https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/2768 Tue, 05 May 2026 17:39:35 GMT 2026-05-05T17:39:35Z https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/31938 The life of John Dunn, with special reference to Zululand 1879-1897 Shields, Charles The lives of some men are so transmogrified after death as to represent them rather as their mothers believed them to be instead of the mortals that they really were. The opposite seems to be the fate of John Dunn, whose good has been interred with his bones; for those historians who have mentioned him have not done so in the most favourable light. The reason for this is, perhaps, because their reference to him has been the briefest, and just as a photograph of, say, Victoria Falls, can never adequately reveal the awe-inspiring object it represents, so a succinct phrase seldom, if ever, shows forth the man. To date, the following extracts sum up what is thought of John Dunn. Dr Uys regards him as “the renegade John Dunn who has become a Zulu, chief, and as who (sic) was in all but name a Zulu”; further, he was that “polygamous Anglo-Zulu” who, “it is almost certain.… inspired Cetywayo…. If the diplomatic Cetywayo had stood in need of inspiration … to move against Umbandine.” Professor de Kiewiet tells us that “he was that renegade Englishman and gun-runner who lived, in the euphemistic words of Walseley, a mormon-like mode of life, with the habits of a Zulu and yet able to take his place in an officer’s mess.” Mr. Gibson, spoke of who was appointed a magistrate in Zululand in 1889, six years before Dunn's death spoke of "John Dunn, of subsequent notoriety” who had ingratiated himself….with Cetywayo. Professor Walker coupled his name with that of the “traitor Hamu” and briefly refers to him as “the gun-runner who deserted Cetywayo in his hour of need. Bishop Colenso of Natal remarked “that he Cetywayo had obtained…. firearms chiefly by the lucrative agency of Mr. John Dunn who was up till the (Zulu) war began, Cetywayo’s chief adviser although receiving $300 per annum as “Immigration Agent” of the Natal Government. The final touch to this portrait is added by the Bishop's daughter, Miss Harriet Colenso, who, reiterating her father, says, "He was for many years Tonga Emigration Agent to the Natal Government while known to be supplying the Natives with the guns wholesale. The “notorious” is an epithet that might suit him. It is rather odd that I have not been able to procure a copy of Dunns’s Book in Natal. It is called "Cetshwayo and the Three Generals” or something of that sort but was edited, and no doubt, carefully by Mister Rider Haggard. Who then was this "notorious" person who has have been so denigrated. It is the object of this essay to show John Dunn as he really was, a human being with human failings, a wise chief among both cunning and stupid ones, a beneficent father to his tribe, and one who, although badly treated by the Imperial Government served that Government both faithfully and well. At the time we hope to show his place in the South African cosmos. Sun, 01 Oct 1939 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/31938 1939-10-01T00:00:00Z https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/28980 The political life of Jacob Daniel Du Plessis ‘Japie’ Basson 1937–1989 Murray, Paul Leonard This study of the working career of Jacob Daniel Du Plessis Basson (1918 - 2012), a South African politician, covers the years from when he started to work in politics in 1937 until 1989, when he finally retired from full time work in the political field. It traces influences from his early home life as a boy growing up in the town of Paarl in the Boland, processed in his political career, which started out with his involvement in student politics at the University of Stellenbosch where he was instrumental in forming the student branch of the United Party in 1937. His entry into politics at the University of Stellenbosch coincided with the debates around Fusion, when Afrikaners had to decide between the policies of Dr D. F. Malan and Dr J. B. M. Hertzog, and on South Africa’s future relations with Britain. The study also looks at Basson’s views on republicanism and other significant ideologies such as federalism. Preoccupations such as these, manifested themselves in regional and generational tensions, in Afrikanerdom as well as a broader South Africa, and with the sectionalist policies of the National Party government inaugurated in 1948. Further areas of contestation were between Afrikaners and English-speaking South Africans around issues such as the establishment of a republic in 1961, and federation as an alternative model of politics to the Westminster style/model. Left out of the constitutional landscape were black South Africans, whose strong political aspirations Basson was sensitive to, but he firmly believed that gradual and effective change could only be initiated from within party structures. Basson’s clashes with the National Party over the constitutional position of coloured people and black people’s representation in the 1950s are highlighted as an indication of the internecine struggles within white politics at the time. Basson was directly involved in these deliberations, always aware of these tensions, such as in the Progressive Federal Party, which he co-founded in 1978, over the establishment of the President’s Council in 1980 to direct the transition of white politics to a new political and constitutional dispensation for South Africa. By emphasizing these complexities, this thesis attempts to contribute to an understanding of South Africa’s turbulent political past and Basson’s role in it. It draws upon the memoirs he wrote from when he retired until his death and on primary material from archives in South Africa, as well as Basson’s personal papers. Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/28980 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/28940 The dynamics of Tulama Oromo in the history of continuity and change, ca. 1700-1880s Tsegaye Zeleke Tuffa The thesis examines the dynamic and perplexing relations between the Kingdom of Shawa and the Tulama, aka the Shawan Oromo, in central Ethiopia from ca. 1700 to the1880s. A history of the kingdom of Shawa and the Tulama has been inextricably intertwined and punctuated by warfare, resistance, collaboration, economic and cultural intercourses, or in a nutshell dominated by the twin processes of homogenization and hegemonization. Unlike other parts of Oromo inhabited territories as well as the southern half of Ethiopia, which were conquered by the kingdom of Shawa within a short period, the conquest and incorporation of the Tulama, took at least more than a century and a half.This perhaps facilitated a remarkable process of cultural exchange between the Oromo and the Amhara on the Shawan plateau. Yet it is enigmatic that the Shawan kingdom encountered the most protracted and stiff resistance from the Tulama on the one hand and the notables of Oromo extraction like Matakkoo Borjaa, Abbaa Maallee, and Gobana Dachi played a pivotal role in the incorporation of the Shawan Oromo into the Kingdom on the other. The kingdom‘s headquarters from the outset was not based in the renowned Shawan sub-province of Manz as usually perceived by scholars but was based in the territories from where the Oromo had been either evicted or integrated into the kingdom. Hence, it is again enigmatic that by using the Oromo territory as their hotbeds the sovereigns of the kingdom of Shawa made campaigns against the Shawan Oromo starting from the time of Nagasi Krestos up to the time of the last but one of the most prominent and illustrious kings of Shawa, Meniek (1865-1889), who managed to incorporate the whole Tulama into the kingdom. Therefore, following centuries of conflicts and negotiations between the Shawan kingdom and the Tulama, central Shawa / the abode of the latter has been steadily transformed from the fringes of the kingdom to the hub of modern Ethiopia, and this development, in turn, has made the Oromo territory the most important base on which the whole edifice of modern Ethiopia has been constructed. Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/28940 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/28882 Carnal vigilance, vending vice: race, gender and sexual commerce in Cape Town, 1868-1957 Gonzalez-Stout, Corina This Ph.D. thesis is an examination into the history of prostitution in Cape Town from 1868 to 1957, a period that began with societal and legal toleration of the sex trade through government regulation and ended with abolition and criminalization. This historical research does not simply focus on the changing dynamics regarding prostitution in a vacuum that are only specific to Cape Town, but rather assesses local, regional, national, international, and imperial forces affecting the Western Cape and southern Africa. The overarching themes involve socially constructed ideas on morality, gender, race, and class. Such ideas produce and sustain the practice of the following discourses: state power, government control, resistance, surveillance, and policing. Sexual anxieties were also anxieties about threats to the racial order. It is these corresponding attitudes that resulted in greater limitations to the sex trade. Ultimately, this study addresses increasing racially motivated exclusionary and segregationist measures, moral policing, immigration, industrialization, health policies, disease, women’s activism, sexual commerce, national formation, and identity. Bibliography: leaves 266-282 Mon, 01 Nov 2021 00:00:00 GMT https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/28882 2021-11-01T00:00:00Z