Our understanding of the Later Stone Age (LSA) on the Greater Mapungubwe Landscape has until now been fairly limited. However, it is a landscape upon which foragers witnessed and partook in agriculturalist state formation between AD 900 and 1300, altering their cultural behaviour to suit their changing social and political topography. Nowhere else in southern Africa were foragers part of such developments. For this project a landscape approach was used to study the various changes in the regional LSA record as well as the way in which foragers interacted with farmers. In order to address these issues, data were obtained from an archaeological survey followed by an excavation of seven sites in north-eastern Botswana, part of the Greater Mapungubwe Landscape. These finds indicate that the local forager record varies chronologically and spatially, which had not previously been recorded. Foragers also used a variety of site types and in each a different forager expression was deposited, providing indications of their changing settlement pattern. Notably, this included a gradual movement into agriculturalist homesteads beginning by at least AD 1000 and concluding by AD 1300, when the Mapungubwe capital was abandoned. Thus, interactions, at least in some cases, led to assimilation. There is also clear evidence of exchange with agriculturalists at many of the excavated sites, but this does not always seem to be related to their proximity with one another. Performing a landscape study has also made it possible to make two general conclusions with regard to LSA research. First, these data challenge ethnography, displaying its limitations particularly with linking modern Bushman practices, such as aggregation and dispersal patterns or hxaro gift exchange, to LSA foragers. Second, a full landscape understanding combines the archaeology of multiple cultural landscapes and in this case also crosses national borders, two themes often neglected in southern African archaeological studies.

Existing studies of this topic have not made enough use of the British archives. Nor have they analysed the American domestic response to UDI in sufficient depth. The policies of successive American administrations as regards the Rhodesian problem can only be fully understood as part of Washington’s attitude to Britain, to Africa in general, and to southern Africa in particular. And, because the issue of white minority rule in Africa raised powerful emotions both in the African American community and among white opponents of civil rights, the Rhodesian crisis became a part of the politics of racial equality within the USA, playing a key role in the developing ideologies of these two communities. This thesis is based on research in both American and British archives and aims to show that the prevailing interpretation, especially of the policies of the Johnson Administration once Rhodesia had made its illegal declaration of independence in November 1965, is mistaken. Scholars have tended to take at face value the oft-repeated claim of US policy-makers that Rhodesia was a British problem, that they wished to be no more than helpful bystanders, supporting British efforts to see the downfall of the illegal regime and the creation of a government based on majority rule, and that when they did intervene, it was merely to urge the British to be firmer in their resolve to end the rebellion. The central contention of this thesis is that the officials shaping African policy in the Johnson Administration were intimately involved in the management of the crisis and that, far from resisting a solution that legitimised the white minority regime, they actively encouraged the British to settle with the illegal government.

Between 1945 and 1969 the Sudanese achieved independence and overthrew a military junta with a popular uprising. Nevertheless both democratic periods were quickly ended by military coups. At the same time a civil war divided the country. The thesis asks why the democratic structures were so unstable, and unable to end the conflict between north and south. It argues that the ideas about the Sudanese nation by different groups were so contradictory, that no nation could be built. As a result, the political system failed to find a stable form and to deliver policy results to the constituents. The thesis is using political parties as units of analysis and primarily the constitutional process and, secondarily, questions of independence and sovereignty, as prisms. It discusses the history of the political parties within the context of the political history of Sudan. The discussions about the constitution are understood as one form of expressing ideas about the nation. The thesis presents the different suggestions for the constitution by different parties, especially in regards to governance, federalism, and religion. These contradictory ideas led to the failure of the constitution writing process. The thesis argues that the contradictory positions of the parties created a dual deadlock, which led to a breakdown of democracy. Firstly, due to reciprocal distrust, widely diverging platforms, and generally the difficulty of forming coalition governments, especially in the absence of a democratic tradition, coalitions became extremely unstable and politicians were forced to invest a lot of time and effort to keep coalitions alive and in consequence concrete political actions did not receive enough attention. Secondly, the divergent perceptions of the nation led to a situation where they stopped to see each other as part of the same nation and therefore stopped to recognise others as legitimately participating in the political process.

No abstract available.

This thesis surveys and discusses the documentary and archaeological evidence for sixth-century fortifications in Byzantine Africa. Chapter I examines the sources of evidence, noting that over 80 years have passed since the last major study of the subject was undertaken, by Charles Diehl in 1896. Chapter II traces the military history of Byzantine Africa from 533 to 602, with introductory and concluding sections on the fifth and seventh centuries. Chapter III discusses the evidence for the military organization and defensive strategy of Byzantine Africa in the sixth century, looking in particular at the structure of military command, the composition of the Byzantine army, the garrison structure (including the evidence for the nature and size of local garrisons stationed in forts and towns), the administrative machanisms by which fortifications were built and the strategy to be discerned in their siting. The chapter ends with a general appraisal of the benefits that Roman Africa received from Justinian's reconquest. Chapter IV examines the architecture of Byzantine fortifications in Africa, comparing it with earlier and contemporary practice in the eastern and western empires. The tactical aspects of fortifications are also considered, in particular the question of how far their design was influenced by the use made of artillery and archery in the sixth-century Byzantine army. In a short final chapter, an assessment is made of the value that the study of sixth-century Byzantine fortifications in Africa has for understanding later developments in the military architecture of eastern and western Christendom and of Islam. The Gazetteer includes full descriptions (with plans and photographs) of all the Byzantine fortifications identified in Africa, and shorter notes on other structures of more doubtful Byzantine identification; an index to fortifications in Africa referred to by Procopius; and a corpus of sixth- and seventh century military inscriptions from Africa.

This study examines the role of law in the constitution and contestation of state power in African history. Using Zimbabwe as a case study, it analyses legal struggles between Africans and the state, and amongst Africans themselves between 1950 and 1990. In doing so it intervenes in a number of scholarly debates on the relationship between law, state power and agency in African history. Firstly, I examine the role of law in constituting state power by exploring the interplay between legitimation and coercion in long term perspective. Secondly, I interrogate legal centralism as an approach to understanding developments in the legal sphere in African history and make the case for legal pluralism as a more appropriate approach. I argue that during the period under study, Zimbabwe witnessed a process of evolving legal pluralism characterised by the mutual appropriation of forms, symbols and concepts between state law and the ‘customary law’. Thirdly, I contribute to the debate on African legal agency by demonstrating that its significance went beyond the utility of the law in specific social, economic and political struggles. I argue that it also gave expression to emergent political imaginaries, shifting ideas of personhood and alternative visions of the social and political order. Lastly, I argue that, by undertaking a historical examination of legal struggles, this study provides a useful foundation from which to analyse contemporary legal struggles in Zimbabwe and in Africa more generally. The findings presented here caution against being drawn in by the apparent novelty of contemporary legal struggles. In addition, they suggest the means by which human rights discourse in Africa might be reinvigorated.

This is the history of a turbulent borderland in a time of transition. Colonialism redefined the meaning of borders in Burundi, and in the traumatic shift from colonial rule to Independence it became dangerous to live on the frontier. Responding to Newbury’s plea to ‘bring the peasant back in’ to the written history of the Great Lakes region, the thesis takes a micro-history approach, viewing the tumultuous events of the 1960s and 1970s from the perspective of the hills and the homestead. The border with Rwanda, as experienced in the two communes of Kabarore and Busiga, is tested as the point of encounter between society and state in this crucial time. It reveals the function and dysfunction of political linkage, and the tensions of being a citizen and a subject in the margins of a political community ruled by suspicion and paranoia. The themes - dissent, collaboration, elimination, repression - link this local history to the flow of national politics and the making of a new African state. Taking as its scope the pivotal period from decolonisation to the military state’s ‘selective genocide’, enacted against its Hutu population, the thesis identifies ‘vigilance’ as the most productive concept by which to study concepts of governance, political community and political linkage in the Great Lakes at the vital point of transformation. A communicative act that blends the stance of the citizen and the subject to shape a means of cautious cooperation and mutual recognition between people and state, vigilance also proved the destructive weapon that violently distilled the population into a subjugated peasantry beneath a bloodied state. The interaction on the border reveals these vital issues in acute contrast, opening the door to their examination elsewhere. This thesis studies the border; its conclusions may be chased far beyond it.

This thesis provides an account of the work of Canadian organizations that took part in the global anti-apartheid movement and then continued political advocacy work in South Africa post-1994. My central research question is: What explains the rise and fall of international solidarity movements? I answer this question by exploring the factors that allowed the Canadian anti-apartheid network to grow into an international solidarity movement and explaining how a change in these factors sent the network into a period of decline post-1994. I use two organizations, the United Church of Canada and CUSO, as case studies for my analysis. I argue that four factors were behind the growth of the Canadian solidarity network: the presence of large CSOs in Canada willing to become involved in solidarity work, the presence of radical spaces in these organizations from which activists could advocate for and carry out solidarity work, the frame resonance of the apartheid issue in Canada and the political incentives the apartheid state provided for South African activists to encourage Northern support. Post-1994 all of these factors shifted in ways that restricted the continuation of international solidarity work with South Africa. Accordingly I argue that the decline of the Canadian network was driven in part by specific South African factors, but was also connected to a more general stifling of the activist work of progressive Canadian CSOs over the 1990s. This reduction of capacity was driven by the ascent of neo-liberal policy in Canada and worldwide. Using examples from a wide swath of cases I outline this process and explain how all four factors drove the growth and decline of Canadian solidarity work towards South Africa.

This thesis constructs an ethnography for the nineteenth century ǀXam Bushmen of the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, known primarily through a nineteenth century manuscript collection of oral narrative (the Bleek-Lloyd archive), which has, over the past twenty-five years, increasingly become the focus of scholarly attention, mined for insights about the cultural world of southern Bushman societies. It draws on the Bleek-Lloyd archive to produce a detailed ethnographic case study, focusing on the ideological and ontological concepts that underpinned the differentiation of ǀXam society. Firstly, the thesis situates the archive and ǀXam society within their particular environmental and historical contexts, providing valuable supplementary information that informs readings of the narratives. By producing a fully searchable transcription of the entirety of the archive, paying close attention to emic terminology, and examining the recurrence of thematic associations of this phraseology throughout the narratives, the analysis explores the constitution of ǀXam ‘personhood’ and examines the extent to which the ‘hunter-gatherer’ category forms a useful heuristic for understanding ǀXam society, with a particular focus on models of the ‘animic ontology’. The ǀXam deployed a series of positively and negatively evaluated traits in the creation of dimensions of authority, obligation, and social responsibility, embedded in particular social identities; central to these constructions and to the differentiation of these identities were the techniques and resources of ǀXam subsistence practices, salient in the production of admirable (socially-responsible hunters), reprehensible (antagonistic ‘beasts of prey’), and more ambiguous (ǃgi:tǝn ritual specialists) identities. Recognising this internal differentiation, the thesis outlines ǀXam ‘subsistence strategies’ and suggests they should be defined broadly to include their contacts and interactions with non-ǀXam groups, with domesticated animals, and with the novel material culture of the colonial period; these interactions were a consequence of their ‘hunter-gatherer’ strategies rather than a negation of them. Such strategies generated experiences that reinforced and reconstituted ǀXam ideological frameworks, incorporating the dynamics of the nineteenth century ‘frontier’ scenario and provided avenues for social change that ultimately led to the collapse of independent hunter-gatherer lifeways, and to the adoption of strategies that incorporated ǀXam individuals within rural and urban ‘Coloured’ populations of the Northern Cape; placing the ǀXam in a comparative colonial context, the thesis stresses the wider relevance of this particular ethnography for understanding hunter-gatherer engagements with food-producing, state-level societies.

This thesis is a family history of Silas Molema and his three children from the late 1880s to the late 1920s. The Molemas were a family of devout Methodists and educated chiefs in Mafikeng north of British Bechuanaland (part of the Cape colony in 1895) but they held extensive landholdings across the border in the Bechuanaland Protectorate. The thesis explores education, landholding and political office as strategies through which the Molemas attempted to maintain their position of class, status and power. Chiefs perceived formal annexation by Britain in 1885 also as opportunity to pursue greater self-determination, preserve the institutions of chiefly rule, and sustain respectable livelihoods. These aspirations had come to be experienced and understood as sechuana, which was a fluid reconstruction of tradition that helped Molemas and other Bechuana notables straddle incongruous cultural spheres along a racially and ethnically diverse colonial frontier. The thesis argues that nationhood was a key identification through which Molemas and other educated Bechuana saw themselves, and considers why they imagined their nation within the British Empire. The thesis also points to the various historical transformations and private entanglements that enmeshed various conceptions of nationhood into the everyday experience of the family as an emotive and socialising institution. These sentiments of nationhood profoundly shaped this family’s self-understanding, and mediated the choices children made about work, marriage and other significant relationships. The challenge to transfer inherited privilege across generations shaped identities, intersected with the reconfiguration of the local political economy, and impinged upon structural transformations in southern Africa.