Much has been written about anti-apartheid resistance and its violent repression by security forces in urban areas, such as the Sharpeville massacre and the Soweto riots. But very little attention has been paid to resistance by rural people. The Mpondo Revolts, which began in the 1950s and reached a climax in 1960, rank among the most significant rural resistances in South Africa.  The revolts were fought by Mpondo villagers who emphatically rejected the introduction of Bantu Authorities and rural land use planning that would mean the loss of their land.

This volume presents a fresh understanding of the uprising, as well as its meaning and significance today, particularly relating to land, rural governance, party politics and the agency of the marginalised.

 

About the editors
Professor Lungisile Ntsebeza is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cape Town and holds the NRF Research Chair in Land Reform and Democracy in South Africa. He is the author of Democracy Compromised (Brill and HSRC Press).

Professor Thembela Kepe is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto. He is co-editor of Land, Memory, Reconstruction and Justice: Perspectives on Land Claims in South Africa (Ohio University Press and University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2010).

Chapter One: Introduction: Thembela Kepe & Lungisile Ntsebeza

Section One: On the Revolts
Chapter Two: Resistance in the Countryside: the Mpondo Revolts Contextualized Lungisile Ntsebeza (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
Chapter Three: Reading and Writing the Mpondo Revolts - Jimmy Pieterse (University of Pretoria, South Africa)
Chapter Four: Govan Mbeki’s The Peasants’ Revolt: a Critical Examination - Alison Drew (University of York, England)
Chapter Five: The Mpondo Revolt through the Eyes of Leonard Mdingi and Anderson Ganyile - William Beinart (Oxford University, England)
Chapter Six: All Quiet on the Western Front: Nyandeni Acquiescence in the Mpondoland Revolt - Fred Hendricks and Jeff Peires (Rhodes University, South Africa)

 

Section Two: Influence of the Revolts
Chapter Seven: Hoyce Phundulu, the Mpondo Revolt, and the Rise of the National Union of Mine Workers - T. Dunbar Moodie (Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New York, USA) (with Hoyce Phundulu)
Chapter Eight: The Moving Black Forest of Africa: The Mpondo Rebellion, Migrancy and Black Worker Consciousness in KwaZulu-Natal - Ari Sitas (University of Cape Town, South Africa)

 

Chapter Nine: The Shock of the New: Ngquza Hill 1960 - Diana Wylie (Boston University, USA)
Chapter Ten: Tangible and Intangible Ngquza Hill: A Study of Landscape and Memory - Liana Müller (University of Pretoria, South Africa)

Chapter Eleven: A Bag of Soil, a Bullet from Up High: Some Meanings of the Mpondo Revolts Today - Jonny Steinberg (South Africa)
Chapter Twelve: Discontent and Apathy: Post-apartheid Rural Land Reform in the Context of the Mpondo Revolts - Thembela Kepe (University of Toronto, Canada)
Chapter Thirteen: ‘We don’t want your development!’: Resistance to Imposed Development in Northeastern Pondoland - Jacques P. de Wet (University of Cape Town, South Africa)

Historians, students and academics in African history, human rights, land rights and political studies, and a general readership.