Size: 297mm x 210mm
Page Extent: 134  (including photographs)
Format: Soft Paperback
Price: 270.00 (VAT Incl) 
ISBN:  978-0-9922329-8-6
Publication Date: 15 Sept. 2017
Rights: World

Fort Hare
From garrison to bastion of learning.

AUTHOR: Luvuyo Wotshela
The University of Fort Hare, situated along the Tyhume River valley, was established in what was once an Eastern Cape garrison post to fortify a troubled frontier. It became world renowned as a bastion of higher learning which produced some of the greatest minds to come out of South Africa. It was, in fact, the first ever university created specifically for Africans in the Union of South Africa.

Set in a typically controlled mission environment, along with other historical missionary schools, it extended influence beyond the geo-political boundaries of the Union. By mid-twentieth century some of Fort Hare’s students and staff were also intertwined with national political movements. Seen and regarded as a social space embedded with too liberal ideas, the National Party government took control of the university during the late 1950s, imposed its apartheid strategy and turned Fort Hare into a perennial hot-bed of students’ protests. Notwithstanding that challenge, it continued to grow and evolve to reaffirm itself as one of the key educational centres for mobilisation against apartheid in the country.

The names of luminaries from politics, business, arts, science and academia are to be found in the records of the institution. Aside from these being among the leaders in their respective fields, many of them, as students at Fort Hare, endured persecution and torture by the apartheid government and helped to lay the basis of our democratic South Africa. As democracy and the new South Africa dawned in 1994, Fort Hare was faced with the challenge of redefining and repositioning itself for the new realities confronting centres of higher education nationally and worldwide.

This book, an illustrated celebration of the centenary of Fort Hare, introduces some of the people associated with various epochs of this institution, weaves their pedigrees alongside its protracted history and some broader historical facets of this country. Today, Fort Hare University, with its enviable history is still a dynamic learning centre for the regeneration of young Africans. This book is a pictorial snapshot of an institution that is an integral part of the South African story.

Author Information.
Luvuyo Wotshela holds a D Phil in Modern History from Oxford University (St Antony’s College), in the United Kingdom. He is currently the Head and Professor of the National Heritage and Cultural Studies Centre (NAHECS), at the University of Fort Hare.

Readership: This book is a recommended reference for students and academics in social sciences as well as general readers interested in revisionist history, especially that of the Eastern Cape.

Size: 230mm x 150mm
Page Extent: 184  (including photographs)
Format: Soft Paperback
Price: 210.00 (VAT Incl) 
ISBN: 978-0-620-36610-6 
Publication Date: November 2010
Rights: World

The Struggle for the Eastern Cape 1800-1854

AUTHOR: Martin Legassick

The Struggle for the Eastern Cape 1800-1854: Subjugation and the roots of South African democracy reconstructs our understanding of a period that has been given little attention in the historical narratives of South African democracy. It is a narrative of the land struggles of the Xhosa and other indigenous populations against subjugation by the British ruled Cape Colony in the first half of the 19th century. The book also examines an important turning point in South African history: the introduction of a non-racial franchise in 1854 which represented the roots of democracy in this country. By the end of the 19th century this franchise had nurtured generations of African voters, amongst them the founders of the 20th century African nationalists who fought for democracy against white minority rule.

Author information.
Martin Legassick was an Emeritus Professor in the History Department at the University of the Western Cape, where he lectured between 1992 and 2005. He studied at the universities of Oxford, Ghana, and California, Los Angeles, obtaining his PhD at the latter university in 1969. He lectured at the universities of Santa Barbara in California, Sussex and Warwick in Britain before resigning to work full-time on the liberation of South Africa between 1981 and 1991. He has written extensively on South African history, from the pre-colonial period to the present day.

"The Struggle for the Eastern Cape makes an important contribution with its systematic examination of how racism and capitalism shaped the rise of the state in South Africa. The Reader is left with the question of whether this kind of state, by its very nature could be transformed into a tool for people-centred development.” Professor Kwandiwe Kondlo