This thesis investigates the Teachers' League of South Africa's (TLSA, League or Teachers' League) ideas and practice of non-collaboration. It seeks to ascertain whether these ideas and practices continued after the organisation merged with several public sector unions in the National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers (NUPSAW) at the end of the last century. The thesis tracks the emergence and changing dynamics of the TLSA from the early decades of the twentieth century, as it developed and grew in the Western Cape, a region that was its nerve centre and where it was most active. There is a focus on the endeavours of the League to adapt and grow during the political and educational tumult of the 1990s, a period characterised by negotiations, reconciliatory and consensual politics that centred on nation building, and which was unreceptive if not clearly hostile to the organisation's non-collaborationist stance. The thesis employs an historical approach to contextualise the development of the League's non-collaborationism, and to elucidate the impact of South Africa's changing political, economic and educational landscape on the organisation. Extensive interviews were conducted, therewith giving a voice to the writing of history from below, embracing the experiences and perceptions of League members and the teacher activists who interacted with them before, but more so during and even beyond the 1990s. Documentary material of the TLSA and its umbrella body, the Unity Movement, dating back to the 1940s, provides the key primary sources for the study, while secondary information on the development of South Africa's political economy and the liberation movement offers valuable insights and alternative perspectives on the TLSA and Unity Movement. The thesis endorses the notion that appearances are at times intermingled with the opposite of what is being perceived, and thus challenges assumptions that the League's policy of non-collaboration was fixed and timeless. Instead, the thesis seeks to uncover the incongruities, nuances and complexity of this distinctive quality of the organisation, in an attempt finally, to elucidate its transformative potential in the present period.

Spoken Word poetry in South Africa is understood as a genre of poetry which encompasses elements of textuality, musicality and performance, and is currently produced and frequented predominantly by a young, black public, according to Molebatsi and D’Abdon (2007). By means of ethnography, content analysis, and interviews with thirteen poets, this study demonstrates that the genre is used for expressing the life experiences of artists and their communities (Sole, 2008), as well as narrating social ills and concerns, including political, religious and other social experiences. In this sense, it is argued that Spoken Word may be termed as being a contemporary form of liberation politics (Judge, 1993) that is employed to serve a social function beyond directly political aims. This is made visible through the narratives, styles and identifications that distinguish members of this movement. This study provides a description of the scene in Pretoria and Johannesburg, drawing out various features of the movement. The social and political significance of the movement is presented by emphasising the poets’ perspectives on the Spoken Word movement, and engaging in a thematic content analysis of poems under the themes race and politics, gender and sexuality, and religion. International literature is engaged to demonstrate differences and similarities between South Africa’s Spoken Word scene and that of the USA by consulting works of scholars such as Weber (1999), Bruce & Davis (2000) and Hoffman (2001). It is demonstrated that similar to the genre in the USA, South African Spoken Word stresses performance to be an important distinguisher of this type of poetry. Also, in both contexts this art form has links to identity politics of previously marginalized groups. The study presents a similar finding to D’Abdon’s (2014) argument that the narratives presented in the post-apartheid Spoken Word movement greatly reflect Black Consciousness ideology, yet also importantly stresses that the movement also presents discontinuities with this discourse, allowing for a much broader array of narrative to permeate the performance poetry scene. This study makes an additional contribution to the existing literature through its key findings. Firstly, the study argues that although there has been a significant increase of women into the scene, Spoken Word remains a gendered space. Secondly, this study demonstrates that narratives produced by this movement contribute to experiences of community, but also play an exclusionary role to certain groups. Finally, the study illustrates that poets of the present day Spoken Word scene have begun a move towards commercialisation of the art form, subsequently also aiming for the valuation of African literature. In essence, it is argued that the present day Spoken Word poetry movement has great social and cultural value, and presents great potential of being a vehicle through which political and social consciousness can be both created and sustained. Key words: Spoken Word, poetry, South Africa, oral literature, slam, open mic, post-apartheid, literature, narratives, Black Consciousness, politics, social change, art, liberation poetry, liberation politics, culture, hip-hop, conscious art, resistant political art / Dissertation (MSocSci)--University of Pretoria, 2015. / Sociology / Unrestricted