Category Archives: Mpondo Revolts

Understanding Marikana Through The Mpondo Revolts

Sarah Bruchhausen

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate some of the ways in which rural histories can enhance our understanding of both rural and urban resistance, both past and present, in contemporary South Africa.  In order to do so, it explores two books in conversation with each other, Thembela Kepe and Lungisile Ntsebeza’s edited volume Rural Resistance in South Africa: The Mpondo Revolts after Fifty Years as well as Peter Alexander, Thapelo Lekgowa, Botsang Mmope, Luke Sinwell and Bongani Xezwi’s Marikana: A View from  the Mountain and a Case to Answer. These two books provide a useful platform from which to engage in  a re-examination of rurally based protest and repression in order to locate some of the suggestive links,  particularly in regard to the transmission of repertoires of struggle, between the Marikana strike and the  Mpondo revolts, as well as the on-going struggles of the organised poor in some of South Africa’s urban centres.

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Understanding Marikana Through The Mpondo Revolts

The Peasant’s Revolt

The Peasant's RevoltSouth African peasants have a long history of resistance to oppression. They know what it is to be crushed by the armed forces of the whites, to be imprisoned without trial, banished to desolate parts of the country, and banned from normal social contact.

Since the enforcement of the Nationalist Party’s policies by harsh and frequently violent means, peasant resistance has been widespread and organized. Africans have resisted forcible removal from their homes to new territory. They have opposed the imposition of Bantu Authorities, the extension of passes to women, and schemes for the rehabilitation and reallocation of land.

Between 1946 and 1962 risings have been provoked in Witzieshoek, on the border of Basutoland; in Marico, just south of Bechuanaland; in Sekhukhuneland, in the north-west Transvaal; in Zululand, on the South Coast; and throughout the Transkei, especially in Pondoland. They have been suppressed with brutal force.

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The Peasant's Revolt