| Places of Resistance and Quiescence: A Reinterpretation of the ANC and Popular Movements in Urban Struggles in South Africa, 1943-1957 |  Printable version
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Seminar on the occasion of 100 years ANC
Date: 16 February 2012, 15.30-17.00
Room: 1A27
Speaker: Dr Noor Nieftagodien, History Workshop, University of
the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Discussant:
Dr Ineke
van Kessel, ASC
You are kindly requested to register for this seminar.
This seminar will explore the evolution of the ANC and other popular
movements (including the Communist Party of South Africa) from the first
major bus boycott in Alexandra Township and the formation of the ANC
Youth League in 1943/44 until the final (successful) bus boycott in the
same township in 1957. It will offer an analysis of the production and
dissolution of contentious spaces and how these processes shaped
resistance politics in this period. One of the main arguments is that by
inserting places of the urban poor – locations, peri-urban squatter
camps, freehold townships and ‘model’ townships – more centrally into
analyses of resistance, it is possible to develop a more nuanced
understanding of the character and rhythms of resistance politics than
emerge in conventional interpretations that concentrate on the political
parties.
It is suggested that the form and character of resistance politics were
completely transformed in this period and that, in the process,
important ideological shifts occurred and new templates of protest
politics and repertoires of struggle were established that shaped the
subsequent struggle against apartheid. In addition, it is argued that
the apartheid state’s massive programme of urban restructuring, one
salient dimension of which was the destruction of so-called ‘black
spots’ or spaces designated as troublesome and their replacement with
‘model’ townships, had a much greater impact on local resistance
politics than has previously been acknowledged.
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