Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Understanding local knowledge has become a central academic project among those interested in Africa and developing countries. In South Africa, land reform is gathering pace and African people hold an increasing proportion of the livestock in the country. Animal health has become a central issue for rural development. Yet African veterinary medical knowledge remains largely unrecorded. This book seeks to fill that gap. It captures for the first time the diversity, as well as the limits, of a major sphere of local knowledge. Beinart and Brown argue that African approaches to animal health rest largely in environmental and nutritional explanations. They explore the widespread use of plants as well as biomedicines for healing. While rural populations remain concerned about supernatural threats, and many men think that women can harm their cattle, the authors challenge current ideas on the modernisation of witchcraft. They examine more ambient forms of supernatural danger expressed in little-known concepts such as 'mohato' and 'umkhondo'. They take the reader into the homesteads and kraals of rural black South Africans and engage with a key rural concern - vividly reporting the ideas of livestock owners. This is groundbreaking research which will have important implications for analyses of local knowledge more generally as well as effective state interventions and animal treatments in South Africa. William Beinart is Rhodes Professor of Race Relations, African Studies Centre, University of Oxford; Karen Brown is Research Associate at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford. South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Swaziland: Wits University Press

Livestock --- Veterinary therapeutics --- Animals --- Domestic animals --- Therapeutics --- Veterinary medicine --- Animal husbandry --- Farm animals --- Live stock --- Stock (Animals) --- Stock and stock-breeding --- Agriculture --- Animal culture --- Animal industry --- Food animals --- Herders --- Range management --- Rangelands --- Diseases --- Treatment --- Traditional veterinary medicine --- Animal health --- Health --- Veterinary physiology --- Health behavior in animals --- Ethnoveterinary medicine --- Folk animal medicine --- Folk veterinary medicine --- Indigenous veterinary medicine --- Traditional animal medicine --- Traditional livestock medicine --- Traditional medicine

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This volume explores some of the key features of popular politics and resistance before and after 1994. It looks at continuities and changes in the forms of struggle and ideologies involved, as well as the significance of post-apartheid grassroots politics. Is this a new form of politics or does it stand as a direct descendent of the insurrectionary impulses of the late apartheid era? Posing questions about continuity and change before and after 1994 raises key issues concerning the nature of power and poverty in the country. Contributors suggest that expressions of popular politics are deeply set within South African political culture and still have the capacity to influence political outcomes. The introduction by William Beinart links the papers together, places them in context of recent literature on popular politics and 'history from below' and summarises their main findings, supporting the argument that popular politics outside of the party system remain significant in South Africa and help influence national politics. The roots of this collection lie in post-graduate student research conducted at the University of Oxford in the early twenty-first century.

Government, Resistance to --- South Africa --- Politics and government

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Who controls the land and minerals in the former Bantustans of South Africa - chiefs, the state or landholders? Disputes are taking place around the ownership of resources, decisions about their exploitation and who should benefit. With respect to all of these issues, the courts have become increasingly important. The contributors to Land, Law and Chiefs in Rural South Africa capture some of these intense contestations over land, law and political authority, focussing on threats to the rights of ordinary people. History and customary law feature strongly in most disputes and succession to chieftaincy is also frequently disputed. Judges have to make decisions in a context where rival claimants to property or office assert their own versions of history and custom. The South African constitution recognises customary law and the courts are attempting to incorporate and develop this branch of jurisprudence as 'living customary law'. Lawyers, community leaders and academics are called on to assist in researching cases around restitution, land rights and customary law. The chapters in this collection discuss legal cases and policy directions that have evolved since 1994. Some chapters analyse the increasing power of chiefs in the South African rural areas, while others suggest that the courts are giving support to popular rights over land and supporting local democratic processes. Contributors record significant pushback from groups that reject traditional authority. These political tensions are a central theme of the collection and thus serve as vital case studies in furthering our understanding of rights and restitution in South Africa.

Political theory --- Politics and international relations --- Administration --- Civil government --- Commonwealth, The --- Government --- Political thought --- Politics --- Science, Political --- Social sciences --- State, The --- Land reform --- Customary law --- Land use, Rural --- Restitution --- Chiefdoms --- Chieftaincies --- Chieftainships --- Political anthropology --- Replevin --- Unjust enrichment --- Rural land use --- Land use --- Agriculture --- Law and legislation