In KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, many of those who search for solace from mental illness draw on one or more of the three vigorous therapeutic traditions of healing to which the region is heir. Western psychiatry and its formal institutions have a long history in this region: in 1868, the Colony of Natal passed southern Africa's first 'lunacy legislation'; and in 1880, the Natal Government Asylum was opened on the Town Hill, Pietermaritzburg. Although founded on the precepts of nineteenth century liberalism, by 1910, the Pietermaritzburg Mental Hospital (as it was now known) increasingly reflected a national concern with a racialised 'mental science' and Natal psychiatry became somewhat marginalized within a broader network of national asylum administration. During World War 1, too, the white citizens of Pietermaritzburg sought to have future expansion of the asylum halted, and its inmates hidden from public view. Although the story of Western psychiatry in Natal and Zululand is important for any history of mental illness in South Africa, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, colonial psychiatry had relatively limited significance for the majority of people. Since the nineteenth century, African understandings of and treatments for illness have proved especially resilient, interacting with and at times adopting - and adapting - elements of Western biomedicine, as well aspects of healing strategies whose origins lie in Indian concepts of health and medicine first brought with indentured workers from the 1860s. For whites, as well as for Africans and Indians, committal to the asylum came, most typically, at the end of a lengthy quest to find a cure for mental illness. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, other sectors of healing proved to be remarkably flexible, offering new explanations for apparently new forms of illness - including insanity - that accompanied the political, economic and social upheavals of the time, as well as producing new therapies, strategies, and specialists to meet them. It is this variety of responses to mental illness, and ways of attempting to negotiate a path to a state of mind that might be termed 'mental health', that this dissertation traces. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.

The pivot around which the controversy over the Board's political policy revolved was the question whether a collective Jewish attitude towards the government's racial policies should be formulated, or whether this was the province of individual Jewish protest. Stemming from this was the question of the extent of communal responsibility towards the individual who had fallen afoul with the law in expressing his protest. The complexity of formulating policy was exacerbated by the trauma of the 1930's and 1940's where the National Party and its leadership espoused a radical anti-Semitic ideology and a pro-Nazism policy. Added to this was the very real sympathy felt for the aspirations of survival of the Afrikaner People, conflated by a revulsion and antipathy towards the measures the nationalist Government took to attain this end. The solution hit upon by the Board was a policy of 'neutrality' in the political area. This dissertation is an attempt to highlight the problems with which the Board grappled and its central concerns in formulating policy vis-a-vis the political issues that were at the centre of the political life of South Africa. The study follows the evolvement of the policy of collective non-involvement from the 1950s and the gradual evolution it underwent in the 1970s and 1980s towards a commitment and a responsibility to openly and publicly speak out on the moral aspects of Apartheid. In view of the above, the thesis begins in 1930 with the promulgation of the Quota Act, which initiated the new antisemitic policies of the National Party, until 1978. The epilogue ends 1985 when the Board of Deputies abandoned its policy of neutrality towards the political arena, when the 33rd National congress of the Jewish Board of Deputies, passed a resolution condemning the Policy of Apartheid, thus adopting a collective stance towards the government's racial policies. Although this stance was in line with the views prevalent in the white community, it signalled a giant step in the Board of Deputies' drive to abandon its policy of accommodation towards the NP government and Nationalist forces. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1995.

No abstract available. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1971.

The primary focus of the thesis is the attempt by the United Party, between 1948 and 1953, to regain political power. It argues that although policy issues were important, insufficient attention has thus far been paid to the United Party's organisational weakness, particularly in regard to its inability adequately to register and delete voters, as an explanation for the Party's 1948 defeat. The United Party had, therefore, from a far more heterogeneous base of support, not only to implement organisational reforms so as to evince an efficiency equal to that of the National Party but had also to clarify what it intended to achieve by its pragmatic race' policy. It is argued that the essence of the latter had been white immigration. Only a substantial white population, it was felt, would induce that sense of white security sufficient to allow the peaceful accommodation of the' aspirations of the unenfranchised. Faced with the immediate curtailment of immigration and unable to emphasise, through fear of alienating marginal Afrikaans-speaking voters, its importance, the Party was progressively forced to give ii ground on its race policy. Its tendency to do so and yet demand the retention of constitutional guarantees made the Party an easy target for Government manipulation. Seen against this background the United Party initiative in encouraging the establishment of the War veterans' Torch Commando, its formal alliance with the Labour Party and the considerable structural reforms it was able to implement as a consequence of its informal alliance mining interests, failed to halt the voters away from it. with financial and swing of marginal The United Party's 1953 General Election defeat not only resulted in a crippling collapse of its financial support but also led to a gradual realignment of opposition parliamentary politics towards a rapprochement with those extra-parliamentary forces which were already assuming their place as the real opposition to the National Party Government. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1989.

The formation of a settler elite and its role in colonial Durban's urban development between 1854 and 1910 have been studied. In this instance of early colonial capitalism, local business leaders readily established an intimate connection between economic and political power. Many of them used their position on the Durban Town Council, formed in 1854, to wield preponderant civic influence and become the driving force in the development of the town. The nature of this settler elite has been investigated in terms of the theories of social stratification, formulated along Weberian lines. Following the institutionalization of power arrangements these leading settlers were legally acknowledged as a governing elite. Durban provided the setting in which metropolitan institutions, activity patterns and environments could be introduced and maintained, as dictated by the underlying value-system of the British settlers. The colonial city of Durban hereby not only demonstrated the appearance of a civilization, but also the mutual interaction between man's behaviour and his culturally modified environment. The ruling elite regarded the beautification of the urban environment as part of their civic responsibilities in this city-building process. Such a civic pride was especially applied in Durban to the building of impressive Town Halls and public buildings. These leaders also played a decisive role with regard to harbour improvements, railways, tramways, electricity supply, telephone services and sanitary improvements. Following a historical pattern of colonial urban development, Durban became another British city in Africa. Yet it possessed local features which made it atypical, if not unique, in a South African context. The driving force and way of life of the town during the colonial period was clearly British. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1994.

The Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902 has been the subject by contemporary and modem historians alike of a plethora of studies on most aspects of the conflict, including its military operations. None, however, has focussed specifically on the response ofthe Colony ofNatal, which formed an important base of military operations, nor on the conduct and effectiveness of its force of Volunteer soldiers. This study seeks to fill this significant gap in the historiography of the war. The central theme to emerge in this investigation of the response ofNatal to the war is that of a distinct gap between the perception of the scale and consistency of the commitment to military operations and the mobilization of colonial resources on the one hand, and, on the other, the socio-economic, political and military reality. The Natal Volunteer forces, especially the mounted infantry units such as the Natal Carbineers, were never able to exercise a significant influence on the conduct ofthe war in the Colony. There were several reasons for this. In terms ofimmediate military factors, the force was not considered sufficiently reliable by the British Army, and was therefore seldom deployed effectively, particularly in the formal phase of the war. This Volunteer force was also the victim of British strategic errors, such as that which led to the investment of Ladysmith by Boer forces from 2 November 1899 to 28 February 1900. The bulk of the Volunteer force was effectively removed from the war effort in the Colony for this period. Its marginalisation was, however, also evidence of a conflicting and fickle mobilization for war by the Natal government and the Colony's English speaking settler population. Cultural and Imperial affinity to Britain was countered by parochial regional interests such as economic affiliation with the Transvaal, which meant that Natal did not welcome a British war for confederation in the region. Qualified official and popular support in Natal for the war lasted only as long as the invading Boer forces posed a perceived threat to the Colony, from October 1899 to October 1900. In fact, from the date of the relief of Ladysmith, Natal colonial interests - directed by a ruling settler agricultural, legal and mercantile elite which controlled political authority, as well as economic policy - agitated for a reduction of military and economic commitment to the war. Natal's commitment to the British military effort, and the political policy that underwrote it, was retrospectively embellished in the immediate wake of the war as British hegemony in the region appeared to have been restored. However, this masked what effectively had been a muted and disputed response to the Anglo-Boer War. / Thesis (PhD.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2002.

No abstract available / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1976.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1988.

An analysis of why cultural heritage sites are created, preserved, and developed is what concerns the pages of this study. It identifies patterns and shifts in cultural heritage preservation in the period between 1977 and 1999 in KwaZulu-Natal, and analyses the motivations for the preservation of cultural heritage. Using specific case studies, I argue that in KwaZulu-Natal political necessities and ideas of economic development largely motivated cultural heritage preservation. I also examine the (dis)connection between academic historians and cultural heritage preservation. I indicate that their (dis)connection with cultural heritage preservation, especially its motivations, was a complex one. I argue that in complex ways some academic historians were drawn into the tendencies that were characteristic of cultural heritage presentations of history in KwaZulu-Natal during this period. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2001.

The Natal Education Department's "Native" education system which functioned from 1910 to 1953 has often been termed a good example of "liberal" education for Africans. However an investigation into the administrative structure and curricula content of this education order proved that numerous similarities existed between "Native" education, as formulated by the Natal Education Department, and "Bantu" education as established by the Nationalist government as part of its apartheid program. "Native" education in Natal could be considered a forerunner of "Bantu" education. Both systems were designed to achieve similar aims, eg. to maintain the social divisions, aid in the reproduction of semi-skilled labour and bolster the reserve system and migrant labour system. Course content was geared, in both "Native" and "Bantu" education, to promote a specific way of life for the African - a life that was both rural and agrarian in nature. A continuity of both method and aim existed between the two education orders. In effect, despite the different rhetoric and arguments used by the authorities of these two education systems, both implemented systems aimed at maintaining segregation. Emphasis is placed on exposing the true character of "Native" education as well as developing the argument that "Native" and "Bantu" education should be seen as the continuation of a specific education order rather than two distinct and different systems. This study focuses on Natal's 'Native' education and reveals it as a system designed to promote segregation and protect white interests. It too did not have the true interests of African children at heart. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, 1990.