1999
		quarterly
		English
		Humanities and Social Sciences
		1543-1304
		Routledge (Taylor and Francis)

Lead Editor: Andrew van der Vlies - Queen Mary University of London, UK Editors: Shane Graham - Utah State University, USA Karin Shapiro - Duke University, USA Reviews Editors: Derek Catsam - University of Texas of the Permian Basin, USA Annel Pieterse - University of the Western Cape, South Africa Monica Popescu - McGill University, Canada Tiffany Willoughby-Herard - University of California, Irvine, USA International Editorial Board: Rita Barnard - University of Pennsylvania, USA Louise Bethlehem - Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel Kerry Bystrom - Bard College, USA/Germany Carrol Clarkson - University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Nadia Davids - University of Cape Town, South Africa Michele Elam - Stanford University, USA Norman Etherington - University of Western Australia, Australia Jeremy Foster - Cornell University, USA Albert Grundling - University of Stellenbosch, South Africa Rick Halpern - University of Toronto, Canada Stefan Helgesson - Stockholm University, Sweden Jon Hyslop - Colgate University, USA Tsitsi Jaji - Duke University, USA Christopher J. Lee - Lafayette College, USA Simon Lewis - College of Charleston, USA Alex Lichtenstein - Indiana University Bloomington, USA Peter Limb - Michigan State University, USA Zine Magubane - Boston College, USA Mandisa Mbali - University of Stellenbosch, South Africa David Chioni Moore - Macalester College, USA Brenna Munro - University of Miami, USA Dana Phillips - Towson University, USA Peter Rachleff - Macalester College, USA Pallavi Rastogi - Louisiana State University, USA Stéphane Robolin - Rutgers University, USA Steven Robins - University of Stellenbosch, South Africa Christopher Saunders - University of Cape Town, South Africa Thula Simpson - University of Pretoria, South Africa Michael Titlestad - University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa Hedley Twidle - University of Cape Town, South Africa Robert Vinson - College of William and Mary, USA Jennifer Wenzel - Columbia University, USA Luvuyo Wotshela - University of Fort Hare, South Africa Founding Editor: Andrew Offenburger - Yale University, USA
Please see https://www.tandfonline.com/rsaf?
Safundi Publications P.O. Box 206788 New Haven, CT 06520 (203) 548-9155 / Phone (203) 548-9177 / Fax info@safundi.com

Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies

Safundi -- "S" represents "South Africa," "a" stands for "America," and "fundi" comes from the Xhosa verb, "-funda," which translates as "to read/learn." Safundi is an online community of scholars, professionals, and others interested in comparing and contrasting the United States of America with the Republic of South Africa. Our journal, Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, is the centerpiece of our online community. We believe that analyzing the two countries in a comparative and transnational context enhances our perspective on each, individually. While new comparative research is the focus of the journal, we also publish articles specifically addressing one country, provided the articles are of interest to the comparative scholar. Furthermore, our subject matter is as permeable as any country's border: we will consider research addressing other colonial and postcolonial states in Southern Africa and North America. Articles that Safundi publishes are academic in nature. Research papers are reviewed as they are submitted. Scholarly essays are welcomed. Any topic may be addressed. We hope to provide our readers with a diverse and insightful collection of articles in each issue. We publish on a quarterly basis. Our journal is peer-reviewed. Submissions are vetted by the editors-in-chief and the editorial board before they are accepted for publication. The views expressed in the articles are those of the authors and not of the editors or of Safundi itself.

» Visit Journal Web Site

April 2003, Issue 10

“Breaking the Monologue?”: The American Indian Movement and Inkatha Freedom Party

By Jason McKenney
In this paper the author tries to understand two movements of subjugated peoples of America and South Africa that claim to be for the political, cultural, and economic advancement of their particular ethnic group�the American Indian Movement (AIM) and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). Both groups actively use symbols and protests to tie their group to the traditional past and to the history of subjugation; both groups look to traditional leadership as a source of legitimacy. Inkatha in particular uses a highly controversial history, invented to suit its political purposes, that ties the current movement to the supposed greatness of King Shaka of the early nineteenth century. There can be no doubt history plays an important role in the construction of AIM and IFP. The prevailing question of this paper is: to what degree do the American Indian Movement and the Inkatha Freedom Party move their groups of people out of the shadow of isolation and achieve breaking the monologue of the colonizer�s history?

Crossing Borders: A Black Feminist Approach to Researching the Comparative Histories of Black Women's Resistance in the U.S. South and South Africa

By Pam Brooks
This article is constructed around two primary themes. Rather than offer a complete narrative retelling of historical events, the author offers here a reflection on how she approaches the integration of comparative, black feminist, and African diasporic analyses of the oral sources so vital to understanding the liberation movements of the United States and South Africa in truer terms. Focusing her attention on the close-up life histories of little regarded working-class and middle-class black women in political resistance, she asks: how does she view the women about whom she writes, and how does she research and tell their stories so that they reflect a well nuanced picture of the women�s own vividly remembered, lived experiences and meanings? The second theme provides a few examples of an important question within the production of women�s history: the question of a black feminist practice. Through the stories that several Montgomery and Johannesburg women have given the author, she finds that, when positioned next to each other, these stories reveal similar themes, which require little manipulation from her.

Disarticulating Black Consciousness: A Way of Reading Films About Apartheid

By Keyan Tomaselli
A general contextual way of "reading" documentary films and docu-dramas like Biko: Breaking the Silence (1987) and Cry Freedom (1989) is offered. The argument shows how context and crew assumptions reinterpret historical conditions into sometimes opposing social and political discourses. These in turn redefine the actual ethnographic and political events and contexts. Alongside critique of these films and videos, theoretical concepts are developed to explain how and why these shifts in meaning occur.

Institutionalizing International Influence

By Joel Samoff
Education is perhaps the most public of public policies. Yet most of the major studies of education, explicitly commissioned to guide policy decisions, have very limited circulation. Designated "confidential" or "restricted," Africa's education sector studies are generally available only to the commissioning agency and a few government officials. The volume of theses studies, their central role in the aid relationship, and thereby their influence on objectives and priorities in African education is the most visible manifestation of the evolution of the international role in education: the institutionalization of international influence. Individually, none of these studies, or perhaps even the aid programs that spawned them, is likely to prove very consequential over the longer term. But as a group, these studies outline and provide insights into changing patterns of international influence in education. In this discussion the author traces that evolution briefly, concerned especially with the experiences of the world's poorer countries and particularly those that became independent during the second half of the twentieth century.

The Study of South African Society: Towards A New Agenda For Comparative Historical Inquiry

By Ran Greenstein
The goal of this paper is to contribute to the formulation of a new comparative historical research agenda in South African studies, examine some of the existing literature in the field in the light of that agenda, and explore the implications such as analytical program might have for our understanding of critical issues in South African history. The comparative field is of particular importance in the context of this paper as it allows a clear focus on the theoretical issues involved in the study of history. The issues discussed here resonate beyond the specific comparative field, however, and the discussion will hopefully encourage an evaluation of some of the premises underlying the historical and sociological work on South Africa.

"Red Sales in the Sunset": The Rise and Fall of White Trader Dominance in the United States' Navajo Reservation and South Africa's Transkei

By Robert Volk
This paper examines the role of white traders in two distinct locations: the Navajo Reservation in the United States and the Transkei, a former reserve in South Africa. Despite historical, cultural, and geographical differences, the imposition of colonial rule and the establishment of reservation structures in both regions meant that the indigenous populations endured many common experiences. In these situations, opportunities were present for a class of entrepreneurs to position themselves as intermediaries between these populations and the outside world, thereby becoming agents of change. These activities expanded and contracted in response to changing internal and external conditions. This paper's intention is to further uncover the forces at work in the process of capitalist development in peripheral areas through a comparative analysis of these situations.

The Career of Mabel Carney: The Study of Race and Rural Development in the United States and South Africa

By Richard Glotzer
This paper is a survey of the career of Mabel Carney, an American authority on rural education, highly regarded by educational practitioners and academic peers alike. Her areas of special interest and expertise�teacher education and rural school development�broadened over time to include infrastructural and organizational concerns of rural communities, including race relations. Given the opportunity to apply her educational expertise in British colonial Africa in the mid-1920s, Carney gained acceptance as a uniquely qualified educational authority by American foundation executives and prominent figures (both conservative and liberal, as defined at the time) in the race relations establishments of the United States, Britain, and South Africa. Her access to these centers of power and influence was paralleled by her unique ability to form friendships across racial lines with important black leaders in the United States and colonial Africa. For several generations of black students who came to Teachers College, Columbia, from Africa and the United States, she served as a mentor and advocate helping open avenues for achievement in a national context permeated by racism. Because her career and active retirement spanned more than five decades, she was able to see the acceptance of many of her beliefs in the United States, as well as their wholesale rejection in South Africa, a country with which she had multiple involvements.

Other Issues

July 2013, Volume 14, Number 3
April 2007, Volume 8, Number 2
January 2007, Volume 8, Number 1
Deterritorializing American Culture, 23
Safundi Issue 22, Issue 22
George Fredrickson's White Supremacy , Issue 21
October 2005, Issue 20
July 2005, Issue 19
April 2005, Issue 18
January 2005, Issue 17
October 2004, Issue 16
July 2004, Issue 15
April 2004, Issue 13-14
October 2003, Issue 12
July 2003, Issue 11
May 2002, Issue 09
February 2002, Issue 08
November 2001, Issue 07
July 2001, Issue 06
April 2001, Issue 05
January 2001, Issue 04
October 2000, Issue 03
July 2000, Issue 02