jill.e.kelly

history, research, teaching

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Repost: Lecture Prep and Digital Humanities

This is a re-post from my #DayofDH2014 page (April 8, 2014). 

Some portion of my Tuesday is usually devoted to grading and lecture prep for the rest of the week. Tomorrow the Modern Africa History course will cover decolonization in Portuguese Africa, so I want to blog about some of the great online digital sources and tools I use in this lecture.

The African Activist Archive (hosted by our #DayofDH2014 sponsor, MATRIX) has an awesome collection of posters on Angola and Guinea Bissau.

Angola for the Angolans

by Ato Seitu,Toronto Support Committee for MPLA
Montreal, Canada. No date, apparently late 1975 or early 1976

by Chicago Committee for the Liberation of Angola Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau Chicago, Illinois, United States Fall 1973

by Chicago Committee for the Liberation of Angola Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Fall 1973

The posters do not just operate as colorful background to the lecture. They serve as a tool for students to identify and discuss several important themes I hope to cover:

1) The role of international activists, here a U.S. campaign to boycott Gulf. Portugal received significant income from Gulf’s exploitation of Angolan oil that helped pay for its military activities in Angola against the struggle for independence.

by Pan-African Liberation Committee Brookline, Massachusetts, United States. Most likely late 1972 or 1973

by Pan-African Liberation Committee
Brookline, Massachusetts, United States. Most likely late 1972 or 1973

2) The role of women in the struggle for independence. Both the poster above and the items below portray female freedom fighters, allowing us to examine women at war. But students also discuss the decision to feature mothers and their children in these activist materials.

big32-131-3E6-98-LSM Angola 83

by Liberation Support Movement Information Center
Richmond, Canada. 1973

button

by Chicago Committee for the Liberation of Angola Mozambique and Guinea
Chicago, Illinois, United States. No date, 1972?

3) The context of the Cold War. Both the button and poster below provide entry into the discussion of U.S. support for UNITA in one of the Cold War proxy wars.

London, United Kingdom 1993 Publisher: Mozambique Angola Committee

London, United Kingdom
1993
Publisher: Mozambique Angola Committee

by Young Socialist Alliance United States 1976 or later

by Young Socialist Alliance
United States
1976 or later

Finally, I use the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture’s Africana Age page for photographs of important leaders to accompany our discussion.

Agostinho Neto. UN photo from the Schomberg Center.

Agostinho Neto. UN photo from the Schomberg Center.

What other great digital sources do you use in lecture?

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“Nadine’s People”

The South African author, Nobel laureate, anti-apartheid and anti-secrecy activist Nadine Gordimer has died at the age of ninety.

Novelist Thando Mgqolozana tweeted this morning, “Nadine’s People,” a play on one of her most popular novels, July’s People.

nadine

I am one of Nadine’s People.

I frequently get asked, “Why South Africa?” Why did I choose to study South Africa?

Because I read Nadine Gordimer in high school.

Somewhere, someone has my copy of July's People. Return it, please!

Somewhere, someone has my copy of July’s People. Return it, please!

I was a senior at a small town school. There were four of us in my AP English class. For our final paper, the teacher put four novels on the library table and we each chose. I just queried one of my classmates with whom I still keep in contact. She cannot remember what she chose. Maybe something Russian, she thought? But I remember my part clearly.

I picked up Nadine Gordimer’s A Sport of Nature. I’m sure I’d be embarrassed now to read the paper I wrote then. But I am not being dramatic when I say that this assignment changed my life.

It lead me to read more, first to those most available in small town, America: Olive Schreiner, Doris Lessing, Alan Paton, Mandela’s autobiography and Tutu’s treatise on reconciliation. I’d later find Sindiwe Magona, Zakes Mda, Richard Rive, Alex La Guma.

It let me to study abroad in Durban during my junior year of college, where I studied isiZulu and lived with an isiZulu-speaking family.  It lead me to graduate school, research, and teaching.

One reviewer suggested A Sport of Nature marked how Gordimer “has evolved, adapted, triumphantly come of age…”  Gordimer’s evolution, adaptation, and coming of age certainly sparked mine.

 

My Zulu homestay family, the Msiyas

My 2003 homestay family, the Msiyas

 

 

 


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#SAVotes2014 #20YearsofFreedom

Today, South Africans vote in their fifth democratic election. Here’s a round-up of images and links:

Google Doodle for May 7, 2014

Google Doodle for May 7, 2014

April 27  marked the 20th anniversary of South Africa’s first democratic election, which  South Africans celebrate annually as Freedom Day. To learn more about the end of apartheid and South Africa’s 1994 elections, visit South African History Online. They’ve got a timeline of elections and entries on most of South Africa’s historical elections.

The Overcoming Apartheid site also has features a lesson on the end of apartheid and multimedia on the elections, such as this image of Madiba casting his first vote. For a longer read, check out the gripping account of Peter Harris on the challenges faced by South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission in Birth.

The online ANC Archive also has great images of the ANC election campaign and Mandela’s inauguration. The Mandela Centre for Memory has an online exhibit on Mandela’s term as president.

By UN Photo by C. Sattleberger on Overcoming Apartheid

By UN Photo by C. Sattleberger on Overcoming Apartheid

Mandela's 1994 inauguration

Mandela’s 1994 inauguration

voter 10 commandment

10 Commandments for Voters, Northwestern Library

South African History Archive has a collection of 1994 election posters and African Activist has 1994 South African Election Watch Campaign Updates.

1994 Poster Matla Trust Speak Magazine (SAHA)

1994 Poster Matla Trust Speak Magazine (SAHA)

South Africa’s Mail & Guardian commemorated the first elections with a moving slideshow of images and audio. There was also the 20 funny but not so funny “20 bizarre apartheid moments.”

Also be sure to check out the great images of Ra’eesa Pather (below) and reflections on the status of the Freedom Charter in the new South Africa from South Africa Votes 2014. Today they’ve got up a live blog of their conversations with voters.

Andrew91-1024x682

Africa is a Country has several posts on 20 Years of Freedom and today Sean Jacobs considered the growing criticism of the ANC leadership.

Stay tuned for the results!


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Last Day of Class!

Today was the last day of class, so my six Overcoming Apartheid Junior Seminar students enjoyed a South African feast! World Market provisioned us with Ceres litchi juice and Mrs. Ball’s chutney.

The bobotie on the way into the oven

The bobotie on the way into the oven

Bobotie is certainly one of the Cape”s best known dishes with a bit of a controversy around it. Is it of Cape  Malay descent? Created by Dutch settlers and infused with Eastern spices from their trade in the Dutch East Indies? Sarah Emily Duff sheds some light:

One of the ironies of boerekos [farmers’ food, comfort food] is that so much of it is derived from the cooking of the slaves who were transported to the Cape from southeast Asia during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. The sambals, atchars, and chutneys of Afrikaner cooking are a particularly obvious debt to the food traditions imported to South Africa from present-day Indonesia and Malaysia.

Although Leipoldt, an unusually thoughtful nationalist, acknowledge that many of the recipes he found were cooked and invented by ‘Malay’ women – a term which he used to describe the largely Muslim and Afrikaans-speaking descendants of slaves who lived in the Cape –their presence gradually disappeared in other, later boerekos recipe books.

There is no neat boundary between Afrikaner cuisine and what most South Africans dub ‘Cape Malay’ cooking: there are recipes for bredie (mutton stew), bobotie, and sosaties (kebabs) in both boerekos and Malay recipe books. But in order to use food to construct distinct, discrete national or group identities, the differences between these two cuisines had to be emphasised over their similarities.

Sarah Emily Duff, in “National Kitchens“

I always forget to take “during” photos, but we’ll use this “after” shot to suggest that the bobotie was enjoyed by all!

Bobotie aftermath

Bobotie aftermath

Now they’re off to finish their research papers with full stomachs.


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On the Anniversary of Hani’s Assassination

Today in 1993, Thembisile “Chris” Hani was assassinated. Januzs Walus, an anti-Communist Polish refugee who had close links to the Afrikaner nationalist AWB, shot Hani in front of his Johannesburg home. Conservative Party MP Clive Derby-Lewis was implicated in the assassination. Both men are still serving prison sentence for the murder and Derby-Lewis has been attacked twice in the last month.

Hani remains a revered figure. Sean Jacobs’ analysis certainly suggests why:

Yet, any observer of contemporary South Africa can’t help noticing that while Chris Hani is still lionized and his name invoked in speeches and songs, the principles he stood for no longer  animate the political project of the liberation movement he laid down his life for or that his erstwhile comrades in the ruling party, its Communist ally and the main trade union federation have been disappointing.

So as we remember Hani, I thought I’d round up some of the material on his life and the many articles and analyses that are being shared today.

You can read about Hani’s life with South African History Online (SAHO). There’s Janet Smith and Beauregard Tromp’s Hani: A Life Too Short and Tim Gibbs analyzed his role in feeding Eastern Cape activists into MK.

The online repository, Aluka, has material on Hani, including photographs and journals such as these:

acn12892

 

 

 

hani and mthimkhulu

Return of MK combatants to South Africa: Hani and Duckmore “Morris” Mthimkhulu, 1990

DISA has several letters written by the leader, including this one to Ray Simons:

hani to simons_Page_1 hani to simons_Page_2

The Community Video Education Trust’s pilot episode of a Community News Programme also features Hani, here addressing an audience on housing, healthcare, and education.

This 2008 article covers the events of his assassination thoroughly. Aluka also has materials covering his memorial, such as the flyer and photograph below:

 

hani memorial 1993 hani memorial flyer

 

There are several other short biographical documentaries, including this one by the SABC and another by Afravision.

Africa is a Country has launched a piece to encourage readers to remember where they were when they heard about his death. Head over and contribute.