Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 469-494). / This thesis is concerned with the militarization of white South African society in the 1960s. It argues that the military threat perceptions of the period were crucial in altering white views of the South African Defence Force (SADF) and reinforcing support for the National Party government. The military achieved enhanced public status within civil society as the state's supposed bulwark. A range of purported potential threats, both internal and external and regularly reported in the media, were investigated by the SADF in response to Afro-Asian bloc spokespersons calling for international military intervention against white South Africa to end apartheid.

Includes bibliographical references.

Bibliography: pages 356-385. / This thesis investigates how the icon of Jan van Riebeeck acquired a position of prominence in South African public pasts through the government sponsored festival organised in 1952 to commemorate his landing three hundred years previously. From the seventeenth to the midtwentieth centuries van Riebeeck and the landing in 1652 had, through commemorative events, school text books and the publication of the Dutch East India Company journal for the period when he was commander at the Cape of Good Hope, acquired different meanings. These ranged from conveying Christianity to southern Africa, to initiating British colonial rule and providing the ancestry for an Afrikaner volk. tVsing material from the various planning committees for the tercentenary celebrations, newspaper reports, pamphlets, high school year books, interviews with organisers and participants, radio broadcasts and documentary film footage, this thesis argues that the festival in 1952 selected elements from these various pasts to construct a Van Riebeeck as the founder figure of a racially exclusive settler nation in South Africa. The pasts that were produced for this festival of European settler founding often resulted from negotiations between opposing groups over its constituent elements, what events and personalities should be included and excluded and how they should be represented. It was immensely difficult to produce this consensual past, particularly as local identities often clashed with the national pasts the festival was attempting to construct and the audiences viewed the exhibitions and performances in a variety of different ways. There was also a massive boycott of the proceedings by those whom the festival organisers attempted to incorporate into its displays and audiences as, separate, developing 'non-European' ethnic entities. One of the most notable aspects of the boycott campaigns against the festival was that they largely mirrored and inverted its symbols. Instead of subverting the images of the festival, they therefore unintentionally bolstered and sustained their significance in South African public pasts.

Includes bibliographical references. / The Cape of Good Hope was rocked by a period of political turmoil at the end of the 1770s and beginning of 1780s. Coenraad Beyers published an extensive study about this period and labelled the protesters: Cape Patriots ("Die Kaapse Patriotte"). In his view they were pre-Afrikaner burghers who, driven by ideological arguments, opposed a colonial VOC tyranny. This thesis aims to revise this analysis, while seeking to demonstrate that late eighteenth century Cape society was marked by a complex and intertwined network of status groups. The burgher protests are used as a case study to illustrate that the Cape settlement was part and parcel of the Dutch empire. The protesters emphasised that their burgerschap was on par with that in cities in the Dutch Republic. The first part of the thesis compares Cape and Dutch burgerschap and argues that the Cape burghers were justified in stating that they were burghers of a city belonging to the United Netherlands. It furthermore becomes clear that the Cape burghers had developed a robust burgher identity. This certainly contributed to the outbreak of the conflict, but was not the determining factor. Because the Cape settlement was essentially a Dutch city, many elements many elements of political and social life derived from the Dutch Republic. One of these was that at the Cape a ruling elite consisting of higher VOC officials and prominent burghers had developed with close familial and entrepreneurial links between them.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 354-369). / This study explores the experiences of the rank-and-file soldiers of Umkhonto we Sizwe and the Azanian People's Liberation Anny. Extensive interviews by the author and other researchers reveal the voices of the soldiers themselves. The African National Congress and Pan African Congress archives at the University of the Western Cape and the University of Fort Hare supplement and verify these oral testimonies, as do some published sources. Most previously published materials about the armed struggle against apartheid have already focused on diplomacy, strategy and tactics, operations, leadership, and human rights abuses to the neglect of the soldiers' actual experiences. This study complements these with significant new oral history materials from the Soweto generation of soldiers and their successors. When dealing with MK, many authors have documented issues of the camp structure in Angola, and operations inside South Africa, so much of this detail is only addressed briefly, leaving space to explore the soldiers' experiences. In the case of APLA, very little has been written on its history, and more detail is provided on these subjects. This study therefore deals with the soldiers' politicisation and motivation for joining the armed struggle, their experiences in leaving South Africa and training in exile, the crises in exile which limited their effectiveness for a time, their return to fight in South Africa, and their difficulties in the "new" South Africa. These materials reveal that vast problems remain facing these veterans of the struggle against apartheid, and that they have the potential, if properly supported and employed, to contribute substantially to the development of present day South Africa. Conversely, if their neglect continues, they also have the potential to bring vast harm to the country. Further use of the investigative tools of oral history, especially if extended to the former soldiers' vernacular languages, is necessary to augment the history of South Africa, and these soldiers' contributions.

Bibliography: pages 66-74. / Public history as a distinct discipline emerged in America in the 1970s and by the 1980s a Committee and Council had been established aimed at promoting historical studies, broadening historical knowledge among the general public and opening up opportunities for historians to work in the private sector, rather than as purely academic historians. The discipline is broken up into a variety of aspects: archival administration, museology, publishing and editing, historic preservation, business history and the media. Historic preservation is an important aspect both in the genre of public history broadly and in South Africa today where the new government of the ANC views the historical buildings in Cape Town as elitist and portraying a narrowly white, ethnocentric view of heritage. This makes the arena of public history one in which much ongoing debate can be found around the various Historical Monuments in Cape Town. The Castle is a crucial example, being the first building in South Africa and strongly linked with colonialism through its history and present use by the army. It has been the centre of much debate and controversy recently with the Castle Management Act being passed in 1993, showing the extent of the debate which extended to parliament. It was decided to study this site and evaluate the background to the debates, considering how new, or not the debates are, and discuss the images of the Castle presented to the public over the last century. The conflicting perceptions of the Castle over, for example its restoration will also be considered. Further, as an historical discussion, it will not be focused on the physical building, as such, as an architecturally orientated discussion would be, but rather the focus will be on the symbolism present in the building, the way the Castle is portrayed in tourist guides and school textbooks, and the response to key debates such as the restoration of the Castle and the presence of an army headquarters in an historical monument by the public as shown in newspaper articles and editorial letters. This discussion will begin with a legislative overview of the Castle and lead into a discussion on the key debates as seen in newspaper articles over the last 70 years. At the same time a history of the restoration of the Castle will be outlined. The restoration itself will be the subject of the following chapter where issues surrounding the conservation of historical buildings in general as well as specific issues surrounding the restoration of the Castle will be considered. Lastly an analysis of the tourist-orientated literature and school-textbooks, influential in forming the broader public's perception of the Castle will be carried out.

Bibliography: leaves 163-172. / This study explores changes in the way that Drum magazine constructed manhood from the first edition of 1951 to its sale in 1984. The exploration is undertaken from a feminist post modern perspective that sees gender as a social construct and masculinity as a complex and multifaceted identity that is actively and creatively produced by men in relation to women and through the intersections with other identities such as sexuality, race, class, and ethnicity. I argue that Drum's constructions of the masculinity of black men were infused with both black and white notions of race and sex, informed by both western and African discourses of gender. At times these different discourses were in competition, at other times they were more compatible; together they shaped the representations of manhood found in Drum, which in turn helped legitimise and normalise particular ways of being a man in mid to late twentieth century South Africa.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-240). / National and international literature on intergenerational dialogue presents the sharing of primary narratives as necessary to prevent an atrocity from happening again. International literature on history education and memory studies questions this ‘never again’ imperative, pointing out that remembrance does not necessarily lead to redemption. The aim of this research is to conduct a similar exercise by investigating the following paradox within South African history education. On the one hand, public spaces such as the District Six Museum and the Cape Town Holocaust Centre acknowledge and involve primary witnesses in the education of the younger generations. On the other hand, South African history teachers are expected to know how to bring about change, while their multiple positionings, being both teachers and primary witnesses to the Apartheid regime, are neglected. The thesis sets out to address this paradox through a case study of means by which Grade Nine history teachers and museum facilitators use and construct primary narratives about the Holocaust and Apartheid Forced Removals in classroom and museum interactions with learners. A dialogue with the interrelated fields of oral history, trauma research and memory and narrative studies, as well as positioning theory and pedagogical theories on history education and the mediation of knowledge forms the theoretical basis for the study.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis adopts a social history of medicine approach to explore the contradictions surrounding a specific attempt to develop a rural healthcare system in south-eastern colonial Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) from the 1930s to the 1960s. Influenced by a combination of healthcare discourses and models, in 1930, the colony’s new medical director formulated the first comprehensive rural healthcare delivery plan, premised on the idea of ‘medical units’ or outlying dispensaries networked around rural hospitals. The main argument of the thesis is that the Ndanga Medical Unit, as this pioneer medical unit was known, was a variant of a typical colonial project characterised by tensions between innovative endeavours to control disease on the one hand, and the need to fulfil broader colonial ambitions on the other.

Bibliography: pages 275-294. / The political economies of segregation and apartheid contributed to the production and reproduction of a mainly Coloured working-class enclave in Tramway Road and Ilford Street, Sea Point, during the 20th century. Against this background, this thesis discusses activities performed by residents of the enclave in their residential area, activities that reflected the changing political economies and through which the residents themselves produced and reproduced their residential area. From the 1920s through to 1961, the enclave was both a product and a response to the successive political economies of segregation and apartheid. Excerpts of life history interviews are used to discuss activities that residents performed. Those activities discussed focus on the household, occupation, leisure, race and class. In doing so, this thesis is a micro-study of Tramway Road and Ilford Street. Part of the discussion of households and occupation is based on a household survey that was conducted in Tramway and Ilford streets around August 1961. Combined with oral history excerpts, the survey shows that household structure changed over time and in response to conditions internal and external to the enclave. Oral history excerpts are also used to discuss the occupations of people who lived in the enclave. To date there has been little discussion on the working lives of Coloureds in the now-destroyed residential areas. Oral history excerpts and data from the 1961 survey emphasise that the gender and race bias of the political economy limited the occupational status and income of the residents. Based on the 1961 survey, tables on the wages of females and males and household income were developed to support discussion on occupation and the economic well-being of households. The data and excerpts provide evidence of the legacy of the political economy of segregation and its role in the reproduction of a mainly Coloured working-class residential area. Owing to the mainly working-class character of the enclave, residents interacted in ways that promoted their economic well-being and helped to sustain households that lived in the residential area. Oral history excerpts are used to discuss race and class. Matters related to race examines ways that residents of the enclave responded to the racialisation of space in Sea Point. Matters related to class focus on how a general working-class status was expressed through housing but how the inhabitants communicated their personal status through material possession and inter- and intra-class distinction. In doing so, the thesis discusses how segregation and apartheid not only informed a sense of race identity but also contributed to class distinction and tension in the residential area. Newspaper, municipal and city archives are used to discuss the historical origins of the enclave and the concerns of city officials about the condition of the dwellings there. Newspaper archives and oral history excerpts also form an important part of the discussion of the forced removal of the residents of the enclave in 1959-1961. Minutes of meetings and personal communication provide data on the process of restitution for Tramway Road in 1997-2001. Through this micro-study of Tramway and Ilford streets, this thesis is meant to contribute to the histories of now-destroyed residential areas of Cape Town.