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Quiet Dawn: Time, Aesthetics, and the Afterlives of Black Radicalism traces the unfulfilled utopian aspirations of the revolutionary past that haunt the present of the African diaspora. Taking its name from the final track on famed black nationalist musician Archie Shepp’s 1972 Attica Blues, this dissertation argues that the defeat of black radical and anticolonial projects witnessed during the turbulent years of the sixties and seventies not only represent past “failures” but also point to a freedom that has yet to arrive. Working at the convergence of literature, performance, and visual culture, Quiet Dawn argues that the unfinished projects of black and anticolonial revolution live on as radical potentialities that linger in the archive like a “haunting refrain.” Quiet Dawn offers a theory the haunting refrain of black sociality that emanates across seemingly disparate geopolitical nodes. The concept of the haunting refrain designates an affective register through which otherwise hidden and obscure regions of the past can be apprehended. The dissertation attends to the traces of black sociality that linger in the archive through an examination of the literary and critical works of black intellectuals such as Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Kamau Brathwaite, Sylvia Wynter, Frantz Fanon, and Léopold Sédar Senghor. Rather than lay claim to political heroes, Quiet Dawn turns to the past in an attempt to give an account of the dispersed social forces that gathered around the promise of a black world. Each chapter offers an example of the haunting refrain of black social life that lingers in the past. In this way, the dissertation as a whole gives an account of the radical potentialities that register as hums, echoes, muted chants, and shadow songs of the “long sixties.” Quiet Dawn contributes to scholarship on black internationalism and intervenes in current critical debates around race, gender, and sexual violence in the fields of black studies, feminist studies, and postcolonial studies. Its theorization of black social life as a spectral presence is an attempt at attending to the other others that haunt contemporary critiques of power which merely seek redemption in an irredeemable world. To be sure, this project strikes neither an optimistic nor pessimistic note. Rather, it is rooted in the belief that there are infinite amounts of hope that we have yet to apprehend.

The 1930s and 1940s in Durban have been relatively under-researched, and yet these two decades constituted a crucial phase in the city's growth. This thesis concentrates on the political experiences of Africans during the period. The beer hall riots of 1929 and the 'African-Indian' riots of 1949 serve as significant points at which to start and end the thesis. These two flashpoints were very different in nature, and their differences signalled the changes that took place in Durban between the late 1920s and the late 1940s. Yet the riots can also be linked: they both reflected extreme frustration amongst Africans at their exclusion from the resources of the city. The two riots illuminate key issues in African politics, in municipal and state policy, and in the changing structures of Durban society. These comparative findings are based on a detailed study of the period between the two riots. A wide variety of African political experiences in Durban is examined. These fall into four broad categories of political ideology and practice: populism, nationalism, ethnicity and 'workerism'. The narrative begins with the radical anti-municipal populism of 1929-30 and then attempts to explain the politically 'quiet' 1930s. The Second World War brought significant changes, giving rise to a range of important new ideologies and political strategies. The most important developments were in worker organisation and nationalist politics. The struggle for the city was heightened even further in the post-war period. Wide-ranging expressions of urban populism and racial ethnicity set the scene for the 1949 riots. Due to the nature of the evidence collected, much of the thesis concentrates on the roles played by the (largely middle class) political leadership. The analysis portrays African politics as a complex process of 'negotiation', and the historical narrative is informed by theoretical perspectives which integrate 'class' and 'race'.

Research Report: Masters in psychology - Coursework and research report , 07 June 2017 / The study investigated the challenges that black middle class men experience in negotiating the masculine identities within the South African context. The adopted understanding was that of Connell in that there are many ways of being a man. The findings were that men are given a standard or expectations to live by but there are never guided on how to go about meeting them. This was portrayed by the interwoven themes and discourse that in some instances work against each other and render the black middle class men vulnerable in terms of identities. / MT2018