Department of History
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Browsing Department of History by browse.metadata.advisor "Fransch, Chet"
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- ItemAll my companions are free, I alone am excepted : a socio-economic history of recaptured Africans at the Cape Colony in the age of reform, c. 1807-1834(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2024-03) Crous, Benjamin Daniel; Fransch, Chet; Ekama, Kate; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The study of the enslaved peoples ‘rescued’ from illegal slave ships and apprenticed in colonial locales in the aftermath of the Abolition Act of 1807 is of burgeoning scholarly interest. The lived experiences and governance of those subject to this scheme in the British Caribbean, Sierra Leone and more recently Brazil and Cuba have received increasing attention. The literature on ‘recaptured Africans’ or ‘prize negroes’ as they were known at the Cape Colony, by contrast has remained rather inert since the early twenty first century. This study is an attempt to redirect attention to the history of recaptives at the Cape Colony, focusing on the period of change ushered in by the 1820s. Using the underutilised records collected by the Commission of Eastern Inquiry, as well as new quantitative sources and methods, allow for new insights to be gleaned about the history of recaptives during this period. Forming part of a larger ‘experiment’ in free labour, the 1820s saw the end of the fourteen-year apprenticeships of recaptured Africans at the Cape. With the aim of ending chattel slavery, the metropolitan government sought to assess the state of their colonies and prepare their labour markets for the integration of free labourers. This resulted in the despatch of Royal Commissions of Inquiry, as well as the passing of various ameliorative legislation. This dissertation argues that the period of reform ushered in by the 1820s merits attention specifically because it resulted in a variety of power struggles leading to conflict between colonists, commissioners and recaptives. Indeed, these contestations were symptomatic of a larger struggle as each group sought to redefine their place within the shifting colonial boundaries of class and race. Analysing the testimonies of recaptives brought before the Commissioners of Inquiry allows for these struggles to be personalized and the lived experiences of these subaltern labourers to come to the fore during this tumultuous period in Cape history.
- ItemBeing public : musicians and the Market Theatre Cafe, 1976 - 1980(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-03) Ncume, Pakama Sbongile; Matshoba, Pakama Sbongile; Lambrechts, Lizabe; Fransch, Chet; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.ENGLISH SUMMARY : In 1976 the Market Theatre Complex was opened in Newton, Johannesburg by Barney Simon and Mannie Manim. Their vision was to establish a non-discriminatory and inclusive theatre that operated outside the legislated segregation policies of the apartheid system. One of the venues in the complex was a small music entertainment space called the Market Theatre Café. The Café which operated from 1976 to 1978 was run and managed by David Marks and his wife Frances Marks. Throughout its short existence, the venue offered a platform for local and international musicians, English, Afrikaans, Zulu, and Sepedi singers-songwriters, folk musicians, township jazz groups, rock and punk groups, and jazz musicians to perform. While the performances in the Market Theatre Complex are well documented, very little has been written about the Café and the music and musicians who performed there. Using primary sources, specifically live sound recordings made of the performances at the Café, preserved in the Hidden Years Music Archive at Stellenbosch University, this study will offer an analysis of the concerts staged in the Market Theatre Café. Through investigating the musicians, the music performed and lyrics of songs, as well as the conversations on stage between musicians and/or with the audience - as well as the music productions staged at the venue - this study will explore how such music performances enabled the coming together and the “being public” of a community that sanctioned a space for freedom of expression and political action during times when “publics” and “being public” were highly regulated.
- ItemProcession, pilgrimage and protest : a historical study of the Qadiriyya-Nasiriyya and Islamic movement in Nigeria, public religiosity in Northern Nigeria, 1952-2021(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2023-03) Shehu, Abdullahi Hamisu; Fransch, Chet; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of History.ENGLISH SUMMARY : This dissertation explores the changing history, mode of organization and conduct of the Maukibi (procession) of the Qadiriyya-Nasiriyya (QN) Sufi group and the Muzahara (procession and protest) and the Tattaki (pilgrimage) of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN) Shia group. The former was introduced in 1952 and practiced within the confine of urban area of Kano state while the latter in 1981 and staged in varied spaces across northern Nigeria, particularly from 1996. Practiced differently, the Tattaki, unlike urban-based Muzahara, members trekked across state borders to Zaria via designated meeting points within the region. Analyzed in different historical contexts, these public religious rituals have since become defining practices of these two religious groups which, among multitude of religious groups in Nigeria, pattern their public religiosity. While the extant historical and anthropological studies on religious groups in Nigeria pay more attention to their evolution, transformation, sectarian fragmentation, and entangled relations among them, motivated by different socio-political and economic atmosphere, they hardly explore the phenomenon of public religiosity⸺ Maukibi, Muzahara and Tattaki ⸺of the QN and IMN. The dissertation fills this historiographical gap by exploring the culture of veneration of saints as the underlying genesis of all these public practices and the way in which, in the long run, the practices are instrumentalized in the making and revitalizating of collective identities in the saturated northern Nigeria’s religious landscape. By locating these practices within the broader scholarly conversations on nationalism, identity, politics, public order policing and violence, the dissertation posits that the practices constitute a new dimension of popular religiosity and represent the intricate nexus between religion, identity construction, commemoration and security in the region. With their distinctive features of appropriation of public spaces, massing of bodies, mass mobilization and transcendence, the dissertation demonstrates that different government(s) deployed various uneven regulatory measures to tame them. These regulatory measures ranged from confinement, postponement, restriction, repression and ban. While the application of these measures varies: the Maukibi was regulated by confinement, postponement and restriction; Muzahara by repression and ban, the latter measures resulted in the death of many of the IMN members over the last three decades and many more injured or incarcerated. Multitude of sources and methodologies have been used: primary and secondary sources, qualitative method, content analysis and observation.