Southern Journal for Contemporary History

Book Review:Marmon, Brooks. Pan-Africanism Versus Partnership: African Decolonisation in Southern Rhodesian Politics, 1950-1963. New York: Springer, 2023. SBN 10: 3031255585

2024-09-17T12:17:49+02:00

Brooks Marmon’s Pan-Africanism versus Partnership is a welcome addition to the historiography of Zimbabwe’s political history. There has not been much written of late on this period, as most historians have focused on the liberation war and the negotiated settlement leading up to Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. Marmon has taken up the challenge of re-assessing the messiness of white settler and African nationalist politics during the 10-year Federation period (1953-1963). During this period, white politicians from Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) tried to forestall African majority rule from reaching their territories by engineering a veneer of a more racially inclusive politics short of majority rule for the Federal government. Marmon does an excellent job of bringing to life the debates and power plays of various white politicians and parties as they tried to block the growth of “pan-Africanism” amongst the Black African movements in the Central African Federation (CAF). In addition to establishing how central the fear of black nationalism, or pan-Africanism, was to white politicians, Marmon demonstrates how important it was for fledgling Zimbabwean African politicians to navigate and build ties with pan-African movements in West, Central, and Southern Africa during this period.

Book review: Odendaal, André. Dear Comrade President: Oliver Tambo and the Foundations of South Africa’s Constitution. Cape Town: Penguin Books, 2022. 441 pp. ISBN: 9781776096695

2024-06-12T20:58:32+02:00

Many South Africans, particularly Black Africans, are increasingly disgruntled about the Constitution of the country and its perceived lack of inclusive representation. One of the overarching arguments is that the Constitution should be re-written to be more just. On 27 February 2018, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) tabled a motion in parliament for section 25 Constitution to be amended to allow Land Expropriation Without Compensation (LEWC). The process failed after the National Assembly could not get a two-thirds majority to amend the Constitution. Additionally, when the United Democratic Front (UDF) held its 40th anniversary at City Hall in Johannesburg on 19 August 2023, former South African minister of finance Trevor Manuel noted that “the Constitution of the country should be amended so that citizens can hold government accountable, as voices of the general public are not represented”.1 Postapartheid South Africa is, therefore, undergoing a moment of critical introspection, with the Constitution at the centre of many public and scholarly debates.

Book Review:Erlank, Natasha. Convening Black Intimacy: Christianity, Gender, and Tradition in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2022. xvi. 272 pp. ISBN: 9781776148165.

2024-09-17T12:21:17+02:00

Natasha Erlank’s Convening Black Intimacy: Christianity, Gender, and Tradition in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa is a text that chronicles how “black affect” (referring to the feelings of love, devotion, and attraction in intimate relationships) was profoundly reconfigured by the influence of Christianity.1 While acknowledging the profoundly destabilising effects of the system of migrant labour on the intimate and family lives of black South Africans, central to Erlank’s
argument is the assertion that the modernising influence of the adoption of Christianity by black converts should not be elided (p. 6). She successfully makes this argument over the course of six substantive chapters, demonstrating how embedded Christianity was and continues to be in black life, and “black intimacy” in particular, which she defines as the, “interlinked and interlocking set of thinking, behavior, and feelings tied to sexuality, fertility, the moral dispositions associated with both of these, conjugal and family life, and the gendered roles that shape them” (p. 1). This is, by necessity, a broad definition, also taking into account the public life and discussion of these ideas – the “convening” part of the title.

Archival Report

2024-06-10T14:26:26+02:00

This archival report tracks two collections at Northwestern University (USA) which contain significant, albeit underutilised material on two organisations (the Capricorn Africa Society and Inter-racial Association of Southern Rhodesia) which played a notable role in attempts to implement the ‘Partnership’ philosophy that ostensibly underpinned the governing credo of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in the 1950s. A unique and notable component of the material are the significant first-hand observations and field notes by a contemporaneous American academic, Vernon McKay, with a scholarly interest in both organisations. Additionally, while the academic literature on the Society and the Association typically emphasises the role of white liberals, material at Northwestern also delineates both the role of those who would shortly play a leading role in the anti-colonial liberation struggle (such as Herbert Chitepo) as well as that of their reactionary white opponents. The report also provides a brief historiographical review of extant work on the organisations and other archival repositories that have traditionally informed this scholarship.

ECOWAS protocol on Democracy and good governance: an analysis of response to the 2021 Guinean Coup D'état

2022-11-04T08:08:29+02:00

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) aims to counter the economic, political, social, and security challenges of its sub-region. The aim is embedded in the fact that it is only an economically vibrant, politically stable, socially harmonious, and environmentally secure sub-region that can promote “collective self-sustenance”. The pursuit of this mandate led to the creation of several protocols; one of which mandates the organisation to uphold democracy and good governance within its member states. ECOWAS attempts at fulfilling this obligation often suffer setbacks. This research aims to provide answers to the following questions: 1. Why did ECOWAS respond to the 2021 coup d’état in Guinea the way it did? 2. What is the impact of ECOWAS response to the 2021 coup d’état in Guinea on the perception of member-states? The article deploys the qualitative methodology of a single case-study of the 2021 coup d’état in Guinea, to examine ECOWAS capacity of fulfilling its mandate on democracy and good governance. For this purpose, data were sourced through secondary sources, and the descriptive and historical approaches are applied to examine the content and context of ECOWAS response. Furthermore, the concept of democratic backsliding is used as an analytical framework because it provides elucidation for the political development of African states. In the final analysis, it is observed that ECOWAS capacity for political or military intervention in “democratically troubled” member-states may be constrained by both the organisation’s internal contradictions and the member-states’ lack of resolve to strengthen ECOWAS.

A history of Congolese and Rwandese immigrants in Harare’s urban transport sector 1993-2022

2023-10-16T08:42:01+02:00

This article traces the involvement of the Congolese and Rwandese in the Harare urban transport sector by engaging with the challenges and successes they registered from 1993 to 2022. Despite the wave of economic nationalism and challenges that have affected Zimbabwe over the past decades, the Congolese and Rwandese transport operators have survived. The study argues that the reasons for the survival of Congolese and Rwandese transport operators over the past decade can be understood within their economic ties or social networks to a greater extent. However, local links play a complementary role. Despite their seemingly insignificant numbers, Congolese and Rwandese immigrants are a force to reckon with as they play a crucial role. The article moves away from the conventional approach of focusing on South-to- North migration by looking at South-to-South migration. It also demonstrates how those considered to be on the margins of the state seek to contest their marginality, registering their visibility. Moreover, Zimbabwe is a country punctuated with crisis discourse, and this article offers a paradoxical case in point on Congolese and Rwandese immigrants who resettled in Zimbabwe. The article deploys oral histories from the key participants and primary and secondary sources to critically examine the resettlement and survival of immigrants in Zimbabwe. It concludes that foreign players in the transport sector cannot be ignored for long since evidence indicates that they play a significant role in their small numbe

Prominent Malawian Machona Progenies in Zimbabwe

2024-05-09T12:32:24+02:00

As immigrants settle and gradually entrench themselves in foreign spaces, some permeate the socio-economic and political fabric of their host nation and in the process assume unprecedented hegemonic prominence over time. Such has been the case of Malawian Machona (lost ones) descendants in Southern Africa, who as products of the colonial labour migration system, have over the years carved a niche for themselves in their adopted lands. Despite many of them living invisibly on the margins of the state, they have exhibited and showcased their unique ancestral traits and gained prominence across various fields. In Zimbabwe and South Africa, which are territories that immensely benefited from the sweat of colonial regional migrant labour, these immigrants have imprinted their genetic socio-cultural cosmology and left an everlasting influence and legacy across numerous spheres. Therefore, using biographical narratives of people of Malawian ancestry in Southern Africa, this article details how descendants of Malawian labour migrants in the region have become visible and left an indelible mark on the southern African geo-political landscape. The article anchors itself within the concept of visibility and invisibility, to showcase how migrants become prominent or visible in situations where formal bureaucracies and even historiographies tend to conceal, invisibilize or underrepresent such minorities. In the context of Malawian progenies, this prominence or visibility emerges out of an inherent assertiveness that has been historically informed by numerous socio-cultural circumstances in the diaspora.

Editorial

2024-09-17T12:12:55+02:00

One of the topical subjects globally at present is migration. From refugees fleeing wars in Ukraine and Russia to Donald Trump’s electioneering on immigration and border control in the United States of America to allegations of xenophobia against immigrants in Southern Africa, the subject remains alive. Historians have long researched and written on the topic, showing as they do, various facets to the subject. Even in the current discourses, historians remain attracted to the topic as is evidenced in this journal. This issue of the Southern Journal for Contemporary History opens with an article by Anusa Daimon entitled “Prominent Malawian Machona Progenies in Zimbabwe”. The article deals with a very important topic: the role of immigrants in colonial and post-colonial African territories. The presence of Malawians in Zimbabwe originated from the colonial labour migration system. Over the decades, as evidenced by Daimon, Malawians have carved significant roles in Zimbabwe and the whole southern African region. Brian Maregedze and Thembani Dube’s article “The involvement of Congolese and Rwandese immigrants in Harare urban transport sector, 1993-2022” also deals with African immigrants in Zimbabwe. Similarly
to Daimon’s contribution, it also includes an important use of oral sources. Tola Odubajo’s contribution deals with ECOWAS’ response to the 2021 Guinean coup d’etat. This is a welcomed topic for a journal that aims to cover areas of the continent beyond the English-speaking African territories, to which it mainly caters, and which encourages analyses of contemporary African political issues. We hope to see more contributions covering themes on Francophone and Lusophone Africa, as well as North Africa, in the future.