Texte remanié de: Thèse de doctorat--Anthropologie--Paris 8, 2002. / IFAS = Institut français d'Afrique du Sud. En appendice, entretiens. Bibliogr. p. 413-436. Glossaire.

Thesis (DLitt (Afrikaans and Dutch))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / Prior to 1990, autobiographical texts have received little attention within the cadre of South African literary science, because they, by tradition, have not been regarded as part of “high” literature or of the canon. In spite of this, autobiography has been claiming an increasingly important position in literary studies in postapartheid South Africa. This study focuses on the hybrid forms of South African autobiographical texts published since 1990 and on the manner in which the autobiographical self is represented and constructed in these texts. The following autobiographical texts are discussed in the study: Breyten Breytenbach‟s Return to Paradise and Dog Heart, Hennie Aucamp‟s triptych of diaries, Gekaapte Tyd, Allersiele and Skuinslig, Rian Malan‟s My Traitor‟s Heart, Antjie Krog‟s Country of My Skull and ‟n Ander Tongval, Abraham Phillips‟s Die Verdwaalde Land, and A.H.M. Scholtz‟s Vatmaar. Their self-referential texts are analysed on the basis of theoretical consideration of different autobiographical forms, such as travel writing, the diary, essay, memoire, testimonio, autoethnography and the autobiographical novel. The studied autobiographical texts resist categorisation under a single genre and thereby demonstrate their generic hybridity. These heterogeneous and hybrid autobiographical forms reflect the inner struggle of the autobiographers in their continuous search for an appropriate form of self-representation in the new South Africa. Through the self-representation of the South African autobiographers, the re-confirmation of their ethnic and cultural identities gives form to a strategic positioning of their own collective identity and a future agency for rehabilitating the collective self within the new South African community. They are seen to be manifesting their cultural identity on the one hand, while attempting to position this identity within the multicultural South African society on the other. The study presents the hybridity of identities, as well as of the genre, which characterises contemporary South African autobiographical writing as a measure of the dynamic process of change (at political, sociocultural and personal levels) in postapartheid South Africa.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This dissertation takes Chris Hani beyond the conventionally biographic by thinking through his multiple lives and deaths and engaging with his legacy in ways that cannot be contained by singular, linear narratives. By doing so, I offer alternative routes through which to understand historical change, political struggle and subjectivity, as well as biographical and historical production as a conflicted and contested terrain. I attend to these conflicting narratives not as a means through which to reconcile the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sides of history, struggle, or the political subject. Nor do I sacrifice either to what Frederick Jameson has referred to as a dialectical impasse: a “conventional opposition, in which one turns out to be more defective than the other”, and through which “only one genuine opposite exists… [therefore sharing] the sorry fate of evil… reduced to mere reflection.”1 Instead I place contested narratives about Hani and the anti-apartheid struggle into conversation with one another, and treat them as “equally integral component[s]”2 of the life and legacy of Hani. This I argue, provides fertile ground through which to rethink the lives and times of Martin Thembisile ‘Chris’ Hani, and the political subject more generally. Through a study that focuses on performance and memorialisation, violence, revolution, and spectrality, this dissertation also engages with a number of issues surrounding Hani’s assassination, the transitional period in southern Africa, justice, armed struggle, and the work of mourning in a postapartheid society. It begins by revealing the contested ways in which Hani’s legacy was produced during the anti-apartheid struggle, and how it was contained and acted out in the immediate aftermath of his assassination. This study then goes on to trace how the postapartheid state’s narrative about the struggle against apartheid, has been challenged and undermined, and how differing modes of narrative emplotment have shaped the ways in which we understand this period. Critically, I argue that the operative and contested qualities of historical production mean that Hani’s revolutionary legacy is always already uncontainable. As such this type of legacy and politics haunts the ANC’s postapartheid project and, to paraphrase Jameson, makes the present waver like a mirage on the landscape of postapartheid South Africa.3 Within this framework I ask if rumour and conspiracy surrounding Hani’s assassination merely represent a yearning for ‘truth’, or if these have become a means through which the nation comes to terms with the violence that remains in the wake of apartheid and colonialism, and to call on activists like Hani to judge and denounce capitalism, state violence, corruption, and exploitation. Rather than attempting to reveal the truth of his assassination and political legacy, I end by asking what possibilities might be opened up when we dwell upon the uncertainty and plurality of Hani’s lives and deaths and take seriously the continued presence of Hani and the spectralities that remain. I do so in order to work against the monumental projects of nationalism and the nation-state, and to keep open our horizon of expectation in the face of what David Scott has called the ‘stalled present’ of postcolonial and postsocialist worlds.4

“Nation building without city building is a senseless exercise” - Tomlinson et al (eds.) 2003: x. What is the nation in the 21st century and how is it represented in the urban built environment? This question underlies an anthropological investigation into the meanings of the Nelson Mandela Bridge project - a simulacrum for the making of a particular Johannesburg experience. The multi-million Rand fantasy of the urban imagineers showcases a post-apartheid inner city revival through the personification of a mayoral dream for a world-class city. The city’s textured socio-cultural and political-economic urbanity, its haphazard mining town origins and the aggressive apartheid urban politics, filter into its post-apartheid urban reconfiguration. The artful juggling of socio-cultural, political and economic elements launches the project as physical and symbolic entry-point into a new urban and historical era – a new urban frontier. The project’s technological innovation and slick excesses mirrors 21st century capitalist thinking – a packaging of local experiences into a marketable landscape commodified for moneyed consumption and participation. The privatisation of public space through modes of urban gentrification elicits elitist urban engagement in a partitioned and generic urban space. The latter conflicts with the project’s official branding as: “[being]‘for the good of all’. This research interrogates the adaptation of international best practices, the machinations of trans-nationalism in setting up urban experiences that contest individual constitutional and democratic rights. Contrasted here are the un-narrated voices of the city’s dark underbelly, the uncertainties of a marginalized majority struggling for a meagre existence in the inner-city in the face of the grand-scale urban regeneration project.

This study investigated the nature of opinions and attitudes expressed in letters to South African newspapers regarding selected incidents of interracial controversy, namely the Botes (2010) and Forum for Black Journalists (FBJ) (2008) incidents. A qualitative and quantitative content analysis of these letters was conducted to gauge the attitudes that writers displayed towards members of their cultural group (ingroup) and members of other cultural groups (outgroups). The results of the qualitative analysis indicated that individuals in a racial group have different perspectives of in- and outgroup members. The results of the quantitative analysis, however, showed that the majority of writers tend to display positive attitudes towards ingroup members and negative attitudes towards out groups. The dominance of positive attitudes towards ingroups and negative attitudes towards outgroups can be attributed to myths and discourses circulating in postapartheid South Africa and the current social climate in general. The study concluded that although individuals’ attitudes may differ from the stark negative attitudes displayed towards outgroups during the apartheid era, negative attitudes towards outgroups persist. / Communication Science / M. A. (Communication Science)