Noor Nieftagodien

Introduction: ‘Life after Thirty’ – A Critical Celebration

In 1977, a group of Johannesburg-based academics launched the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) History Workshop (hereafter HW), in a move that would reconfigure the landscape of South African historiography. So, in 2009, on the occasion of thirty-odd years of the HW, it was resolved to host an event that would not only celebrate its longevity, but also reflect critically on its practice. Imagined as an opportune moment reflexively to interrogate the HW’s past, present, and indeed future, a colloquium was convened that involved a weekend’s worth (3 to 5 April) of sustained critical intellectual exchange, debate, and dialogue. Local and international scholars – those intimately involved with the HW, those with only a passing familiarity, and even some of its most outspoken critics – were brought together around several select themes that carefully, and often critically, engaged the HW’s practice across both time and space.

The Place of ‘The Local’ in History Workshop's Local History

This article discusses the evolution of the History Workshop (HW)s engagement with local history from the late 1970s to the present. It reflects on the articulation between local history and social history, which collectively defined much of the HWs theory and practice. The proliferation in local histories was associated in the 1980s with the mounting anti-apartheid movement, especially in black working-class localities, which augmented the emancipatory impulses in the production of this kind of history. Although the triennial HW conferences during this period debated important questions related to the character of local communities and the contested meanings of ‘the local’, it is argued here that the HW did not systematically engage the emerging theoretical discussions on the production of space and place. Consequently, histories of ‘the local’ largely did not give appropriate attention to the importance of place. The final part of this article suggests that the resurgence in local history over the past few years, which has arguably been inspired by global and local protest movements, offers the HW an opportunity seriously to address theoretical questions about space, place and the local.

‘Comrade Professor’ – Phil Bonner

Phil Bonner joined the History Department at Wits University in 1971 and played a leading role in the development of African History in South Africa and internationally. He was part of a cohort of young revisionist and Africanist scholars who challenged liberal orthodoxies in the academy and produced new histories that emphasised the experiences of the black majority. His book on the Swazi kingdom, Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires (1983), exemplified this scholarship. Professor Bonner was a founding member in 1977 of the Wits History Workshop andwas its head from the late 1980s until his retirement in 2012. The History Workshop pioneered social history – history from below – in South Africa and under his supervision numerous postgraduate students undertook original research on the lives and struggles of black workers, women, youth and migrants in locations, mines, factories and villages. Phil Bonner’s work ranged from the evolution of the Swazi state, to a series of deep local histories of townships, to a turn to biography later in his life, making him not just one of the most significant historians of his generation, but one of the most versatile. He wrote on squatter movements, the complexities of urbanisation, histories of black resistance and archaeology.

Popular Politics and Resistance Movements in South Africa

Edited by WILLIAM BEINART and MARCELLE C. DAWSON. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2010. 376 pp. IBSN 978 1 186814 518 8.