Why South Africa's children are vulnerable to violence and injuries

South Africa’s deep structural poverty is part of the explanation for injuries to children.
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South African children are vulnerable to injuries, not just those that are accidental but also those inflicted intentionally. This is according to the 2019 Child Gauge report, an annual publication that explores how children in South Africa are faring.

The report notes that injuries to children span from burns to drowning and from road traffic injuries to fatal child abuse. More than 8,000 children die every year as a result of injuries. About 5,000 of these are accidental or unintentional. The leading causes of child injury deaths in South Africa are road traffic injuries (36%), homicide (28%), unintentional injuries such as burns and drowning (27%) and suicide (8.5%), which is considered intentional.

In a society like South Africa which has deep structural poverty, the causes of injuries to children are often linked to the circumstances in which people live. For example, poor infrastructure and harsh living conditions expose children to high levels of neglect, harm and injury in the home and community.

Even though most injuries may not be inflicted intentionally, they shouldn’t be considered as accidents. This is because most injuries occur in the context of inadequate care. Most can be prevented by ensuring children’s safety in their homes, schools, recreational spaces, community settings and the transport connections between them.

Patterns of child injuries

Child safety interventions should take into account the child’s evolving capacities and stage of development. The risks change as children become more independent and move out of home into schools and the wider community.

Young children are particularly vulnerable to falls, drowning and hot water burns because of their natural curiosity and increasing mobility. School-aged children are at risk of road traffic injuries, especially because 67% of them walk to school. Adolescents tend to overestimate their ability to negotiate often complex and hazardous traffic environments and are primed to engage in risk-taking behaviour.

Efforts to prevent childhood injuries often start by making children and families aware of the dangers. Families should keep poisons, matches, electrical appliances, water containers and hot water away from young children. Children must wear safety belts in vehicles and be supervised closely near open water and other dangers.

Yet individual behaviour change can only go so far.

Many of the drivers of violence and injury are structural in nature. For example, it’s harder to keep children safe when living in a two-room shack and using candles and a paraffin stove. Walking to school in an informal settlement or a busy urban space where there are no pavements is also riskier. It’s more difficult to protect children from violence in communities where poverty, unemployment and substance abuse fuel conflict both within and outside the family.

In fact, violence and injury share many common risk factors. They include poverty, poor infrastructure, harsh living conditions, gender inequality, violent forms of masculinity, and widespread abuse of alcohol and drugs. All these expose children to both violent and unintentional injury.

Yet, evidence from South Africa and elsewhere shows that such epidemics can be prevented. South Africa has many organisations dedicated to preventing injury and promoting resilient children, families and communities. This work needs to be recognised, along with the countless efforts by families to protect their children.

Many of the local evidence-based programmes are showcased in the Child Gauge. For example, several communities have introduced “walking buses” where families and community members accompany children to and from school, helping to protect them from violence and traffic dangers. There are also violence prevention and urban upgrade initiatives to create safe public spaces and neighbourhood resource centres where children can play.

The question is how to take these to scale.

What needs to be done

To turn the tide of violence and unintentional injury alike, the country needs greater leadership and collaboration across sectors to address the overlapping risk factors.

Countries that have seen the greatest gains in violence and injury prevention have invested in leadership to push for interventions that are known to work. The World Health Organisation has reported that countries such as Australia, Canada and France have reduced their injury death rates, some by as much as half and within a 10 to 20 year period. Many others, such as South Africa, have also begun investing in research, programmes and capacities for safety interventions.

Violence and injury rates were reduced in these countries because of concerted efforts that were often led by government and community coalitions as part of a national strategy or programme focused on injury and violence prevention. Therefore a massive coordinated shift is necessary to deliver such interventions and services to communities at scale.

It’s time for government to identify child safety as a strategic priority, build partnerships with nongovernmental organisations and develop an intersectoral plan to promote the safety of South Africa’s children.

This article is based on a chapter in the Child Gauge report “Violence, injury and child safety: The new challenge for child health”.

Shanaaz Mathews, Professor, University of Cape Town and Ashley Van Niekerk, Deputy Unit Director and Senior Specialist Scientist and Professor Extraordinarius: UNISA Institute for Social and Health Sciences, South African Medical Research Council

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Money from Lottery goes to cousin of National Lotteries Commission boss

Only a fraction of the R11 million grant appears to have gone to its intended purpose

National Lotteries Commission COO Phillemon Letwaba signed off a multi-million rand Lottery grant to a non-profit organisation directed by his family member. Photo copied for fair use from NLC website

The National Lotteries Commission has given more than R11 million to a non-profit organisation (NPO) called I Am Made for God’s Glory, which has in turn paid R2 million to a private company of which the sole director is the cousin of the chief operating officer of the National Lotteries Commission.

According to leaked bank statements, R2 million was paid to Upbrand Properties by I Am Made For God’s Glory (IAM4GG), which received a R11,375,000 grant from the Lottery to develop an “integrated sports facility” in Limpopo.

The sole director of Upbrand is Kenneth Tomoletso Sithole, first cousin of NLC chief operating officer Phillemon Letwaba.

GroundUp has previously revealed how Upbrand received a R15-million contract to build a rehabilitation centre near Pretoria at a time when Letwaba’s brother, Johannes “Joe” Letwaba, was a director of the company. Johannes Letwaba subsequently resigned, leaving Keneilwe Constance Maboa, the wife of Karabo Sithole, another first cousin of the Letwaba brothers, as the company’s sole director. When Maboa resigned 17 months later, Kenneth Sithole was appointed as Upbrand’s sole director.

What the bank statements show

The bank statements are for an IAM4GG account opened at Nedbank on 10 January 2017. The account lay dormant for over a year until an amount of R380 was transferred into it to reactivate it on 16 February 2018.

Once again there was no activity on the account and by 25 April 2018 bank charges had reduced the available credit to just R190.55.

The next day the NLC paid R9.1-million into the account, the first of two tranches of the IAM4GG grant. The second tranche of R2,275,000 was paid into the account on 6 July 2018.

Family connections

The application for funding submitted to the NLC listed lawyer Lesley Ramulifho as IAM4GG’s chairperson and Karabo Sithole as secretary.

In other words, money passed from the National Lotteries Commission, of which Letwaba is COO, through IAM4GG, of which Letwaba’s cousin Karabo Sithole is secretary, to Upbrand, of which Kenneth Sithole, cousin of both Karabo Sithole and of Letwaba, is sole director. And the chairman of IAM4GG is Ramulifho, who has already received at least R60 million in Lottery funds, as GroundUp has previously revealed.

Moreover, Phillemon Letwaba signed the grant agreement for the NLC on 16 April 2018.

Where are the promised deliverables?

In its application for funding, IAM4GG said the plan was “to provide infrastructure in order to advance sport, recreation and physical activity in communities across the country”. The project was aimed at sports “transformation” and athletes from “disadvantaged … especially our rural communities”. It would create 60 full-time and 40 part-time jobs and benefit over 16,000 people, according to the application.

GroundUp has not been able to establish where this “infrastructure” is located because the NLC failed to answer our questions. But the commission told GroundUp in a November 2018 statement that the “project work is complete” and the project had been handed over to the local municipality.
The grant allocated R10,440,000 for “capacity building (integrated sports facility)”; R500,000 for “sports equipment and apparel” and R435,000 for administration.

But only five payments in the leaked IAM4GG bank statements appear to be directly connected to the sports facility: R500,000 on 7 May 2018, for “construction sports stadium” and a further four payments for “sports centre” that totalled R22,500. The payments were made on 17, 19 and 20 July 2018. If there were any further payments related to the sports facility, they are not recorded as such on the bank statements.

There were two mystery payments from the IAM4GG account for R5 million on 4 May 2018, and a further R700,000 on 7 July, paid into an account identified only by a number. An amount of R3 million was paid into the same account on 26 January 2018 by Denzhe, an NPO controlled by Ramulifho. This number refers to a Nedbank “investment account”, according to a source at the bank.

Strange payments

However there are other deductions for management fees (R50,000 on 30 April 2018 and R25,000 on 7 May), and deductions to Hush Interiors, an upmarket decor company (R40,000 on 3 May 2018), Bradlows (R19,599.95 on 8 May 2018) and Vaja Products (saunas and steam rooms - R132,000 on 8 May 2018). Within days of the first R9.1 million tranche of the Lottery grant landing in IAM4GG’s account, the first of a series of payments totalling R644,000 were made for “legal drafting”.The payments, ranging from R10,000 to R200,000, were made between 30 April and 30 May 2018.

And, after the second tranche of R2,275,000 was paid on 6 July 2018, a further R373,900 was paid out for “legal drafting” over the next two weeks.

The bank statements also list payments totalling R672,000 that are described as “franchise fee” from the NPO’s bank account.

By 30 June 2018, the Lottery funding was almost exhausted with only R1,708.79 left in the account. But six days later, on 6 July, the account was topped up again with a deposit of R2,275,000 — the second tranche — by the NLC.

However, after a series of payments — including R373,900 for “legal drafting”, R700,000 into the mystery account, R100,000 for “management fees” and R50,000 to a courier company — the account balance was reduced to just R81,706.99 by 14 July, a week after the NLC payment.

Unanswered questions

Neither Ramulifho nor his employee Liesl Moses responded to emailed questions about the project and the information contained in the bank statements.

GroundUp also contacted two people listed as directors of IAM4GG when the organisation was registered with the Department of Social Development in 2012: Thomas Nkuna, deputy chairperson, and Mpho Maphanga, treasurer. Neither responded.

The NLC failed to respond to detailed questions sent to Commissioner Thabang Mampane and spokesman Ndivhuho Mafela.

Instead the NLC’s head of legal affairs, Tsietsi Maselwa, responded by email, noting the “serious allegations”, and claiming to be unaware of most of the information on which we based our questions.

 20 January 2020   By Raymond Joseph


Phillemon Letwaba is suing Raymond Joseph (the author of this article), Nathan Geffen (the editor of GroundUp), and Community Media Trust (the owner of GroundUp) for defamation.

GroundUp is being sued after we exposed dodgy Lottery deals involving millions of rands. Please help fund our defence. You can support us via Givengain, Snapscan, EFT, PayPal or PayFast.

 

© 2020 GroundUp.

South Africa still has a long way to go on the right to food

For most of human history, people had access to food either by producing it themselves, or through trade.
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Fifty-four percent of South Africans are hungry or at risk of hunger. Hunger affects people’s health, as well as their ability to live full and productive lives. That’s why hunger represents a violation of their basic human rights – not only the right to food, but also the rights to dignity, health and education, since all of these are affected by hunger.

Hunger, malnutrition and related illnesses are not evenly spread. There are significant race, class and gender differences. For example, black South Africans are 22 times more likely to be food insecure compared with white South Africans. Food insecurity is defined as not having physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

This unequal distribution indicates a situation of severe food injustice in South Africa. Yet from my research with urban farmers it’s clear that people do not know of the right to food, and don’t see unequal access to nutritious food as an injustice. As a result, questions of hunger are largely absent in South African politics. While there are frequent protests around access to jobs, education, housing, water and electricity, we rarely, if ever, see protests about access to food.

There are international examples of governments taking their obligations seriously with regard to the right to food. In the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, for example, the government has rolled out numerous food and nutrition security programmes to combat hunger. In India, activists used litigation to hold the government accountable, leading to the enactment of the National Food Security Act in 2013, and various anti-hunger programmes such as school meals, subsidised grain distribution and assistance to pregnant women.

South Africans could learn from these examples, and do more.

Food injustice

The concept of food injustice seeks to address issues of equity, fairness and control amid inherent inequality of the food system. Developed by researchers and activists in the US, it is equally relevant in South Africa, where centuries of oppression under settler colonialism and apartheid have created one of the most unequal societies in the world.

One of the drivers of unequal access to food is the way in which the industrial food system works. For example, a few large companies dominate each aspect of the food value chain.

This concentration means that smaller scale producers, processors and retailers are squeezed out. Because the large companies dominate the supply chain, they are able to maximise profits at the expense of small-scale producers, to whom they pay very low prices, and low-income consumers, who can’t afford the marked-up prices in shops.

The system has been normalised to the extent that it is rarely challenged.

In my study with urban farmers I asked participants about the right to food. The majority had never heard of it. Even when I explained the right, it was difficult for them to comprehend how it could work in the context of the current food system.

One woman in Bertrams, Johannesburg, challenged the concept:

A right to eat, but where will we get the food to eat? You’ll go to Spar [supermarket] and say, “I want to eat”, yet you don’t have money to buy food.

When asked if food manufacturers and retailers should help hungry people, another participant in Alexandra, said:

Yeah, I think they must help, but if they’ve got money. Because also they must get something and then they can manage to help people.

This view was expressed by a pensioner struggling to feed her grandchildren. On the other end of the scale might be the CEO of major retailer Shoprite, who earned R100 million (and additional incentives) in 2017 – 1332 times more than employees, who made R75,150.

The idea of food being sold for profit has become entirely normalised. This is despite the fact that for most of human history, people had access to food either by producing (or gathering) it themselves, or through trade. Some of the older participants in the study actually experienced this during their childhoods in rural areas. Their households were largely self-sustaining – growing crops, raising livestock, and sharing or trading with neighbours as needed.

Many of the research participants had monthly household food budgets of around R450 per person per month. At this rate, a healthy diet is simply unaffordable. The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Household Affordability Index suggests that the cost of a basic nutritious food basket for a family of four is R2,327.17 (or R581.79 per person).

Realising the right to food

Tackling food injustice requires a transformation of the structural inequities of the food system. It needs to ensure that marginalised producers, processors and retailers have an opportunity to earn a decent living. At the same time corporate dominance needs to be addressed.

To break the cycle of poverty and malnutrition, the government also needs to ensure that children have access to sufficient, healthy food. This might entail food provision linked to pre- and post-natal care, as well as provision of healthy meals at early childhood development centres.

It requires providing alternative means to access healthy food. This could be through access to land and water, or through subsidised fresh produce and healthy meals. Programmes such as those in Brazil or in India provide examples of how government interventions (through subsidies and distribution) can improve access to food.

At the most basic level, it requires that South Africans know they have a right to food in the first place.

Eight years ago the then UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter criticised South Africa’s progress on this score and made a number of recommendations for improvement. Sadly, little has changed. It’s time South Africans demanded government action.

Brittany Kesselman, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

7 science-based strategies to boost your willpower and succeed with your New Year’s resolutions

Behavioral science has ideas about how to keep on track beyond January.
duchic/Shutterstock.com

It’s that time of year when people make their New Year’s resolutions – indeed, 93% of people set them, according to the American Psychological Association. The most common resolutions are related to losing weight, eating healthier, exercising regularly and saving money.

However, research shows that 45% of people fail to keep their resolutions by February, and only 19% keep them for two years. Lack of willpower or self-control is the top cited reason for not following through.

How can you increase your willpower and fulfill your New Year’s promise to yourself? These seven strategies are based on behavioral science and my clinical work with hundreds of people trying to achieve their long-term goals.

1. Clarify and honor your values

Ask yourself why this goal matters to you. Do you want to lose weight because you value getting in shape to return to a favorite pastime of hiking, or because of societal expectations and pressures? People who are guided by their authentic values are better at achieving their goals. They also don’t run out of willpower, because they perceive it as a limitless resource. Figure out what makes you tick, and choose goals consistent with those values.

2. Frame goals and your life in positive terms

Focus on what you want to accomplish, not what you don’t. Instead of planning not to drink alcohol on workdays during the new year, commit to drinking your favorite sparkling water with Sunday to Thursday evening meals. Struggling to suppress thoughts takes a lot of energy, and they have a way of returning to your mind with a vengeance.

It also helps to reflect on the aspects of yourself and your life that you are already happy with. Although you might fear that this will spur complacency and inaction, studies show that gratitude and other positive emotions lead to better self-control in the long run.

3. Change your environment to make it easier

Research suggests that people with high willpower are exceptionally good at arranging their environment to avoid temptations. So, banish all credit cards from your wallet if your goal is to save money. And don’t keep a bowl of M&M’s at your work desk if you intend to eat healthy.

Surround yourself with people who share your goals.
Luis Quintero/unsplash, CC BY

If your coworkers regularly bring sweets to work, ask them to help you with your goals (they might get inspired to join in!) and bring cookies only for special occasions. Supportive friends and family can dramatically increase your chances of achieving your resolutions. Joining a group whose members practice behaviors you’d like to adopt is another great way to bolster your willpower, because having role models improves self-control.

4. Be prepared with ‘if-then’ strategies

Even the best resolution falls apart when your busy schedule and exhaustion take over. Formulate a series of plans for what to do when obstacles present themselves. These “if-then” plans are shown to improve self-control and goal attainment.

Each time you wake up in the middle of the night craving candies or chips, you can plan instead to read a guilty-pleasure magazine, or log into your online community of healthy eaters for inspiration, or eat an apple slowly and mindfully, savoring each bit. When you’re tired and about to skip that gym class you signed up for, call your supportive sister who is on standby. Anticipate as many situations as possible and make specific plans, vividly imagining the situations and what you will do in the moment.

5. Use a gradual approach

When you embark on a new goal, start small and build on early successes. Use one less spoonful of sugar in your coffee. Eventually, you might be able to forgo any sweeteners at all. If resisting that muffin initially proves to be too hard, try waiting 10 minutes. By the end of it, your urge will likely subside.

You might be surprised to realize that change in one domain of life – like abstaining from sweet processed foods – tends to spread to other areas. You might find you are able to bike longer distances, or moderate your caffeine intake more easily.

If it feels like the payoffs are in the distant future, you can plan a small gift for yourself along the way.
shurkin_son/Shutterstock.com

6. Imagine rewards and then enjoy them

Picture the feeling of endorphins circulating through your body after a run, or the sun on your skin as you approach a mountain summit. Pay attention to all your senses: smell, sight, hearing, touch and taste. Visualizing rewards improves your chances of engaging in the activity that results in them.

If it’s hard to imagine or experience these rewards in the beginning, decide on small, meaningful gifts you can give yourself until the positive effects of the new behaviors kick in. For example, imagine yourself taking a half-day off work each month after you pay down your credit card debt: visualize exactly what you would do and how you would feel. And then do it.

7. Be kind to yourself, even during setbacks

Most people believe the way to increase willpower is to “whip oneself into shape,” because being kind to oneself is indulgent and lacks self discipline. But the exact opposite is true – people who harshly blame themselves for even small willpower failures tend to do worse in accomplishing their goals in the long run.

Try self-compassion instead. Cut yourself some slack and remember that being human means being imperfect. When you fall for that doughnut, don’t despair, and don’t throw in the towel. Treat yourself with care and understanding and then recommit to your goal the following day.

Remember, you aren’t likely to achieve your New Year’s resolutions by being self-critical and hard on yourself. Instead, boost your willpower through a series of small and strategic steps that will help you succeed.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]

Jelena Kecmanovic, Adjunct Professor of Psychology, Georgetown University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Universities in South Africa need to rediscover their higher purpose

The demand for free higher education is one of the key factors that have led to competing waves of thinking and organisation in the sector.
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For over two decades South African higher education has been dominated by three successive and contending waves of thinking and organisation. They are: neo-liberal managerialism the decolonialisation of knowledge
and, most recently, the idea of a Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).

By promising to “transform” higher education, each has taken centre stage at universities – or sections of them – by pledging greater value for the taxpayer (neo-liberalism); social emancipation (decolonisation); or greater access to employment (4IR).

The first wave follows Ronald Reagan’s “reform” of the Californian system which saw decreased state funding for universities. This was taken up by UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Her funding policies encouraged British universities to adopt business management practices. It also involved gearing degree offerings to the requirements of “the market”.

In South Africa, the second was symbolised by the March 2015 protest at University of Cape Town over the stature of Cecil John Rhodes. The movement has been marked by (sometimes violent) demands for a reform of curriculum away from the western “canon” and towards African epistemologies. Politically, it has been characterised by demands for free higher-education.

The third has been propagated by the World Economic Forum and across the world by the champions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the digital revolution. In South Africa this wave has been promoted especially by the University of Johannesburg. This perspective holds that AI and machine-learning will dominate knowledge and knowledge-creating deep into the present century. All academic disciplines should, therefore, be geared to this end.

But there has been very little public discussion about the contradictions between the three moments.

South African higher education remains remarkably detached from society. Its loss of a social purpose can be seen as the erosion of the public and civic vitality which once fuelled the anti-apartheid struggle. Today, its mission has shrunk.

Why is there this disconnect?

The answer is simply that policies and incentives disadvantage the deep connection with the communities in which universities are located. They also emphasise peer-reviewed articles in internationally ranked journals as the measure of excellence. And they lead to a focus on educating students for high-paying jobs. They have little to do with positioning the welfare of society at the core of their scholarship, teaching, and public connections.

Put differently, higher education in the country doesn’t fulfil its civic potential. It has no real social purpose.

There are contrasting examples internationally. For instance, Tokai University, the leading STEM university in Japan, has a vision and mission grown from its founder’s philosophy – Professor Shigeyoshi Matsumae. His life goal was to create a university where young people and faculty would have sustained, deep interactions with social purpose.

Tokai University is implementing this philosophy. It has intensive citizenship education on all eight of its regional campuses for 7,000 entering first year students. It plans to expand this to 30,000.

The true purpose of universities

In the minds of faculty, administrators, government and business leaders, South African universities service two important, but limited, activities.

The first is to prepare students for jobs. The second is to conduct research that treats social communities more as objects of study than as knowledge partners. This approach excludes the development and support of civic agency from scholarly purpose.

Even disciplines that encourage research aimed at enhancing well-being – economics, is the best and worst example
– are deeply flawed. The emphasis is on technical skills and emulating models of prosperity that are based on individual rational choice as the motivator of human agency.

The hard truth is that higher education contributes to societal erosion when expert-knows-best approaches displace civic agency. This is because experts are often far removed from the needs of community development.

Alarmingly, too, teaching and research with public purpose have been squeezed out.

Higher education which prepares students for res publica – for the community – or in local terms, ubuntu – the community-confirming idea that we are human because of other humans – has been replaced. Instead what South Africa has is education suited for a res idiotica – in the Greek, a private and isolated person.

What can be done?

Fortunately, a growing literature points towards strands of civic revival in higher education. And there are a growing number of examples of a recovery of civic and democratic purposes in higher education.

Moreover, two broad streams of thinking are establishing new platforms for exchange, experiment, and social change. One is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary field that has emerged under the broad rubric of “Civic Studies”.

This encourages research and real-world projects which integrate empirical, cultural, and political knowledge as resources for community agency, societal co-creation and human flourishing. One example is the US-based Anchor Institution Task Force. This involves more than 700 universities and colleges which use their economic, physical and educational resources for community development.

One of the key elements of civic studies is public work, a framework of social action developed in partnership with other organisations. These include the Institute for Democracy in South Africa and other international partners.

Cultural evolution is the other stream. This provides resources for civic reconstruction of higher education. Key to this approach is the work of the late Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, a co-founder of civic studies. Working with a network of international colleagues on collective governance of common pool resources, she refuted the rational individualism which has held sway over a great deal of social science across the world.

Her work helped in the translation of cultural evolution science to meet the challenges of improving human societies.

Civic studies and cultural evolution show that human societies can succeed through cooperative efforts within and across groups. But this is only possible when members understand and pursue their interests with conscious regard for the well-being of all.

Higher education needs to take on this insight because it’s indispensable for revitalising human agency, flourishing communities, and active democracy.

It will also re-frame scholarship, teaching and public engagements. This needs to be in pursuit of ensuring that scholarship becomes an integral part of democratic life, not simply as a partner with society.

Peter Vale, Senior research fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria and Harry Boyte, Senior Scholar in Public Work Philosophy, Augsburg University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

The long moral shadows cast by South Africa's colonial history

A Zulu household, from an 1895 book called The Colony of Natal: An Official Illustrated Handbook and Railway Guide.
J Causton and Sons /University of California Libraries/ Flickr

The post-apartheid state in South Africa inherited many colonial legacies. It has transformed considerably over the past 25 years. But it retains mechanisms of a state that secured power for a select few at the expense of most of its citizens.

In my book, Queering Colonial Natal, I looked at the ways in which the settler state “queered” African and Indian social practices in the 19th century. By “queered” I mean that settler regimes defined these practices as threats to the social order they wanted to impose in colonial Natal —established by the British in 1843, today South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. They did this by decrying the practices as inherently wrong and themselves as superior and civilised.

At the same time, colonial archives reveal that both African and Indian people (migrants who arrived in Natal from South Asia throughout the 19th century) challenged these claims. For example, parliamentary reports show that while settler marriage laws imposed monogamous, heterosexual unions as the only legitimate form of matrimony, local populations asserted the legitimacy of their own polygynous institutions in colonial courts.

I traced the complicated histories of race, sexuality and power in contemporary South Africa, focusing on colonial Natal. The colony offers a particularly valuable space to study as it hosted competing African, Indian and European settlers in relatively close proximity.

Understanding the social and legal issues in colonial Natal gives insight into the ways power operated in southern Africa – and the British Empire more broadly.

The entanglements of race, gender, class and sexuality in contemporary South Africa flow in part from the contradictions of the settler colonial state. In tracing the history, I believe it’s possible to see the long shadows that colonial history casts over the country’s complicated present. This provides the opportunity to see that situations aren’t inevitable. It is possible to look for new ways to understand and navigate the contradictions in our contemporary world.

Dissecting the colonial state

One of the major themes I looked at was state control. This extended to marriage and social reproduction, the legal managing of alcohol and the ways mission institutions claimed civilising power over all peoples. I also examined the politics of access to education in the colony. This was to show how different people used ideas of race and gender to claim legitimacy and belonging.

I argue that the colonial state attempted to mark African social practices as aberrant. Or, as I write in the book, as “queer”. This included practices such as isithembu (polygamy), ilobolo (the ceremonial offering of cattle from the groom’s family to the bride’s family), clothing and beer-drinking.

Settlers marked these practices as inherently wrong. They oriented themselves in opposition to them as a way of asserting their normalcy or civilised status.

Africans and Indians in Natal didn’t accept this labelling. As my research shows, they challenged it. Using occupation, belonging and settlement, people sought to challenge easy claims to power and authority. At the very least, they tried to “unsettle” them. They also used colonial courts to challenge legal pronouncements.

One case I examined was the continuous (and constantly challenged) effort of the settler state to ban alcohol consumption by Africans and Indians. The ban on Africans drinking liquor began in the 1850s. The Natal legislature debated – but frequently failed to pass – legislation banning the brewing or consumption of umqombothi, so-called “Native beer”, throughout this period.

Similarly, the access of Indian men and women to alcohol was restricted in 1890. They were allowed to consume beverages on site only and couldn’t take any liquor in bottles.

These restrictions mapped onto ideas in which settlers imagined Africans and Indians having diminished capacity for handling alcohol. But this led to a particular problem for white settlers when Europeans became intoxicated. The colonial record is filled with debates and anxious conversations about the problem of the supposedly rational and capable settler failing to handle his or her liquor, and the fear that this indicated a lack of social power and control.

The second chapter of my book discusses the ways in which African and Indian bodies were marked as inherently aberrant in order to create the figure of the fit, capable European drinker. Both of these fictions existed to uphold racial orders of power in the colony.

I also sought to unpack the ways in which historical framings of “queerness” led to reactionary homophobia as a means of defence.

Thinking through the messy, entangled histories of the past allows us to unsettle the difficulties of the present. Examining the power dynamics of the colonial state allows us to see how it still has an impact on contemporary society.

“Queering Colonial Natal: Indigeneity and the Violence of Belonging in Southern Africa” is available from University of Minnesota Press for $25.

T.J. Tallie, , University of San Diego

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.