Political Violence and the Struggle in South Africa

395 Pages·1990·42.91 MB·English

by  N. Chabani Manganyi

POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND THE STRUGGLE IN
SOUTH AFRICA
Also by N. Chabani Manganyi
EXILE AND HOMECOMINGS
Also by Andre du Toit
AFRIKANER POLITICAL THOUGHT, 1780-1850 (with Hermann Giliomee)
DIE SONDES VAN DIE VADERS
Political Violence and the
Struggle in South Africa
Edited by
N. Chabani Manganyi
Professor and Senior Research Fellow
African Studies Institute
University of the Witwatersrand
and
Andre du Toit
Professor of Political Studies
University of Cape Town
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-21076-3 ISBN 978-1-349-21074-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21074-9
© N. Chabani Manganyi and Andre du Toit, 1990
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1990
ISBN 978-0-312-04662-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Political violence and the struggle in South Africa/edited by N.
Chabani Manganyi and Andre du Toit.
p. em.
ISBN 978-0-312-04662-0
1. Violence-South Africa. 2. Political persecution-South
Africa. I. Manganyi, N. C. II. Du Toit, Andre.
HN80l.Z9V568 1990
303.6'0968--dc20 90-30359
CIP
Contents
Notes on the Contributors vii
Acknowledgements xi
Editorial Introduction: The Time of the Comrades-Reflections on
Political Commitment and Professional Discourse in a Context of
Political Violence 1
1 The Epidemiology and Culture of Violence
Shu/a Marks and Neil Andersson 29
2 The Concept of Violence
Johan Degenaar 70
3 Discourses on Political Violence
Andre du Toit 87
4 The Shooting at Uitenhage, 1985: The Context and
Interpretation of Violence
Robert Thornton 131
5 Symbolizing Violence: State and Media Discourse in
Television Coverage of Township Protest, 1985-7
Deborah Pose/ 154
6 From Biko to Wendy Orr: The Problem of Medical
Accountability in Contexts of Political Violence and Torture
Mary Rayner 172
7 Detention and Violence: Beyond Victimology
Don Foster and Donald Skinner 205
8 State Violence in South Africa and the Development of a
Progressive Psychology
Leslie Swartz, Kerry Gibson and Sally Swartz 234
9 Political Oppression and Children in South Africa: the Social
Construction of Damaging Effects
Leslie Swartz and Ann Levett 265
10 Crowds and their Vicissitudes: Psychology and Law in the
South African Court-room
N. Chabani Manganyi 287
11 Violence and the Law: The Use of the Censure in Political
Trials in South Africa
Dennis M. Davis 304
v
VI Contents
12 Sentencing in Cases of Public Violence
Clive Plasket 326
13 Images of Punishment in the People's Courts of Cape Town,
1985-7: From Prefigurative Justice to Populist Violence
Wilfried Schiirf and Baba Ngcokoto 341
Index 373
Notes on the Contributors
Neil Andersson is a Professor of Tropical Medicine at the University of
Guerrero in Mexico, where he founded and now directs the Center for
Tropical Diseases Research (CIET). After qualifying in medicine he
specialised in epidemiology. He has worked partly as an academic based at
the London School of Hygiene and partly as a field epidemiologist and
consultant for international agencies, such as WHO and UNICEF. His
work has included studies of health care and disease in South Africa;
development of a new health planning and information method used by
governments throughout Central America; and epidemiological follow-up
of the victims of the Bhopal gas disaster.
Dennis M. Davis was educated at the University of Cape Town and at
Cambridge University. He is Associate Professor of Commercial Law at
the University of Cape Town. Publications include a co-edited work Crime
and Power in South Africa and being a contributing author of Detention
and Torture in South Africa. He has published about forty articles includ
ing work on political trends, jurisprudence and labour law. He is on the
editorial board of the International Journal of Sociology of Law.
Johan Degenaar is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Stellen
bosch, where he has been teaching since 1951. From 1965 to 1987 he was
head of the Department of Political Philosophy at this university. He has
published a number of books in the area of political philosophy and
morality and many scholarly articles on philosophical and interdisciplinary
topics. His current research interests include literary theory and the
philosophy of deconstruction. Among colleagues and students he is held in
high regard as perhaps the premier philosopher active in South Africa, and
he was honoured with a Festschrift In Gesprek in 1987.
Don Foster is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the
University of Cape Town. He was educated at the Universities of Stellen
bosch, Cape Town, London and Cambridge. As part of his concern about
detention he has been a member of a number of organisations including the
Detention Action Committee (ADAC), Repression Monitoring Group
(RMG), Detainee Clinic, and Organisation for Appropriate Social Ser
vices in South Africa (OASSSA). He is the senior author of Detention and
Torture in South Africa (1987) and has also served on the editorial board of
Psychology in Society for the past six years.
vii
viii Notes on the Contributors
Kerry Gibson is a clinical psychologist who received her MA (Ciin. Psych.)
from the University of Cape Town. She is an ex-staff member of the
Political Violence and Health Resources Project at the African Studies
Institute, University of the Witwatersrand. She is currently Lecturer in the
Department of Education at the same University. Her scholarly publica
tions have appeared in Social Science and Medicine as well as Psychology
and Society.
Ann Levett is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University
of Cape Town. She has recently submitted a PhD dissertation titled
'Psychological trauma: Discourses of childhood sexual abuse'. She is a
clinical psychologist influenced by contemporary Euro-British social psy
chology, anthropology, and with a strong interest in problematizing no
tions of victimology.
N. Chabani Manganyi is a practising clinical psychologist whose main
concentration is forensic neuropsychology and is currently Professor and
Senior Research Fellow in the African Studies Institute at the University of
the Witwatersand. He was educated at the University of South Africa and
at Yale University. He has published several papers in scholarly journals,
three collections of essays, as well as two books of biography.
Shula Marks is Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and
Professor of Commonwealth History in the University of London. She has
published widely on South Af1 ican history, has been an editor of the
Journal of African History and is on the editorial board of the Journal of
Southern African Studies. Recently she was one of the advisers on the
Granada TV series, 'The History of Apartheid'. Her publications include
The Ambiguities of Dependence in Southern Africa and 'Not Either an
Experimental Doll': the Separate Worlds of Three South African Women.
She has jointly edited three volumes of essays on South African history,
the most recent being The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in
Twentieth Century South Africa with S. Trapido.
Baba Ngcokoto completed an MA at Leeds University in 1989. He has
studied at the University of Fort Hare, University of the North and the
University of Cape Town. From 1982-3 he was a full-time organiser for the
Azanian Student Organisation and was the Western Cape publicity sec
retary of the United Democratic Front during 1984.
Clive Plasket was educated at the University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg),
where he obtained the degree of LLB and LLM in Administrative Law.
After teaching law at the Universities of Natal (Pietermaritzburg) and
Rhodes (East London Division), he joined the human rights legal firm
Notes on the Contributors ix
Cheadle Thompson & Haysom in Johannesburg in 1987. He has published
articles primarily on human rights in such journals as the South African
Journal on Human Rights and the South African Law Journal amongst
others.
Deborah Posel is a Research Officer in the African Studies Institute at the
University of the Witwatersrand. She was educated at the University of the
Witwatersrand and at Oxford University where she completed her doctor
ate. She has contributed several chapters to books on African politics.
Mary Rayner completed a doctoral dissertation on Cape Colonial slavery
for Duke University in 1986. She worked for several years as a researcher
for the Southern Africa project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights
Under Law in Washington DC. Her published work includes 'Law, Politics
and Treason in South Africa' and Turning A Blind Eye? Medical Account
ability and the Prevention of Torture in South Africa.
Wilfried Scharf is a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director at the Institute of
Criminology at the University of Cape Town. He holds a BCom!LlB (1972)
from Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, and an MSoc Sci (Crimi
nology) (1985) from the University of Cape Town. He is an Advocate of
the Supreme Court of South Africa. He is an active member of NICPRO
(National Institute of Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of Offenders)
and NADEL (National Association of Democratic Lawyers).
Donald Skinner is employed by the Centre for Epidemiological Research in
South Africa, where he is working on stress and developing interdisciplin
ary research methods. He is completing an MA in Clinical Psychology at
the University of Cape Town. Other research interests include the effects
of political violence, coping methods and psychotherapy.
Leslie Swartz is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Cape Town.
He holds an MSc in Clinical Psychology (with distinction) from the Univer
sity of Cape Town. He has authored or co-authored approximately 25
articles in the areas of cross-cultural psychiatry, psychiatry in South Africa,
and developments in South African progressive psychology. He is on the
editorial board of Psychology in Society and is an active member of the
Organization for Appropriate Social Services in South Africa.
Sally Swartz is a Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the Child Guidance
Clinic of the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town.
She holds an MA in English and an MSc in Clinical Psychology from the
University of Cape Town. She has published articles in the areas of
discourse analysis, social theory and developments in South African pro-