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ASAUK Presidential Address: From Difaqane to Discarded People: South Africa's Internal Refugees

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

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Extract

We have spent much of today talking about refugees in southern Africa, refugees who have been spawned by the war in the sub-continent, which has produced its toll of misery and suffering and death. By and large, we have been talking about people who have been displaced from their homes as a result of war and political upheaval, though sometimes it is difficult to separate out the political from the economic. In an immediate sense, of course, South Africa has also generated its political refugees - the thousands of children who fled Soweto after the massacre of 1976 were but the last and the most numerous and most dramatic of the recent refugees to have fled from South Africa for overtly political reasons - some to join the liberation movements and fight from outside, some simply to escape the fate they feared if they remained behind.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Research and Documentation , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , 1980 , pp. 2 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1980

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References

Notes

1 Cited in Rubin, N. ‘Africa and Refugees’, African Affairs LXXIII, 292 (1974), p.291.Google Scholar

2 ‘The crisis over the land’, an address given by John Kane-Berman of the Financial Mail at the AGM of the Ecumenical Agency, Diakonia, Durban, 27.2.79, and published in South African Outlook, March, 1979, p.41.

3 Cited in Royston, R. (ed) Black Poets in South Africa (London, 1973) p.96.Google Scholar

4 Sunday Post, 8.7.79.

5 In his paperback Published in south Africa (London, 1973) p.96. order.

6 Sunday Post, 8.7.79.

7 It is difficult to come by precise figures, although these estimates are based on totals worked out by the SAIRR and the Black Sash. See the annotated map published by the Black Sash, A Land Divided Against Itself (Johannesburg, 1977), and Uprooting a Nation - the study of 3 million evictions in South Africa (Africa Publications Trust, 1974).

8 See e.g. George Ellis et al, The Squatter Problem in the Western Cape. Some causes and remedies (SAIRR, 1977); ‘Crossroads’ - special edition of South African Outlook, April, 1976, and ‘Married to a Migrant’, special edition, South African Outlook, November, 1978; also Oliver Palgrave, ‘Final Instalment of Crossroads?’, Guardian Third World Review, 10.12.79.

9 Cf. B. Rogers, Divide and Rule. South Africa's Bantustans (international Defence and Aid, 1977) p.29; and Director of Information, South Africa House, London, South Africa, Intergroup and Race Relations, 1970-7 (London, 1978), p.29.

10 Clarke, L. and Ngobese, J., Women Without Men (Institute of Black Research, Durban, 1975), p.55.Google Scholar

11 Ibid. p.92.

12 Nattrass, J., Migrant Labour and Underdevelopment: the case of Kwazulu, Department of Economics, University of Natal, 1977), p.7.Google Scholar

13 Leeuwenberg, J., Transkei: a study in economic regression (The Africa Bureau, 1977), p.2.Google Scholar

14 N. W. White, ‘The nutritional status of children in Crossroads and NqutuV’ Paper no.5, Conference on the Economics of Health Care in Southern Africa. September, 1978 (SALDRU/SAMST, University of Cape Town).

15 South African Outlook, April 1976, p.51, article on Crossroads, reprinted from the Financial Mail, 20.2.1976.

16 Financial Mail, 6.4.79; Sunday Post, 8.7.79; Post, 9.7-79; Star, 5.11.78 and 16.11.78.

17 In his classic Native Life in South Africa (London, 1916). The quotation is from the reprint by Negro University Press, 1969, p.17.Google Scholar

18 Financial Mail, 6.1*.79.

19 Survey of Race Relations in South Africa, 1977 (Johannesburg, 1978) p.358; the total area of Qwa Qwa is 117 sq. miles.Google Scholar

20 SAIRR, Survey, 1977, p.254-5.Google Scholar

21 For the debate on wage-levels in the farming sector and the effects of mechanization, see M. Lipton, ‘White farming; a case study of change in South Africa’, Jnl. of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, vol.XII, 1975, pp. 45-61; M. Legassick and D. Innes, ‘Capital restructuring and apartheid: a critique of constructive engagement’, African Affairs, LXXVI, no.305 October, 1977, pp.437-82; and M. Lipton, ‘The debate about South Africa: neo-Marxists and neo-Liberals’, African Affairs, LXXVIII, no.310, January, 1979, pp.57-80.

22 For an assessment of the nature and intentions of these two Commissions, hailed by the pro South African media as a sign of the imminent demise of apartheid, see S. Friedman and John Kane-Berman, ‘Pretoria's plan for the black elite’, The Guardian, May 22, 1979; and SALDRU/ South African Labour Bulletin, ‘The Wiehahn Commission: a critique and some reactions’, . Working Paper no.25, SALDRU, Cape Town, 1979; and ‘Focus on Wiehahn’, South African Labour Bulletin, vol.5, no.2, 1979.

23 Ibid.

24 Cited in Kane-Berman, John, ‘The crisis over the land’, op. cit. p.4l, which adds further quotations of similar intent.Google Scholar

25 See especially H. Wolpe, ‘From segregation to apartheid: capitalism and cheap labour power In South Africa’, Economy and Society, 1972; M. Legassick, ‘Legislation, ideology and economy in post-1948 South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies. I, 1, October, 1974, pp.5-35; M. Legassick, ‘South Africa: forced labour, The Political Economy of Africa (Boston, 1975); and M. Legassick and H. Wolpe, 'The Bantustans and capital in South Africa’, Review of African Political Economy, no 7.1976.

26 The precise numbers of unemployed and partially employed in South Africa are almost impossible to arrive at with accuracy, and different economists have arrived at very different results. For some of the debate see M. Lipton, ‘The debate about South Africa’, op. cit. pp.64-9; C. Simkins, ‘Structural Unemployment in Southern Africa1 (Natal, 1978) and the papers by C. Simkins, L. J. Loots and P. J. van der Merwe to the workshop on ‘Unemployment and Labour Allocation’, held at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, March, 1977. See also SAIRR, A Survey of Race Relations, 1977, p.213 ff and 1978, p.l68 ff.

27 M., Legassick and Wolpe, H. , ‘The Bantustans and capital accumulation’, op. cit. p.95.Google Scholar

28 Thomas, Trudi, Their Doctor Speaks (Cape Town, 1973) p.17.Google Scholar

29 Financial Mail, 16.2.79.

30 For analogous labelling and an explanation, see I. R. Phimister and C. van Onselen, ‘The political economy of tribal animosity: a case study of the 1929 Bulawayo location “faction fight“! JSAS, vol.VI, 1 October, 1979. Undoubtedly ‘faction fights’ have their roots in far earlier conflicts, and there is much evidence of this in the Msinga district. See J. Clegg, ‘“Ukubuyisa Isidumbu” - Bringing back the body: an examination of the ideology of vengence in the Mcinga and Mpofana rural locations (1882-1944)’, unpublished paper presented to the African Studies neninar, Univertiity of Witwaterorand, 7.5.79. Neverthelean, Ciegg concluer ‘…In trying to understand the conditions under which thin new nocial phenomenon /i.e. in the 1880s/ developed, there is, among all the other numcroun factorn, a single underlying element which seems to pervade the fighting at all levels - the problem of insufficient land’ (p.l).

31 The quotation and much of this paragraph is based on Joanne Yawitch's important study, ‘Women and Squatting. A Winterveld case-study’, unpublished seminar paper, Institute of African Studies, University of Witwatersrand, and reports in the Financial Mail and Post already cited.

32 See Hellmann, E., Rooiyard. A Sociological Survey of an Urban Native Slum Yard (Livingstone, 1948).Google Scholar

33 Financial Mail, 20.4.79.

34 ‘The South African Dilemma’, in Hartz, L. (ed), The Founding of New Societies (New York, 1974), p.182.Google Scholar

35 Some of this new interpretation has been summarised in S. Marks and A. Atmore, Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa (London, 1980), introduction and chapters by J. J. Guy and P. Bonner; see also D. Hedges. ‘Trade and politics in southern Mozambique and Zululand in the 18th and 19th centuries’, Ph.D., London, 1978; J. Wright, ‘Pre-Shakan age-group formation among the northern Nguni’, Natalia, no.8, Dec. 1978; and H. Slater, ‘Transitions in the political economy of south-east Africa before 1940’, D.Phil., Sussex, 1976.

36 Sanders, P., Moshoeshoe. Chief of the Sotho (London, 1975), p.29.Google Scholar

37 Wrigley, C., ‘Historicism in Africa’, African Affairs, LXX, no.279, April, 1971, pp.113-24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 (London, 1978) see esp. Appendix A, p.181.

39 Post, 9.7.79.