Africa after Apartheid
South Africa, Race, and Nation in Tanzania
Publication Year: 2012
Tracing the expansion of South African business into other areas of Africa in the years after apartheid, Richard A. Schroeder explores why South Africans have not always made themselves welcome guests abroad. By looking at investments in Tanzania, a frontline state in the fight for liberation, Schroeder focuses on the encounter between white South Africans and Tanzanians and the cultural, social, and economic controversies that have emerged as South African firms assume control of local assets. Africa after Apartheid affords a penetrating look at the unexpected results of the expansion of African business opportunities following the demise of apartheid
Published by: Indiana University Press
Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
Table of Contents
During my first trip to northern Tanzania in December 1995, my wife and I were invited to a dinner party at the home of some friends. The day of the party was crystal clear, the majestic peaks of Mount Meru and Mount Kilimanjaro emerging from the clouds to provide a spectacular backdrop. ...
The core of the research presented here was carried out during a year-long intensive ethnographic study from July 2005 to June 2006. I also made shorter trips to Tanzania in 1995, 2000, 2004, 2007, and 2011. The benefit of following a particular story line for a decade and a half is that one can track the narrative as it develops and can definitively assess whether its significance has withstood the test of time...
List of Acronyms
The rise and fall of South Africa’s system of racial oppression known as apartheid marked one of the most infamous chapters in modern world history. The effects of apartheid on the 40 million South Africans who witnessed the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as their country’s first democratically elected president in 1994 are indelible. Indeed, they continue to profoundly shape social interactions...
1. Frontline Memories
One of the more perverse features of apartheid was the creation of black “homelands” or “bantustans.” These nominally autonomous territories were run by puppet governments and were expected to pursue independent development paths without assistance from Pretoria. Located on some of South Africa’s most desolate wastelands, they were dumping grounds for displaced blacks who were forcibly...
The billboard greeting arriving passengers outside the Dar es Salaam airport in 2005 seemed to say it all. Erected on behalf of the South African cellular telephone giant, Vodacom, the sign depicted tourists craning their necks through the overhead hatch of a Land Rover as they snapped pictures of a giraffe in the background. The caption read, “Feel free to roam.” While the ad agency’s allusion to the firm’s newest...
3. Fault Lines
“People are complaining . . .”—so goes the beginning of a joke that circulated in northern Tanzania in 2005. “People,” not “the people”: a subtle but telling linguistic marker of the populist character of public opposition to the country’s “post-socialist” economic policies. “People are complaining about the beer.” The beer. There was only one possible referent: beer brewed by Tanzania Breweries, Ltd., or TBL...
4. Tanzanite for Tanzanians
Our destination was a windswept hillside a few kilometers south of Tanzania’s majestic Mount Kilimanjaro, the site of world’s only known deposit of an obscure gemstone known as tanzanite. We entered the compound through the first of three gates, each staffed with armed guards and ringed with tall fences topped with razor wire. Two were monitored by the security personnel of a South African...
5. Bye, the Beloved Country
On 11 November 1998, a political cartoon published in Die Burger, one of South Africa’s leading Afrikaans-language newspapers, depicted Anne Paton, the widow of the late South African author Alan Paton.1 Shown pushing a luggage cart towards an exit sign, Paton speaks the words, “‘Bye, the beloved country.” Under her arm is a photo of her husband and in the basket of her luggage cart is a copy...
6. White Spots
It may have been the biltong that cost her her job, at least judging from the story her boss told. Lots of white patrons came into the high-end grocery outlet in Dar es Salaam where Lucy worked as a salesperson behind the butcher counter. Indeed, the store’s clientele was primarily comprised of white expatriates whose salaries supported the regular purchase of high-quality meat products. ...
In March 2010, the story about South African gemstone miners using dogs to subdue Tanzanians caught trespassing on corporate property reappeared in the Tanzanian press (see chapter 4). The article, which bore the headline, “Police nab S. African who ‘fed’ Tanzanians to dogs,” detailed the arrest of a former Afgem/Tanzanite One employee who was allegedly part of the original security detail involved in the incident. ...
About the Author
Richard A. Schroeder is Associate Professor and Chair of the Geography Department at Rutgers University, and was the founding director of the Rutgers University Center for African Studies. He is author of Shady Practices: Gender and Agroforestry Politics in The Gambia, and coeditor of Producing Nature and Poverty in Africa.
Page Count: 248
Publication Year: 2012
OCLC Number: 808372534
MUSE Marc Record: Download for Africa after Apartheid