Includes bibliographical references. / This thesis sets out to examine the important role of the Xhosa in the development of King William's Town during a crucial period. The local Xhosa community and the nearby Arna Ntinde tribe under Chief Jan Tzatzoe obviously made a major contribution to the history of British Kaffraria's capital in this era (1854-1861), but there were many other external forces. The interaction between cultures in and around King William's Town affected the Xhosa at all levels. This process of acculturation was hastened by many of Sir George Grey's administrative measures. He established several institutions in the Kaffrarian capital for the benefit of the Xhosa population as a whole and some aspects of his "native policy" are still applied on a national basis. Grey's administration therefore forms one of the central issues.

Bibliography: pages 134-142. / This thesis will aim to explore the relationship between the battle of Dithakong and 'mfecane' theory in connection with the growing critique led by Julian Cobbing. Essentially, it will be argued that certain aspects of 'mfecane' theory appear in fact tenable, with particular reference to the upheavals west of the Drakensberg in the years 1822-4, as the thesis seeks to establish the original version of events at Dithakong. Ever since Cobbing has questioned the fundamental tenets of 'mfecane' theory and suggested rather that the destabilizations within black society during the 1820's sprang from European penetration, there have been efforts to give his ideas academic credibility. Dithakong is one key event within the 'mfecane' diaspora that has been attempted to be explained without reference to African agency. Julian Cobbing, Jurg Richner and Jan-Bart Gewald have presented these alternative analyses which, although similar in broader intention, are distinct in detailed explanation. Whereas in the past, Dithakong has been viewed as a defensive battle against the threatening advance of a numerous and destitute 'mfecane' migratory group, the latest versions interpret the events in terms of a raid on an unprovoked and unaggressive people. Although noting the advances made by Cobbing and others, it will be argued that with regard to Dithakong their analyses are forced and suited to meet the respective demands of their larger suppositions, which ultimately brings their singular Eurocentric theory of violence into question. To this end, certain elements within 'mfecane' theory require to be reconsidered.

Bibliography: leaves 137-146. / Between 1975-1976 South Africa intervened in the Angolan civil war. The invasion of a black African country was then an unprecedented event in South Africa's history. This dissertation explores the motivations behind, and implications of, South Africa's involvement in Angola. It firstly scrutinises the rationalisations given by the government of the day, specifically the four key objectives that the Defence Force claimed it had been pursuing. These were: the protection of South Africa's investment in the Cunene hydroelectric scheme; the 'hot pursuit' of Namibian guerrillas; the response to appeals from two of the liberation movements in Angola; and finally, the need to counter communist, specifically Cuban, intervention in Angola.

Include bibliographical references. / This dissertation examines the political practice of the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) in the South African countryside during the latter half of the Twentieth Century. It demonstrates that the NEUM was the only liberation movement in South Africa which maintained that the land question was one of the most fundamental questions confronting the liberatory struggle in South Africa. It shows how the NEUM acted on their belief that the acute land-hunger experienced by the majority of the population in South Africa would be the mobilising force for a revolutionary overthrow of the existing political, social and economic order in South Africa This dissertation argues that the NEUM was the only liberation movement to consistently assign importance to the political organisation of what it termed the "landless peasantry" in the African reserves. Through a series of case studies this dissertation charts the trajectory of the NEUM's political work in the South African countryside from the early 1940s until the early 1970s. In so doing the dissertation also challenges the established historiography whic maintains that the NEUM shied away from popular struggles and did not develop into an organisation rooted among the population. The study commences with outlining the historical roots and ideological foundation of the NEUM. The bulk of the dissertation examines the practical implementation of the NEUM's political strategy in the countryside. It shows that between 1945 and the early 1960s the African reserves were seething with political ferment as rural dwellers resisted the implementation of numerous oppressive laws and regulations. Through supporting and attempting to provide direction to reserve dwellers in their struggles, the NEUM cadres gained a peasant following. By the early 1960s the NEUM laid claim to have captured the support of several numerically significant peasant organisations that emerged out of the struggles in the reserves. The final chapters of the dissertation argue that South Africa entered a "pre-revolutionary phase" in the early 1960s. They suggest that had the NEUM succeeded in gaining the necessary support in Africa to launch an armed campaign, the outcome of the liberatory struggle in South Africa may well have been fundamentally different. These chapters examine the changes in political strategy adopted by the NEUM in the early 1960s and the rapid growth of the African Peoples' Democratic Union of Southern Africa (a new national political organisation launched by the NEUM in 1961) among rural dwellers and migrant workers.

In an influential article on the evolution of Afro-American society on the British mainland of North America, written in 1980, Ira Berlin charged slave historians with having ''produced an essentially static vision of Afro-American life. From Stanley Elkins' Sambo to John W.Blassingame's Nat-Sambo-Jack typology, scholars of all persuasions have held time constant and ignored the influence of place". Contrary to the monolithic presentations of the slave experience in the existing literature, Berlin maintains that at least three regionally distinct North American slave systems emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: a Northern nonplantation system and two Southern plantation systems (centred respectively on the Carolina/Georgia lowcountry and the Chesapeake). Regional variations in economic and demographic patterns (i.e. the demands of particular staples, the various configurations of whites and blacks, and variations in African-creole ratios) are shown to have underpinned the evolution of distinctive socio-cultural patterns in these three areas. Furthermore, Berlin demonstrates how temporal changes (specifically with regard to the differential impact of the slave trade in the mid-eighteenth century) superimposed themselves upon existing regional variations in shaping the North American slave experience - or, more accurately, experiences. Thus: "no matter how complete recent studies of black life appear, they are limited to the extent that they provide a static and singular vision of a dynamic and complex society".

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 491-507). / Includes index (leaves 508-546). / This thesis is a critical edition of a section of the journals of the Reverend James Laing of the Glasgow Missionary Society. The first scholarly study of the Laing journals, this thesis seeks to contribute towards a new understanding of the early days of transcultural interchange on the Eastern Cape frontier. The only previous published work on Laing is William Govan's hagiographical Memorials of the Missionary Career of the Rev. James Laing, Missionary of the Free Church of Scotland in Kaffi'aria published in Glasgow by David Bryce and Son in 1875. This thesis attempts to make Laing's text as accessible to today's readers as possible. To this end, the text is a faithful transcription of the original, augmented by a contextual introduction, detailed footnotes and a comprehensive index. James Laing was born on 6 September 1803 and was raised in the Scottish Lowlands. He read classics, philosophy, theology and a range of medical subjects at Edinburgh University where he enrolled in 1822. The Glasgow Missionary Society assigned Laing to Burnshill Mission on the Eastern Cape frontier. He sailed for the Cape on 11 October 1830. From that day, he kept a journal almost without break, until a week before his death. Laing's journals comprise four bound volumes and more than two thousand pages in toto. These are housed in the Cory Library for Historical Research, Rhodes University as part of the Lovedale Institution Collection. Laing's journal constitutes a major element in the small body of extant Glasgow Missionary Society records. It was decided to edit, for this thesis, the first portion of the journals only.

Little has been written about the Coon Carnival since its inception in the late nineteenth century. This thesis helps remedy the general neglect of popular, "Coloured", working class history during the apartheid years. attempts to situate Cape Town's New Year Carnival within the international debate surrounding popular festival and identity. Following a broadly historical line of inquiry, this thesis straddles different disciplines, borrowing from a range of interpretative fields to assess the form and significance of the event during the 1960s and 1970s, a critical period in the Carnival's history. During these years, District Six - the event's symbolic and spiritual home - was declared for "White" residence only under the Group Areas Act. Coloured residents were forcibly removed from this central city suburb to disparate areas on the Cape Flats - the townships surrounding the metropolis. A year later, in 1967, the carnival parade was effectively banned from the city centre's streets; banished to remote and enclosed stadium venues. Thus, in a relatively short space of time the Carnival came under sustained attack. Due to the relative dearth of critical engagement with, or historical commentary on, the Carnival, this thesis relies heavily on oral sources and journalistic, visual and tourist oriented representations. Focussing particularly on the oral testimonies of twenty-four people involved in the event, it explores the notion of continuity and change in the Carnival during this period, through a thorough interrogation of the narratives.

Bibliography: pages 238-246. / While the past decade has seen a proliferation of studies of Cape slavery, there has been very little research directed at the immediate post-emancipation period. This study seeks to examine the consequences of emancipation for the former slaves who settled at the Moravian mission at Groenekloof. This was situated in the wheat-producing Malmesbury district of the Cape Colony. The dissertation takes the form of a case study of nearly 700 people and focusses on the period from December 1838 to December 1852. Mission records are used as a way of identifying the origins of newcomers to the mission as well as of the social groups in which they arrived. The structure and ethos of the mission is explored as a context of the new lives constructed by the former slaves, and aspirations of ex-slaves concerning marriage and family life are examined.

Bibliography: pages 173-186. / This thesis explores the political identity of middle-class coloured people in metropolitan Cape Town focusing particularly on the period extending from the formation of the Coloured Advisory Council in 1943 to the removal of the qualified coloured male franchise in 1956. The findings of the thesis are based largely on thirty-one random interviews with coloured men and women over the age of sixty-three. All of the males had the vote and either the fathers or husbands of all the women had enjoyed the vote. The 'open attitude' style of interviewing was employed, enabling the interviewees to help frame the discussions. Politics for most of my respondents was not an integral influence within their childhood. Most men, however, recalled their fathers voting and have clear memories of election days, political movements of the time and meetings that took place. All, except one, became teachers. Their post-secondary education, often at the University of Cape Town, encouraged most to grapple with the political and social processes of the day. By the 1940s the majority of the males began to challenge the prevailing political structures and beliefs of mainstream coloured society. The childhood memories of political events of most women were comparatively less pronounced. Some recalled their fathers voting, although memories of their mothers involvement in church and welfare activities are clearer. They also recalled political events that affected them directly. Most of the women interviewed either became teachers or they married teachers. This exposed them to what they saw as male-dominated coloured politics and they experienced a sense of political alienation from these political processes. This does not necessarily imply that they were apolitical. On the contrary, looking back, they see themselves as having given expression to political concerns in alternative ways. They also showed greater interest in 'white politics' as expressed through the United Party accepting that it was 'white politics' that ultimately had the power to determine their social and economic well-being. Most women showed limited concern about the removal of qualified males from the common voters' roll. They saw this as having a minimal impact on their social well-being. It was largely the Group Areas Act that socially and economically affected their lives, giving rise to a heightened level of political awareness and involvement. The ambiguities and divisions which marked middle-class coloured political groupings could be attributed partly to the historical policies of social-engineering practised by successive governments, whose intention was to construct a coloured political identity separate from whites, while being grounded in civil privileges not extended to Africans. Most of my interviewees acknowledged that by the 1940s they had accepted these privileges. They were naturally reluctant to see these undermined politically. From 1948 onwards middle-class coloured privileges began to be eroded. This signalled the emergence of a new era of coloured identity.

Early liberal historians predominantly criticised the migrant labour system for its economic irrationality. After high GDP growth and steady benefits from gold mining in the 1960s, Marxist scholars in the 1970s pointed to the destructive impact of the system. Since 1994, the challenge inter alia has been to forge a new developmental path for the economy. In 2012 the National Development Plan set out its aim to “eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by 2030”.1 This is the challenge. For the country or region to ‘develop’ and eliminate ‘poverty’ we need to know what we are trying to eliminate and what our development is trying to achieve. This thesis examines the migrant labour system in the Transkei through a lens of development and asks how and to what extent the system inhibited the development of the Transkei and its peoples. Using Amartya Sen’s conception of development - which sees development as a process of expanding social, political, and economic freedoms/capabilities - this thesis offers a view of migrant labour institutions in terms of how they created and engendered deprivation and unfreedom in the Transkei. It is an attempt to understand our ‘developmental past’ and to understand how development in the Transkei has been frustrated and inhibited by formal institutions. Amartya Sen’s notions of ‘development’ and ‘deprivation’ offer an autonomy- and freedom-centred approach to thinking about poverty and development. Specifically the thesis examines the nexus of formal institutions underpinning the migrant labour system - including state laws, the Native Affairs Department, and the Native Recruiting Corporation - in terms of how they acted to inhibit the development of mineworkers and labour exporting regions like the Transkei.