Tag Archives: History

“Small Groups Can’t Change History or the Law” – ANC

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Today, one of the most incredulous remarks by an ANC spokeswomen sparked my interest to such an extent that I felt the need to share it. The remark was from a story about a ban being placed on Julius Malema’s ‘Shoot the Boer’ liberation song. For anyone who has followed South African politics recently, they have undoubtedly come across stories describing Malema’s use of the song to fire up his supporters, often appealing to them using populist and racist speech. Malema of course defends all of this by saying that he is simply using a song from the time of liberation (despite the fact that he was only 9 years old when Apartheid began to fall), and that he does not intend to spark race based violence. Malema is in deeper trouble these days, with his membership in the ANC under review, yet the ANC still felt the need to contradict this ruling. 

After Malema used the song at a number of rally’s over the past few years, the group AfriForum, an Afrikaans interest group, brought a suit against his use of the song to Equality Court. The court banned the use of the song yesterday with the judge saying Continue reading →

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Second Published Work – African Studies Quarterly

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My first book review accepted for publication, but the second to hit the presses, takes a look at Peter Alegi’s Laduma!: Soccer, Politics and Society in South Africa (2010). My review was published in the University of Florida-produced journal, the African Studies Quarterly. This was the second edition of Alegi’s well received book first published in 2004, and updated for this past year’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

I had been very interested in the book having just returned from the World Cup in South Africa, but found it to be much more of a historical text about the origins of football in the colonial period and how it progressed up to the 1970s, rather than an analytical text about what soccer has contributed to society. Many of the connections were there, but obviously that part of the text is limited by Alegi’s training as a historian and not a sociologist, or political scientist. However, anyone doing that kind of study would definitely need to use Alegi’s work because, as shown through in the text, his use of original text is one of the highlights of a very interesting book.

You can check out my review here, and the pdf here.

[Update]

My review has been reposted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal Press here and Amazon is selling my review for 10USD!