History Making and Present Day Politics - Stolten's African Studies ...

H i s t o r y i n t h e n e w S o u t h A f r i c a
History on South Africa has great potential and, despite a complicated
and paradoxical situation, there is sufficient information to sustain positive
expectations. A significant tendency is that universities abroad are reaching
out for collaboration with institutions in the new South Africa. South African
based historians now write in greater numbers for international journals
and participate in more international conferences than ever before. Some of
the well-known universities attract considerable numbers of undergraduates
from the best universities in the world. The isolation of the apartheid period
is definitely over.
The articles
The editorial work on this collection has been an arduous task. However, it
has also been extremely rewarding and entertaining, and a learning process
in itself. Some of the contributions to this book are quite controversial.
Social scientists are humans. They disagree. They become committed. They
have different political attitudes. Many of them are activists in one form or
another. At the conference in Copenhagen, and in this book, we have tried to
make room for divergent views and temperaments to give a broad and inclusive
picture of South African historiography.
The contributions on history and nation-building
Saul Dubow’s article “Thoughts on South Africa” serves as a general introduction
to South African historiography in this anthology. The problem of
what the South African nation is and who the South Africans are, as defined
by history, remains fundamental. The questions Dubow asks are central for
our historical understanding: How was South Africa conceived and imagined?
What form did ideas about South Africans and South African societies
take, and how was the South African “problem” defined over time?
Dubow reminds us that the endeavour for national unification is not exactly
new in South Africa. His article offers a concentrated overview with
focus on the creation of national identity, which was of course not an obvious
process for the native peoples of South Africa, since they were excluded from,
234; Sakhela Buhlungu, “The state of trade unionism in post-apartheid South Africa”,
in Adam Habib, John Daniel and Roger Southall (eds), State of the Nation. South
Africa 2003–2004, Ch. 8, pp. 184–203, Human Sciences Research Council, 2003.
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