Browsing by Author "Swart, Sandra"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    "Discontented scoundrels who crowd the mercantile marine today" : labour relations regimes of the Cape Ichaboe guano trade, c. 1843-1898
    (Historical Association of South Africa, 2013-05) Snyders, Hendrik; Swart, Sandra
    The scraping of guano on offshore islands in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans during the mid- to late nineteenth century was an essentially primitive industry. As guano is a natural product with no further need for processing, the primary task of guano workers was the physical collection of guano chunks using basic tools such as crowbars, spades and wheelbarrows. Working on nearly barren islands with non-existent harbour facilities in remote areas far removed from its supply source, meant that guano- collection was an extremely risky enterprise and guano-labour was both back breaking and hazardous labour. Motivated by profit considerations, guanopreneurs and the Cape colonial state established and maintained an exploitative and coercive labour regime characterised by the use of deferred wages, credit and rationing as well as rigid contract enforcement. Guano diggers, however, did not accept these practices passively and as this article demonstrates, actively resisted their exploitation and marginalisation. As a result, the Cape colonial authorities were compelled to intervene, changing the system in 1898.
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    History, politics and dogs in Zimbabwean literature, c.1975–2015
    (Van Schaik Publishers, 2018) Dande, Innocent; Swart, Sandra
    Zimbabwean fiction writers have engaged with dogs as objects, subjects and even actors. This essay focuses on the pivotal forty-year period between 1975 and 2015, which saw the end of white rule, the rise of an independent African state and the collapse of that state. In analysing how selected writers have variously made use of dogs, we discuss the extent to which writers deal with human-dog relations. We buttress our point by examining key pieces of fiction in which dogs appear and we unpack the extent to which fictive representations of humans and dogs approximate lived relations in pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial settings. We show the enduring relevance of dogs as metaphors of power in the Zimbabwean political landscape. We contend that such canine allegories have a history and explore their usage by creative writers over the last forty years.
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    Hunger and power : politics, food (in)security and the development of small grains in Zimbabwe, 2000-2010
    (The Historical Association of South Africa, 2022-05-01) Kauma, Bryan; Swart, Sandra
    White maize sadza is the most eaten food in Zimbabwe. Yet, over the decade of the 2000s, its consumption was threatened by drought and consequent acute food shortages. Small grains - sorghum and millet - offered a panacea to looming starvation and civil unrest. Yet, as we argue in this article, its access became rooted increasingly within political contestations between the ruling ZANU PF government, the budding opposition party and ordinary citizens. Using the story of small grains -sorghum and millet - between 2000 and 2010, we trace how food (in)security took a political form, stirring a pot of sometimes violent clashes between political and social contenders. We argue that through 'political grain', various political and social elites were able to amass wealth and power for themselves and grab control of sociopolitical discourse on food security during the crisis years. As the state imposed a series of seemingly well-intentioned and sometimes even widely welcomed food initiatives such as Operation Maguta and BACOSSI, these food security measures were often ad hoc, temporary and - as we argue - actually had an adverse long-term impact on local grain production and food availability. The government worked through key parastatals like the Grain Marketing Board and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to allocate resources and food support to ruling party loyalists. In this period, the ZANU PF regime was concerned primarily with holding on to its waning political power and avenues for personal wealth accumulation at the expense of food security in the country. This paper demonstrates how an anthropogenically-induced 'hunger' effectively prolonged ZANU PF's control of society - but we also show how 'small people' fought back against President Robert Mugabe's 'big men' by embracing the growing and eating of traditional 'small grains'.
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    Hunting status? Power and buffalo shooting in the Albany and Bathurst districts of the Cape Colony c. 1892-1916
    (North-West University, 2013-11) Gess, David W.; Swart, Sandra
    The hunting of buffalo in the Bathurst district of the Cape Colony during the closing decades of the 19th Century serves as a case study of the system of issuing permits to shoot big game introduced by the Game Act of 1886, and provides an opportunity to identify and interrogate the competing interests of those who wished to obtain for themselves the right to hunt these increasingly threatened animals. The administrative process by which the Department of Agriculture considered and determined permit applications is a lens through which to view the use of influence and connection in the pursuit of personal hunting interests, particularly when the clerk to the local Civil Commissioner, whose duties included recommending permit applications, sought to secure hunting opportunities for himself to the exclusion of others.