This thesis compares the later poetry of Breyten Breytenbach and Lucebert from the phenomenological approach of landscape as dwelling. The metaphor of landscape as dwelling is derived from the art philosophy of Martin Heidegger, which emphasises the importance of truth as aletheia (or “disclosure”), the cultural geography of John Wylie, which illuminates the notion of landscape as tension, and the anthropology of Tim Ingold with reference to the dwelling perspective, adopted from Heidegger’s philosophy on dwelling. The thesis destructs the Cartesian idea of landscape, which relates to the constructivist description of landscape as a way of seeing. The destructive reading shows that mortals’ dwelling on earth is inherently part of the landscape, which means that landscape opens up as an expression of Dasein’s fundamental being-in-the-world, rather than a scene looked upon from afar. Furthermore, this thesis uses Ingold’s distinction between the landscape and the taskscape (Ingold, 2000:195), and Heidegger’s notion of the fourfold (Heidegger, 1989:172), to make a desctructive reading of the poets’ work, with specific reference to William Spanos’s destructive criticism. It investigates a number of poems from Breytenbach’s Nine landscapes of our time bequeathed to a beloved (Nege landskappe van ons tye bemaak aan ʼn beminde, 1993), Paper flower (Papierblom, 1998), The wind-catcher (Die windvanger, 2007), The principle of dust (Die beginsel van stof, 2011) and Catalects (Katalekte, 2012), and Lucebert’s Harvests in the roaming garden (Oogsten in de dwaaltuin, 1981), The swamp rider from paradise (De moerasruiter uit het paradijs, 1982), Console the hysterical robot (Troost de hysterische robot, 1989), Of the malt-like profligate (Van de maltentige losbol, 1993) and Of the motionless agitator (Van de roerloze woelgeest, 1994). The analyses focus specifically on the destruction of the traditional landscape idea by emphasising Dasein’s everyday activities, and his/her dis-covering approach toward the elements of the fourfold. The thesis concludes with a comparison of the work of the poets in terms of their destruction of the notion of landscape, the temporality of the taskscape, the taskscape as an ensemble of tasks, and a systematic reading of dwelling. / PhD (Afrikaans en Nederlands), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Breyten Breytenbach's Afrikaans translation of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus is a little known member of the corpus of Afrikaans Shakespeare plays. Published without annotations in South Africa in 1970 and performed in Cape Town in the same year, it has never been performed again and the text has attracted no academic review or led to any subsequent editions. However, situated in 1970 in the heyday of the Apartheid regime, the play's production broke attendance records in Cape Town and was accompanied by substantial public controversy. In this thesis, the author analyses Breytenbach's translation in order to determine whether the translator had an ideological agenda in performing the translation. The analysis is based on a preliminary discussion of culture and ideology in translation, and then uses the Skopostheorie methodology of Hans J. Vermeer (as developed by Christiane Nord) to assess the translation situation and the target text. The target text has been analysed on both a socio-political and microstructural level. The summary outcome of the analysis is that the translator may possibly have tried to promote an anti-Apartheid ideology by translating the play. The outcome is based on several contextual factors such as the socio-political situation in South Africa in which the translated play was published and performed, the translator's stated opposition to the Apartheid system, the choice of Titus Andronicus for translation and production, and to a lesser extent the level of public controversy that accompanied the target text's production in the theatre. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Breyten Breytenbach se Afrikaanse vertaling van William Shakespeare se Titus Andronicus is 'n min bekende eksemplaar van die versameling Shakespeare toneelstukke in Afrikaans. Dit is sonder enige annotasies in 1970 in Suid-Afrika uitgegee, en is dieselfde jaar in Kaapstad opgevoer. Sedertdien is dit nooit weer opgevoer nie, en die teks het geen akademiese kritiek ontlok nie. Die teks is ook nooit weer herdruk nie. Maar in 1970, tydens die toppunt van die Apartheidregime, het hierdie toneelstuk se opvoering bywoningsrekords oortref en dit is deur aansienlike openbare omstredenheid gekenmerk. In dié tesis ontleed die skrywer Breytenbach se vertaling om te bepaal of die vertaler 'n ideologiese agenda in die vertaling van die toneelstuk gehad het. Die ontleding word op 'n voorlopige bespreking van kultuur en ideologie in die vertaalproses gegrond, en maak dan gebruik van die Skopostheorie van Hans J. Vermeer (soos verwerk deur Christiane Nord) om die omstandighede ten tyde van die vertaalproses sowel as die doelteks self te ontleed. Die doelteks is op sowel sosiaalpolitiese as mikrostrukturele vlak ontleed. Die samevattende uitkoms van die ontleding is dat die vertaler moontlik 'n anti-Apartheid ideologie probeer bevorder het deur hierdie toneelstuk te vertaal. Hierdie uitkoms is gegrond op verskeie samehangende faktore, soos die sosiaalpolitiese omstandighede in Suid-Afrika waarin die toneelstuk uitgegee en opgevoer is, die vertaler se vermelde teenkanting teen die Apartheidstelsel, die keuse van Titus Andronicus vir vertaling en opvoering, en tot 'n mindere mate die vlak van openbare omstredenheid wat gepaard gegaan het met die doelteks se opvoering in die teater.

In 1978 the SADF carried out an airborne assault on Cassinga in Southern Angola. The South Africans claimed that Cassinga was a key SWAPO military headquarters, training camp and logistic base. SWAPO claimed it was a refugee camp and that the approximately 600 people who died in the attack were innocent civilians. The SADF said it had dealt SWAPO a significant military blow; SWAPO said the SADF had carried out a brutal massacre of old people, women and children. This dissertation focuses on the military dimensions of the raid, examining first the military situation in southern Angola and northern Namibia at the time, then looking at Cassinga itself before reviewing the airborne capability of the SADF, considering the decision that was made to launch the attack, describing the planning and preparations, the actual assault, a Cuban counter-attack and the extraction of the South African paratroopers. It concludes with the propaganda claims of both sides before assessing the military significance of the action. / History / M.A.

This thesis examines works written about imprisonment by four South African political prison writers who were incarcerated for political reasons. My Introduction focuses on current research and literature available on the subject of political prison-writing and it justifies the study to be undertaken. Chapter One examines the National Party's policy pertaining to the holding of political prisoners and discusses the work of Michel Foucault on the subject of imprisonment as well as the connection he makes between knowledge and power. This chapter also considers the factors that motivate a prisoner to write. Bearing in mind Foucault's findings, Chapters Two to Five undertake detailed studies of La Guma's The Stone Country, Dennis Brutus's Letters to Martha, Hugh Lewin's Bandiet and Breyten Breytenbach's The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, respectively. Particular emphasis is placed on the reaction of these writers against a repressive government. In addition, Chapters Two to Five reflect on the way in which imprisonment affected them from a psychological point of view, and on the manner in which they were, paradoxically, empowered by their prison experience. Chapters Four and Five also consider capital punishment and Lewin and Breytenbach's response to living in a hanging jail. I contemplate briefly the works of Frantz Fanon in the conclusion in order to elaborate on the reasons for the failure of the system of apartheid and the policy of political imprisonment and to reinforce my argument. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

Autobiographical writing acquired increasing importance during the apartheid period, with greater numbers of autobiographical texts being published by a more representative range of South Africans across race, class and gender categories. This thesis analyzes the implications of shifts in autobiographical production, in English, during the years 1948-1994 through the examination of selected texts. The readings are informed by poststructuralism, modified by information about indigenous black South African cultural practices, as well as by input supplied by some of the autobiographical texts themselves. This theoretical approach may be referred to as a "pratique de metissage" (Glissant). The texts selected for close reading are from a field of over 120 autobiographical texts. They were chosen for their ability to illustrate important trends in South African autobiographical writing, specifically with regard to the three constituent parts of autobiography: autos, bios, and graphe. The chapter dealing with the depiction of self interrogates the hierarchized discourses of male-biased humanism in Roy Campbell's Light on a Dark Horse (1951). In Ellen Kuzwayo's Call Me Woman (1985) I analyze the melding of the conceptual frameworks of indigenous black cultures and Western individualism by which the autobiographical subject is defined. Breyten Breytenbach's The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1984) is read as an exploration of the postmodernist decentred self. In the chapter focusing on the portrayal of life experiences, I examine the ways in which the narrator of Albert Luthuli's Let My People Go (1962) seeks to secure the reader's approval of his version of recent South African history; while the analysis of the sub-genre referred to here as worker autobiography is principally concerned with the politics of life-writing. In Chapter 5, I look at how Godfrey Moloi's My Life: Volume One (1987) uses the discourses of popular American movies of the 40s and 50s in order to validate a self victimized by racism, and also at the ways in which Lyndall Gordon's Shared Lives (1992) probes the limits and possibilities of biography through autobiographical speculation. In general, apartheid autobiography moves away from individualism to contribute, through various means, to social and political change. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1994.

In 1978 the SADF carried out an airborne assault on Cassinga in Southern Angola. The South Africans claimed that Cassinga was a key SWAPO military headquarters, training camp and logistic base. SWAPO claimed it was a refugee camp and that the approximately 600 people who died in the attack were innocent civilians. The SADF said it had dealt SWAPO a significant military blow; SWAPO said the SADF had carried out a brutal massacre of old people, women and children. This dissertation focuses on the military dimensions of the raid, examining first the military situation in southern Angola and northern Namibia at the time, then looking at Cassinga itself before reviewing the airborne capability of the SADF, considering the decision that was made to launch the attack, describing the planning and preparations, the actual assault, a Cuban counter-attack and the extraction of the South African paratroopers. It concludes with the propaganda claims of both sides before assessing the military significance of the action. / History / M.A.

This thesis examines works written about imprisonment by four South African political prison writers who were incarcerated for political reasons. My Introduction focuses on current research and literature available on the subject of political prison-writing and it justifies the study to be undertaken. Chapter One examines the National Party's policy pertaining to the holding of political prisoners and discusses the work of Michel Foucault on the subject of imprisonment as well as the connection he makes between knowledge and power. This chapter also considers the factors that motivate a prisoner to write. Bearing in mind Foucault's findings, Chapters Two to Five undertake detailed studies of La Guma's The Stone Country, Dennis Brutus's Letters to Martha, Hugh Lewin's Bandiet and Breyten Breytenbach's The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, respectively. Particular emphasis is placed on the reaction of these writers against a repressive government. In addition, Chapters Two to Five reflect on the way in which imprisonment affected them from a psychological point of view, and on the manner in which they were, paradoxically, empowered by their prison experience. Chapters Four and Five also consider capital punishment and Lewin and Breytenbach's response to living in a hanging jail. I contemplate briefly the works of Frantz Fanon in the conclusion in order to elaborate on the reasons for the failure of the system of apartheid and the policy of political imprisonment and to reinforce my argument. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

Text in English / Restricted files have not been uploaded / The thesis commences by elaborating on the concept of vertical envelopment as a form of military manoeuvre and defining airborne operations as comprising parachute, helicopter and air-landed actions. It goes on to describe strategy and tactics as they apply to the discussion before briefly tracing the development internationally of vertical envelopment and the thinking of the South African military about airborne operations during the Second World War. Events leading up to the decision by the South African military to acquire helicopters and to train paratroopers in 1960 are examined and the early operational employment of helicopters is analysed. The establishment of 1 Parachute Battalion is discussed in the light of the absence of a clear understanding of how it should be employed. Moving on to the commencement of the conflict known as the Southern African Thirty Year War, the issue of strategic versus tactical application of an airborne capability during operations in Namibia, Angola and Rhodesia is defined. Strategic application is then illustrated by specific independent airborne strikes, and the requirement for an airborne brigade to plan and conduct such operations is highlighted. The establishment of 44 Parachute Brigade and the difficulties experienced in its development are reviewed before scrutinising the tactical use of airborne forces in support of other ground forces. The high point in organisation and capability of the airborne forces of the South African Defence Force at the time of the ending of the Thirty Year War is appraised and the unfulfilled potential of the capability is elucidated. Faced with change and uncertainty, the employment of the paratroopers in urban operations during the height of the civil unrest is examined. This is followed by probing the response of the paratrooper organisation to severe budget cuts, enforced reorganisation and relocation, the ending of conscription and integration into the new South African National Defence Force following the country’s first democratic elections in 1994. The thesis concludes with an evaluation of the airborne actions during the incursion by South Africa into Lesotho in 1998 and an assessment of the implications of the loss of a strategic airborne capability. / History / D. Litt. et Phil. (History)