000 stars, and found it necessary to define a number of new constellations. He also catalogued nebulous objects, considerably increasing the number known. He determined an accurate position for the Cape and studied atmospheric refraction. Other projects included finding the distances of the Moon, Venus and Mars. He further worked towards deriving better orbits of the earth (via the Sun), Mars, Venus and the Moon.Less

Africa

Liz Gwyther

in Education in Palliative Care: Building a Culture of Learning

Palliative care training in Africa has been a hospice function since hospices first appeared in Africa with the opening of the Island Hospice and Bereavement service in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1979, St ... More

Palliative care training in Africa has been a hospice function since hospices first appeared in Africa with the opening of the Island Hospice and Bereavement service in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1979, St Luke's Hospice, Cape Town, and Highway Hospice, Durban in 1980. The initial palliative care training was for volunteers as caregivers and bereavement carers. From small beginnings and individual hospice training programmes, palliative care training in Africa has developed so that it is now a formal part of nursing and medical training. Further developments have included recognition and support from national governments to engage palliative care trainers in providing training to staff within hospitals and clinics. This will improve the access to palliative care for patients and families facing the diagnosis of life-threatening illness.Less

“I’d Never Had Pain Like That—A Searing, Dying Agony”: Racialized Clandestine Abortion

Susanne M. Klausen

in Abortion Under Apartheid: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Women's Reproductive Rights in South Africa

This chapter examines the methods African women used to procure abortion prior to colonialism and the importation to South Africa of colonial laws prohibiting abortion. It explains why clandestine ... More

This chapter examines the methods African women used to procure abortion prior to colonialism and the importation to South Africa of colonial laws prohibiting abortion. It explains why clandestine abortion, widely practiced but almost invisible, became a political issue in the 1960s. It shows that starting in the 1960s, black and white women with incomplete or botched abortions began streaming in large numbers to emergency departments in urban hospitals in Soweto, Cape Town, and Durban. Turning to hospitals was not always an act of desperation. It was widely known doctors could not perform abortions on request, but they could legally treat woman presenting at hospitals with symptoms of incomplete or septic abortion. Therefore, in order to circumvent the law, women commonly followed a two-step procedure for obtaining safe abortions.Less

Apartheid, Democracy, and the Urban Future

Tony Roshan Samara

in Cape Town after Apartheid: Crime and Governance in the Divided City

This chapter summarizes the study of urban governance in Cape Town, which emphasizes new mechanisms of social control under conditions of neoliberal democracy and unequal development. It provides a ... More

This chapter summarizes the study of urban governance in Cape Town, which emphasizes new mechanisms of social control under conditions of neoliberal democracy and unequal development. It provides a brief overview of the mechanisms in which policing and urban renewal in Cape Town is considered a part of a lineage of governance strategies immersed in unresolved social tensions that evolved over decades. The chapter also explains neoliberalism as a central and defining role in the organization of urban governance, pointing out the conflicts that neoliberalism reflected and regenerated.Less

Bethelsdorp 1811–1815: Oh Free Grace!

Roger S. Levine

in A Living Man from Africa: Jan Tzatzoe, Xhosa Chief and Missionary, and the Making of Nineteenth-Century South Africa

This chapter discusses the period when Jan Tzatzoe lived in the Reads' Bethelsdorp household, which served as a sanctuary for him. This period is important because, later on, the lives of Jan Tzatzoe ... More

This chapter discusses the period when Jan Tzatzoe lived in the Reads' Bethelsdorp household, which served as a sanctuary for him. This period is important because, later on, the lives of Jan Tzatzoe and James Read Junior became intertwined. Two trees born of the same soil, growing so close at first as to appear as one, but then splitting apart and separately seeking the nourishment of sun, rain, and earth, their roots burrowing in different directions for security and sustenance. James Read misses most of his son's first year of life. In late 1811, he and Van der Kemp were called to Cape Town to testify before the British Governor of the Cape Colony and a new judicial circuit court the Governor has created.Less