Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / This study investigated the hypothesis that Caprivi identities exist; and that they have always been contested. These identities defined as a sense of not belonging to greater South West Africa exist in two forms: i) as a spatial or geographical entity usually divided into East and West in history for administrative purposes; and, ii) as a people, such as Subia, Mafwe, Mayeyi, Mbukushu, Barakwena, Totela, Mbalangwe, and Lozi, collectively referred to as ‘Caprivians’. Through utilizing primary sources such as oral interviews and archival material as well as secondary sources, the study endeavored to establish how Caprivi identities were constructed; what the nature of its contestations are; and how ‘Caprivians’ responded to its construction. It was established that Caprivi identities were the result of administrative neglect in state formation that constructed isolation on the basis of difference – that ‘Caprivians’ are different from other groups in South West Africa, and that Caprivi was geographically remote from Windhoek and hence difficult to administer as part of South West Africa. Resultantly, only a primitive form of indirect rule existed in the area for most part of its colonial history resulting in constant change of colonial masters. Though it was pushed more to neighboring territories administratively, it was not made an integral part of such territories but made to stand separate as a geographical entity.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / The history of the abaThembu chieftainship in the twentieth century has been very little studied. This thesis is the first attempt to examine the chieftainship in detail. It shows how the chieftainship was deeply divided, yet survived socio-political assaults from both within and without. It focuses on the individuals who were successive paramount chiefs of the abaThembu, exploring how they helped shape the chieftainship over time, and on the impact on the chieftainship of state policy in the eras of segregation and then apartheid.

The Major problems facing me during both the research and the writing of this essay were the material available and the nature of the subject. Initially, both the necessary material and Jagger's character and role as Minister of Railways seemed remarkably elusive. The nature of the material available tended to enforce a reliance on Jagger's actions in parliament and the crises which he faced on that somewhat isolated stage, and on the gleanings from an almost exclusively partisan press. Jagger himself was a humourless, dry and lonely man whose private life remained his own business. His public career was the common story of the "boy with brains" who "did well in the Colonies". Another problem arises out of the fact that Jagger was appointed Minister of Railways and Harbours, a portfolio as dry as his personality. These factors go a long way towards explaining the generally uncontroversial nature of the material presented in this essay. Any dullness and related deficiencies are, of course, entirely the fault of the writer. It could be asked of what possible significance grain elevators, harbour extensions and railway deficits are. It is unlikely that any of these features will ever be considered to be of major significance to the history of South Africa in the twentieth century. In fact it could never really be said that J.W.Jagger was of major significance to South African history. What is presented here, however, be it dry statistics or seemingly absurd scandals about grain elevators or harbour extensions, is what Jagger himself found compelling. These aspects of South African life, the economic aspects, are where Jagger found fulfilment. To many this may seem incomprehensible, but this was Jagger's life. Life, after all, is at the core of history and it is only by immersing ourselves in the past, as historians, that we can hope to understand the present. Thus Jagger's life - albeit a dry and humourless life - is history; it lives; it is the "stuff of which dreams are made". Statistics and ways and means of economising comprise the essence of both Jagger's term of office as Minister of Railways and Harbours, and in fact of his entire life. The making of money, the best ways of saving it, and the best ways of spending it for the good of the nation comprise the essence of his career.

There is a paucity of oral-history works on Kat River. Likewise, although various histories of Kat River/Stockenstrom exist, few have focused on the forced removals of Stockenstrom coloured people in the 1980s, the effects of displacement on them, and their involvement in current land claims issues. This dissertation seeks to redress these lacunae and provide information from "the underside" on the Kat River Rebellion of 1851-1853. In order to accomplish this, between 2011 and 2016 the author interviewed, with their consent, people of Khoikhoi descent in Kat River, recording, transcribing and analysing the interviews. The interviews, which range from conversations with male and female subsistence farmers and lay preachers to activists - such as the late Manie Loots, aka James Stewart - are set in the broader context of a selective Kat River history from 1829 to the present. Vagrancy legislation during the historical period is discussed; showing the link between pauperism, vagrancy, and colonial perceptions of disease such as leprosy, which was often associated with "loose" women. It is argued that the above perceptions, together with fear, led to the targeting of women and lepers during the attack on Fort Armstrong in 1852. Despite attempts to marginalise them, it was found that both colonial women, including rebels, and women in present-day Kat River exercised, and continue to exercise, remarkable agency. This thesis also reassesses the ideological bases of the Kat River Settlement, arguing that they were cultivation and militarism, with the latter exemplified in the Kat River settlers' service in frontier wars. Further, it found that neo-Marxist theories of commoning can shed light on the etiology of the Kat River Rebellion, and that people, whose access to their commons or other rights is restricted or denied, become radicalised. It was also found that, although their dispossession from Kat River took place in the 1980s, the interviewees, who all demonstrated strong ties to the land on which they grew up, still feel the effects of it, their all-consuming aim being the recognition of their land claims and the restoration of their titles.

Includes bibliographical references and index. / In 1888, eighty years after Britain ended its oceanic slave trade, a British warship liberated a consignment of Oromo child slaves in the Red Sea and took them to Aden. A year later, a further group of liberated Oromo slave children joined them at a Free Church of Scotland mission at Sheikh Othman, just north of Aden. When a number of the children died within a short space of time, the missionaries had to decide on a healthier institution for their care. After medical treatment and a further year of recuperation, the missionaries shipped sixty-four Oromo children to Lovedale Institution in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. From 1890, Lovedale baptised the children into the Christian faith, taught them and trained them. By 1910, approximately one third had died, one third had settled in the Cape of Good Hope, one third had returned to Ethiopia and one had headed for the United States. The present study is a cohort-based, longitudinal prosopography of this group of Oromo slave children, based on the core documentation of the children’s own first passage accounts, supplemented by numerous and varied independent primary sources.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 262-289). / This thesis is based on the archival and fieldwork research, and sheds light on the area which has been little studied or reflected in scholarly literature: Islam in Northern Mozambique. Its particular focus is on African Muslim leadership in Northern Mozambique, which has historically incorporated Islamic authority and chiefship. The link between Islam and the chiefly clans existed since the eight century when Islam made inroads into the northern Mozambican coast and became associated with the Shirazi ruling elites. With the involvement of the region in the international slave trade during the nineteenth century, the Shirazi clans secured alliances with the most powerful mainland chiefs through conquest and kinship relations in order to access supplies of slaves from the mainland. This process was accompanied by a massive expansion of Islam from the coast into the hinterland. The alliances between the Shirazi at the coast and the chiefdoms further into the interior resulted in a network of paramount chiefs and their subordinates making up the bulk of Muslim slave-raiders, who established the limits between themselves (the Maca, Muslims and 'civilized') and those to be enslaved (the Makua and Lomwe, derogatory terms, meaning savagery, i.e., 'non-Muslims' and 'uncivilized')

Includes bibliographical references (p. [393]-423). / Hugh Archibald Wyndham was born in 1877, on the eve of the so-called 'Scramble for Africa', and died in 1961, surviving long enough to witness the dissolution of empire and the exit of South Africa from the British Commonwealth. His eighty-six years break into four, almost equal periods; the second of which, his twenty-two years spent in South Africa, are the focus of this study. These years, marked by the creation of the South African state, the forging of an exclusive, white, South African nationalism and, increasingly, by conflict among her peoples, is the core of what seems to be a coherent historical period extending from approximately 1800 to 1950.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 265-279). / This dissertation is about the social history of Timbuktu during the colonial era (1894 - 1960). This dissertation, firstly, takes fatwās from Timbuktu's archives as its historical source, a source the aforementioned scholars paid very little attention to or consciously ignored. Although fatwās are legal documents, this dissertation shows that fatwās are a historical source. Secondly, it looks at the history of ordinary men and women in their everyday lives.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 217-239). / This thesis examines one aspect of cinema in South Africa, namely, the historical construction of a 'black film industry' and the development of a 'black' cinema viewing audience. It does so by focusing on films produced specifically for an African audience using a state subsidy. This subsidy was introduced in 1972 and was separate from the general or A-Scheme subsidy that was introduced in 1956 for the production of English- and Afrikaans-language or 'white' films. This thesis is a critical assessment of the actual film products that the B-Scheme produced. The films are analysed within the broader political, economic and social context of their production and exhibition. The films are used as historical sources for the way in which African identities were constructed. Through critical analyses of the selected films, the thesis examines the manner in which African people, culture, gender and family relations, as well as class and/or political aspirations were represented in film. Africans had very little opportunity or power to represent themselves and where this had been possible, it was within the ideological and political boundaries set by the apartheid government.

Bibliography: leaves 329-352. / This thesis examines the ways in which Coloured identity manifested itself in South African society from the time the South African state was formed in 1910 till the institution of democratic rule in 1994. The central argument of the dissertation is that Coloured identity is better understood, not as having evolved through a series of transformations during this period, as conventional historical thinking would have it, but to have remained remarkably stable throughout the era of white rule. This is not to contend that Coloured identity was static or that it lacked fluidity but that the continuities during this period were more fundamental to the way in which it operated as a social identity than the changes it experienced. It is argued that this stability was derived from a central core of enduring characteristics that regulated the way in which Colouredness functioned as an identity during this period. Each of the four emotions in the title of the thesis corresponds to a key characteristic at the heart of the identity. The principal constituents of this stable core are the assimilationism of the Coloured people (hope), their intermediate status in the racial hierarchy (fear), the negative connotations, especially that of racial hybridity, with which it was imbued (shame), and finally, the marginality of the Coloured community (frustration).