Please note the following history related courses will be offered at the 2020 UCT Summer School.
Local and South African History
MASSACRE ON THE FRONTIERS DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD: 1780–1820
Professor Nigel Penn, Department of Historical Studies, University of Cape Town
13–17 January < 3.00 pm < COURSE FEES Full R590 Staff & Students R295
This course will look at the causes, course and consequences of massacre as an instrument of policy on the
frontiers of European expansion, in particular areas of the world during the Revolutionary Period between 1780 and
1820. The case studies will include the French Empire in Europe, the expansion of settler colonialism in New South
Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, the Cape Colonial frontier zone and the American frontier zone.
LECTURE TITLES
1. Massacre and the Age of Revolution
2. France: Revolutionary terror, colonial empire and massacre in Europe
3. Massacre on the frontiers of the Cape Colony: colonists, Khoisan and Xhosa
4. Massacre, Aboriginals and settler colonialism in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land
5. The American frontier and the discourse of extermination
THE EARLY CAPE: PEOPLE, PLACES AND INSIDE STORIES
Dr Antonia Malan, historical archaeologist, Dr Helena Liebenberg, historical linguist, Tracey Randle, heritage
consultant, Professor Johan Fourie, economic historian, Maureen Rall, transcriber and researcher
20–24 January < 9.15 am < COURSE FEES Full R590 Staff & Students R295
The Tracing History Trust (THT) has been transcribing Dutch East India Company records, personal estate
inventories and associated documents. This major project has revealed much about people and places of the early
Cape. Archived VOC documents tell the stories of Angela of Bengalen, the royal princes Loring Passir and Diepa
Nagera of Indonesia, Nicolaas Ondatje of Colombo and others. Household inventories and the subsequent sale
of goods at auction offer insights into aspects of social status, identity and familial connections in Cape society
of the mid-eighteenth century. This course, presented by members of the THT team and researchers who have
used the material, will be of interest to genealogists as well as to those keen to learn more about the early Cape.
LECTURE TITLES
1. Recreating the spatial history of the early Cape from archival clues Antonia Malan
2. People of the early Cape: what VOC documents reveal Helena Liebenberg
3. Household inventories of the eighteenth century Tracey Randle
4. ‘A high plateau’: an economic history of the Dutch Cape Colony Johan Fourie
5. A woman’s life: church records, inventories and a medical treatise Maureen Rall
OCEANIC HISTORIES
Emeritus Professor Nigel Worden, University of Cape Town
13–17 January < 5.00 pm < COURSE FEES Full R590 Staff & Students R295
In recent years historians have given greater attention to 71% of the Earth’s surface that is usually neglected:
the oceans. This course examines the new field of ‘oceanic history’. It moves beyond traditional accounts of
shipbuilding technologies and individual feats of maritime exploration and instead probes the ways in which the
sea has affected wider human histories between ancient times and the recent past. Why did people, material
objects and ideas travel across the sea and what impact did these journeys make? How did the experience of
seafaring change people? Did oceans divide or connect societies located on their shores? Did they create new
societies? Are coastal regions inherently different from their hinterlands? Each lecture will explore such issues in
relation to a specific maritime region. Where appropriate, special attention will be given to oceanic influences on
our own city and continent.
LECTURE TITLES
1. History and the sea: the Mediterranean
2. Maritime lakes: the Black, Baltic and North Seas
3. Making an Atlantic world
4. Africa and the Indian Ocean world
5. The Great Ocean: the China Seas and the Pacific
THE LEGACY OF COENRAAD DE BUYS
Emeritus Professor Mike de Jongh, research fellow, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, UNISA
6–10 January < 9.15 am < COURSE FEES Full R590 Staff & Students R295
Born in 1761 on a farm near Montagu, Coenraad de Buys was the progenitor of the Buys people of the far northern
Limpopo Province. An exceptionally tall, formidable man of great resourcefulness and courage, Coenraad de Buys
married or cohabited with several indigenous women, including the niece of the Matabele king, Mzilikazi. He left an
indelible imprint on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century sociocultural landscape of South Africa. Today
his descendants, a hybrid community of some 300 individuals (de facto) or a few thousand (de jure), inhabit
11 000 hectares of land which comprises Buysdorp in the foothills of the Soutpansberg. Their story, one of a
reclusive rural community with a long history now challenged by land claims and the pressures of modernisation,
can be read as a case study of identity politics and politics of identity – and what it means to be ‘truly South
African’.
LECTURE TITLES
1. The making of the Buyses: three centuries of controversy, conflict and contentment
2. Larger than life: Coenraad de Buys, progenitor of the Buyses
3. Makhado, the missionaries, the Boers and the British
4. Buysdorp: governance, management and autonomy
5. ‘People of a middle world’: development and doubts, change and challenges
MORE UNTOLD STORIES OF THE ANGLO-BOER WAR
Emeritus Professor Mike de Jongh, research fellow, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, UNISA
Saturday 11 January < 10.00 am–12.00 pm < COURSE FEES Full R236 Staff & Students R118
When the Boers occupied Colesberg in the Cape Colony on 14 November 1899, and again when the British took
over the town on 28 February 1900, conflict enveloped the local people. Documentation from that time – diaries,
letters, local newspapers and family oral tradition – offer fascinating insights into the way war touched the lives
of ordinary people, both Boer and Brit, soldier and civilian, loyalist and ‘rebel’, who were caught up in extraordinary
circumstances. This course returns to the ‘forgotten front’ and tells the stories that lie behind the events in the
Anglo-Boer War in the Karoo, including several humiliating British defeats, usually referred to in despatches as
‘reversals’. Depending on the context of the people involved, or of a particular situation or incident, their human
and humane qualities, and even the humorous, constantly come to the fore.
MISSIONS WITH A MISSION
Dr Sandra Shell, senior research associate, Rhodes University: Cory Library
20–24 January < 5.00 pm < COURSE FEES Full R590 Staff & Students R295
In 1888 a British warship liberated a large group of Oromo child slaves in the Red Sea and took them to Aden in
Yemen. In 1889 a second Royal Navy ship rescued a smaller group of Oromo slave children who joined the first
group, by then in the care of a Free Church of Scotland mission near Aden. Three Afaan Oromo speakers and two
Scottish missionaries interviewed the children about their enslavement and their lives. When many of the children
fell ill and died in a short time, the sixty-four surviving children were shipped to the Eastern Cape where they were
cared for and educated by Lovedale Institution. After four lectures on the Oromo children the final lecture will
discuss the Reverend James Laing, one of the earliest missionaries of the Glasgow Missionary Society to arrive on
the eastern frontier in 1831. Laing’s interest, gentleness, sincerity and empathy earned him the trust and affection
of amaXhosa leaders like Maqoma, Suthu, and Sandile as well as many of the amaXhosa he encountered.
LECTURE TITLES
1. The Oromo Children of Hope
2. Profiles of two Oromo Children of Hope: Tolassa Wayessa and Bisho Jarsa
3. A man of worth and dignity: Wakinne Nagesso
4. Trauma and slavery: Gilo and the soft, subtle shackles of Lovedale
5. Indoda Ebisithanda – the man who loved us: Reverend James Laing
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SOUTH AFRICA’S DESERT WAR
David Brock Katz, historian, author and soldier
Monday 20–Wednesday 22 January < 11.15 am < COURSE FEES Full R354 Staff & Students R177
This course covers the build-up and deployment of South Africa’s Union Defence Force to the Western Desert
in 1941 where it formed an essential component of the British Eighth Army. Using new documentary evidence
answers will be sought to explain setbacks the South Africans suffered at the hands of the Deutsches Afrika
Korps (DAK) led by Rommel. Before North Africa, the South Africans led by General Dan Pienaar, a pre-eminent
exponent of manoeuvre warfare, enjoyed considerable military success and gained much-needed experience in
their campaign against the Italians in East Africa. However, the 5th South African Infantry Brigade under Brigadier
Bertram Armstrong was annihilated at Sidi Rezegh and seven months later General Hendrik Klopper was forced to
surrender Tobruk with the loss of the 2nd South African Infantry Division. Pienaar regained pride at First Alamein
when the South Africans finally shared in the defeat of Rommel’s DAK.
LECTURE TITLES
1. The build-up of the Union Defence Force from 6 September 1939 to the East Africa campaign
2. Twin disasters: Sidi Rezegh 1941 and Tobruk 1942
3. Victory at Alamein
TWO SOUTH AFRICAN PRIME MINISTERS: LOUIS BOTHA AND JAN SMUTS
Richard Steyn, author
Thursday 23–Friday 24 January < 11.15 am < COURSE FEES Full R236 Staff & Students R118
This course re-examines the lives and legacies of Jan Smuts and Louis Botha. These soldier-statesmen effectively
operated as a double act at home and on the international stage before Botha’s death in August 1919. After
the South African War Botha encouraged peace between English and Afrikaner; later he led the four British
colonies (Cape, Natal, Free State and Transvaal) to Union and dominion status. During the First World War he
led South African troops to victory and the capture of German South West Africa. A big-hearted man, he pleaded
for magnanimity towards the Germans at the Peace of Versailles. Botha’s ally and successor Jan Smuts was a
champion of human rights, advisor to world leaders and an architect of the United Nations. Smuts had a rich
spiritual and intellectual life, characterised by extraordinary friendships, including one with former enemy Winston
Churchill, which spanned the first half of the twentieth century.
LECTURE TITLES
1. Louis Botha
2. Jan Smuts
FIVE CRISES IN UCT’S HISTORY
Emeritus Professor Howard Phillips, Emeritus Professor Anwar Mall, Dr James Leatt, University of Cape Town
6–10 January < 3.00 pm < COURSE FEES Full R590 Staff & Students R295
Looking back over the university’s 101-year history, the five lectures in this course will focus on five episodes
which posed serious challenges to the operation and character of the institution. The course will seek to determine
the causes of each crisis, how the university understood these, how effective it was in addressing each crisis and
how far doing so did (or did not) change the institution.
LECTURE TITLES
1. World War II Prof Howard Phillips
2. The onset of apartheid Prof Howard Phillips
3. The student sit-in of 1968 Prof Howard Phillips
4. The states of emergency of the 1980s: a personal perspective Dr James Leatt
5. The Fallist movement: a personal perspective Prof Anwar M
Focus on other countries:
A CAPSULE HISTORY OF BRAZIL
Dr Ken Hughes, University of Cape Town
6–10 January < 1.00 pm < COURSE FEES Full R590 Staff & Students R295
In 2018 the populist wave which had astonished the world since 2016 took a new turn with the election of Jair
Bolsonaro, a right-wing demagogue openly nostalgic for the years of military rule, as the new President of Brazil.
This five-lecture course aims to enquire into the genealogy of this event by exploring aspects of Brazilian history,
drawing on the work of several generations of Brazilian scholars and a rich cultural heritage.
LECTURE TITLES
1. The Portuguese sea-borne empire
2. Conflicts and conspiracies in eighteenth century Brazil
3. Independence: slavery, spiritualism and positivism: the war at the end of the world
4. Twentieth century struggles: some heroes and villains
5. Into the latest age: Lula to Bolsonaro
CRIMEA: MYTH AND MEMORY
Dr Sara Pienaar, lecturer and broadcaster
Monday 13–Wednesday 15 January < 3.00 pm < COURSE FEES Full R354 Staff & Students R177
Crimea has been part of both the Mediterranean and the Asian worlds for more than 2500 years. Its strategic
position on the Black Sea, temperate climate, natural beauty and plentiful resources have attracted conquerors,
settlers and traders, Greeks, Romans, Tatars, Turks, Russians and many others over the centuries, all adding to
its rich and varied culture. More recently, royalty and the rich built palaces and fashionable resorts there, while
artists and writers drew inspiration from its natural beauty and exotic past. The twentieth century was marked by
tragedy and crisis and Crimea’s disputed status since the Russian-backed coup of 2014 is but the latest chapter
in its long and complex history. This course traces that history and seeks to explain why Crimea has played a part
in the world so disproportionate to its size.
LECTURE TITLES
1. From the Greeks to the first Russian conquest
2. Tsars, poets and commissars
3. A poisoned chalice – the last 75 years