Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400–1948

Abstract

Popular Politics in the History of South Africa, 1400–1948 offers an inclusive vision of South Africa's past. Drawing largely from original sources, Paul Landau presents a history of the politics of the country's people, from the time of their early settlements in the elevated heartlands, through the colonial era, to the dawn of Apartheid. A practical tradition of mobilization, alliance, and amalgamation persisted, mutated, and occasionally vanished from view; it survived against the odds in several forms, in tribalisms, Christian assemblies, and other, seemingly hybrid movements; and it continues today. Landau treats southern Africa broadly, concentrating increasingly on the southern Highveld and ultimately focusing on a transnational movement called the 'Samuelites'. He shows how people's politics in South Africa were suppressed and transformed, but never entirely eliminated.

Living on Edge: New Perspectives on Anxiety, Refuge and Colonialism in Southern Africa

“…Hall 2012;Landau 2010; see also papers in Hamilton 1995). Beginning perhaps as early as the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries (Parsons 1995) but coming more sharply into (historical) focus from the late eighteenth century, this period is characterised by the consolidation of numerous Highveld chieftaincies, competition for cattle and followers, and raids for cattle and captives by Griqua and Korana pastoralists.…”

“…M. Hall 2000;Voss 2008). In settler colonial situations such as South Africa, there existed a plurality of colonialismsChristianisation, cadastralisation, forced labour and migration, tribalisation, Indigenous colonialisms -that were felt profoundly but whose infrastructures were unevenly distributed (Landau 2010;Braun 2015). In places, trade networks and settlement penetrated to a limited degree, such that the material record does not disclose the entry of new objects into circulation.…”

In praise of outlaws

“…Predominately agropastoralist, Bantu-speaking chiefdoms competed for followers, cattle (useful for securing followers through marriage payments) and territory across the high plains (Highveld), the eastern coast and adjoining midlands. Ascendant leaders like the Basotho chief Moshoeshoe and the Zulu chief Shaka articulated novel political formations and strategies, from military structures to new national affinities designed to sublimate historical difference (Hamilton 1998; Landau 2010). Colonialist intrusions into the subcontinent both impacted these events and created an audience for imagining these complex political processes as disorderly obstacles to civilization's progress, as we shall see.…”

Indexing the human: from classification to a critical politics of transformation

“…Many of these terms continue to be deeply contested: from tribe (e.g. Landau 2010;Mafeje 1971) to "the social" (e.g. Latour 2011; Povinelli 2011), from the "relation" (Strathern 1996) to the "human" itself (Mbembe 2002).…”