Course Overview

• Organization
• Requirements
• Readings
• Evaluation and Grading
• Schedule of Seminar Sessions

For a complete syllabus with readings, click on Syllabus (PDF) on the left panel.

The inauguration of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela as President on 10 May 1994 marked the end of era, indeed the end of a way of life, for South Africa. Or did it? Most South Africans finally became citizens in their own country. Their new constitution guaranteed the equality of all citizens and promised not only equity but redress for the discrimination and injustice of the past. The imagination, persistence, and resilience that characterized opposition to minority rule could now be turned to reconstruction and development. New leaders, new rules, and a new agenda. Yet much remained the same. Even as the new leaders moved into their offices, laws, administrative rules, common practices, interpersonal expectations, and more all reflected the legacy of discrimination and racism.

Many commentators describe South Africa as in transition from apartheid to development. In practice, reconstructing South Africa requires confronting multiple, overlapping, and sharply contested transitions. How, for example, should government be organized? Will local authorities facilitate genuine popular participation or function to entrench elite privilege? Will education fulfill the promise of protesting students and become fundamentally liberating, or will schools remain conservative barriers to change? Can socialist and communist ideas guide national development or will they be discarded as obstacles to economic growth and entry into the global capitalist system? Will vibrant community organizations retain their militancy and autonomy, or will they be constrained and disempowered as they become part of the bureaucracy?

The seminar's major task will be explorations in comparative social history. What are the roots of the current situation, and in what ways do they shape and constrain future possibilities? How do people in majority rule South Africa confront the ideas that have shaped their understanding of their own country as they reconstruct their history? How do official stories interact with popular tales? Who are the story tellers and their audiences?

Participants in this seminar will explore efforts to create a non-racist, non-sexist, democratic South Africa by analyzing these and related contested transitions. Within that common framework students will identify particular arenas of special interest to pursue in more detail.

This seminar has no prerequisites and will not assume particular prior knowledge or experiences. In the expectation that students will have diverse backgrounds and different level of familiarity with Africa, the seminar will enable participants to develop their own interests and their expertise.

This seminar will require both broad and focused reading by its participants. That reading must be critical and analytical. The assigned readings are of course entry points to the topics considered. Accordingly, seminar participants will be expected to develop their own supplementary reading lists throughout the Quarter.

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Organization

This course seeks to achieve the breadth of a survey though the interactive style of a seminar. We will meet weekly. I shall take responsibility for introducing the topics, reviewing relevant literature, and suggesting appropriate readings. Class participants will share responsibility for the content and conduct of the seminar, including summarizing and criticizing their readings, contributing to the collective online discussion, and suggesting avenues for developing further the topics we discuss.

Each seminar participant will select, early in the Quarter, a particular organization or individual in contemporary South Africa for continuing attention throughout the course. As the Quarter progresses, seminar participants will focus part of their effort on that organization or individual, including noting current events, developing a relevant bibliography, doing supplementary reading, and sharing their puzzles, observations, and insights with other class members.

Weekly videos (Mondays, 12 noon - 1 pm) will provide additional perspectives on contemporary South Africa. Occasional longer films or other special presentations may be scheduled during the Quarter.

Requirements

A seminar is the product of its participants. Hence, each participant will share in the responsibility for the direction and conduct of the seminar, as well as completing her/his own individual work.

Students will be expected to do the necessary reading for the course, both from the works suggested in the syllabus and from sources they locate themselves. Students will be expected as well to participate in the seminar's collective effort, including reporting on particular readings, presenting their own ideas and insights, providing feedback to their colleagues, and contributing to the collective online discussion.

To facilitate regular and prompt feedback on students' work, the assignments for this seminar will be relatively brief and distributed throughout the Quarter. Students will prepare two Analytic Reviews of selected readings and a Critical Essay on the organization or individual on which they focus. To reinforce the collaborative nature of our work, students will comment online on each week's topic, regularly add to their online scrapbook on their primary focus, and share responsibility for a group presentation on a contested transition in South Africa. At least once during the Quarter, students will present their work to the seminar.

Clearly, this seminar will require initiative, self direction, and collective responsibility on the part of each participant. Each individual's own work is intended to contribute to a collective product. For that to be possible, each individual's own work must be thorough, creative, and timely.

Except by special arrangement, written work will be expected when due and will not be accepted after the last class meeting.

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Readings

Several sorts of readings are necessary for this class: broad overviews of major events and actors, analyses of specific issues and interactions in South African history, politics, and society, and empirical studies of particular people, places, and events. Both to provide alternative perspectives and because historically most South Africans have had limited access to research libraries, scholarly journals, and academic publishers, we will also draw on the observations and analyses presented in novels, poetry, and drama.

The Stanford Bookstore has been asked to stock the following books, all available in paperbound editions.

• William Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Revised Edition, 2001)
• Nadine Gordimer, Burger's Daughter (Viking Penguin, 1981)
• Hein Marais, South Africa: Limits to Change-The Political Economy of Transformation (London: Zed Books, Second Edition, 2000)

Among the other books that class members may find useful as basic resources is (available in paperbound edition; listed in the Stanford Bookstore as Recommended):

• Leonard Thompson, A History of South Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, Revised Edition, 2000) [a more conventional history, organized chronologically]

All seminar participants will be expected to review a limited set of basic readings for each seminar topic. Some will be available as a Course Reader in the Stanford Bookstore, while others will be available electronically on the course web site: http://www.stanford.edu/class/history48q.

Readings for each topic are listed in the schedule of seminar sessions. Since some important sources, especially those we identify during the Quarter, may not be on library reserve, seminar participants will need to locate them in the general library collections and share them with other class members.

Seminar participants will need to supplement those suggested readings with other materials rele-vant to the topics considered and to the domain of transition on which they focus.

Studying contemporary Africa requires regular use of electronic as well as print sources. Course assignments and discussions will therefore encourage students to develop their electronic searching and locating skills for sources available in both print and electronic form.

The list of seminar sessions, topics, and dates, along with suggested readings, is attached. The materials included in Course Reader are marked . The materials available electronically on the course web site are marked WS. Note that the full text of articles in many professional journals is now available to the Stanford community online (library.stanford.edu select E-JOURNALS on the top menu enter the title of the journal in the search box). The lists of readings for each theme are of course themselves introductions to broad topics and themes. Course participants will need, therefore, to develop the skills of addressing a list that contains more readings than can be accomplished within a single week and that must be supplemented by additional readings selected by each individual. Those skills include: identi-fying quickly the major thrust of the argument presented in an article or book; surveying the contents of a book through its preface, introduction, table of contents, and initial and concluding chapters; associating authors with particular schools of thought and/or methodologies; reading for a narrowly defined purpose; building on reading previously done; and sharing reading responsibilities with other class members. Each week, each class member will need to make judicious choices about what to read and how to read it.

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Evaluation and Grading

The primary criteria for grading will be individual progress (in mastery of the course themes and relevant literature and in critical, analytic, and synthetic skills) throughout the Quarter and contribution to the collective effort of the class. Thus, no student will be disadvantaged by a relatively more limited background at the outset.

Written work will be evaluated as it is submitted. I am happy to meet with seminar participants to supplement the written evaluations.

This course will require a substantial independent and self sustained effort, as well as a creative contribution to a collective enterprise. For those who accept that challenge, the course should prove de-manding, involving, and rewarding.

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Video Schedule (Mondays, 12-1 pm)

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