Currently I am working on three research projects.
1. The History of the Winter Family
2. The Politics of Housing in Late Colonial and Early Independent Kenya, Zambia and DR Congo
3. The Burial of Dennis the Goat – Revisiting the Years of the South African Transition
The History of the Winter Family – A Winters’ Tale Emerging in a South African Context
In a collective research project based on archival research and – mainly – oral history we are reconstructing the history of “the Winters”. The family consists of many branches. Once there was a missionary couple, “the Winters”, who went to South Africa as part of the Berlin Missionary Society in the 1870s. They separated from the mission and established themselves in the Pedi heartland, where they interacted closely both with the paramountcy and local South African authorities. A son married into a Swazi lineage which came from afar as well to establish themselves in the region. This was the starting point for a line of Winters to emerge who were later discriminated against on the basis of their skin colour and ethnic categorisation. The missionary couple’s son married an Afrikaner woman after the death of his Swazi wife. It is form there that another family line came into being who were “white” as the South African nomenclatura dubbed their roots and belonging.
The Winters’ tale captures the pain, the ambitions and injustices of South African history over at least four generations. The family’s tale relates to issues of claiming lost land and to being cast as “coloureds” in-between other ethnic labels – even though there was a constant social and familial interaction with so-called “whites”, “Indians” and “the Pedi”. A colleague of mine and I were happy to be contacted, in 2008, by a descendent of the “German-white-Swazi-Indian-coloured” line of the family and her sister. They themselves and their mother had intermarried with men “of the Muslim faith” while staying in immediate touch, at least partly, with versions of Christianity available in both town and countryside. We are exploring the family history from a variety of angles, and we appreciate that so many of “the Winter family” have engaged with us in a series of conversations.
The Politics of Housing in Late Colonial and Early Independent Kenya, Zambia and DR Congo
This research was started with funding from the Austrian Science Funds (FWF). In three case studies, between 2017 and 2021, a group of researchers committed themselves to the study of housing as provided in the context of employment.
Parallel to a doctoral fellow writing on “Building Ideology” in Livingstone, I am currently devoting time to coming up with a history of the provision of housing in late colonial Zambia and ideas of social advance among an emerging urban strata of aspiring citizens. The book will focus on issues of rent-paying, the meaning of house numbers and addresses as well as on representations of houses and homes in Zambian life-writing. I am also pursuing a focus on the cultural, political and architectural meanings of roofs, which are mentioned excessively in the archival record.
The Burial of Dennis the Goat – Revisiting the Years of the South African Transition
In 1992 a goat called Dennis was murdered in the streets of Umlazi. Dennis had the reputation of being like a human being, and his owner, Xolani Sabelo, was determined to give him a human burial. This proved difficult as the Umlazi authorities were reluctant to assign space from their cemetery for Dennis’ grave. Xolani then went from pillar to post to find a place for his beloved friend and companion. A variety of print media and radio stations keenly covered the story, and in many ways the story of the death and burial of Dennis the Goat was a story of African journalism re-emerging from apartheid pressures.
The story unfolded in a fragile moment of South African history, namely virtually between the ending of apartheid and the beginning of “new times”. Everything was in flux. There was a high level of violence sweeping through the country. There were many expectations towards a better future. The “output” will be an extended essay offering various possibilities of reading the story.
